Russian regime change is needed for US corporations like Goldman Sachs to return, says Anthony Scaramucci
Phil Rosen – March 11, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin.MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
Big corporations won’t return to Russia while Putin is in charge, Anthony Scaramucci told CNBC on Friday.
“There’s no way back into the international community for President Putin,” Scaramucci said.
He anticipates a significant regime change in Russia, and says Putin will not be in power much longer.
A number of western businesses have fled Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, and anything short of regime change is unlikely to bring them back, according to SkyBridge Capital founder and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs became the first major Wall Street bank to cease operations in Russia, and the Big-Four accounting firms also all recently announced their departure.
“There’s no way back into the international community for President Putin,” Scaramucci told CNBC Friday. “It’s just ridiculously bad.”
As the West’s economic sanctions choke Russia’s economy, Scaramucci expects Putin to eventually negotiate a ceasefire that includes immunity for himself and his top generals.
Among the scores of corporations that have cut ties with Russia in recent weeks, most won’t return until there’s a sign of progress, he said.
“Until there’s a significant regime change [in Russia] and some positivity and softening of that militarism, I do not see anybody being able to go back,” Scaramucci said. He added that he doesn’t see a reason for Western leaders to ease sanctions even if Russia pulls out of Ukraine.
And while foreign businesses may eventually resume operations there, “they’re not going to go back anytime with President Putin in charge,” he said.
How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affects ‘everything on the supply chain’: Analyst
Dani Romero – March 11, 2022
Economists and industry experts widely believe supply chain disruptions will continue to affect the U.S. economy as Russia’s invasion against Ukraine sent oil prices surging and suggested an unpredictable course for markets in the short term.
“To run everything on the supply chain — unfortunately, so much of it relies on oil,” Kona Haque, ED&F Man head of research, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “It’s the reason why every time you see oil prices go up by 50%, a U.S. recession typically follows. It’s that impactful. It’s that entrenched in the economy. And obviously the U.S. clearly is very, very energy dependent … It will have a reverberating impact across the supply chain.”
Gas prices skyrocketed over the past month as Western sanctions against Russia bite: The U.S. national average, as of March 11, is $4.33 a gallon. California became the first state to see average gas price tick up to more than $5/gallon with states like Nevada, Hawaii, and Oregon not far behind, according to the latest data from AAA.https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/8914950/embed?auto=1
High gas prices generally trickle into other parts of the economy: Haque noted that the cost of shipping “is going to go through the roof” because bunker fuel is used so often, and fuel is under pressure right now. Along with bunker fuel are oil and gas, which are considered “hugely important components” for fertilizers that are both currently experiencing shortages since Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of them.
“Basically, the impact that this war is going to have across the global economy is going to happen via the commodity transmission,” Haque said.
Men repair a gas pipeline outside a house which was damaged by shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, January 5, 2015. REUTERS/Igor Tkachenko
‘An inflationary impact’
Shipping companies like FedEx Express (FDX) announced last week they were hiking up their surcharge for many international parcel and freight shipments due to the disruptions among Russia and Ukraine.
Meanwhile in Europe, fertilizer makers, Yara International ASA (YARIY) and Borealis, also cut their output because of surging natural gas prices, adding more pressure for global food inflation.
A general view of a factory of Norwegian chemical company Yara International ASA, at Ambes near Bordeaux, south-western France August 6, 2020. (Photo by MEHDI FEDOUACH / AFP)
Last month, two of the top European shippers — Maersk and DSV — warned that freight costs would likely remain high into the year, offering no relief to customers who are also feeling the pinch at the pump and the grocery store.
“This whole supply chain is obviously going to have an inflationary impact within the U.S. economy, but globally, oh my gosh,” Haque said.
‘Enormous casualty count is one-third of total Russia lost occupying Afghanistan for a decade: reporter
Bob Brigham – March 10, 2022
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin wearing a Sitka Gear camouflage. Sitka jackets are manufactured in Bozeman, Montana. Photo via the Kremlin.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks even worse when reports of its fatalities are compared to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that is widely seen as hastening the collapse of the USSR.
“I was just reading up, looking back at the history of the Afghan war, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. 15,000 Soviet soldiers, Russian soldiers died in Afghanistan, Ari, during the course of ten years. U.S. estimates now think that about 5,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, in two weeks, and the amount of losses is enormous for the Russians,” she noted.
“The Soviet Union, ending a long silence about the exact number of its casualties in the war in Afghanistan, said today that 13,310 soldiers had been killed, 35,478 wounded and 311 are missing,” The Times noted. “The number of troops killed was slightly higher than the United States had estimated. Washington had put the number of Soviet casualties in the eight and a half years of war at 33,000 to 38,000, a third of them fatalities.”
Ukraine’s army, vastly outgunned, inflicts losses on more powerful Russian forces
Nabih Bulos – March 9, 2022
The Russian soldier wrenched the steering wheel to the right, digging furrows in the embankment as the truck lurched onto a field astride the M06 highway near Kyiv. He barreled down a few dozen yards, desperate to escape the Ukrainian forces that ambushed his armored column a few miles away when he ran into another unit.
“We got the info that they were coming down this road; our intelligence groups told us,” said Vasil, a 57-year-old Ukrainian tank operator sitting at a picnic table in the bushes on the side of the highway. A few yards away was his tank; it too was obscured by the trees, like a bulky beast with its turret pointed toward the road.
“They were more than us. We used everything we had.”
The driver’s corpse and the burnt husk of the overturned Russian truck seemed proof that it was enough.
The body of a Russian soldier lies on the side of a road where there was recent heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces near Sytnyaky, Ukraine, on March 5, 2022. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
The recent skirmish was one of the many surprises of this invasion, now entering its third week: The Ukrainian army, outmanned and outgunned by several magnitudes, has somehow been able not just to survive, but to bog down and score palpable hits against its adversary, even as Russian forces have expanded their reach in the east and south.
Rather than a lightning-fast assault made up of tank columns and swarms of helicopters meant to overrun Kyiv in a few days, the Russian onslaught — the largest ground war in Europe since 1945 — has been marked more by what observers and Ukrainian soldiers see as a lack of coordination, with Russian armor often entering areas with little infantry support or protection from above.
“It’s f— up. They come with very big columns, 30, 40 in a line, and they just go at us. Yes, they use planes, artillery, but we’re smart and we know the terrain well; they’re panicked so we stop them,” said Vladimir Korotya, a deputy administrator in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, who has since become a commander in the fight against Russian forces.
