After years of living in Moscow, I have bad news: No one should expect the Russian people to suddenly rise up against Putin now
By Lukas I. Alperto – March 8, 2022
Years of state-controlled media, stifled dissent and increases in standards of living have bred an almost impenetrable political complacency.
Vladimir Putin has lulled Russians into a deep political sleep that even crushing sanctions and the threat of global war won’t quickly wake them from. MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/GETTY IMAGES, ISTOCKPHOTO
In late 2011, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets of Moscow to demand that election results rife with alleged fraud be overturned.
It was the biggest challenge to Vladimir Putin’s authority since he took power a decade earlier, and that it wasn’t immediately crushed gave hope that perhaps change was coming to Russia.
“There has been a phase shift — like water starting to boil — anything is possible from here,” one protestor told me at the time. It was a level of optimism that has not been seen since.
As Russia wages war in Ukraine and deals with crippling economic sanctions that have crushed the ruble, sent prices soaring, and shredded its citizens’ savings, street protests have begun anew, but it is hard to imagine public outcry strong enough to shake the Putin regime.
Over the past decade, the Kremlin has systematically hounded whatever vestiges of the protest movement into silence. Many of its organizers now live abroad. Its most well-known figure, Alexei Navalny, has been jailed.
For the rest of the country, years of increasingly monolithic messaging through state media has further undermined whatever resistance might take root.
The Russian population has been lulled into a deep political sleep under Putin after being bombarded for years by such lies and misinformation on TV, following decades of a similar approach under Soviet rule. Why bother being engaged if you don’t know what to believe?
Many are convinced that Russia is simply trying to dislodge Nazis who have taken power in Kyiv and that Ukrainian people are welcoming Russian soldiers with open arms. Nowhere to be seen on state-controlled television are images of Ukrainian housing blocks blasted to dust and fleeing civilians killed by indiscriminate Russian shelling.
What little independent media remained has been entirely shut down under new rules from the Kremlin vowing to harshly punish any news outlet that deviated from the official line. Even foreign media has been forced to curtail operations so as not to run afoul of the new rules,
Average Russians have also seen their standard of living improve under Putin following the turbulent 1990s when Russia was recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wages have risen. Average people can afford foreign cars and annual holidays to the beaches in Greece and Egypt. For years, many had little interest in rocking the boat.
And the brutal stifling of all dissent has driven home to many that there is little upside to being politically engaged, unless you were fully for Putin. As a matter of survival, it was better to just keep your mouth shut.
The oligarchs don’t pick their leader, Putin picks who his oligarchs are. They have limited influence, so a palace coup from the business class seems unlikely.
It is difficult to imagine Russia’s sudden global pariah status and the collapse of the economy quickly changing this dynamic.
The other theory is that sanctions will cause such deep economic pain to the country’s oligarchs, who are seeing their yachts and overseas villas being seized, that they will rise up and push Putin into changing course.
But that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Russia’s power dynamics — the oligarchs don’t pick their leader, Putin picks who his oligarchs are. They have limited influence, so a palace coup from the business class seems unlikely.
Putin’s power lies with the country’s all powerful intelligence agencies, defense complex and police force, none of which he is likely to lose anytime soon.
Perhaps sanctions and the threat of global war will rouse long dormant forces in Russia, but it seems unlikely that that will happen swiftly.
Lukas I. Alpert is a financial crimes reporter for MarketWatch, and a former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
An exiled oligarch who spent almost a decade in a Russian prison predicts the Ukraine war will end Putin’s regime
Hannah Towey – March 7, 2022
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos oil company chairman who was charged with embezzlement and tax evasion, speaks to the media after his release from a Russian prison.Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Mikhail Khodorkovsky was once Russia’s richest man, before spending almost a decade in prison.
He told CNN that the Ukraine war has “significantly reduced” Putin’s ability to stay in power.
“We are no longer thinking in terms of him being around another decade,” he said in the interview.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky — an exiled oligarch who was once the richest man in Russia — said on Friday that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has “significantly reduced” the longtime president’s chances of remaining in power.
“I’m convinced that Putin hasn’t got much time left. Maybe a year, maybe three,” he told CNN during an interview, adding later, “Today we are no longer thinking in terms of him being around another decade as we thought a week ago.”
Khodorkovsky is the former CEO of the Russian oil giant Yukos, a position that temporarily made him Russia’s richest man in 2003 with a reported net worth of $15 billion. In 2001, he founded Open Russia, a diplomacy initiative that was later shut down by Russian authorities.
