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The Washington Post

Putin’s pre-war moves against U.S. tech giants laid groundwork for crackdown on free expression

Greg Miller and Joseph Menn – March 12, 2022

Russian agents came to the home of Google’s top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison.

Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents – believed by company officials to be from Russia’s FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service – then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook.

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition – moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine.

In a single year, Putin had his political nemesis Alexei Navalny imprisoned after a poisoning attempt failed to kill him; pushed independent news outlets to the brink of extinction; orchestrated a Kremlin-controlled takeover of Russia’s Facebook equivalent; and issued “liquidation” orders against human rights organizations.

Amid this internal offensive, Putin also moved to bring foreign technology companies to heel. Moscow deployed new devices that let it degrade or even block Russians’ access to Facebook and Twitter, imposed fines totaling $120 million on firms accused of defying Kremlin censors, and ordered 13 of the world’s largest technology companies to keep employees in Russia and thus exposed to potential arrest or other punishment for their employers’ actions – a measure that U.S. executives refer to as the “hostage law.”

On their own, these moves were seen as disparate signs of Russia’ descent into authoritarianism. But they also laid the groundwork for the Soviet-style suppression of free expression now underway in Russia, much as the months-long military buildup set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s crackdown has accelerated in recent weeks. Facebook and Twitter have been knocked offline by the government for millions of Russians. News outlets that survived state harassment for years shut down this month in the face of a new law imposing prison time of up to 15 years for spreading “fake” news – understood to be anything contradicting the Kremlin’s depiction of a “special military operation” unfolding with precision in Ukraine.

To Russian activists, the impact has been devastating.

“Every meaningful, practical avenue for dissent is being systematically shut down,” said Pavel Khodorkovsky, founder of the New York-based Institute for Modern Russia, whose father was one of Russia’s original oligarchs before spending a decade in prison after confronting Putin over corruption.

“I don’t think it’s an over dramatization to say that Putin is longing for a return to Soviet Union times,” Khodorkovsky said, “not only in geopolitical power but in terms of total control inside the state.”

There is preliminary evidence that the suppression strategy is working. Polls, whose reliability is always uncertain in Russia, show that a majority of Russians support the war. In interviews with Western journalists that have gone viral online, Russians who rely on state-controlled media have consistently echoed Kremlin falsehoods about eradicating alleged Nazism in Ukraine while seeming to be genuinely oblivious to the war’s carnage.

For relatives on opposite sides of the Ukraine border, reality has cleaved. Civilians in the besieged cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa have described surreal conversations with family members in Russia who refuse to believe that Russian forces are bombing residential districts, that women and children are among the casualties, and that 2 million people have fled a country hit by power outages and food shortages.

The war is still in its early days. And it may prove more difficult for the Kremlin to sustain its information blockade as costs of the conflict, including mounting casualties and sanctions that are turning the country into an economically marooned pariah, penetrate Russian society.

Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms have played a major role in galvanizing the global response. Viral images of the devastation in Ukraine and video clips of the country’s resilient leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, have shaped world opinion and exposed Moscow’s war claims as fiction.

American technology companies have used their power to add to the pressure on Putin. Google’s YouTube platform has blocked RT, Sputnik and other Russian propaganda channels globally, and cut them off from ad revenue. Facebook, which Russia has sought to declare an “extremist” organization, has taken similar steps against state media outlets. Apple has “paused” sales of iPhones and other devices in Russia and removed RT and Sputnik from its app store outside the country.

But American tech companies have also made numerous compromises with the Kremlin in recent years that have undermined activist groups, impaired Russians’ access to reliable information and look increasingly problematic in the wake of the invasion.

Even after the threat to its executive, Google kept its employees in Russia and continued to negotiate with the Kremlin on ways to comply with the so-called landing law putting company officials there at risk of arrest or other punishment, according to industry executives familiar with the discussions. Those talks were still underway, one executive said, even after U.S. officials were warning that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent.