“Russian soldiers fight well, but their tactics are inexplicable.”
Vasil, asked about his unit’s clashes, criticized the Russians as “uncoordinated.”
“They’re in a land that is not theirs, and they don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
Observers have chalked up Russia’s poor performance thus far — Kyiv still stands and the second largest city, Kharkiv, has yet to fall — to a lack of morale, faulty intelligence and what appear to be logistical issues that have occasionally bordered on the comedic. Videos on social media depict Russian troops surrendering because they got lost or having their vehicles towed by Ukrainian farmers atop tractors when they ran out of gas.
“The Russians have had huge logistics problems. They have expended most of their first and second lines of ammunition,” said Jack Watling, an expert with the Royal United Services Institute, in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday. “And therefore we actually saw a real lull in their operational tempo over the weekend while they tried to reset.”
That has also extended to air operations. With the Ukrainian air force still flying, not to mention Western nations delivering hundreds if not thousands of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Ukrainian troops, Russia has not been able to or has chosen not to fully deploy its air power.
On Wednesday, an intelligence update by the British Defense Ministry said Ukrainian air defenses appear to have “enjoyed considerable success against Russians’ modern combat aircraft.”
“Initially, they assumed that they would immediately establish air superiority. They didn’t, and so they were taking very considerable losses,” Watling said, adding that though the Russians have “a depth of aircraft, at the moment they are taking unsustainable losses.”
“The question is whether the Ukrainians can continue to inflict that rate of loss,” he said.
A man makes his way past destroyed Russian military vehicles in Bucha, close to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. (Serhii Nuzhnenko / Associated Press)
In Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have had more success. They have pushed into parts of the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine; using a potent combination of land, sea and air units, they now besiege Mariupol and other cities on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. But even there, the offensive has yet to reach the country’s largest and most significant port, Odesa.
That the force of numbers and destructive power of the Russian war machine can eventually overwhelm Ukrainian troops is not in doubt: Russia has more than four times the troops, more than six times the armored vehicles and tanks and almost 10 times the aircraft and helicopters. It may be part of Moscow’s strategy not to fully muster its arsenal or expend too much of its munitions in a conflict that could drag on and possibly draw in other nations. But some intelligence officials suggest Moscow will turn more aggressive.
Experts also caution that the information coming from the battlefield isn’t giving a full picture.
“There’s a lot of noise in the information environment,” said Marta Kepe, a senior defense analyst at Rand Corp. She added that though there have already been examples of Russian forces bombing and shelling urban areas, ground combat between armies has been less common, and there’s little insight as to what the Ukrainian army is doing. American officials say 2,000 to 4,000 Russian troops have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24.
Part of the reason for that, said retired Maj. John Spencer, who chairs the Urban Warfare Studies department at the Madison Policy Forum, is that the Ukrainian army isn’t conducting large-scale military engagements.
“It would make no sense for the Ukrainian army to go military to military against the Russians. To be out in the open, especially if you’re not technologically more advanced, it’s suicide,” he said. Instead, Ukrainian forces have relied on a combination of guerrilla tactics.
“They know where to hide; they can establish ambushes, they can get out of dense urban terrain, pop out, fade back in,” he said.
But Russia has also yet to unleash the full power of its military might, especially when trying to dislodge Ukrainian forces from major cities. That was the strategy in Syria, when Russia, along with its Syrian government allies, carried out a devastating campaign to subdue rebels in the city of Aleppo. Spencer brought up the example of Chechnya, where Russian forces began their offensive with 3,000 artillery rounds a day before they ramped up to 30,000.
Ukrainian soldiers ride in an armored military vehicle Saturday in the outskirts of Kyiv. (Emilio Morenatti / Associated Press)
“That’s the level of bombing that a city like Kyiv should be prepared to take without giving up,” he said.
Even if Russia does manage to press its advantages and steamroll into Kyiv and install a pro-Moscow government, it seems certain that it will face a grinding insurgency, not just in the capital but across the country.
The seeds of that resistance can already be seen. Russian-occupied cities such as Kherson in the south have erupted in protests against Russian rule. In Novopskov, in the Donbas, demonstrations stopped only because Russian troops reportedly shot a number of protesters earlier this week.
Then there’s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: His insistence on staying in the capital — going so far as to release videos showing him walking in his office in Kyiv — and delivering rousing speeches on social media have boosted fighting morale, something even his most vociferous critics acknowledge.
People practice an ambush during an introductory level military and first-aid training session. (Bloomberg)
Even more crucially, the large number of cadres from the general population has allowed the army to outsource guarding territory — not to mention intelligence on enemy movements — to reservists. Western governments also have a pipeline for weapons ready to be reoriented toward an insurgency.
“The only reason the army has survived is because they went from whatever they were before the invasion to eventually millions — although untrained — civilians assisting in the military campaign,” Spencer said.
“That’s not really as normal as people would think it is. They’ve added to the combat power of the Ukrainian military.”
Mr. Zygar is a Russian journalist and the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin.”
President Vladimir Putin, left, meeting with members of Russia’s Security Council last month.Credit…Pool photo by Alexei Nikolsky/EPA, via Shutterstock
Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Russia is now more isolated than it has ever been. The economy is under sanctions and international businesses are withdrawing. The news media has been even further restricted; what remains spouts paranoia, nationalism and falsehoods. The people will have increasingly less communication with others beyond their borders. And in all of this, I fear, Russia increasingly resembles its president.
I have been talking to high-level businessmen and Kremlin insiders for years. In 2016 I published a book, “All the Kremlin’s Men,” about Mr. Putin’s inner circle. Since then I’ve been gathering reporting for a potential sequel. While the goings on around the president are opaque — Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, has always been secretive and conspiratorial — my sources, who speak to me on condition of anonymity, have regularly been correct. What I have heard about the president’s behavior over the past two years is alarming. His seclusion and inaccessibility, his deep belief that Russian domination over Ukraine must be restored and his decision to surround himself with ideologues and sycophants have all helped to bring Europe to its most dangerous moment since World War II.
Mr. Putin spent the spring and summer of 2020 quarantining at his residence in Valdai, approximately halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to sources in the administration, he was accompanied there by Yuri Kovalchuk. Mr. Kovalchuk, who is the largest shareholder in Rossiya Bank and controls several state-approved media outlets, has been Mr. Putin’s close friend and trusted adviser since the 1990s. But by 2020, according to my sources, he had established himself as the de facto second man in Russia, the most influential among the president’s entourage.