After being charged with fraud and tax evasion, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2005. He was later pardoned by Putin and released a year early in 2013.
Detention Center No. 1, where Andrei Pivovarov — the former head of the exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s pro-democracy group Open Russia — is being held after his 2021 arrest.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images
Khodorkovsky said his imprisonment was politically motivated. Putin’s former prime minister testified that the Kremlin ordered Khodorkovsky’s arrest due to his funding of the opposition party, according to a 2010 Reuters report.
Now the exiled businessman lives in London and is known as one of Putin’s most outspoken critics. In his interview with CNN, Khodorkovsky said Putin is his “personal enemy” but also “the enemy of humankind.” A handful of Russian billionaires have spoken out over the past week to similarly denounce the invasion of Ukraine.
His prediction that Russia’s attack on Ukraine will eventually end Putin’s rule has been echoed by experts at the Kennan Institute, a Russian research center in the US.
“The attack on Ukraine was not just an absolute crime,” Mikhail Minakov, the institute’s senior advisor on Ukraine, wrote in a blog post last week. “It was an irreparable mistake that put into motion the end-game for Putin’s regime in Russia.”
A funeral near Lviv, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 6, 2022, for a member of the Ukrainian Army who died while fighting Russian forces. (Ivor Prickett/The New York Times)
LVIV, Ukraine — Trapped in his apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv during fierce battles over the weekend, the well-known Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Irvanets composed a few lines that encapsulated the national mood.
“I shout out to the whole world,” he wrote in a short poem published online by his fans, who have since lost touch with the writer and were worried that he may have fallen behind Russian lines. “I won’t forgive anyone!”
If there is one overriding emotion gripping Ukraine right now, it is hate.
It is a deep, seething bitterness for President Vladimir Putin, his military and his government. But Ukrainians are not giving a pass to ordinary Russians, either, calling them complicit through years of political passivity. The hatred is vented by mothers in bomb shelters, by volunteers preparing to fight on the front lines, by intellectuals and by artists.
The emotion is so powerful it could not be assuaged even by an Orthodox religious holiday on Sunday intended to foster forgiveness before Lent. Called Forgiveness Sunday, the holiday is recognized in both the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
And this hatred has overwhelmed the close personal ties between two Slavic nations, where many people have family living in both countries.
Billboards have gone up along roadsides in gigantic block letters, telling Russians in profanity-laced language to get out. Social media posts in spaces often shared by Russians and Ukrainians have been awash in furious comments.
Some Ukrainians have posted pictures of people killed in the military assault in Russian chat rooms on the Telegram app. They have vented by writing on the reviews pages for websites of Moscow restaurants.
And they have been mocking Russians in scathing terms for complaining about hardships with banking transactions or the collapsing ruble currency because of international sanctions.
“Damn, what’s wrong with Apple Pay?” Stanislav Bobrytsky, a Ukrainian computer programmer also trapped in the fighting around the capital, Kyiv, wrote sarcastically about how Russians are responding to the war. “I cannot pay for a latte in my favorite coffee shop.”
Putin is the target of much of the Ukrainians’ unbridled resentment.
The authoritarian leader is to blame, almost all Ukrainians agree. But the frustration is also directed more broadly at Russian society.
Many Ukrainians chastise Russians for increasingly accepting middle-class comforts afforded by the country’s oil wealth in exchange for declining to resist limits on their freedoms. They blame millions of Russians, who Ukrainians say gave up on the post-Soviet dreams of freedom and openness to the West, for enabling the war.
“Are your iPhones all right?” another Ukrainian writer, Andriy Bondar, asked Russians on his Facebook page, after a thinly attended anti-war rally in Moscow that was broken up by the riot police. “We are very worried about you. It’s so cruel they use rubber sticks, those terrible riot police.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine also appealed to Russians on Sunday to protest for their own sakes as much as for the Ukrainians.
“Don’t miss this opportunity,” he said in comments directed at Russians.
“Citizens of Russia, for you this is a struggle not only for peace in Ukraine, it is a struggle for your country, for the best that was in it, for the freedom that you saw, for the prosperity that you felt,” he added. “If you keep silent now, then only your poverty will speak for you later, and only repression will answer. Do not be silent!”
Zelenskyy did not hold back on how he felt about the Russian military.
“We will not forgive the shooting of unarmed people,” he said.
There were virtually no anti-war protests in Russia before the conflict began, though small demonstrations have been staged in recent days. Most participants were arrested.
