Russia’s economy ‘in crisis’ as banks formally cut out of Swift
Tim Wallace – March 12, 2022
Cashpoint – Dmitry Feoktistov/TASS via Getty Images
Russia is braced for more economic chaos as seven banks are formally been blocked from the Swift messaging system which is a core part of the international payments mechanism, as EU sanctions come into force today.
Western institutions had already been scrambling to cut back dealings with Russian institutions following a wave of restrictions aimed at isolating Vladimir Putin’s regime and crippling the country’s economy over its invasion of Ukraine.
It has instantly cast Russia’s economy into a deep hole, said a top economist at an international group who asked not to be named.
“It is clear Russia is in a deep financial and economic crisis, the only question is how much its economy will contract and how great the damage will be. It could well be worse than what happened in 1998 when they defaulted. It is a very, ery severe crisis for Russia,” the economist said.
“For at least five years it has been trying to develop its economy so it has greater resilience and independence from the west in terms of building up foreign exchange reserves, reducing its deficit, and reorienting trade away from western Europe precisely for this day.
“My suspicion is they didn’t expect sanctions to be as far-reaching as they have proved to be.”
Russia’s central bank has extended the closure of the Moscow exchange until at least 18 March. It had previously said trading on the stock market would recommence on Monday 14 March, following the closure which began on 25 February.
The Institute for International Finance estimates GDP could plunge by as much as 30pc by the end of this year, which compares to the World Bank’s estimates that its economy shrank by 3pc in 2020 and by almost 8pc in 2009’s global financial crisis.
The EU has ordered Swift to disconnect Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, Vnesheconombank and VTB Bank, though other institutions including Gazprombank and Sberbank are still able to use the messaging system as they are needed for European nations to buy oil and gas from Russia.
Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has said kicking banks off Swift helps “reinforce” the sanctions, as Russia has only limited means to make payments through alternative channels.
“Alternative systems have emerged in the past decade. For instance, Russian authorities have supported the development of what is known as SPFS, while Chinese authorities have developed the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. However, these aren’t commonly used for US dollar and euro transactions, nor are they as globally accepted as Swift,” the agency said when the Swift decision was announced.
“Moreover, although Russian banks could switch to these alternative systems, their counterparties might not be as willing to participate. Another alternative is for Russian banks cut off from Swift to use intermediaries that are still connected to Swift or establish bespoke processes. However, the other sanctions already imposed on these seven banks materially reduce the practicality of these alternatives for a large number of counterparts.”
Analysts expect the sanctions to prompt other nations including China to investigate further the possibility of setting up alternative systems alongside their allies in further efforts to reduce their vulnerability from the global system which was in large part established by the western powers in the second half of the 20th century, giving democracies significant economic leverage over dictatorships.
It comes as German lender Commerzbank said it is cutting back links to the Russian economy.
“We have stopped new business in Russia and we are winding down existing transactions,” said a spokesman for the bank. “Of course we’re complying with sanctions.”
Bill Maher slams both parties for playing partisan politics with the war in Ukraine
Grayson Quay, Weekend editor – March 12, 2022
Real Time host Bill Maher wrapped up his show Friday night by slamming both parties for using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to score partisan points, Fox News reports.
“New rule: don’t make World War III all about you,” Maher said. The only conclusion anyone seems to be drawing from the war in Ukraine, he continued, is that “everything proves what we already believed, and everything goes back to the thing we already hate.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/mXdzAZvid0E
Maher pointed out headlines that showed Republicans blaming President Biden for the war and Democrats blaming former President Donald Trump. He also quoted Biden’s comparison of the invasion to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s insistence that the crisis was caused by the “rigged” 2020 U.S. presidential election.
On March 2, Biden suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been emboldened to invade Ukraine after watching the events of Jan. 6. “Putin was counting on being able to split up the United States. Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament and kill five cops?” Biden said.
Trump made the comments to which Maher alluded on Feb. 24 as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was beginning. Putin, Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, “was going to be satisfied with a piece [of Ukraine], and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration.” Trump added that “it all happened because of a rigged election,” repeating his baseless claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 election.