Apple has similarly kept employees in Russia and taken other steps to placate the Kremlin. The company last year began configuring iPhones sold in Russia to promote Kremlin-backed social media companies, enabling users to activate them with a single click. It is an accommodation Apple has rarely made elsewhere and advances Putin’s goal of migrating Russian people to platforms controlled by the government, according to Russia analysts.

Among them is VKontakte, a Facebook equivalent that in December became majority owned by the state-run energy giant Gazprom.

Apple is also yet to give Russian users access to a new security tool, Private Relay, that could help Russians reach foreign news coverage and other content blocked by the government. The feature, designed to render Internet browsing untraceable, comes pre-installed on new phones in the United States and other markets. But those who try to activate it in Russia get a message saying that the program “is not supported” in that country.

Apple’s decision has baffled Russian analysts.

“What is the reason at this point to accommodate the Russian government?” asked Sergey Sanovich, a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University tracking the Kremlin crackdown. “I’m not sure what [Apple] has in Russia that they are trying to protect at this point.”

Apple, through a spokesman, declined to answer questions from The Post or comment for this article. Google did not directly respond to questions, but referred The Post to a Web site where the company lists its responses to the Ukraine crisis.

For years, American technology companies navigated a narrow path in relations with the Kremlin. Google and others resisted some of the most invasive demands, including a law requiring the storing of users’ data on servers in Russia more likely to be breached by the government. But the firms granted concessions in other areas in part to preserve access to the Russian market.

“A lot of tech companies played rope-a-dope with the Russian government,” said Andrew Weiss, a former White House official who oversees research on Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The war in Ukraine has scrambled those calculations, and, at least in some corridors of Silicon Valley, led to bouts of second-guessing.

“There is concern about the employees we have there,” said an executive with one of the companies that has been a target of pressure by the Kremlin. “There may come a point where [my] company decides it’s not worth it anymore and just completely pulls up stakes.” He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the situation’s sensitivity.

Even critics of U.S. tech companies acknowledge that departures on those terms could be harmful to U.S. interests and advantageous to Putin.

The devices and platforms provided by American tech firms have functioned as conduits of Western information and ideas to millions of Russians. This American technology has been critical to protest movements and reform advocates, enabling such groups to raise money, build support and map strategy on encrypted channels that are more difficult for Russian intelligence agencies to monitor.

A decade ago, Navalny’s group started with about 50,000 followers, but was reaching as many as 10 million a day before the war through videos and other messages distributed on YouTube, Twitter, Telegram and other platforms, according to Leonid Volkov, the political director for the organization.

That is in part why the decisions by Google and Apple to take down the Navalny app in September were seen as such betrayal, Volkov said. “It was a major blow to our supporters,” he said. “They really helped Putin.”

The Smart Voting app, as it was called, had sought to help Navalny supporters across the country select candidates with the best prospects of beating representatives of Putin’s United Russia party. The aim was not to take control of the Duma – considered an impossibility because of ballot manipulation – but to eat into United Russia’s margin of victory, bring new energy to the opposition movement and deliver an embarrassing setback to Putin, Volkov said.

The app had been conceived in part as a way to evade Kremlin censors; while Russian authorities were well equipped to take down lists posted online, the main censorship body, Roskomnadzor, had not demonstrated that it could interfere with downloads through Google and Apple’s secure app stores to millions of cellphones.

Navalny’s organization had spent months fine-tuning the app and selecting 1,300 candidates for endorsements. Then, at 8 a.m. on Sept. 17, just as the three-day voting period for the Duma election was to get underway, the app disappeared from Google and Apple platforms.

The removal of the app came after a period of escalating pressure. Weeks earlier, Roskomnadzor had ordered Apple, Google and other companies to sever all ties to Navalny, citing his group’s status as an “extremist” entity and warning that any link to the voting app would be construed as foreign election interference.

On Sept. 3, a Moscow court had ordered Google and Yandex, the main Russian search engine, to stop displaying Navalny-related results on their websites. A week later, U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan was summoned to the Kremlin. “There is one reason – interference in Russian elections,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a posting on the messaging service Telegram.

When Google and Apple resisted removing the app, the Kremlin’s tactics became more menacing. On Sept. 14, armed Russian police entered Google’s offices in Moscow, a frightening show of force staged under the pretext of collecting fines for alleged content and other violations.

