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Associated Press

Ukrainian drone enthusiasts sign up to repel Russian forces

Matt O’Brien – March 4, 2022

In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion.

“Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!” read a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to operate them.

One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

“Why are we doing this? We have no other choice. This is our land, our home,” said Denys Sushko, head of operations at Kyiv-based industrial drone technology company DroneUA, which before the war was helping to provide drone services to farmers and energy companies.

Sushko fled his home late last week after his family had to take cover from a nearby explosion. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone and text message Friday after climbing up a tree for better reception.

“We try to use absolutely everything that can help protect our country and drones are a great tool for getting real-time data,” said Sushko, who doesn’t have a drone with him but is providing expertise. “Now in Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can.”

Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren’t much use as weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and heat sensors.

But there’s a downside: DJI, the leading provider of consumer drones in Ukraine and around the world, provides a tool that can easily pinpoint the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really knows what the Chinese firm or its customers might do with that data. That makes some volunteers uneasy. DJI declined to discuss specifics about how it has responded to the war.

Taras Troiak, a dealer of DJI drones who started the Kyiv retail store, said DJI has been sending mixed signals about whether it’s providing preferential access to — or disabling — its drone detection platform AeroScope, which both sides of the conflict can potentially use to monitor the other’s flight paths and the communication links between a drone and the device that’s controlling it.

DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg said wartime uses were “never anticipated” when the company created AeroScope to give policing and aviation authorities — including clients in both Russia and Ukraine — a window into detecting drones flying in their immediate airspace. He said some users in Ukraine have reported technical problems but DJI has not disabled the tool or given preferential access.

In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they’ve been doing whatever they can to teach operators how to protect their whereabouts.

“There are a number of tricks that allow you to increase the level of security when using them,” Sushko said.

Sushko said many in the industry are now trying to get more small drones — including DJI alternatives — transported into Ukraine from neighboring European countries. They can also be used to assist search-and-rescue operations.

Ukraine has a thriving community of drone experts, some of whom were educated at the National Aviation University or the nearby Kyiv Polytechnic University and went on to found local drone and robotics startups.

“They’ve got this homebuilt industry and all these smart people who build drones,” said Faine Greenwood, a U.S.-based consultant on drones for civic uses such as disaster response.

Troiak’s DJI-branded store in Kyiv, which is now shuttered as city residents take shelter, was a hub for that community because it runs a maintenance center and hosts training sessions and a hobby club. Even the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, once paid a visit to the store to buy a drone for one of his children, Troiak said.

A public drone-focused Facebook group administered by Troiak counts more than 15,000 members who have been trading tips about how to assist Ukrainian troops. One drone photographer who belongs to the Ukrainian Association of Drone Racing team told The Associated Press he decided to donate his DJI Mavic drone to the military rather than try to fly it himself. He and others asked not to be named out of fear for their safety.

“The risk to civilian drone operators inside Ukraine is still great,” said Australian drone security expert Mike Monnik. “Locating the operator’s location could result in directed missile fire, given what we’ve seen in the fighting so far. It’s no longer rules of engagement as we have had in previous conflicts.” In recent days, Russian-language channels on the messaging app Telegram have featured discussions on ways to find Ukrainian drones, Monnik said.

Some in Ukraine’s drone community already have experience deploying their expertise in conflict zones because of the country’s long-running conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Monnik’s firm, DroneSec, has tracked multiple instances just in the past year of both sides of that conflict arming small drones with explosives. One thing that Ukrainians said they’ve learned is that small quadcopter drones, such as those sold at stores, are rarely effective at hitting a target with explosive payloads.

“It would seem somewhat short-sighted to waste one,” said Greenwood, the consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I assume the chief goal would be recon. But if things are getting desperate, who knows.”

DJI also has experience in responding to warfighters trying to weaponize its drones and used so-called “geofencing” technology to block drone movements during conflicts in Syria and Iraq. It’s not clear yet if it will do the same in Ukraine; even if it does, there are ways to work around it.

Small civilian drones are no match against Russian combat power but will likely become increasingly important in a protracted war, leaving drone-makers no option to be completely neutral. Any action they take or avoid is “indirectly taking a side,” said P.W. Singer, a New America fellow who wrote a book about war robots.

“We will see ad-hoc arming of these small civilian drones much the way we’ve seen that done in conflicts around the world from Syria to Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan,” Singer said. “Just like an IED or a Molotov cocktail, they won’t change the tide of battle but they will definitely make it difficult for Russian soldiers.”