“Kanye thinks less about Pete Davidson than Trump thinks about the rigged election,” Maher quipped. He also asked why, “if Putin thought Trump was really that supportive of him … didn’t he invade when Trump was in office?”
Russia intensifies assault, warns U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine are ‘legitimate targets’
Nabih Bulos, Jenny Jarvie – March 12, 2022
Ukrainian soldiers run toward safety Thursday after battling Russian forces in Irpin, just outside the capital of Kyiv. Fierce fighting in Irpin continued Saturday. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across Ukraine on Saturday, capturing the eastern outskirts of a key southern port and waging an increasingly violent campaign with an eye to encircling the capital even as they sought to bring a political veneer to their occupation in cities they have captured.
The moves come as the White House announced it would send an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine. That announcement came hours Moscow signaled it could soon expand the war to embroil Kyiv’s allies, warning the U.S. that it would consider convoys carrying weapons to Ukraine to be “legitimate targets.”
While wide-scale Russian bombing campaigns intensified in cities including Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, Russian forces plan to conduct a referendum that would turn the city of Kherson — the first major city captured by Russian forces earlier this month — into a vassal breakaway republic, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
“Given zero popular support, it will be fully staged,” he wrote on Twitter, warning that it was a repeat of Russia’s playbook in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists held a referendum that led to the creation of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine.
“Severe sanctions against Russia must follow if they proceed. Kherson is & will always be Ukraine.”
Sergey Khlan, a deputy in the Kherson Regional Council, said in a post on Facebook on Saturday that Russian authorities were contacting deputies and asking for their cooperation in holding the referendum to create a putative Kherson People’s Republic.
“The creation of Kherson People’s Republic will turn our region into a hopeless hole without life and future,” Khlan wrote.
“Do not give them a single vote! Do not give them any opportunity to legitimize [the Kherson People’s Republic]… Enter the history of Ukraine not as traitors whom nobody wants, but truly as citizens whose names will be remembered by the next generations.”
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday that shipments of Western weapons to Ukraine could be attacked by Russian forces, according to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency. Western nations’ “thoughtless transfer” of portable air defense and antitank missile systems to Kyiv, Ryabkov said, demonstrated “the escalatory component of Washington’s policy.”
The White House announced Saturday it approved an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine, on top of $350 million President Biden approved last month.
“We have warned the U.S. that the U.S.-orchestrated inundation of Ukraine with weapons from some countries is not just a dangerous move, but also an action that makes these convoys legitimate targets,” Ryabkov said. The Russian diplomat did not say whether Russian forces would target such convoys in Poland or Romania, NATO countries that border Ukraine.
The tough talk came on a day that Russian forces sustained “heavy losses in manpower and equipment” in areas northeast of Kyiv and were prevented from regaining a foothold on previously captured frontiers, according to the Ukrainian military.
Northwest of the capital, the bulk of Russian ground forces were gathered Saturday about 15 miles from the city center, according to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense. Parts of the large Russian column north of Kyiv had dispersed, the ministry said, either in an effort to encircle the city or limit its risk of Ukrainian counterattacks.
Early in the morning, loud explosions reverberated near the capital. Rumbles — louder and closer than the booms of previous days — could be heard throughout the day and well into the night in Kyiv. They served as the calling card of the twin Russian pincers stretching toward the capital from its northeastern and northwestern flank.
Despite holding off enemy forces from the capital, Ukrainian officials admitted a bitter defeat, acknowledging that Russia had seized part of Mariupol, a strategic city in the southeastern Donetsk region that could allow it to build a land corridor from pro-Moscow enclaves in the east to Russian-annexed Crimea in the south. Russian shelling of the city hit a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, and repeated efforts to evacuate 430,000 residents have failed as their convoys come under artillery fire. Dozens of buses loaded with humanitarian supplies were reported to be attempting to reach the city.