Mr. Kovalchuk has a doctorate in physics and was once employed by an institute headed by the Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov. But he isn’t just a man of science. He is also an ideologue, subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism. This appears to be Mr. Putin’s worldview, too. Since the summer of 2020, Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk have been almost inseparable, and the two of them have been making plans together to restore Russia’s greatness.
According to people with knowledge of Mr. Putin’s conversations with his aides over the past two years, the president has completely lost interest in the present: The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he and Mr. Kovalchuk obsess over the past. A French diplomat told me that President Emmanuel Macron of France was astonished when Mr. Putin gave him a lengthy history lecture during one of their talks last month. He shouldn’t have been surprised.
In his mind, Mr. Putin finds himself in a unique historical situation in which he can finally recover for the previous years of humiliation. In the 1990s, when Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk first met, they were both struggling to find their footing after the fall of the Soviet Union, and so was the country. The West, they believe, took advantage of Russia’s weakness to push NATO as close as possible to the country’s borders. In Mr. Putin’s view, the situation today is the opposite: It is the West that’s weak. The only Western leader that Mr. Putin took seriously was Germany’s previous chancellor, Angela Merkel. Now she is gone and it’s time for Russia to avenge the humiliations of the 1990s.
It seems that there is no one around to tell him otherwise. Mr. Putin no longer meets with his buddies for drinks and barbecues, according to people who know him. In recent years — and especially since the start of the pandemic — he has cut off most contacts with advisers and friends. While he used to look like an emperor who enjoyed playing on the controversies of his subjects, listening to them denounce one another and pitting them against one another, he is now isolated and distant, even from most of his old entourage.
His guards have imposed a strict protocol: No one can see the president without a week’s quarantine — not even Igor Sechin, once his personal secretary, now head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft. Mr. Sechin is said to quarantine for two or three weeks a month, all for the sake of occasional meetings with the president.
In “All the Kremlin’s Men” I described the phenomenon of the “collective Putin” — the way his entourage always tried to eagerly anticipate what the president would want. These cronies would tell Mr. Putin exactly what he wanted to hear. The “collective Putin” still exists: The whole world saw it on the eve of the invasion when he summoned top officials, one by one, and asked them their views on the coming war. All of them understood their task and submissively tried to describe the president’s thoughts in their own words.
This ritual session, which was broadcast by all Russian TV channels, was supposed to smear all of the country’s top officials with blood. But it also showed that Mr. Putin is completely fed up with his old guard: His contempt for them was clear. He seemed to relish their sniveling, as when he publicly humiliated Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who started mumbling and tried to quickly correct himself, agreeing with whatever Mr. Putin was saying. These are nothing but yes men, the president seemed to say.
As I have reported for years, some members of Mr. Putin’s entourage have long worked to convince him that he is the only person who can save Russia, that every other potential leader would only fail the country. This was the message that the president heard going back to 2003, when he contemplated stepping down, only to be told by his advisers — many of whom also had backgrounds in the K.G.B. — that he should stay on. A few years later, Mr. Putin and his entourage were discussing “Operation Successor” and Dmitri Medvedev was made president. But after four years, Mr. Putin returned to replace him. Now he has really and truly come to believe that only he can save Russia. In fact, he believes it so much that he thinks the people around him are likely to foil his plans. He can’t trust them, either.
And now here we are. Isolated and under sanctions, alone against the world, Russia looks as though it is being remade in its president’s image. Mr. Putin’s already very tight inner circle will only draw in closer. As the casualties mount in Ukraine, the president appears to be digging in his heels; he says that the sanctions on his country are a “declaration of war.”
Yet at the same time he seems to believe that complete isolation will make a large part of the most unreliable elements leave Russia: During the past two weeks, the protesting intelligentsia — executives, actors, artists, journalists — have hurriedly fled the country; some abandoned their possessions just to get out. I fear that from the point of view of Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk, this will only make Russia stronger.
GOP Rep. Cawthorn calls Zelensky a ‘thug,’ says Ukraine is pushing ‘woke ideologies’
Christopher Wilson, Senior Writer – March 10, 2022
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” at a campaign event over the weekend.
“Remember that Zelensky is a thug,” Cawthorn said in a video obtained by WRAL. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
The 26-year-old Cawthorn’s statement is a deviation from mainstream Republican support of Zelensky and the Ukrainian people as they defend themselves against the Russian invasion, but it echoes comments made at the first impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks in Kyiv on March 6. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
“We’re talking Ukraine … one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said at the first hearing. “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine — it’s the system!”
Trump was impeached for attempting to blackmail Zelensky shortly after the Ukrainian president took office, in a call to him in 2019. Democrats argued that Trump had threatened to condition U.S. military aid to Ukraine on a commitment from Zelensky to launch an investigation into Joe Biden, then a top candidate in the Democratic primary race.
An hour after WRAL published the video, Cawthorn tweeted that Putin’s actions were “disgusting” and that he was praying for Ukrainians but that “leaders, including Zelensky, should NOT push misinformation on America.”
A spokesperson for Cawthorn did not immediately reply to Yahoo News’ request for comment.
The comments from the freshman congressman were first noted by the Republican strategist Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday. In a piece describing Republican support for Ukraine, despite Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rove cited Cawthorn’s comments, as well as those made by Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, as exceptions.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., arrives for the State of the Union address at the House of Representatives on March 1. (Saul Loeb/Pool via Reuters)
He also spoke at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the violence at the U.S. Capitol and subsequently voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He recently made headlines for driving with a revoked license, his third reported traffic violation in the last six months.
Cawthorn won the 11th District in the western portion of North Carolina with 55 percent of the vote in 2020. After initially saying he would run for reelection in a newly drawn 13th District, he reversed course and said he would remain in the 11th.
On Jan. 6, 2021, newly elected Rep. Madison Cawthorn addresses supporters of then-President Donald Trump near the White House. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
A number of North Carolina Republicans, including several of Cawthorn’s GOP primary opponents, quickly condemned his remarks on Ukraine. And on Wednesday, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared to distance himself from Trump, who praised Putin as “savvy” in the lead-up to the invasion.
“I do not think anything savvy or genius about Putin. I think Putin is evil. I think he’s a dictator. I think he’s murdering people right now,” McCarthy said.
When asked if he agreed that there was no room in the Republican Party for Putin apologists, a statement made by former Vice President Mike Pence, McCarthy answered in the affirmative.