——

AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

Air Force Times

What a Ukrainian cannon on a bridge might tell us about what happened there

Philip Athey – March 4, 2022

For military artillery crews, going against an armored vehicle well within range of that vehicle’s gun is the thing of nightmares.

Vehicles are more armored, can shoot on the move, typically can shoot faster and are designed for a close fight.

Artillery howitzers, on the other hand, are meant to lob shots onto an enemy position miles away from the front line.

But in the desperate fighting around Kherson, Ukraine ― now reportedly taken over by the Russians ― in the very first days of the Russian invasion, a Ukrainian artillery crew may have faced off with Russian armored vehicles advancing on a hotly contested bridge outside the city.

Though Kherson, Ukraine, fell into Russian hands on Wednesday, the defenders of the city, possibly including one brave howitzer crew, played a significant role in slowing down the Russian southern advance.

Incredible first-hand look from @npwcnn of the bridge to Kherson, Ukraine that was the scene of much fighting in the last 24 hours pic.twitter.com/EPIymr48RT

— Nora Neus (@noraneus) February 25, 2022

On Feb. 26 a CNN reporter toured a bridge on the outskirts of Kherson, Ukraine, that just hours earlier had been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the first few days of the war.

The bridge was key chokepoint that, if taken, would allow the Russian military to cross the Dnieper River and into central and southern Ukraine.

By the time Nick Paton Walsh and the rest of his CNN crew arrived at the bridge it had changed hands multiple times.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the city saw the toughest fighting in the first few days of the war.

Though it is impossible to tell without eyewitness accounts or video of the actual fighting, CNN footage shows one Ukrainian 152 mm 2A65 Msta-B, a Soviet-style howitzer, appearing to be lined up facing the strategically important bridge head on, surrounded by impacts and two abandoned artillery shells.

“Shelling continued back and forth, and through the smoke CNN could see what appeared to be armored vehicles on the bridge moving towards the Ukrainian side, although it was not possible to confirm who they belong to,” Walsh said.

Tactically, sending in U.S. howitzers to stop such an advance using direct fire would go directly against U.S. military doctrine.

“The preferred defense technique against an armored or mechanized ground attack is for the battery or platoon to displace to an alternate position and continue the mission,” an Army manual on how to deploy a howitzer battery said. “Direct confrontation with this type of force is not advised.”

However, Soviet-style howitzers, like the Msta-B, were designed with direct fire in mind, said Tim Heck, an Eastern armies scholar and a Marine reserve artillery officer.

The Mst-B comes with some forward-facing armor that modern U.S. howitzers simply don’t have.

“If they are shooting thin skinned vehicle, no worries,” Heck said in a written statement. “Tanks would be trickier, but not unreasonable if the ammo load is right.”

But even with the splinter shield in front, the Ukrainian crew likely would have been vulnerable to anything more than a light or medium machine gun, Heck said.

Roman Fontana, a former enlisted U.S. Marine who has worked with the Ukrainian military, said the Ukrainian force tends to be creative in how it deploys old equipment often in need of repairs.

“They’ll take weapons not for their intended uses and turn it into something else,” Fontana said.

If a U.S. artillery battery was to perform direct fire, it typically would use every gun in the battery. The fact that only one howitzer seemed to be set up to take on the advancing armored vehicles may indicate the Ukrainian force had to get creative with limited resources.

Fontana said the barrel on that specific cannon may have been too worn down to be used effectively for indirect fire. But it still was possible to shoot straight over short distances.

“If you have a broken tennis racket that you patched together and fixed, you can still get the ball where you need it to go.” he said.

Another possibility from the images was that the howitzer was attempting to withdraw when the vehicle towing it was taken out by enemy fire.

Heck noted that the cannon did not have its trails dug in, indicating that the emplacement may have been a rush job and it was possible the crew retreated from the cannon before it was able to get a shot off.

Eventually, the Russians were able to take the bridge and now have taken Kherson, according to The New York Times.

But the Russian advance in the area and in the rest of the country was significantly delayed due to the unexpected fighting prowess of the Ukrainian military.

And possibly due to one suicidally brave cannon crew willing to face down a column of advancing Russian armored vehicles.

Yahoo! News

Why Russian attacks in Ukraine are likely to get more deadly

Niamh Cavanagh and Sam Matthews – March 4, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted Thursday that his invasion of Ukraine was “going to plan,” and experts warn that the failure of Russian forces to swiftly achieve victory in the first eight days of the war could mean the worst is yet to come for civilians.