Yuri Makarov, the chief editor of the Ukrainian national broadcasting company and the head of a national literature and arts award committee, said the war had driven a deep wedge between the Ukrainian and Russian societies that will be hard to heal. Russians, he said, have become Ukrainians’ “collective enemies.”
Some modicum of popular support is enabling the fighting, he said.
“The orders to shell the residential areas of Mariupol, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr were given by specific colonels, captains and junior lieutenants, not by Putin or Shoigu,” he said, referring to the Russian president and his minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu. “It is their choice and their responsibility,” he added.
“As for the Russians, I am not interested in their motivation now. They, with the exception of a few, were quite comfortable being in a full dictatorship,” he added.
Olha Koba, a psychologist in Kyiv, said that “anger and hate in this situation is a normal reaction and important to validate.” But it is important to channel it into something useful, she said, such as making incendiary bombs out of empty bottles.
“When people are happy about the death of Russian soldiers, it is explicable” she said. “There is a subconscious understanding that this soldier will no longer be able to kill their loved ones.”
Irvanets, the poet who sent his bitter composition to friends over the weekend, wrote that he had composed the lines in “a city shattered by missiles,” and he referenced the upcoming holiday on Sunday.
But by Forgiveness Sunday, his fans were writing on social media that he had not been in contact and they were concerned that something had happened to him.
Decoding the ‘Z’ — the mysterious Russian military symbol that’s been co-opted by Russia’s nationalist movement
Cheryl Teh – March 7, 2022
Around a thousand Serbian ultra nationalist supporters marched in Belgrade in support of the Russian attacks on Ukraine, some carrying banners with a white “Z.”Milos Miskov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A new emblem has surfaced in the Ukraine-Russia conflict: a “Z,” stylized in a thick brushstroke.
The “Z” was spotted on Russian tanks invading Ukraine and painted on the sides of military vehicles.
It may have started off as a Russian signal for victory, but has been appropriated as a symbol of the far-right.
A new symbol of Russia’s war against Ukraine has emerged — a white “Z” emblem, stylized in a thick brushstroke. It has found its way onto the signs and t-shirts of ultra-right, pro-Russian protesters, been painted on Russian tanks and military vehicles, and been worn as a show of support for Russia’s invasion.
In the past several weeks, the “Z” has gone from a military marking to a potent symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And there are signs that Russian nationalist groups have co-opted the mark as well.
The emblem was first spotted on Russian tanks in February
The original meaning of the “Z” symbol is unclear and has not been confirmed by official sources.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Twitter commenters speculated that the “Z” symbols, which appeared on tanks framed by squares, triangles, and other painted shapes, could be a way to delineate infantries.
Kamil Galeev, a former Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at the policy think tank the Wilson Center, tweeted that some interpreted the “Z” as short for “za pobedy” — the Russian term for “victory.” Others have guessed the “Z” is short for “zapad” (or west) and is meant to designate west-bound infantry.
The meaning of the symbol has yet to be confirmed by Russian military sources.
Let’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?
“Z” is a letter that Russian Military are putting on their vehicles departing to Ukraine. Some interpret “Z” as “Za pobedy” (for victory). Others – as “Zapad” (West). Anyway, this symbol invented just a few days ago became a symbol of new Russian ideology and national identity
A symbol of Russian nationalism and a rallying cry in support of Putin
The “Z” symbol has appeared on the sides of Russian military vehicles in the country’s invasion of Ukraine.Alexander Ermochenko/ Reuters
Cars were spotted around Russia emblazoned with the “Z” logo, and businesses have also co-opted the symbol.
It found a lot of supporters. Many Russians are putting “Z” on their cars – that’s totally voluntary and to my best knowledge nobody’s forcing themBusiness owners put “Z” – showing their support of invasion on their trucks. Here you see a funeral service fully endorsing Z message
Similarly, a group of Russian nationalist protesters in Leningrad were filmed wearing hoodies emblazoned with a white “Z” along with the words “We don’t give up our own.” It is unclear when the video was taken, but it surfaced on social media in the first week of March.
The slogan echoed false Russian propagandist claims that the invasion is meant to “liberate” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine — an independently-governed democracy led by a Jewish president.
On Sunday, a Russian gymnast appeared at a medal ceremony with a “Z” taped to his uniform
Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak taped a “Z” symbol on the front of his uniform while accepting a medal at the gymnastics World Cup in Doha on Sunday. He came in third, behind Ukraine’s Illia Kovtun, who came in first.
Pro-Putin figures also donned the symbol. Maria Butina, a convicted Russian spy and current member of the Russian State Duma, was seen in a video removing her blazer and drawing a “Z” on her lapel.