Diabolical International War Criminal Vladimir Putin
The world is in shock. The people of Ukraine and Russia are in shock. A madman with his fingers on the nuclear buttons, and hell bent on Russian world domination, has unleashed almost 200,000 reluctant and low-paid soldiers, including thousands of conscripted young men who seem as dazed and shocked as the rest of us, for undoubtedly the biggest political and military bungle in Russia’s history. Ukraine and it’s courageous Democratic populace are squarely in the cross-hairs of Putin’s needless conflagration.
How can any nation’s responsible leader wake up in the morning and decide he must make life harder and incredibly more dangerous for 44 million innocent human beings. That what ever his personal lifelong ambitions are for his country, its requires killing, terrorizing and maiming 10’s of thousands of men, women and children, and forcing millions of terrified folks to flee their homeland. The only word I can think of is diabolical, someone created by the movie industry in order to sell tickets, break box office records and scare the bejesus out of theater goers.
But this isn’t a cinematic farce, it’s real life and death for the Democratic leaning citizens of Ukraine, forced to cower in underground shelters to avoid indiscriminate missiles and rockets raining down on civilian targets.
A group of women and a boy walk to the train station as they try to leave Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 2.
There are no super heroes for this epic, signed up to vanquish the evil doer, only countless daily stories from the war fronts, about 100’s of thousands of ordinary people doing heroic things to protect their families, their cities, their country and their fledging Democracy.
Vitaly Skakun Volodymyrovych is hailed a hero and remembered as a symbol of the resistance, after sacrificing his life to blow up the Henichesky Bridge. Russian tanks were attempting to use the bridge to advance in Crimea. The bridge was mined, but a Russian column was advancing and there was no time to detonate it remotely. Skakun Volodymyrovych radioed his unit and told them he would do it manually, saying goodbye.
The Kherson region of Crimea, now over taken by the advancing hoards, was one of the first met with enemy troops, the military said. When it seemed like stopping the advancing column of tanks would be impossible, the troops made the decision to blow up the bridge.
“The bridge was mined, but he didn’t manage to get away from there,” a statement from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “According to his brothers in arms, Vitaly got in touch and said he was going to blow up the bridge. Immediately after, an explosion rang out. “Our brother was killed,” the statement continued.
Volodymyrovych is but one of many thousands of Ukraine’s hero’s sacrificing their lives to protect their families, their sovereign country and their Democracy. Ordinary people are taking up arms, building Molotov cocktails, laying down under tanks and confronting heavily armed Russian soldiers with nothing but their tired bodies.
A child learns how to use an AK-47 assault rifle during a self-defense course for civilians in the outskirts of Lviv, in western Ukraine, on Friday, March 4. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Young men, old men, mothers and even grandmothers are separating from their loved ones, sending them West to safety, and then staying behind to defend their homeland; refusing to surrender their country to a megalomaniac despot like Putin.
A couple embraces before the woman boards a train leaving for western Ukraine, at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday. The U.N. refugee agency says nearly 120,000 people have so far fled Ukraine into neighboring countries in the wake of the Russian invasion. Andriy Andriyenko/APStanislav, 40, says goodbye to his son, David, 2, and his wife, Anna, 35, on a train to Lviv, Ukraine, at Kyiv’s train station Thursday, March 3. Stanislav was staying to fight while his family was leaving the country to seek refuge in a neighboring country.
Hundreds of nations and companies have signed onto the sanctions devised, by the U.S., the European Union and NATO, to cripple the Russian economy, personally punish Putin and his oligarch supporters and possibly end the war. The sanctions are virtually unanimous worldwide. Russia is now the most isolated and vilified country in the world.
Their economy is in freefall, their stock market’s been shut down, the inflation rate is almost 25%, there’s a run on their banks and the difference in value of the ruble compared to the U.S. dollar is – a dollar, worth less than a penny. Putin is contemplating Marshall law and those who are able, are attempting to flee the country.
Long line at Russian banks. Ruble hits new low.
How did this maniac reach the point of deciding it was a grand idea and opportune time to start WWIII, when the world is just now recovering from a two year siege from the coronavirus?
Is he nuts? Is he so isolated from ordinary Russian’s, that he can’t see the humanity through his malevolent ambitions?
Is he suffering from Alzheimer’s; the plaque shielding any rational thought, and growing more belligerent by the day?
Putin has outlawed constructive political debate and eliminated free thinking courageous advisors. Everyone seated at that ridiculous block long Kremlin conference table appears terrified to speak up when Putin proposes his irrational ideas? The toadies at the seat of Russian power kowtow to every Putinish whim.
Putin with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, second from left, and Valery Gerasimov, head of the general staff of the armed forces, in Moscow on Sunday. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
But still, thousands of Russian hero’s have seen through the curtains of disinformation and demonstrated in the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and cities across Russia, knowing that anyone willing to defy Putin’s omnipotent authority will surely end up in a gulag and maybe never heard from again.
Dozens of prominent athletes, sports teams and celebrities from Ukraine, from countries throughout the world and even from Russia, have joined the resistance.
“I am proud to be Ukrainian” Manchester City Player
Lviv based Pravda brewery switched from making beer to making Molotov cocktails. The bottle label says ‘Putin is a dickhead’.
Many conscripted low wage Russian troops, now running out of food and fuel, were told they were taking part in routine military maneuvers or a “special military operation, but were actually headed to the Western front to bombard and lay siege to their peaceful relatives and neighbors.
tarbabys believes Putin might just be crazed and paranoid from bunkering throughout the covid pandemic. The entire civilized world told him that invading Ukraine was a crazy bat-shit idea, and that the world would bring a heavy ass-woopin set of sanctions, if he executed his 19th century plans of Russian empire.
He of course didn’t believe or listen to anyone, not his flunkies, not his oligarch buddies, not his military advisors (and especially not the conscripted soldiers who hadn’t a clue where they were going and what they were supposed to do) and certainly not the state-run media fed Russian people, who have family members at the receiving end of the missiles, rockets, tank shells, cluster bombs and thermobaric.
Oksana is hugged by her son, Dmytro, during a funeral for her husband, Volodymyr Nezhenets, in the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, March 4. A small group of reservists buried their comrade after Nezhenets was one of three killed on Saturday, Feb. 26, in an ambush Ukrainian authorities say was caused by Russian “saboteurs.” Emilio Morenatti/AP
Now the entire world has turned Russia into an isolated pariah with an economy cratering faster than the oligarchs yachts and jets have attempted fleeing to the Maldives. The world has taken notice and have enlisted money laundering repo-men tasked with recovering those ill-gotten gains.