“Let’s see whether this one gets here or not,” Mariupol Deputy Mayor Serhiy Orlov said in an interview with the BBC, noting that six previous attempts to bring food, water and medicine to his beleaguered city were unsuccessful.
“The convoys were not let through,” he said. “They were bombed, the road was mined, there was shelling in the town.”
In Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding center about 300 miles west of Mariupol, Mayor Olexandr Senkevitch claimed in a video posted Saturday on Instagram that eight civilians were injured and more than 160 houses, three hospitals and 11 educational institutions were damaged overnight.
“We will definitely repair and restore everything,” he said. “We heal the wounded. And defeat these damn orcs” referring to the Ukrainian nickname for Russian forces.
With those forces assembled about 15 miles outside Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky struck a confident tone from inside the capital, where citizen militias are armed with missiles, machine guns and Molotov cocktails.
“We know 100% there will be a victory,” he said in a news conference.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Zelensky said, about 1,300 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had died — a fraction of the 12,000 Russians that he claimed had died. The numbers could not be independently verified.
“One in 10,” he said.
Asked if Russian troops could enter Kyiv, Zelensky said it was theoretically possible.
“If they carry out a carpet bombing and simply decide to erase the historical memory of the whole region, the history of Kyivan Rus’, the history of Europe, they will enter Kyiv,” he added. “If they destroy all of us, they will enter Kyiv. If this is the goal, they will enter and will have to live on this land alone, without us. They will not find friends among us here.
Zelensky urged Ukrainians to keep fighting.
“The resistance of the entire Ukrainian people against these invaders has already gone down in history,” Zelensky said. “But we have no right to reduce the intensity of defense. No matter how difficult it is. We have no right to reduce the energy of resistance.”
In Melitopol, 120 miles west of Mariupol hundreds gathered on the streets Saturday to demand the release of the southern city’s mayor, Ivan Fedorov, whom the Ukrainian government has said was kidnapped from a government office Friday by Russian forces.
“Fedorov!” the crowd chanted. “Free the mayor!”
After accusing Russia on Saturday of “switching to a new stage of terror” in trying to “physically eliminate” elected officials, Zelensky praised the protesters for their open resistance.
“The invaders must see that they are strangers on our land, on all our land of Ukraine, and they will never be accepted,” he said in a video broadcast.
In telephone conversations with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, Zelensky said he urged them to push for Fedorov’s release.
“The demand is simple: to release him from captivity immediately,” he said. “We expect them, the world leaders, to show how they can influence the situation. How they can do a simple thing: free one person. A person who represents the entire Melitopol community, Ukrainians who do not give up.”
Russia’s intensified assault on the cities and villages of Ukraine came as the United States continued to insist that diplomacy still had a role in the conflict.
But prospects of a resolution looked dim after Scholz and Macron unsuccessfully tried in a lengthy telephone call Saturday to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate cease-fire or diplomatic talks.
Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency also reported Saturday that Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview that Moscow and Washington were not negotiating or consulting on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in the disputed Donbas region, the self-appointed head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, issued a decree Saturday saying the borders of the state would correspond to those declared in May 2014. (Ukrainian forces had clawed back two-thirds of the Donbas before a ceasefire later in 2014.)
The move aims to formalize gains in recent days after Russian forces — backed by separatists — have advanced into government-held areas of Luhansk province. A day earlier, Pasechnik issued another decree restoring names of streets that had been changed after the Ukrainian government’s so-called de-communization drive.
US intelligence officials believe a $700 million superyacht that’s docked in Italy could belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports say
Zahra Tayeb – March 12, 2022
The Scheherazade, one of the largest superyachts in the world, pictured in Turkey in 2020.Photo by Osman Uras/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
US officials say a superyacht docked in Italy could belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
People briefed on the intelligence, however, said no set conclusions have been made, per The NYT.
The $700 million superyacht is currently docked on the Tuscan coast of Italy.
US authorities believe a $700 million superyacht that’s docked in Italy could belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The New York Times reported the news, citing several people briefed on the information.