“Russia has a substantial air and missile advantage over Ukraine,” Scott Boston, a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit organization RAND, told Yahoo News. “If Russian leadership, if Vladimir Putin, continues to double down on this and insist that Kyiv is to be taken, there is still a great deal of violence left that Russia can resort to.”

Trying to predict exactly how the war will play out, or whether Putin might be compelled to agree to a ceasefire, is difficult. If history is a guide, however, the Russians may simply try to force Ukraine into submission, no matter how long that ultimately takes.

During a nearly 11-week campaign, from December 1994 through February 1995, Russian forces laid siege to the Chechen city of Grozny. When it was done, estimates put the civilian death toll at between 25,000 and 30,000.

Beginning in 2012, Russian forces aided the Syrian government in a relentless, four-year attack on the Syrian city of Aleppo that left an estimated 31,000 civilians dead.

What’s playing out now in Ukrainian cities, experts say, bears a striking resemblance to those two conflicts. Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, said the images of the bombing of Kharkiv are “like Aleppo all over again.”

Sergiy Orlov, the deputy mayor of Mariupol, said on Wednesday that his city was witnessing a “human catastrophe,” with entire districts of its outlying areas having been leveled by Russian bombs and artillery fire. Medics have not been allowed to retrieve the dead as the Kremlin attempts to bomb towns and cities into submission, he said.

Philip Reeker, the U.S. chargé d’affaires to the U.K., warned that “medieval tactics are certainly what we can expect [from Putin]. That is exactly what President Putin and the Russian military have in mind.”

In terms of military might, Russia has the clear advantage over Ukraine in the conflict. Its tanks alone outnumber those of the Ukrainian forces by a margin of 3 to 1, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. As for military aircraft, Ukraine has 200 attack aircraft, including helicopters and 27 warships, while Russia has at least 1,300 aircraft and 34 warships.

Yet nine days into the war, the level of resistance being mounted by Ukraine has taken many experts by surprise.

“We expected to see certain things, and we didn’t see them,” Boston said. “You’ve seen Ukrainian civilians walking out, blocking the movement of Russian armored vehicles. We see them walking right up to the Russians in some cases.”

Boston said Putin may have simply miscalculated how to execute his assault on Ukraine.

“We saw an initial set of cruise and ballistic missile strikes take place,” Boston said. “But it was not followed up by a large-scale airstrike campaign, like one might expect. Parts of this operation look a lot like how they tried to execute the Crimea operation.”

Unlike in 2014, when Putin swiftly seized the Crimean Peninsula, Ukrainians are now fighting back, keeping Kremlin-led forces out of most major cities. “One crucial difference is that the Ukrainians are shooting back this time,” Boston said. “So it seems to have caught whoever made the plan off guard.”

While people in the West have cheered on the Ukrainian resistance, however, the days and weeks ahead are likely to hold no shortage of tragic moments.

“It’s important to keep in mind that although what has happened so far is awful, and it is a crime, it can get a great deal worse,” Boston said. “And I, frankly, am not totally sure how it will not get a great deal worse.”

The Telegraph

Lord Owen: Ukraine is going to be Putin’s undoing

Christopher Hope – March 3, 2022

David Owen has met his fair share of Soviet and Russian leaders.

“I met with Brezhnev when he was ageing, but he was still dignified, quite well-informed. Gromyko was very much on the ball… a serious negotiator. But Putin, I think he’s a different kettle of fish in every way.”

Speaking to Christopher Hope on the Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, the former foreign secretary says he’s seen a shift in the Russian President.

“I’ve never had a one-on-one meeting with him, but I’ve been in the room with him. I was there at the banquet at Buckingham Palace in 2003 when he came over. I went to the meeting with BP. I was at that time chairman of Yukos International, a large Russian oil company. Then there was this feeling that this is a person you could have dialogue with. I think in the last two years, there’s been a substantial change in this man’s approach.”

“Compare how drastically he prepared the way with Russian opinion for taking the Crimea to this, then there were a lot of preliminary discussions and debate, it came as no surprise. Now? Absolutely nothing.”

“There’s no doubt this is a different man to one we were in G8 with. Ukraine is going to be his undoing, I have no doubt. How long will it take? Who knows.”

Daily Beast

Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia

Jose Pagliery – March 3, 2022

As the United States increasingly goes after some of the Kremlin’s business tentacles, the latest person arrested for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia is a former Fox News director who left to launch a Russian propaganda network.

The Department of Justice on Thursday revealed that Jack Hanick was quietly arrested in London on Feb. 3 for dodging U.S. sanctions by helping a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeyev, start his right-wing Tsargrad TV.