Will Putin admit that he made the biggest political and military blunder in Russian history or will he double down on destroying Ukraine and establish a massive, documented war crime chronicle for all the world to see in real time. His own survival is in the balance.
Regime change might be the only hope of ending Ukraine’s nightmare. More than 8,000 Russian protestors have already been arrested, but it might take 100’s of thousands or several millions in the streets of Moscow and Putin’s St Petersburg to convince him that an about face is necessary to preserve the Russian Federation.
Crying boy asks to stop the war
Similar to the U.S. Congress, the Russian Federal Assembly, is made up of the 450 member State Duma (equivalent to our House of Representatives) and the 100 member Federation Council (similar to our U.S. Senate). One thing they both have in common is that they can commence the process of impeaching the President with a two-thirds majority. Do they have the courage to rain in their diabolical madman.
Most don’t hold much hope since the Duma passed a law this week proposing a 15-year prison sentence for anyone calling Putin’s “special military operation” a war or invasion, or spreading what Der Leader deems fake news. Another thing is the fact that the Assembly, like our U.S. Senate, is terrified of holding a lawless President accountable.
Experts believe that unless Putin is stopped now, the entire European continent will be in jeopardy. How this will end is anyone’s guess. Putin has put his nuclear options on high alert and all but explicitly threatened to use them, warning that countries that interfere with his invasion will suffer “consequences you have never faced in your history.” Is the world prepared to call his bluff, or let the madman roll through Eastern Europe.
A rich billionaire has put a $1 million bounty on Putin’s head and I’m sure behind the scenes, there are dozens more willing to kick in much more.
America should take note; we have our own Autocratic Putin want-a -be in Donald trump.
Putin has lied to the Russian people and even to his own conscripted soldiers from the very beginning of his Czarist crusade. After deploying 200,000 soldiers, more than half of his entire army, on the borders of Ukraine, he told Russia and the world that it was only military maneuvers and that he had no plans of invading Ukraine.
He then tried to manufacture a number of farcical false flag operations that convinced no one. He claimed his military hoards were actually “peacekeepers.” When no one except Trump fell for that, he tried to convince the world that he needed to prevent a nonexistent “genocide,” that Ukraine was actually the aggressor and were trying to oppress the Russian speaking residents of the Donbas region.
From that, he signed a decree recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk. Again not convincing, except to best bud Donald J. Trump, so Putin searched his addled mind and discovered that Ukraine was so full of Nazi’s that he had to round up President Zelensky, who is Jewish, and perform a de-Nazifying exorcism of the entire country.
This gets even more bizarre; he then tried to claim NATO and Ukraine were actually conspiring to attack the Russian homeland. Finally, delusional Putin appears on T.V. and claims the war “operation” is going as planned, even though everyone can see the myriad of logistical problems and blunders.
Are the indoctrinated folks in Russia able to even recognize the subterfuge? The disinformation, propaganda, lies and rants on Russian T.V. morph daily; we in the real world certainly aren’t bamboozled.
Trump lied so often during his administration, news outlets had whole teams of archivists documenting his 30,000 plus lies or misstatements. Both Putin and Trump are world renown liars who decry the fake news and conspiracies they embrace so easily.
Putin decreed Luhansk and Donetsk were now part of the Russian Empire; I’m surprised he didn’t use Trump’s Sharpie at the televised signing.
Trump said it was “wonderful,” “so smart,” and even “genius” for Putin to “declare a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent.” He claimed Putin will now “go in” and “be a peacekeeper.”
Trump also declared that Putin has “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen,” with “more army tanks than I’ve ever seen,” and “we could use that on our southern border.” Putin is “savvy,”
Trump would have loved that power and authority to decree, lets say, the Southern District of New York, as part of his own Trump empire.
Putin thinks nothing of the millions of Ukraine’s he’s ordered slaughtered, maimed, displaced and forced to flee to neighboring countries. And couldn’t care less about destroying their towns and cities, and the homes and businesses of millions of peaceful neighbors. He probably doesn’t even worry about creating another Chernobyl catastrophe by recklessly targeting and shelling critical nuclear infrastructure. But someone should tell him the wind blows from West to East.
Europe’s Largest Nuclear Plant Under Attack
Trump never cared about anyone but himself. He disparaged our neighbors (drug dealers and rapists) on our Southern border and tried to build a boondoggle of a wall to keep out the hoards. He ridicules anyone who refuses to bow down and tow the Trump company line.
Putin and his anti-Democratic criminal Kleptocracy have looted 85% of Russia’s wealth and treasures, amounting to trillions of dollars. He enriches a cabal of oligarchs who acquiesced to launder and bank his own ill-gotten billions.
Trump’s main goal in life, and as America’s Grifter in Chief, was stealing as much as he can from anyone he can. The victims are too long to list. Trump also signed countless executive orders enriching those willing to countenance his criminal enterprises and support his assault on America’s Democracy and Democratic institutions.
Putin‘s Autocratic authority knows no bounds, since he never had to worry about obscure notions like rules and laws.
Trump’s attacks and rants against our courts and Judicial institutions are legendary. And the only laws he obeys were his executive one’s absolving his convicted cronies of past crimes.
Putin preaches a Nationalist dogma and commands Russian’s to believe his lies about Making Russia Great Again, even though they’ve been on a downward spiral for the last 20 years.
Trump plays to the far rights nationalist sensibilities, campaigned on Making America Great Again, listens to no one and proclaims “Only I can do it.”
Putin hates the independent media and the truth even more than Trump, but also wields the power to poison, imprison or vanish those who speaks truth to power. His recent crackdown on his own citizens is reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s worst reign of dis-information and oppression. Escalating Ukraine war protests throughout Russia forced Putin to crack down on demonstrators and shut down all independent media.
Trump, envious of Putin’s omnipotent power to quash public dissent, never missed an opportunity to bash the media and cry “fake news.”
Putin declared himself President for life and enjoys election majorities of more than 90%. Ballot stuffing in Russia is a political art form.
Trump is again envious. He attempted to withhold $400 million in military aid allocated by Congress to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression, unless President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to look into the debunked conspiracies during his presidential campaign.