Just another day in the life of Maria Butina:
Drawing a white "Z" marking on your lapel to show solidarity with the invasion of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/raYG3kRznT
Ukraine’s army is using a nimble ‘game-changing’ drone called The Punisher that has completed scores of successful missions against the Russians, say reports
Alia Shoaib – March 5, 2022
The Punisher drone being deployed in Ukraine.UA Dynamics
Ukraine’s military uses stealthy Punisher drones that can fly long distances while remaining undetected.
The “game-changing” drones are operated remotely and can carry 3kg of explosives.
As the battle for Ukraine’s skies continues, experts have been surprised by Russia’s lack of air power.
The Ukrainian military is using “game-changing” drones that can carry 3kg of explosives and hit targets up to 30 miles behind enemy lines, The Times of London reported.
Eugene Bulatsev, an engineer with the Ukrainian designer UA-Dynamics, told the outlet that the “game-changing” Punisher drones had completed up to 60 “successful” missions since the Russian invasion began.
“This is the cheapest and easiest way to deliver a punch from a long distance, without risking civilian lives,” Bulatsev told the newspaper.
The electric drones have a 7.5-foot wingspan and can fly for hours at 1,300ft and need only the coordinates of their target so they can carry out their mission automatically, Bulatsev said.
A smaller reconnaissance drone called Spectre flies alongside to identify targets before the Punisher strikes.
After the fighting started in eastern Ukraine in 2014, a group of veterans launched the drone-making company, UA-Dynamics, according to an Haaretz report, last month.
“Three-quarters of the company’s employees are veterans with experience in special operations deep in enemy territory,” Maxim Subbotin, a marketing expert and an unofficial spokesman for UA-Dynamics, told the newspaper.
Bulatsev said that the main targets were stationary, including fuel and ammunition storage, electronic and counter-electronic warfare stations, and anti-air systems.
Different units in the Ukrainian military are using the drones, but the number of how many and the locations where the Punisher drones are being deployed is classified, Bulatsev said.
Bulatsev previously told The Sun that stealthy Punisher drones had been “causing havoc behind pro-Russian lines on Donbas for years because the enemy has no idea what has hit them.”
He told the outlet that the drone is relatively small and light and is undetectable to radars.
“What’s more, it can drop three bombs at a time or hit three separate targets then return to base to be reloaded and sent back into battle within minutes,” Bulatsev told The Sun.
British defense secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News that Ukraine had stalled Russian advances partly by carrying out a “very clever plan.”
“We’ve seen footage we can’t verify but we’ve seen footage of Ukrainians using UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to attack petrol train convoys, to go after logistical lines, we’ve seen lines blown up, all the things you and I think of when it comes to resistance,” Wallace said.
Along with the Punisher drones, the Ukrainian military is also using around 20 of the highly-rated Bayraktar TB2 drones from Turkey.
Videos shared by the Ukrainian military last week showed at least one strike from a TB2 drone appearing to tear apart a column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles.
A senior US defense official described the airspace as “contested” and “very dynamic” earlier this week in an off-camera press briefing, despite Russia claiming to have gained control.
Although Russia was expected to quickly knock out Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, in recent days, Ukraine has claimed to have shot down Russian fighter jets, helicopters, and even troop transport planes.
Former commander of U.S. forces in Europe predicts Russia won’t take Kyiv
Tucker Reals – March 7, 2022
Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said he believes Russian forces will be unable to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, due to the city’s sheer size and the resistance being mounted not only by Ukraine’s military, but by its citizens.
Hodges said he foresaw “lots more destruction and fighting” in and around Kyiv, but he predicted the capital “will not fall” and the “Russians will not be able to take it.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “initial strategy” when he invaded Ukraine — to quickly storm major cities, oust pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky and replace him with a Russian-friendly alternative — “has failed,” said Hodges.
He noted that Russia’s military had resorted to “an attrition strategy to bring about the same aim,” and acknowledged that the steady barrage of rocket fire on Ukraine’s cities had “helped make up for their poor planning, terrible logistics, inability to conduct effective joint operations at the operational level, and their poor estimation of Ukrainian fighting power.”
“But I don’t think they can sustain this ‘overwhelming’ firepower as their logistical challenge worsens and the logistics for Ukraine get better,” said Hodges. “I don’t think they have the manpower, logistics, or time to conduct this approach effectively.”
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Monday that nearly 100% of the Russian combat power that had amassed at the Ukrainian border in the weeks leading up to the invasion has now been committed inside the country. The Russians have launched more than 625 missiles in the 11 days of fighting, the official said, and appear to be increasing their use of long-range strikes to supplement or make up for the lack of ground movement and lack of air superiority.