The DOJ simultaneously unsealed a grand jury indictment against him, accusing Hanick of knowingly engaging in business dealings with Malofeyev, who had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in financing Russia-backed soldiers in eastern Ukraine who have violently tried to break off from the democratic country since 2014.

Sean Hannity’s Ukraine War ‘Plans’ Are Even Dumber Than You Think

The indictment also accuses Hanick of lying to FBI agents about his travels to Greece and Bulgaria to expand the TV network in 2015 and 2016, when he was interviewed by American investigators last year in New York City.

Federal agents assert that many of the damning details about Hanick’s Kremlin adventures were laid out in an unpublished memoir he kept in his email account, which was searched by the feds with a court-approved search warrant.

Malofeyev was sanctioned in December 2014 by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for financing separatists in the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia-aligned fighters there operated with the not-so-secret help of that country’s military and used that government’s weapons when they shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers.

Malofeyev (also spelled in the West as Malofeev) started an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad TV. In 2020, he launched a similarly named right-wing political group in Russia with an imperialist bent that would—much like the National Rifle Association does in the United States—pressure politicians to toe the conservative line.

I’m a Former Russian TV Anchor. Fox News Mimics State TV.

According to The Warsaw Institute, a Polish-based geopolitical think tank, “Tsargrad” would test political candidates’ adherence to “traditional family, religious, and cultural values of the Russian people.”

The Financial Times in 2015 analyzed how Malofeyev launched his “conservative yet modern spin on global news” in an attempt to mimic the rise of Fox News. Then, in 2018, the online news site Salon called out Hanick for joining the Russian operation, noting that he had previously served as a director for Fox News host Sean Hannity. However, on Thursday, Fox News told The Daily Beast that assertion was wrong and never corrected.

Hanick got his start at Fox News when it first launched in 1996. Fifteen years later, in 2011, he left. Three years later, he joined forces with Malofeyev’s Russian propaganda operation. The Justice Department now wants to extradite him from the United Kingdom to New York City.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, issued a statement noting that sanctions “prohibit United States citizens from working for or doing business with Malofeyev but as alleged, Hanick violated those sanctions by working directly for Malofeyev on multiple television projects over the course of several years.”

Williams noted the indictment underscores his office’s “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes. This Office will continue to be a leader in the Justice Department’s work to hold accountable actors who would support flagrant and unjustified acts of war.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated Hanick was a producer on Sean Hannity’s show. While he worked at Fox News for 15 years, a Fox spokesperson said he never worked on Hannity’s program.

Business Insider

At least 5 super-yachts belonging to Russian billionaires are anchored or cruising around the Maldives amid sweeping sanctions: report

Huileng Tan – March 3, 2022

• More Russian-owned superyachts are making their way to the Maldives amid sweeping Western sanctions.
• The Maldives does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
• At least five superyachts belonging to Russian billionaires are anchored or cruising around Maldives.

At least five superyachts belonging to Russian billionaires are anchored or cruising around the Maldives, Reuters reported, citing ship-tracking data.

The vessels’ arrival in the area comes as sweeping sanctions hit Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The US Justice department on Wednesday launched the Task Force KleptoCapture to seize assets belonging to sanctioned Russian individuals.

The Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation, does not have an extradition treaty with the US.

Among the superyachts around country are the 238-foot Clio, according to Reuters, citing shipping database MarineTraffic. The vessel is owned by Oleg Deripaska, who founded aluminum giant Rusal. It was anchored off the Maldivian capital of Male on Wednesday, per Reuters.

The Nirvana superyacht, owned by Vladimir Potanin, is also cruising in waters off the Maldives, according to MarineTraffic.

According to a Bloomberg analysis, the four biggest luxury yachts currently in the Maldives are owned by Russians. They include the 459-foot Ocean Victory, which belongs to steel magnate Viktor Rashnikov.

Russians own about 7% to 10% of all superyachts in the world, according to industry publication Superyacht News.

The superyachts’ journey to the Maldives comes as Germany seized a superyacht owned by EU-sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov on Wednesday, according to Forbes, citing three industry sources. It’s the first superyacht owned by a Russian tycoon seized since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

The Maldives government did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

HuffPost

Russia Expert Fiona Hill Reveals How It Could All Go South For Vladimir Putin

Lee Moran – March 3, 2022

Russian affairs expert Fiona Hill said there is one group of people in particular that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably has to worry about” more than anyone else if his invasion of Ukraine doesn’t go as planned.