Trump also tried to overturn the not even close 2020 election in more than 60 U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. After being soundly defeated and embarrassed in every case, he sent his MAGA storm troopers to attack our capitol, assault its defenders and hang his own vice president. His “big lie” persists today. And his cowardly sycophants in congress, in right wing media and in state houses across the country have embarked on a campaign of voter suppression, intimidation and nullification.
Putin expelled over the last two decades, anyone who might have convinced him to act in the best interests of his Ukrainian neighbors, the Russian Federation and the civilized world. He surrounded himself with the most extreme nationalistic politicians, military advisors and bootlickers.
Trump caters to the most extreme right wing white nationalistic, government hating, anti-democratic segments of American society. Anyone in the Republican Party, who had even a modicum of common sense, integrity or loyalty to our constitution quit his administration, and the party, or were drummed out. With the Trump MAGA cult operatives firmly entrenched at every level of his administration and in many of our democratic institutions, including the Justice Department, no one was left to stop Trump from trying to overthrow our Democracy and from destroying the GOP.
InPutin’sown mind, history should record his reign as the savior of the Soviet Empire. But in reality, he will be remembered for trying to destroy Europe’s largest, forward thinking, blossoming Democracy, vilified as a monomaniacal war criminal obsessed with the Russification of Ukraine, and for destroying what’s left of a backwards looking Russian Hegemony.
Ukraine is everything Russia is not. They embrace the Democratic principles that scare Putin into acting irrationally. Ukraine invests in their industrious and forward thinking people. Russia invests in overwhelming military armaments, the architecture of a world class police state and Kremlin sponsored media, cyber warfare and enriching the faithful.
That’s why those who can afford to flee Russia are not waiting for the other shoe to drop. While Czar Nicholas 2.0 contemplates Marshall Law and cracks down on nervous and skeptical Russian’s, those who can are fleeing to Finland, those who can’t are stocking up on critical medications, cans of Campbell’s tomato soup and root vegetables like beets, parsnips and turnips. It looks like a long siege.
Trump in his own mind is gearing up for the 2024 presidential election, notwithstanding even the most craven Republican political types, wish Trump would just go away. But in his own mind, he refuses to except being remembered only as the humiliated, twice impeached, biggest presidential loser in American history.
To the Trump MAGA cult faithful, who would “still” vote for him a third time, in spite of his efforts to end American Democracy as we know it and install himself, like Putin, as President for life, “Freedom is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.”
News flash, you think your guns and ammunition would be safe from government apparatchiks, think again. Of the thousands of war protestors in Moscow and St Petersburg, you’ll not see one single assault weapon, hunting rifle, shotgun, handgun, pea shooter or even a slingshot. Of the 8,000 plus courageous demonstrators arrested and hauled off to prison, not one of them was carrying a weapon, concealed or otherwise. Why, because they’ve all been confiscated long ago and no one is allowed to sell them without Kremlin authorization.
I also bet you didn’t see any Peterbuilt or Kenworth Semi’s blocking the streets near the Kremlin while protesting minor inconveniences. And I bet if you had to donate 85% of your hard earned wages or profits to a Trump criminal crime family kleptocracy, instead of paying your fair share of taxes to a Democratic U.S. government, to help keep the wheels of our Capitalistic Social Democracy turning, you would not be so enthused for another Make Trump Great Again reboot. Need I mention, average earnings in Russia are $480 a month.
And don’t get me started on America’s long, enviable history of religious freedom and uncompromising separation of church and state, principles born out of centuries of religious wars in Europe. Russia is overwhelmingly (85%) Russian Orthodox, non religious and atheist. Trump’s white evangelical prosperity faithful are the worst type of Christians, the kind that drives the faithful and spiritual away from organized religious participation all together.
Listen up America, “Freedom” is not a choice, nor is it guaranteed, It has to be nurtured and fought for every day and in every way. Ten days ago, the people of Ukraine were going about their business in a free Democratic country, led by Democratically elected Volodymyr Zelensky; today the people of Kyiv are dodging ballistic missiles and rockets in their Freedom Square, cities across Ukraine are under siege from desperate delusional Autocrat and madman Vladimir Putin, and Zelensky is trying to defend and rally his nation from an air raid shelter somewhere below the cratered streets of Kyiv.
Trump MAGA RallyLet’s discuss what’s happening in Russia. To put it simply, it’s going full fascist. Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they’re getting lots of it. You can see “Z” on these guys’ clothes. What does it mean?Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 3, 2022. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West on March 3, 2022, to increase military aid to Ukraine, saying Russia would advance on the rest of Europe otherwise. “If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky said at a press conference. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty ImagesWomen and children try to get onto a train bound for Lviv, Ukraine, at Kyiv’s train station Thursday, March 3. Ukrainian men have been conscripted to fight in the war while hundreds of thousands of women and children flee the country to seek refuge in neighboring nations that are members of the EU. Emilio Morenatti/APLocal militiaman Valery, 37, carries a child as he helps a fleeing family across a bridge destroyed by artillery on the outskirts Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 2. Emilio Morenatti/APA member of the Ukrainian Emergency Service surveys damage to Kharkiv’s City Hall in the city’s central square following shelling Tuesday, March 1. Russian strikes pounded the square in the country’s second-largest city — in addition to other civilian sites Tuesday — in what the country’s president condemned as a blatant campaign of terror by Moscow. Pavel Dorogoy/APA girl draws at a table set up in the bomb shelter at the Okhmadet Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, on Tuesday, March 1. Chris McGrath/Getty ImagesMothers tend to their children undergoing cancer treatments on Saturday, Feb. 28, in the bomb shelter of the oncology ward at Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine. Chris McGrath/Getty ImagesYevghen Zbormyrsky, 49, runs in front of his burning home after it was shelled in the city of Irpin, Ukraine, outside the country’s capital of Kyiv, on Friday, March 4. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty ImagesMembers of a territorial defense unit prepare to deploy to various parts of the city on Tuesday, March 2, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Related: Putin’s Big War Lie: Ukraine Doesn’t Have A Nazi Problem
1945 – Politics
Putin’s Big War Lie: Ukraine Doesn’t Have A Nazi Problem
By Jack Buckby – March 3, 2022
Russian President Putin from back in 2018.
What Putin Means When He Calls Ukrainians “Nazi” – In February, British and American spies obtained intelligence suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to launch the biggest attack on a European country since the Second World War and that any military action would take place after a “false flag” attack designed to justify his invasion.
British MI6 chief Richard Moore told Twitter that intelligence officials “exposed his attempts to engineer ‘false flag’, fake attacks to justify his invasion.”