Some allied military leaders are likewise indicating that Ukrainian forces and civilians might be able to withstand the Russians’ advances.
“I think we’ve seen a Russian invasion that is not going well. I think we’re also seeing a remarkable resistance by Ukraine, both its armed forces and its people,” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defense staff in the U.K., told BBC News on Sunday. “We do know that some of the lead elements of Russian forces have been decimated by the Ukrainian response.”
Hodges, the retired U.S. commander, said that Putin’s adopted tactics could start to increase pressure on the Russian leader not only from other countries, but from within his own.
“The great unknown for me is if the Russian population will continue to support this once they understand what’s really going on,” Hodges said. “And I’m sure they’ll begin to understand it soon, despite Putin’s blackout on news/social media.”
David Reiter and Eleanor Watson contributed reporting.
Some Russian officials think invading Ukraine was ‘a mistake,’ and are ‘discouraged, frightened’ and ‘making apocalyptic forecasts’: report
Jake Lahut – March 7, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin.MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
Some Russian officials are reportedly unhappy about Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24.
Farida Rustamova, formerly of the BBC, spoke to Kremlin officials for a March 1 story.
An English translation of her article says many are “discouraged, frightened.”
President Vladimir Putin has alienated some top Russian officials ever since the early stages of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to Russian journalist Farida Rustamova.
“In reality, the attitude toward the war within the corridors of power is ambiguous,” Rustamova wrote, according to Lozovsky, whose translation she shared on Twitter and reposted on her Substack newsletter. “I came to this conclusion after speaking with several members of parliament and officials at various levels. Many of them are discouraged, frightened, and are making apocalyptic forecasts.”
Rustamova recently fled the country, and has previously worked for the BBC Russian Service — which has since been suspended by the London-based network — as well as Meduza and the RBC, an investigative outlet that saw a a mass resignation in 2016.
“No one is rejoicing,” a source described as “close to the Kremlin” told Rustamova, per Lozovsky’s translation. “Many understand that this is a mistake, but in the course of doing their duty they come up with explanations in order to somehow come to terms with it.”
“Some officials aren’t associating themselves with what’s happening at all, viewing Putin’s decision as a historical choice over which they have no influence, and the meaning of which no one will understand for a some time to come,” Rustamova wrote.
Another source granted anonymity said Kremlin officials are “carefully enunciating the word clusterf*ck” when describing the invasion.
Rustamova wrote that every source she talked to believed Putin wouldn’t follow through on invading Ukraine, and was instead looking to gain leverage for concessions, such as declaring Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.”
“Everyone had some scattered information that did not provide an answer to the main question: will we start bombing or not?” another source “close to the Kremlin” told Rustamova.
The Russian reporter also outlined how Putin has been limiting information to a close circle of advisors.
“Most likely, my sources say, only the narrowest circle had been informed: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and the leaders of the counterintelligence service,” she wrote, according to Lozovsky’s translation. “For example, the head of the presidential administration Anton Vaino, whose role, unlike his more influential predecessors, is more akin to a private secretary, is not informed about such decisions, my sources say.”
A different source Rustamova called “a good acquaintance of Putin’s” said the Russian president’s mood has gotten worse.
“Here he is in a state of being offended and insulted,” the source said. “It’s paranoia that has reached the point of absurdity.”
Alexander Vindman says Ron Johnson, others have ‘blood on their hands’ over Russian invasion of Ukraine
Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – March 7, 2022
Then-Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert for the National Security Council, prepares to testify on Nov. 19, 2019, before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in a public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into allegations President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
Former national security aide Alexander Vindman accused Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and others of having “blood on their hands” as Ukraine withstands a withering assault from Russian troops.
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, Vindman included Johnson on a list with former President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, claiming they undermined U.S. national security.
“Civilians are dying, Ukrainians are providing a formidable defense, defending democracy for Americans as well as for themselves and their homes. And Ron Johnson is trying to distract and obfuscate,” Vindman said.
Vindman was responding to comments made Feb. 27 by Johnson on Fox News.
Vindman had been with Johnson on a key trip to Ukraine in May 2019, in which the senator sought to assure the newly elected government of congressional support.
A retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Vindman also blamed Johnson and others for ending his military career.