The superyacht, called the Scheherazade, which is currently situated on the Tuscan coast of Italy first came to light after The Times reported Tuesday that Italian authorities were examining the 459-foot-long vessel.
While some believed it could belong to a Russian oligarch, locals told The Times they nicknamed it “Putin’s yacht.”
US intelligence officials have not concluded who owns the Scheherazade but said they found initial indications that it was associated with Putin, per The Times.
The people with knowledge of the matter would not describe what information led them to believe the superyacht was linked to the Russian President, according to the publication.
The ship’s captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, told reporters earlier this week that Putin was not the owner of the ship and that he had never been on the yacht. He didn’t, however, rule out the possibility of the owner being Russian.
Meanwhile, the US and the other countries are doubling down on efforts to confiscate oligarchs’ high-end assets.
“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,” President Joe Biden said in his State of The Union address on March 1. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”
Some oligarchs have scrambled to try and escape the sanctions against them, taking their private jets and ships to places like Dubai and the Maldives.
The Scheherazade has been undergoing repairs since June 2020 in the small Italian town of Marina di Carrara. Its features include a helicopter landing pad, a large pool, a cinema, and a drone crashing system, according to Superyacht Fan.
Klitschko brothers say Kyiv supply lines open, residents returning to fight
Omer Berberoglu – March 11, 2022
Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko visits a checkpoint of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces in Kyiv
KYIV (Reuters) -Kyiv mayor and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko said on Friday that he believed there were nearly 2 million people still left in the city, which is being squeezed by advancing Russian forces on several fronts.
He said the Ukrainian capital, normally with a population of 3.5 million, had enough vital provisions to last a couple of weeks, and that supply lines in and out remained open for now.
His brother Wladimir, also a heavyweight boxing star, added in a joint interview that some men and women who had accompanied their families to the relative safety of the west of the country were returning to take part in the city’s defense.
“We guess close to 2 million people are still in Kyiv and it’s very important to give services to people,” Vitali told Reuters at a logistics centre in Kyiv where he and aides were coordinating food and medicine supplies to stores and people stranded at home.
“We have right now electricity, heating, gas, we have water,” he added, speaking in English.
He thanked countries for sending supplies to Ukraine, and estimated that Kyiv had enough vital goods to last another two weeks.
Russia’s military is already close to Kyiv to the west and northwest, where there has been heavy fighting, and has tried to move closer to the east and northeast.
Ukrainian officials say that its ultimate aim is to surround the city with a view to seizing it.
On Friday Russian forces were regrouping in the northwest, satellite pictures showed, in what Britain said could be preparation for an assault on the city within days.
“The target (of the Russian invasion) is the capital of Ukraine, the target is Kyiv,” Vitali said. “We are ready to defend our city.”
SOME RESIDENTS RETURN
Hundreds of thousands of Kyiv residents have fled westwards as the fighting neared the city’s outskirts, joining millions of others forced to leave homes behind by sometimes fierce bombardment.
Wladimir Klitschko, who has enlisted in Ukraine’s reserve army, said some of the men and women who had got their families to safety were now returning to the capital.
“Yes there are a lot of refugees who left west, but a lot are coming back. A lot of men and women … coming back to defend the country. This is our home. We are staying here. We are not leaving anywhere,” he said.
Across Ukraine, thousands of civilians have joined local defence units to support regular troops.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to disarm and “de-Nazify” the country. It denies targeting civilians.
Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an invasion that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in which hundreds of civilians have been killed and millions more displaced.
In Brovary, just to the east of Kyiv, residents out shopping for food remained defiant.
Dramatic footage released on Thursday showed a column of Russian tanks outside the town coming under artillery fire which appeared to strike some of the vehicles and forced others to retreat.
“There is no panic,” said Brovary resident Larisa Ugviy after packing her shopping into a car with her husband.
“We try to calm down – cook something, do the cleaning, take care of the pets, walk them. So everything is alright. Life goes on, nobody panics, nobody. Trust me.”