Intelligence officials also suggested that Putin was looking for a “pretext” for invasion, and as Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, he promised to send in a “special military operation” to initiate the “denazification” of Ukraine.
The unit was formed in May of 2014 and attracts the ire of Russians not for its members’ views on race, but because it is strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. The infantry unit was formed from the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly organization and the Patriots of Ukraine gang.
It previously fought against pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which Putin recognized as independent before he launched this “special military operation.”
Ukraine Does Not Have a Nazi Problem
A Pew Research Center survey from 2018 found that Ukraine is the most accepting nation in Central and Eastern European countries for Jews. White nationalism does exist in Ukraine, but not to the extent that Vladimir Putin appeared to imply – and certainly not enough to justify a full-scale invasion that has killed thousands of soldiers and innocent people.
The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, or the Supreme Council of Ukraine, has 450 seats – of which 241 are occupied by the Servant of the People party. The party is named after the Servant of the People television show that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy starred in. It is a centrist, pro-European party, and Zelenskyy is Jewish.
The party is supported in government by the populist For the Future party which holds 21 seats, and the regionalist Trust party which has 20 seats.
The biggest opposition party in Ukraine is the centrist “For Life” party, which has 43 seats. European Solidary has 27 seats and is a member of the European People’s Party – a grouping of liberal and conservative parties across Europe. The Ukrainian nationalist and center-left party Batkivshchyna holds 25 seats.
Ukrainian politics is not dominated or influenced to any great extent by neo-Nazis.
While neo-Nazis do exist in Ukraine, they are an extreme minority, with only 5% of Ukrainian citizens stating that they would not accept Jews as fellow citizens – compared to 14% in Russia.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and report on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
Op-Ed: The Ukraine war is a decision point — banks should stop funding the fossil fuel industry forever
By Svitlana Romanko and Bill McKibben – March 9, 2022
We are worlds apart now, one of us terrorized amid the wreckage of invaded Ukraine and the other entirely safe in the United States. But because we’ve been engaged in the same global fight against fossil fuels for decades, we are well-situated to see some of the key drivers behind this wretched moment, and hence some of the solutions.
Above all, it’s obvious that the world’s banks have amorally worked to build Russia’s oil and gas industry, the industry that funds the Russian army, and the industry that Vladimir Putin has used as a cudgel for decades to keep Europe cowering. And that’s why we cheered so loudly Tuesday when President Biden — as part of his ban on Russian oil — told American banks to make no new investments in Putin’s oil. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted, it strikes at the heart of Putin’s war machine.
And it is what more than a million people around the world — and more than 75 prominent NGOs — have demanded. Indeed, Wall Street and the banks must go further and stop the ongoing funding of fossil fuels everywhere, because they are the bulwark of autocracy and the death of the natural world. The sooner we replace oil, gas and coal with cheap, safe renewable energy, the sooner we can all live in peace.
If you think the links between American banks, oil and Russia’s war-making aren’t deep and profound, think again.
Consider, say, JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the world, and the largest lender to the fossil fuel industry. For decades it was the house bank to Exxon, largest of the world’s oil companies — David Rockefeller, heir to that great oil fortune, built Chase into a global giant. And Exxon could not have been more deeply involved in building Russia: Putin actually pinned a medal on the chest of Exxon’s former Chief Executive Rex Tillerson — the “Order of Friendship.” Friendship, in this case, entailed billions of dollars spent to help the Russian state oil company Rosneft search for oil and gas in the Arctic.
Exxon, reading the room, announced on March 1 that it would quit the last of its Russian entanglements in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. And shortly before Biden’s announcement, Chase started taking Russian investments — including oil — off its investment indexes. But of course the damage has already been done.
The banks have happily profited off Putin’s Russia, even after its expansionist aims were clear. The invasion of Georgia didn’t slow them down, nor the annexation of Crimea. Likewise, they’ve happily profited off fossil fuels, even after science made the climate-disaster link crystal clear. The melt of the Arctic didn’t slow them down, nor the fires of California.
But perhaps this is the moment: Maybe the uncanny confluence of last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report chronicling just how little time we have left to deal with global warming and the hideous sight of Russian shells crashing into Kyiv apartment blocks will free up new thinking. What if banks refused once and for all to deal with the oil companies, and instead freed up the capital necessary for a rapid retooling of our energy world to make it both safe and clean?
With an influx of funding, we could, for instance, produce air source heat pumps by the millions and ship them to Europe, so by next winter they could be installed, heating homes and putting a noticeable dent in Putin’s oil-and-gas leverage — it would be FDR’s lend-lease program, but for a new day. We could quickly build out the network of electric buses, bikes and cars that would depress demand worldwide for Putin’s fossil fuels, and that of other oil autocrats and bullies, from the Saudi royal family to the Koch network.
What if we stopped believing that history determines today’s reality, that the future has to look like the past? Ukrainians are remaking their history in these tragic but remarkable days with their shockingly brave resistance to a war machine funded by oil and gas. Surely bankers safe in their peaceful offices can chart a new course. Or we can force them to.
Big banks have waffled and wavered over and over; just last fall at the climate summit in Glasgow they engaged in industrial-scale greenwashing as they claimed their “net zero” climate targets wouldn’t preclude them from lending to oil companies for the next round of pipelines or fracking wells.
Now some may engage in bloodwashing, pretending that somehow they’re helping the people whose misery they’ve ensured by their years of backing Putin. But we can push hard at the lies.
Even if the banks shift their priorities, it will have come too late for the brave people dead in Hostomel, Bucha, Irpin, Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Volnovakha, Mariupol. But as Putin’s war and his occupation of Ukraine grind on, it could help.
Ukraine is in the crosshairs now, but we all share a planet that we must protect. These hideous days represent a decision point for the world, perhaps the last one we’re going to get. The most powerful forces on the globe may be its giant banks — they’re the “capital” in capitalism. As they go, so goes our Earth, the countries that it comprises, and the world’s people that increasingly live in fear.
Svitlana Romanko, in Ivano-Frankvisk in western Ukraine, and Bill McKibben, in Vermont, have worked together for years at 350.org, the global climate organization. She founded the Stand With Ukraine campaign, calling on governments to ban trade and investment in Russian oil and gas. He founded Third Act, a progressive organizing group for people over 60.
Logistics: The hidden challenge for Putin’s military
Niamh Cavanagh, Producer – March 10, 2022
As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third week, it has become increasingly clear that logistics — especially transportation and supply lines — are contributing to Vladimir Putin’s stalled advances.