Vindman was a key witness in the first U.S. House impeachment of Trump. He listened in on the 2019 call when Trump asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid to the country. Trump later released about $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
“I don’t think Vladimir Putin would have moved on Ukraine were it not for the weakness displayed ― certainly by the Biden administration, but by the West in general,” Johnson said in the interview. “I’m certainly hoping that Col. Vindman, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi ― who used Ukraine as a pawn in their impeachment travesty ― are also recognizing and reflecting about how they weakened Ukraine, weakened the West, weakened America by the divisive politics that they play.”
“There’s much blame to go around, but in terms of atrocities, that falls squarely on the shoulders of Vladimir Putin and his cronies,” Johnson said.
Johnson stands by comments
According to a statement from his office, Johnson stands behind his Fox News comments. In addition, the statement asserted, Pelosi, Schiff and Vindman “weakened Ukraine by harming its relationship with the U.S. and therefore made Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian aggression, destabilization efforts, and ultimately invasion.
“Lt. Col Vindman’s actions demonstrated disloyalty to both the U.S. President he served and the Ukrainian people we were trying to help,” the statement from his office said.
“He’s responsible more so than many of his colleagues for creating a situation in which the U.S. actually might find itself in a hot war,” Vindman said.
Asked if Johnson believed he held any responsibility for what is now occurring in Ukraine, the senator’s office responded: “Absolutely not. Senator Johnson has been consistently supportive of the people of Ukraine who want to rid their nation of corruption and live in freedom, peace, and prosperity.”
Johnson’s office noted the senator has made seven trips to Ukraine since 2011 and co-sponsored multiple resolutions and bills in support of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian-born Vindman and Johnson have a history.
“There was a time when I thought he was a good actor, a good guy,” Vindman said.
They were in the Ukraine capital of Kyiv in May 2019 as part of the U.S. delegation attending Zelensky’s inauguration.
“I tried to make him feel at home, make him feel welcome,” Vindman said.
He recalled having a conversation with Johnson.
“He was pretty aggressive in providing support for Ukraine in arming the Ukrainians, giving this new president d everything you need to resist Russian coercion at that point, Russian aggression in a war that had been unfolding for the preceding five years,” Vindman said.
Vindman said he told Johnson that Trump was “not necessarily supportive of such a forward-leaning approach.”
“This was a very awkward position to be in because I had to point this out to the senator,” Vindman said. “That I also don’t agree with the policy. But I have to carry the water of the president. The president was already kind of testing the waters on withholding security assistance.”
Vindman added: “I wanted him (Johnson) to understand that while he might feel strongly about this and that it’s the right thing to do, the chief executive might not be on board.”
“He gave me this quizzical look, like I was a crazy person, like I was the one that was out of step,” Vindman said.
Vindman’s ‘assertions are completely false’
Johnson’s office said in a statement that Vindman’s “assertions are completely false,” and pointed to a Nov. 2019 letter Johnson wrote House Republicans. In that letter, he recalled a conversation he had with Vindman in Ukraine.
“I had just finished making the point that supporting Ukraine was essential because it was ground zero in our geopolitical competition with Russia,” Johnson wrote. “I was surprised when Vindman responded to my point. He stated that it was the position of the NSC (National Security Council) that our relationship with Ukraine should be kept separate from our geopolitical competition with Russia.
“My blunt response was, ‘How in the world is that even possible?’ “
Johnson wrote he didn’t know if “Vindman accurately stated the NSC’s position, whether President Trump shared that viewpoint, or whether Vindman was really expressing his own view.”
Johnson wrote he believed “that a significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their ‘turf.’ They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile.”
Vindman charged Johnson wrote the letter to undermine his credibility before he gave testimony in the impeachment.
He said Johnson “scurried back to his comfort zone, which is how a political creature, a political animal that saw his political survival in pandering to Donald Trump.”
Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Don’t Believe It’s a War
Many Ukrainians are encountering a confounding and frustrating backlash from family members in Russia who have bought into the official Kremlin messaging.
By Valerie Hopkins – March 7, 2022
Photographing the debris of a building hit by missiles in Kyiv, Ukraine, last month.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
LVIV, Ukraine — Four days after Russia began dropping artillery shells on Kyiv, Misha Katsurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, was wondering why his father, a church custodian living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, hadn’t called to check on him.
“There is a war, I’m his son, and he just doesn’t call,” Mr. Katsurin, who is 33, said in an interview. So, Mr. Katsurin picked up the phone and let his father know that Ukraine was under attack by Russia.
“I’m trying to evacuate my children and my wife — everything is extremely scary,” Mr. Katsurin told him.
He did not get the response he expected. His father, Andrei, didn’t believe him.