It’s not Russia’s obscenely rich oligarchs, who face economic sanctions and seizures of their assets worldwide, the former top analyst on the National Security Council told Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Late Show.”

Instead, it’s the “very small circle” — such as Russia’s heads of intelligence, military and security services — who cooked up the invasion plan with Putin, said Hill.

“These are not the kind of guys who have yachts off Monaco, palaces in Paris or anything like this,” Hill explained. “These are people who are very much rooted in Russia itself and I don’t think they’re too worried about all of these sanctions and everything that’s cut off, because they’re not invested in the West. They’ve really got that bunker siege mentality — fortress Russia.”

Members of this small circle are who Putin “probably does have to worry about” if “it looks like Russia is losing,” said Hill, an intelligence analyst under former President George W. Bush and Barack Obama who later served on the National Security Council under Donald Trump. Hill was an important witness during Trump’s first impeachment.

“I don’t think they care about the world of public opinion,” Hill added. “But if there’s not any movement on the ground, if that great convoy of tanks just basically runs out of gas and is just left there, and if they have to kind of lay waste to Ukraine to basically get a success … you might then start to get a backlash from those people who are thinking this has not gone as they intended.”

Reuters

With war on its doorstep, Moldova applies for EU membership

Alexander Tanas – March 3, 2022

CHISINAU (Reuters) – Moldovan President Maia Sandu signed a formal application for her country to join the European Union on Thursday, charting a pro-Western course hastened by Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

Sandu’s move comes days after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a request for immediate EU membership as it battles invading Russian forces.

Moscow is fiercely opposed to the eastern expansion of both the EU and especially of NATO, which it sees as a direct threat to its own national security.

Sandu, the prime minister and the parliamentary speaker all signed the document during a briefing in the capital Chisinau, where pro-Russian and pro-EU politicians have vied for control since Moldova won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

“It took 30 years for Moldova to reach maturity, but today the country is ready to take responsibility for its own future,” said Sandu, before holding up the signed document to the television cameras.

“We want to live in peace, prosperity, be part of the free world. While some decisions take time, others must be made quickly and decisively, and taking advantage of the opportunities that come with a changing world,” she said.

The application will be sent to Brussels in the coming days, she said.

Negotiations to join the EU – which both Chisinau and Kyiv have not even begun – typically take many years as the candidate country aligns its legislation with that of the 27-nation bloc.

EU leaders may discuss Ukraine’s request at an informal summit next month, diplomats said.

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Toby Chopra and Gareth Jones)

Insider

France’s Macron thinks ‘the worst is yet to come’ in Ukraine after talking with Putin, reports say

Jake Epstein – March 3, 2022

• France’s Macron thinks “the worst is yet to come” in Ukraine after talking with Putin on Thursday.
• A senior French official said the 90-minute phone call did not yield any diplomatic progress.
• The official said Putin was determined to carry out the ongoing war in Ukraine until “the end.”

French President Emmanuel Macron thinks “the worst is yet to come” in Ukraine after talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, according to multiple reports.

A senior French official said Macron’s warning came after the two leaders spoke for 90 minutes, which did not yield any diplomatic progress, The Washington Post reported.

The official said Putin was determined to carry out the ongoing war in Ukraine until “the end,” the paper reported.

Putin also told Macron that Russia’s goals in Ukraine would be “fulfilled” and that the war was going “according to plan,” Reuters reported, citing a statement issued by the Kremlin.

The statement read: “It was confirmed that, first of all, we are talking about the demilitarisation and neutral status of Ukraine, so that a threat to the Russian Federation will never emanate from its territory.”

Russia on Wednesday captured its first major city, Kherson, after nearly a week of failure to break Ukrainian resistance.

Western officials have warned that Russia’s lack of anticipated progress in Ukraine so far may lead to Putin’s decision to stage a more aggressive approach.

Both Russia and Ukraine said the second round of negotiations between the two sides is slated to take place on Thursday.

In the last few days, Russian forces have ramped up their attacks on Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv, and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, as troops reportedly fire missiles at civilian areas.

As a result, the US State Department has accused Russia of “widespread” human rights abuses in Ukraine, while top advocacy groups warn that ongoing bombings and attacks against Ukrainian citizens could be considered war crimes.

The International Criminal Court on Wednesday announced that it is launching an investigation into potential war crimes in Ukraine.

Daily Beast

Putin Isn’t Just Insane. It’s Far Worse Than That.