Behind every army, there is a vast network of supply lines. Each day may require hundreds of thousands of pounds of food alone, not to mention water, ammunition, medical gear and other supplies. And then there’s oil to power the tanks and trucks, which are instrumental in bringing troops as well as more supplies to the frontlines.
None of that is easy in Ukraine in March, when the ground starts to thaw from winter.
“There were already numerous episodes when Russian tanks and other equipment drove into the fields and got stuck,” Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Beleskov told Agence France-Presse. “So the soldiers had to leave the equipment and go on foot. The situation will worsen as the weather warms up and the rains start, it’ll just chain them to the ground.”
Russian military vehicles near the village of Oktyabrsky, near the Russian-Ukrainian border, on Feb. 26. (Anton Vergun/Tass via Zuma Press)
Rasputitsa, also known as “General Mud” or “Marshal Mud,” is known by military historians for defeating some of the most defiant armies. During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, French soldiers were unable to effectively retreat on muddy rural roads. More than a century later, during World War II, Adolf Hitler’s tanks and trucks sputtered in waist-deep mud while attempting to advance to Moscow. Dartmouth College professor Jason Lyall tweeted that rasputitsa is one of the “the Four Horsemen of the Ukrainian Army,” along with portable antitank and surface-to-air missiles.
“A lot of the infrastructure in Ukraine, particularly the roads and some of the more rural areas, are not Western roads,” Alyssa Demus, a senior policy analyst at the the global policy think tank RAND Corporation, said.
A German tank stuck in the mud during the invasion into Russia in 1942. (AP)
“So they’re either dirt roads, or they’re incredibly potholed. It’s important to remind people that when we’re talking about moving heavy infrastructure or heavy machinery over these sorts of long distances, a tank could destroy a well-built western road depending on its weight, tread, and other factors,” she said. “So when you come to a Ukrainian road, that might not necessarily be very flat; it could prove even more challenging for the Russian military.”
Accordingly, the Russian military tends to rely extensively on rail lines, sometimes over massive distances; it is over 5,500 miles to go from Vladivostok in Siberia to St. Petersburg in Russia’s west. And as Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union, both countries share the same rail gauges, something they do not share with their Western counterparts on the continent.
Russian tanks take part in drills at a firing range in the Rostov region of southern Russia in January. (AP)
“To those who are in Western Europe this may sound insignificant, but as someone who has been stuck on the Ukrainian-Polish border, where they literally lift the train up and move it to a new gauge rail, it is actually not an insignificant issue,” Demus told Yahoo News. “And so that is sort of helpful on the Russian side of the logistics piece.”
But Demus said that in order to have access to the rail lines in Ukraine, Russian forces would also need to pin down territorial control of major cities. “In order to actually be able to move things via rail, you have to have access to that rail, and with the sort of protracted fighting in and around the Ukrainian-Russian borders, [Russia] won’t necessarily have access to those rail points to bring forces and equipment,” she said.
An armed man near a barricade during an air raid alarm in Maidan Square in Kyiv on March 1. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
And Russia has to navigate these logistics hurdles while battling the surprisingly fierce Ukrainian army on its own turf. Ukrainian soldiers and the armed civilian population are targeting supply trucks and other resources behind the frontlines of the war. “Very real human stories are tied to what seems like strategic moves on a chessboard,” Demus said.
Perhaps the clearest example of Russia’s challenge is the massive military convoy on a path toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv — seen on satellite imagery stretching over 40 miles long — that has been inexplicably unmoving for more than a week.
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Putin’s forces were “getting more desperate” due to the lack of advancement. “Russia has still not been making its advances. It’s day 13,” he said. “That northern column that we have often talked about is still pretty much stuck, I mean really stuck, so that’s not advancing.”
But it’s not just Ukrainian mud that presents a challenge for Russian military logistics. A severe cold snap could soon stall the Kremlin’s forces as temperatures plunge significantly below freezing.
Analysts told the British newspaper the Times that this could make the invasion harder for the Russians, especially the soldiers in the stalled convoy, which may now consist in part of “40-tonne iron freezers.” Similarly, former British Maj. Kevin Price told the Times: “Minus 20 degrees Celsius will degrade the Russian force, there is no question. It will improve cross-country mobility because there will be less mud, but the Russians are not ready for Arctic conditions.”
He added: “It’s not a decisive factor, but it is a very unwelcome development for Russian commanders.”
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday was given several chances during a Fox News Interview to reject autocrats and walk back his praise for President Vladimir Putin of Russia but didn’t.
Fox’s Sean Hannity set Trump up multiple times during the 30-minute exchange to criticize Putin, but the former president didn’t go along. He instead touted his relationships with Putin, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Xi Jinping of China.
Trump came under fire last month for describing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and “savvy,” keeping in line with his tendency to speak favorably of the Russian leader. Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, broke with the former president this week, saying there was nothing “savvy or genius” about Putin. McCarthy went on to say that Putin was “evil,” condemning a war that has already left hundreds of civilians dead in Ukraine.
Hannity not once, but twice, brought up the blowback to Trump’s comments.
“I think you also recognize he’s evil, do you not?” the Fox host said.
Trump again didn’t go that far, but Hannity gave it another try.
“Let me go back to the issue of the criticism, because I’ve known you well over 25 years,” he said. “And when you got criticized for saying that Vladimir Putin is smart, we’ve had many conversations, and you’ve often quoted to me Sun Tzu, ‘The Art of War’: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Is that how you viewed Vladimir? Did you view Vladimir Putin and people like President Xi and Kim Jong Un and the Iranian mullahs as enemies that you needed to keep close?”
Trump, in response, didn’t call his former counterparts enemies.
“I got along with these people. I got along with them well,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they are good people. It doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that I understood them and perhaps they understood me — maybe they understood me even better. That’s OK, because they knew there would be a big penalty.”
Hannity pressed yet again, telling the former president he wanted to understand his thinking, while also trying to put words into Trump’s mouth.
“The thinking is, we got along but you knew that they were looking out for their interests at all times,” Hannity said, with the former president interjecting, “One-hundred percent.”
The Fox News host continued: “And you understood that they were capable of evil things.”
“Putin is for Russia, and you see what happened,” Trump responded. “And that is all because they didn’t respect our leader. Look, there was nobody, and Putin will tell you this — if he was telling the truth, and I am sure he has told it to all of his inner sanctum — nobody was tougher on Russia than me.”