(Reporting by Omer Berberoglu; Writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Alison Williams)
A Ukrainian company that manufacturers medieval armor for sport is now using its materials to produce “caltrops” — or “sharp, six-inch spikes that date back to ancient wars” — in service of the war effort against Russia, The Washington Post reports.
Art of Steel in western Ukraine used to make items like “silver chain mail, helmets, and other armor for reenactments and show,” but has instead in the past two weeks produced hundreds of caltrops, which are being chained together and “placed at checkpoints around Rivne, a city about 210 miles west of Kyiv,” writes the Post. The intent is for the devices, also called “hedgehogs,” to stop or slow Russian vehicles should they try to enter the city, since the metal can pierce tires.
“Ukrainians [are] united in this war,” an Art of Steel official told the Post. “Absolutely everyone is trying to help in the fighting places and in the rear. Therefore, any materials are somehow used.”
“With proper use,” the caltrops “will help stop [a] column of vehicles or at least delay them for a while,” the official added.
The Art of Steel hedgehogs are just one example of homegrown weaponry Ukrainians are using to defend themselves from Russian aggression. Some volunteers, for example, have begun packing bottles with the materials needed to make Molotov cocktails.
The spiky weapons are now at every checkpoint in Rivne, Art of Steel said, per the Post. The company is also making plates for body armor.
Russia’s bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US
David Klepper and Angelo Fichera – March 11, 2022
Russia’s baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump.
Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government.
Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths: Ukraine does maintain a network of biological labs dedicated to research into pathogens, and those labs have received funding and research support from the U.S.
But the labs are owned and operated by Ukraine, and the work is not secret. It’s part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade. The U.S. efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.
“The labs are not secret,” said Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, in an email to the Associated Press. “They are not being used in relation to bioweapons. This is all disinformation.”
That hasn’t stopped the claim from being embraced by some on the far-right, by Fox News hosts, and by groups that push debunked claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon created by the U.S.
The day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an early version appeared on Twitter — in a thread espousing the idea that Russia’s offensive was targeting “US biolabs in Ukraine” — and was soon amplified by the conspiracy theory website Infowars. It has spread across mainstream and lower-profile social platforms, including Telegram and Gab, that are popular with far-right Americans, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and adherents of QAnon, the baseless hoax that Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly shape world events.
Many of the accounts posting the claim are citing Russian propaganda outlets as sources. When Kremlin officials repeated the conspiracy theory on Thursday, saying the U.S. was developing bioweapons that target specific ethnicities, it took a few minutes for their quotes to show up on American social media.
Several Telegram users who cited the comments said they trusted Russian propaganda over independent American journalists, or their own democratically elected officials.
“Can’t believe anything our government says!” one poster wrote.
Others cited the claim while parroting Russia’s talking points about the invasion.
“It’s not a “war,” it’s a much needed cleansing,” wrote a member of a Telegram group called “Patriot Voices” that is popular with supporters of Trump. “Ukraine has a ton of US govt funded BioWeapons Labs that created deathly pathogens and viruses.”
Television pundits and high-profile political figures have helped spread the claim even further. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted segments on his shows on Wednesday and Thursday to promoting the conspiracy theory. On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. said conspiracy theories around the labs were proven to be a “fact” in a tweet to his 7.3 million followers.
Both Carlson and Trump misrepresented congressional testimony from a State Department official saying the U.S. was working with Ukraine to secure material in the biological labs, suggesting that indicated the labs were being used for illegitimate purposes.
It’s not surprising that a biological research center would contain potentially hazardous material, however. The World Health Organization said Thursday that it has asked Ukraine to destroy any samples that could pose a threat if released, either intentionally or accidentally.
While the disinformation poses a threat on its own, the White House warned this week that the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory could be a prelude to a chemical or biological attack that Russia would blame on the U.S. or Ukraine.
“Frankly, this influence campaign is completely consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to accuse the United States of sponsoring bioweapons work in the former Soviet Union,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So this is a classic move by the Russians.”
The conspiracy theory has also been picked up by Chinese state media, and was further amplified this week by China’s Foreign Ministry, which repeated Russia’s claim and called for an investigation.