“No, no, no, no stop,” Mr. Katsurin said of his father’s initial response.
Misha Katsiurin, right, with his father, Andrei.Credit…Misha Katsiurin
“He started to tell me how the things in my country are going,” said Mr. Katsurin, who converted his restaurants into volunteer centers and is temporarily staying near the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. “He started to yell at me and told me, ‘Look, everything is going like this. They are Nazis.’”
As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all.
These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s army is conducting a limited “special military operation” with the honorable mission of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a “drug-addled Nazi” in his attempts to justify the invasion.
Those narratives are emerging amid a wave of disinformation emanating from the Russian state as the Kremlin moves to clamp down on independent news reporting while shaping the messages most Russians are receiving.
An estimated 11 million people in Russia have Ukrainian relatives. Many Ukrainian citizens are ethnic Russians, and those living in the southern and eastern parts of the country largely speak Russian as their native language.
Russian television channels do not show the bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and its suburbs, or the devastating attacks on Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and other Ukrainian cities. They also do not show the peaceful resistance evident in places like Kherson, a major city in the south that Russian troops captured several days ago, and certainly not the protests against the war that have cropped up across Russia.
Instead they focus on the Russian military’s successes, without discussing the casualties among Russian soldiers. Many state television correspondents are embedded in eastern Ukraine, and not in the cities being pummeled by missiles and mortars. Recent news reports made no mention of the 40-mile-long Russian convoy on a roadway north of Kyiv.
On Friday, Russia also banned Facebook and Twitter to try to stem uncontrolled information.
All this, Mr. Katsurin said, explains why his father told him: “There are Russian soldiers there helping people. They give them warm clothes and food.”
A Russian military vehicle destroyed in fighting near Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on Saturday. Images of Russia’s losses are not being seen widely inside the country. Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Mr. Katsurin is not alone in his frustration. When Valentyna V. Kremyr wrote to her brother and sister in Russia to tell them that her son had spent days in a bomb shelter in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha because of the intensive fighting there, she was also met with disbelief.
“They believe that everything is calm in Kyiv, that no one is shelling Kyiv,” Ms. Kremyr said in a phone interview. She said her siblings think the Russians are striking military infrastructure “with precision, and that’s it.”
She said her sister Lyubov, who lives in Perm, wished her a happy birthday on Feb. 25, the second day of the invasion. When Ms. Kremyr wrote back about the situation on the ground, her sister’s answer via direct message was simple: “No one is bombing Kyiv, and you should actually be afraid of the Nazis, whom your father fought against. Your children will be alive and healthy. We love the Ukrainian people, but you need to think hard about who you elected as president.
Ms. Kremyr said she sent photos from trusted media sites of mangled tanks and a destroyed building in Bucha to her brother, in Krasnoyarsk, but was met with a jarring response. “He said that this site is fake news,” she said, and that essentially the Ukrainian Army was doing the damage being blamed on Russians.
“It is impossible to convince them of what they have done,” Ms. Kremyr said, referring to Russian forces.
Anastasia Belomytseva and her husband, Vladimir, have been encountering the same problem. They are residents of Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s north near the Russian border, which has been hit hard by Russian bombs. But they said in an interview that it was easier to explain the invasion to their 7-year-old daughter than to some of their relatives.
Anastasia Belomytseva and her family. Credit…Anastasia Belomytseva
“They totally don’t understand what is happening here, they don’t understand that they just attacked us for no reason,” Ms. Belomytseva said. Her grandmother, and Mr. Belomytsev’s father, are in Russia.
Asked whether they believe that an attack is happening, Ms. Belomytseva responded “NO!”
Parts of Kharkiv have been reduced to rubble, and its city hall is a burnt-out shell. Ms. Belomytseva said she was sending videos of the bombings to her relatives on Instagram, but they just responded with the Kremlin’s oft-repeated claims that the invasion is just a “special military operation” and that no civilians would be targeted.
In reality, more than 350 civilians had died as of Saturday night, according to the United Nations. The real toll is probably much higher.
For Svetlana, a 60-year-old woman living in Cherkasy, the hardest thing to accept is the advice she has received from her sister, who lives in Belarus, and her cousins in Tomsk, Russia: that she and other Ukrainians should not concern themselves with what is going on.
A third round of talks. Ukrainian and Russian delegations met for another negotiating session and agreed to try again to open humanitarian corridors for civilians leaving Ukrainian cities under attack, but made no progress on ending the war.
“It’s not that they don’t believe it is happening, but they think that the high-level politicians should figure it out,” said Svetlana, who was uncomfortable providing her last name.