A. Craig Copetas – March 3, 2022

The subject is Putin’s brain.

Is President Putin clinically insane? Is he choreographing madness and threats of a nuclear holocaust to frighten the West? Or does Putin know precisely what he’s doing? The questions are reasonable, but ultimately unanswerable. There is a data point, however: Russian and German scientists at Moscow’s aptly named Research Institute of the Brain in 1925 sliced and diced 30,953 sections of Vladimir Lenin’s cytoarchitecture for indications of genius.

The results of that research remain a mystery, as does a solution to the enigma of whether the heir to Lenin’s throne—one Vladimir Putin—believes his own hype or is experiencing buyer’s remorse over an invasion that caught the rest of the Kremlin unawares.

Sadly, work has not yet begun dissecting Putin’s cerebrum for clues.

Short of delving inside his mind, Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia on the U.S. National Security Council during the Trump administration, did a splendid job of purifying Putin’s sense and sensibility in a recent interview. “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally,” she told Politico. “It’s reestablishing dominance over what Russia sees as the Russian Imperium. We’re treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again.”

Rewind about 150 years and you will hear a familiar refrain from Russia’s imperial Romanov family, who spent 300 years brutally persuading their subjects to back endless wars. “If the West is cursing Russia, Russia is doing something right,” blustered the multi-titled Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.

To be sure, you really had to be in the audience to feel the full force of tub-thumping late-19th-century Tsar Alexander III’s patriotic call to arms but Alexander Romanov is widely believed to be Putin’s favorite tsar. His father—Alexander II—was assassinated in 1881. A group of young people hurled three bombs at him (without the assistance of TikTok). The Bolsheviks in 1918 murdered the last of the Romanov thoroughbreds in a cellar. The Soviets followed with 69 years of great expectations. The happy drunk and baptized Russian Orthodox Christian Boris Yeltsin became the star of the show in 1991, until Putin took over in 2000.

Still, for the casual visitor, Russia’s memory lane never stretched much further than the gift shop at the Hermitage Museum.

Once upon a time in Moscow, Red Square was an open air market built atop a pavement of logs laid down to cover the mud and keep the tsar’s boots clean and the patriarch’s robe sparkling when they strolled out of the Kremlin. That is the level of reverence Putin has spent the past 22 years resurrecting on state-controlled television for his isolated home audience of 146 million Russian souls.

“Russian politicians excel in making people everywhere believe in things which are not real,” Vladimir Yerofeyev once explained over dinner during my years as a correspondent in Moscow. Yerofeyev should know. He was Joseph Stalin’s translator and no slouch when it came to triggering the trickery Russian leaders use to rally public support to exorcise Western criticism.

The Imperial Kremlin has two masters, one temporal, the other spiritual. The tsar and the Russian Patriarch of All Moscow and All Rus. The tsar and his hierophant-in-chief worked and lived and ruled in tandem. “There’s no difference between the secular realm and the spiritual realm,” explains the Byzantine and Russian historian Henry Hopwood-Phillips. “The tsar and the patriarch are meant to occupy the same body and the same mystical mind. That’s the anvil of Russia’s domestic Byzantine statecraft.”

And Putin’s hammer is wielded by God.

“Let God save the Russian soil,” Putin’s Patriarch Kirill earlier this week on TV told his flock of 90 million devout parishioners. “When I say Russian, I use an ancient expression from the chronicles of where Russian soil started, which includes the Ukraine and Belarus. God forbid,” Kirill thundered, “that the evil forces that have always fought against the unity of Russia and the Russian church get the upper hand in brotherly Ukraine.”

Kirill’s frequent pronouncements in support of Putin’s destruction of Ukraine are not gibberish and, for more Russians than many in the West might want to believe, it’s not lunacy. According to a Feb. 27 poll conducted by Obshestvennoemnenie, 71 percent of the 1,500 respondents said Putin is “working his post rather well” and that they “generally trust him.” Indeed, Russia’s incarcerated opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in a message recently smuggled out of his jail cell, raged against Putin’s primitive melding of the secular and the spiritual to retain miraculous power.

“I will not remain silent watching pseudo-historical nonsense about the events of 100 years ago become an excuse for Russians to kill Ukrainians,” Navalny pleaded. “Let us not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar.”

He is desperately trying to recapture a romanticized heyday.

“Putin looks to be suffering deep melancholy,” reckons Hopwood-Phillips. “His consciousness is still floating in the 17th century, and 44 million Ukrainians are paying the price.”

In Putin’s Russia, nostalgia is what it used to be.