Milton Leitenberg, an arms control expert and senior research associate at the Center for International & Security Studies at the University of Maryland, noted that Russia has a long history of such disinformation. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy theory that the U.S. created HIV in a lab.
Leitenberg said numerous Russian scientists had visited a similar public health lab in the republic of Georgia, but that Russia continued to spread false claims about that facility.
“There’s nothing they don’t know about what’s taking place there, and they know that nothing of what they claim is true,” Leitenberg said. “The important thing is that they know that, unquestionably.”
While gaining traction in the U.S., the claims about bioweapons are likely intended for a domestic Russian audience, as a way to increase support for the invasion, according to Andy Carvin, senior fellow and managing editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which is tracking Russian disinformation.
Carvin noted the Kremlin has also spread hoaxes about Ukrainian efforts to obtain nuclear weaponry.
“It’s a rinse-and-repeat cycle to hammer home these narratives, particularly to domestic audiences,” Carvin said.
Klepper reported from Providence, R.I. Fichera reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporter Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report from Washington.
Zelensky says Ukraine has ‘reached a strategic turning point’ in its fight against Russia
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – March 11, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged the people of his nation to be patient as they continue to defend their country against Russia’s military invasion, which has now entered its 16th day.
“I know that many people have started to feel tired. I understand. Impatient. I understand,” Zelensky said in a video posted online. “This is life. When we mobilize, when we see our victories and the loss of the enemy on the battlefield, we expect the struggle to end sooner. We expect the invaders to fall faster. But this is life, this is war. This is a struggle. Time is still needed. Patience is still needed.”
A defiant Zelensky insisted Ukraine will prevail despite reports of Russian forces striking near airports in the western part of Ukraine for the first time while its troops were attempting to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“It is impossible to say for how many more days we must liberate our Ukrainian land. But it is possible to say we will do it,” Zelensky said, according to an English translation of his remarks by Ukraine’s U.N. mission. “Because we have already reached a strategic turning point. We are already moving toward our goal, toward our victory.”
Ukrainan President Volodymyr Zelensky during an address to the nation from Kyiv on Friday. (Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“This is a patriotic war against an obstinate enemy which doesn’t pay attention to thousands of their own soldiers dead,” he added.
“This is a humanitarian catastrophe,” Zelensky said. “Humanitarian catastrophe — two words that have become fully synonymous with the other two words: the Russian Federation.”
The attack was widely condemned by world leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who said the U.S. would work with its allies to investigate Russia for possible war crimes.
President Biden spoke with Zelensky on Friday morning before announcing new U.S. sanctions against Russia, including a ban imports of Russian alcohol, seafood and diamonds.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday that Russian forces invading Ukraine have killed more Ukrainian civilians than soldiers.
At least 549 Ukrainian civilians, including 41 children, have been killed, according to the United Nations. But the agency believes the actual death toll is likely much higher.
According to the U.N., more than 2.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, when Russia’s invasion began.
Zelensky implored those who have stayed to “hold on.”
“Be sure to fight. Be sure to give your all strength,” he said. “It will not be easy with such a neighbor. But with us, it will not be easy too.”
The future of warfare could be a lot more grisly than Ukraine
Steven Zeitchik, The Washington Post – March 11, 2022
A man walks with a bicycle in a street damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022. Some experts worry that if autonomous weapons take hold, future conflict will be even more violent than the Russian invasion in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) (AP)
Amid the stately beiges of Geneva’s Palais de Nations this week, United Nations diplomats from Ukraine and Russia were launching strikes.
“What we could see in this hall in the course of the two last days is nothing else than the blackmailing of all of us by the Russian representative,” the Ukrainian diplomat said Tuesday.
The Russian delegate fired back a moment later: “There is discrimination suffered by my country because of restrictive measures against us.”
Ukraine was chastising Russia not over the country’s ongoing invasion but a more abstract topic: autonomous weapons.
The comments were a part of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, a U.N. gathering at which global delegates are supposed to be working toward a treaty on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, the charged realm that both military experts and peace activists say is the future of war.