The first sign of trouble for Navalny’s team came the next day when the organization made its first attempt to post a list of endorsed candidates to the Smart Voting app and “nothing happened,” Volkov said. At first, he said, it was unclear whether there was a technical problem or the companies were succumbing to pressure.

Even so, the app had remained available to download until the morning after Russian agents arrived at the Google and Apple representatives’ doorsteps. Google’s executive, a Russian citizen, was “essentially threatened with treason as a Russian citizen,” said an executive with knowledge of the episode.

Executives asked that her identity not be disclosed out of concern for her safety.

The group tried to get its endorsements out through other means, posting lists to the Google Docs platform and even reading the names of endorsed candidates on videos posted to YouTube. But that material was taken down as well under pressure from Roskomnadzor.

Volkov filed complaints with both companies, pleading with them to reinstate the group’s software. Google finally did so, but only days after the election – when distributing the list of endorsed candidates had become pointless.

Russia also tried to force Twitter to censor Navalny and others. But it did not have employees in the country to be threatened. Instead, the Russian government made a crude attempt to block Internet access to Twitter, inadvertently blocking other sites as well.

The removal of the app by Google and Apple was met with relative silence from Western governments, a muted reaction that stunned not only Navalny’s group but some company executives.

“When we took down the Navalny app, there was not a peep from any democratic element,” said an industry executive who had disagreed with the decision. “I was hoping we’d be beaten by [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken” or other U.S. or European Union officials, the executive said. “But no one did.”

Google executives disclosed the removal of the app in an internal email whose contrite tone suggests that the decision was not popular with some employees. “We resisted this position for as long as possible,” the message said, “but nothing is more important to Google than the safety and well-being of our employees.”

Apple responded to Navalny with a legalistic defense of its decision. The orders to take down the app “reflect the state of the law in Russia and Apple was obliged to act on the orders,” the letter said, according to a copy shared by Volkov.

It is hard to know what impact the companies’ capitulation had on the election. United Russia ended up losing about 20 seats in the Sept. 19 election, far short of the 60 or 70 that Volkov said his organization thought it was in position to gain before the decisions by Google and Apple.

– – –

The core of Navalny’s team fled Russia last year and now works from an office in Vilnius, Lithuania, several blocks from a museum where Soviet-era prison cells and torture chambers have been preserved in a building that served as a KGB headquarters.

In an interview before the Ukraine invasion, Volkov talked about the dire situation for dissidents and how it might take an unexpected shock to society – what he referred to as a “Black Swan” event – to dispel Russia’s political apathy and threaten Putin.

The invasion has seemingly delivered such a scenario, creating extraordinary upheaval. But Navalny’s organization is not in Russia to mobilize opposition, and its ability to do so through online means has been impaired by Putin’s campaign of suppression.

In recent weeks, however, Navalny has found new use for the app, posting appeals to Russians urging them to attend antiwar rallies, and sharing news about his trial on charges of embezzlement from his own organization – allegations that he adamantly denies and that U.S. officials consider politically driven.

Those messages now flow to users of cellphones powered by Google’s Android operating system, which accounts for about two-thirds of the Russian market.

But iPhone users in Russia can’t see them.

Volkov sent another letter to Apple on March 1, urging the company again to reconsider. “With independent media being banned in Russia, our team’s resources serve as the key source of objective information about the war,” the letter said, adding that because other platforms were blocked, “the most important media among our resources was the application.”

Apple responded that it was reviewing the matter, Volkov said, but as of Friday had yet to reinstate the Navalny application.

The Washington Post’s Gerrit De Vynck and Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.

USA Today

Zelensky says Ukraine still in daily talks with Russia; US journalist killed in Ukraine: Live updates

John Bacon, Katie Wadington, Celina Tebor, Terry Collins –

March 13, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will continue negotiating with Russia and is waiting for a meeting with its leader, Vladimir Putin despite repeated escalated attacks by Russia in Ukraine.

So far, Zelensky’s requests have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. During his nightly address to his nation, Zelensky said Sunday that his delegation has a “clear task” to do everything to ensure a meeting between the two presidents, the Associated Press reports.