“I tell them that we are people too, and this has affected us,” she said. “I asked them not to hide their heads in the sand, I asked the mothers to think about not sending their sons to the army. The response was amazing to me. That is, that politicians are to blame for everything.”
She displayed a WhatsApp exchange with her cousin showing that her cousin had also been swayed by a narrative being pushed by Russian state TV: that the West fomented this war, was thrilled to see two “brotherly nations” fighting each other and was expecting to reap a significant profit from it.
Her cousin sent a string of messages asserting that Western defense companies were raising their profits, and that alternate sources of energy were being procured for the West.
It was not the response she had hoped for — no recognition of the gravity of the situation for Ukrainians or sympathy for the loss of human life.
Ukrainian refugees at the border with Poland in Medyka on Sunday.Credit…Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
“Every day I send them the necessary information, but the response is that ‘This is some kind of fake information, that this cannot be the case at all, that no one can or will shoot at civilians,’” she said.
Ms. Belomytseva, from Kharkiv, said that while her husband was still trying to communicate with his family in Russia, she had cut off most of her relatives there eight years ago, after the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine.
But Mr. Katsurin said he could not push his closest family members out of his life.
“They are our relatives, they’re the closest people we have, and this is not about them,” he said. “I am not angry at my father — I am angry at the Kremlin. I’m angry about the Russian propaganda. I’m not angry at these people. I understand that I cannot blame them in this situation.”
He said he thought about cutting his father off but decided that was the wrong response. “The easiest thing to do would be to say, ‘OK, now I don’t have a father,’” he said. “But I believe that I need to do this because it is my father.”
He said that if everyone worked to explain the truth to their families, the narrative could change. After a post on Instagram complaining about his father’s disbelief went viral, he launched a website, papapover.com, which means “Papa, believe,” with instructions for Ukrainians about how to speak to their family members about the war.
“There are 11 million Russians who have relatives in Ukraine,” he said. “With 11 million people, everything can happen — from revolution to at least some resistance.”
Russia-Ukraine war could bring ‘biblical event’ as global wheat supply disrupted: Expert
Julie Hyman, Anchor – March 7, 2022
Grain prices were already rising before Russia invaded Ukraine, and recent days have seen unprecedented further gains as two of the world’s biggest producer are at war.
Wheat closed in Chicago at the highest price ever on Monday. Benchmark corn and soybean futures have each surged by 26% this year. Those kinds of increases in food-staple commodities have been associated with social unrest throughout history.
“Remember, bread riots are what started the Arab Spring, bread riots are what started the French Revolution,” said Sal Gilbertie, CEO of Teucrium, the largest U.S. exchange-traded fund issuer focused solely on agriculture funds. “It is a biblical event when you run low on wheat stocks. You won’t see a global food shortage. Unfortunately, what you’re going to see globally is that billions of people might not be able to afford to buy the food.”
Gilbertie doesn’t think the world will run out of wheat — but prices could continue to rise, and that will be most problematic for vulnerable global populations. “Ukraine dominates what they call the sun-seed market,” he said. “Sunflower oil is a major component of cooking oil and food, and you see palm oil rising, and soybean oil rising. That is a big deal, especially for the poorest of the poor, where cooking is a big part of the daily budget.”
Let’s bring it back to wheat as an example of the impact of the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. According to the same organization, Russia was the top exporter of wheat by metric tonnes shipped in 2020 and Ukraine the fifth largest. By contrast, China and India top Russia when it comes to production — but consume most of the crops domestically.
The owner of a warehouse of wheat and grains displays Ukrainian wheat in Hasbaya, southern Lebanon, on Feb. 28, 2022. People have raised concerns that Lebanon’s food supply could be impacted by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, given that they are the country’s two top foreign sources of wheat. (Photo by Taher Abu Hamdan/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Sanctions imposed on Russia by many nations now means wheat already harvested and stored there isn’t being bought.
As for Ukraine, the market has adjusted to the probability that wheat harvested and stored last season won’t be shipped, Gilbertie said. What’s now in question is what happens to the wheat currently in the ground. It’s mostly winter wheat, he said; it’s planted in autumn, then sprouts, grows and is harvested in spring.
“What the market’s trying to do is price in the potential of there not being a harvest season for wheat, and not being able to get the wheat out of the fields and/or shipped out of Ukraine,” he said.
Crops like sunflower and corn are planted in spring, so it’s unclear whether farmers will be able to plant at all, between the Ukrainian war draft, the invasion itself, and supply shortages of fuel and fertilizer.