But citing visa restrictions that limited his team’s attendance, the Russian delegate asked that the meeting be disbanded, prompting denunciations from Ukraine and many others. The skirmish was playing out in a kind of parallel with the war in Ukraine – more genteel surroundings, equally high stakes.
Autonomous weapons – the catchall description for algorithms that help decide where and when a weapon should fire – are among the most fraught areas of modern warfare, making the human-commandeered drone strike of recent decades look as quaint as a bayonet.
Proponents argue that they are nothing less than a godsend, improving precision and removing human mistakes and even the fog of war itself.
The weapons’ critics – and there are many – see disaster. They note a dehumanization that opens up battles to all sorts of machine-led errors, which a ruthless digital efficiency then makes more apocalyptic. While there are no signs such “slaughterbots” have been deployed in Ukraine, critics say the activities playing out there hint at grimmer battlefields ahead.
“Recent events are bringing this to the fore – they’re making us realize the tech we’re developing can be deployed and exposed to people with devastating consequences,” said Jonathan Kewley, co-head of the Tech Group at high-powered London law firm Clifford Chance, emphasizing this was a global and not a Russia-centric issue.
While they differ in their specifics, all fully autonomous weapons share one idea: that artificial intelligence can dictate firing decisions better than people. By being trained on thousands of battles and then having its parameters adjusted to a specific conflict, the AI can be onboarded to a traditional weapon, then seek out enemy combatants and surgically drop bombs, fire guns or otherwise decimate enemies without a shred of human input.
The 39-year-old CCW convenes every five years to update its agreement on new threats, like land mines. But AI weapons have proved its Waterloo. Delegates have been flummoxed by the unknowable dimensions of intelligent fighting machines and hobbled by the slow-plays of military powers, like Russia, eager to bleed the clock while the technology races ahead. In December, the quinquennial meeting did not result in “consensus” (the CCW requires it for any updates), forcing the group back to the drawing board at an another meeting this month.
“We are not holding this meeting on the back of a resounding success,” the Irish delegate dryly noted this week.
Activists fear all these delays will come at a cost. The tech is now so evolved, they say, that some militaries around the world could deploy it in their next conflict.
“I believe it’s just a matter of policy at this point, not technology,” Daan Kayser, who lead the autonomous weapons project for the Dutch group Pax for Peace, told The Post from Geneva. “Any one of a number of countries could have computers killing without a single human anywhere near it. And that should frighten everyone.”
Russia’s machine-gun manufacturer Kalashnikov Group announced in 2017 that it was working on a gun with a neural network. The country is also believed to have the potential to deploy the Lancet and the Kub – two “loitering drones” that can stay near a target for hours and activate only when needed – with various autonomous capabilities.
Advocates worry that as Russia shows it is apparently willing to use other controversial weapons in Ukraine like cluster bombs, fully autonomous weapons won’t be far behind. (Russia – and for that matter the United States and Ukraine – did not sign on to the 2008 cluster-bomb treaty that more than 100 other countries agreed to.)
But they also say it would be a mistake to lay all the threats at Russia’s door. The U.S. military has been engaged in its own race toward autonomy, contracting with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon for AI services. It has created an AI-focused training program for the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg – soldiers designing systems so the machines can fight the wars – and built a hub of forward-looking tech at the Army Futures Command, in Austin.
The Air Force Research Laboratory, for its part, has spent years developing something called the Agile Condor, a highly efficient computer with deep AI capabilities that can be attached to traditional weapons; in the fall, it was tested aboard a remotely piloted aircraft known as the MQ-9 Reaper. The United States also has a stockpile of its own loitering munitions, like the Mini Harpy, that it can equip with autonomous capabilities.
China has been pushing, too. A Brookings Institution report in 2020 said that the country’s defense industry has been “pursuing significant investments in robotics, swarming, and other applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
A study by Pax found that between 2005 and 2015, the United States had 26% of all new AI patents granted in the military domain, and China, 25%. In the years since, China has eclipsed America. China is believed to have made particular strides in military-grade facial recognition, pouring billions of dollars into the effort; under such a technology, a machine identifies an enemy, often from miles away, without any confirmation by a human.