Zelensky said there are daily discussions between the two countries via video conference. He said the talks are necessary to establish a cease-fire and more humanitarian corridors. He said those corridors have saved more than 130,000 people in six days.

The humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Mariupol was blocked Sunday by Russian forces. Zelensky said they would try again Monday.

Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s negotiator and President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, confirmed the daily talks, the BBC reports. In a video posted on social media, Podolyak said Russia was beginning to engage constructively.

“Russia now much more adequately perceives the world around it,” Podolyak said. “It is much more sensitive to the position of Ukraine, which has been proven in battlefields, and in Ukraine’s actions in terms of protecting its interests.”

►’MASS CASUALTY SITUATION’: Downtown Kyiv hospital braces for carnage doctors fear will come

►’WORSE THAN HELL’: Mariupol mother fears for her daughter as Russia lays siege to the Ukrainian city

Latest developments:

►White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday. China has called for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine but has rejected sanctions against Russia.

►Russia has opened 14 recruitment centers in Syria and will pay mercenaries up to $600 per month to fight in Ukraine, the Ukraine military said.

►Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to create “pseudo-republics” to break his country apart. He urged Ukraine’s regions not to follow the path of two eastern areas – Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic – where pro-Russian separatists clashed with Ukrainian forces in 2014.

►An estimated 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia began its invasion, according to Zelenskyy, who claims 12,000 Russian forces have been killed.

►Kyiv is preparing for a possible blockade by stockpiling humanitarian supplies to support the city’s residents, city officials said Sunday.

►Almost 2.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Tens of thousands Europeans protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Europe saw tens of thousands of people rallying Sunday in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Milan, Italy’s financial capital, protesters held bloodied cloth bundles to represent Ukrainian children killed in Russian attacks. Germans carried flags in the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine during protest in Berlin spurred by trade workers.

Anti-war protests were also staged in Warsaw, London and the German cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart. Small vigils took place in Russia as well, despite a crackdown by authorities against demonstrations.

Russian protests against the war in Ukraine have been typically met with a heavy police response. Rights group OVD-Info said more than 668 people had been detained in 36 cities as of late afternoon Sunday Moscow time.

The number of Russians protesting nationwide appeared to have shrunk significantly from major protests a week ago when OVD-Info said over 5,000 people were detained.

Zelensky says Urkaine still in daily talks with Russia; wants Putin at the table

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will continue negotiating with Russia and is waiting for a meeting with its leader, Vladimir Putin despite repeated calls.

So far, Zelensky’s requests have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. During his nightly address to his nation, Zelensky said Sunday that his delegation has a “clear task” to do everything to ensure a meeting between the two presidents, the Associated Press reports.

Zelensky said there are daily discussions between the two countries via video conference. He said the talks are necessary to establish a cease-fire and more humanitarian corridors. He said those corridors have saved more than 130,000 people in six days.

The humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Mariupol was blocked Sunday by Russian forces. Zelensky said they would try again Monday.

Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s negotiator and President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, confirmed the daily talks, the BBC reports.

In a video posted on social media, Podolyak said Russia was beginning to engage constructively.

“Russia now much more adequately perceives the world around it,” Podolyak said. “It is much more sensitive to the position of Ukraine, which has been proven in battlefields, and in Ukraine’s actions in terms of protecting its interests.”

Biden talks to Macron about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

President Joe Biden spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday about efforts to reach a ceasefire and ongoing negotiations with Russia.

In Biden’s call Macron, the two talked about “reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine,” according to a White House readout of the call, CNN reports.

In a separate call, Macron also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a French source familiar with the chat said Macron “reviewed the situation with him. He expressed his full support and detailed the additional aid that the European Union decided to provide at the Versailles Summit. They exchanged views on the continuation of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” CNN also reported.

The two leaders are expected to talk again later this week.

The talks after he and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin urging an immediate ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine.

‘Russian TV channels’ will begin broadcasting soon, says new mayor of Russian-occupied Ukrainian city

The newly installed mayor in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city Melitopol said “Russian TV channels” would be broadcasting in the region soon.