The hazards of AI weapons were brought home last year when a U.N. Security Council report said a Turkish drone, the Kargu-2, appeared to have fired fully autonomously in the long-running Libyan civil war – potentially marking the first time on this planet a human being died entirely because a machine thought they should.
All of this has made some nongovernmental organizations very nervous. “Are we really ready to allow machines to decide to kill people?” asked Isabelle Jones, campaign outreach manager for an AI-critical umbrella group named Stop Killer Robots. “Are we ready for what that means?”
Formed in 2012, Stop Killer Robots has a playful name but a hellbent mission. The group encompasses some 180 NGOs and combines a spiritual argument for a human-centered world (“Less autonomy. More humanity”) with a brass-tacks argument about reducing casualties.
Jones cited a popular advocate goal: “meaningful human control.” (Whether this should mean a full-on ban is partly what’s flummoxing the U.N. group.)
Military insiders say such aims are misguided.
“Any effort to ban these things is futile – they convey too much of an advantage for states to agree to that,” said C. Anthony Pfaff, a retired Army colonel and former military adviser to the State Department and now a professor at U.S. Army War College.
Instead, he said, the right rules around AI weapons would ease concerns while paying dividends.
“There’s a powerful reason to explore these technologies,” he added. “The potential is there; nothing is necessarily evil about them. We just have to make sure we use them in a way that gets the best outcome.”
Like other supporters, Pfaff notes that it’s an abundance of human rage and vengefulness that has led to war crimes. Machines lack all such emotion.
But critics say it is exactly emotion that governments should seek to protect. Even when peering through the fog of war, they say, eyes are attached to human beings, with all their ability to react flexibly.
Military strategists describe a battle scenario in which a U.S. autonomous weapon knocks down a door in a far-off urban war to identify a compact, charged group of males coming at it with knives. Processing an obvious threat, it takes aim.
It does not know that the war is in Indonesia, where males of all ages wear knives around their necks; that these are not short men but 10-year-old boys; that their emotion is not anger but laughter and playing. An AI cannot, no matter how fast its microprocessor, infer intent.
There may also be a more macro effect.
“Just cause in going to war is important, and that happens because of consequences to individuals,” said Nancy Sherman, a Georgetown professor who has written numerous books on ethics and the military. “When you reduce the consequences to individuals you make the decision to enter a war too easy.”
This could lead to more wars – and, given that the other side wouldn’t have the AI weapons, highly asymmetric ones.
If by chance both sides had autonomous weapons, it could result in the science-fiction scenario of two robot sides destroying each other. Whether this will keep conflict away from civilians or push it closer, no one can say.
It is head-spinners like this that seem to be holding up negotiators. Last year, the CCW got bogged down when a group of 10 countries, many of them South American, wanted the treaty to be updated to include a full AI ban, while others wanted a more dynamic approach. Delegates debated how much human awareness was enough human awareness, and at what point in the decision chain it should be applied.
And three military giants shunned the debate entirely: The United States, Russia and India all wanted no AI update to the agreement at all, arguing that existing humanitarian law was sufficient.
This week in Geneva didn’t yield much more progress. After several days of infighting brought on by the Russia protest tactics, the chair moved the substantive proceedings to “informal” mode, putting hope of a treaty even further out of reach.
Some attempts at regulation have been made at the level of individual nations. The U.S. Defense Department has issued a list of AI guidelines, while the European Union recently passed a comprehensive new AI Act.
But Kewley, the attorney, pointed out that the act offers a carve-out for military uses.
“We worry about the impact of AI in so many services and areas of our lives but where it can have the most extreme impact – in the context of war – we’re leaving it up to the military,” he said.
He added: “If we don’t design laws the whole world will follow – if we design a robot that can kill people and doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong built in – it will be a very, very high-risk journey we’re following.”