Galina Danilchenko said in a televised video Sunday claimed there was “a great deficit of trustworthy information being circulated,” as the decision for the broadcasting, according to CNN.

Her televised address was later posted on social media by pro-Russian Telegram channels and by the Ukrainian-controlled Zaporozhye regional administration.

Danilchenko was installed as mayor after elected mayor Ivan Fedorov was detained by armed men on Friday. The prosecutor’s office for the Russian-backed separatist region of Luhansk later accused Fedorov of terrorism offenses.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Federov’s immediate release, saying his “abduction” was a “crime against democracy.”

US officials say Russia asked China for aid, US and China set to meet Monday

Russia asked China for economic and military aid for the war in Ukraine after President Putin began his invasion last month, U.S. officials told The New York Times and the Washington Post.

China has called for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, but has rejected sanctions against Russia. The relationship between the two countries has grown over the past few decades, and both have opposed a further expansion of NATO.

The developments comes as Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is scheduled to meet on Monday with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi in Rome.

“We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,” Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.

“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world,” he added.

US journalist killed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers

American photojournalist Brent Renaud was killed Sunday in Ukraine when Russian soldiers opened fire on a car in Irpin, a town 30 miles outside the capital of Kyiv.

A second American journalist, Juan Arredondo was rushed to a hospital with shrapnel wounds, police said.

Arredondo, 46, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in an interview from a hospital that the two men were filming refugees fleeing the area when their car rolled up to a checkpoint and the Russians began shooting. He said Renaud was shot in the neck.

Renaud, 50, and his brother Craig frequently collaborated on film and television projects. They covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, extremism in Africa, cartel violence in Mexico, and the youth refugee crisis in Central America, according to their website.

Renaud was working on a project in Ukraine focused on the global refugee crisis for TIME Studios, the company said in a statement Sunday afternoon.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that the U.S. government would consult with Ukraine to determine what happened and would then “execute appropriate consequences.”

Airstrike near Polish border kills at least 35

A Russian airstrike on a military training base in western Ukraine killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, a local official said. The assault brought the war to within 25 miles of the border with Poland after a senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow considered foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine “legitimate targets.”

The United States and NATO have regularly sent instructors to the range, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, to train Ukrainian military personnel. The facility has also hosted international NATO drills. Just weeks before the war began, Florida National Guard members trained there.

The base has become a crucial logistics hub and training center since Russia’s invasion began, The New York Times reported. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told ABC News that U.S. military personnel had left the training facility weeks ago and were not present during the airstrike. It was not immediately revealed whether any foreign fighters were at the center.

The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Russian forces fired more than 30 cruise missiles at the Yavoriv military range, located about 20 miles northwest of the city of Lviv.

Pope rails against ‘barbarism’ of Russian siege

Pope Francis urged Russia to stop the massacre in Ukraine by allowing safe passage out of cities under siege and making a serious effort to bring peace at the negotiating table. Mariupol in particular is being “martyred by the ruinous war” raged by Russia against Ukraine, he said. He implored leaders to “listen to the cry of those who suffer” and end the bombings.

“Faced with the barbarism of the killing of children, and of innocent and defenseless citizens, there are no strategic reasons that hold up,” Francis said. “The only thing to be done is to cease the unacceptable armed aggression before the city is reduced to a cemetery.”

Russia could be preparing to use chemical weapons

Russia could be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, an act that would draw a “severe price,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday.

Sullivan told CBS News that Russian rhetoric is increasingly claiming the Ukrainians and Americans will potentially use chemical or biological weapons “and that’s an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it, and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.”

Asked what consequences would result, he said he would not go beyond what President Joe Biden indicated on Friday: “They will pay a severe price.”

“We have communicated that directly to the Russians,” he said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Russian yachts being seized across Europe

Russian yacht owners are encountering rough seas around the world as nations sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight press sanctions that include impounding assets of Russia’s wealthy class. World leaders hope harsh economic sanctions that target Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs could apply pressure on the Russian president to end his brutal military assault on Ukraine. Italy announced Saturday that it had seized a $580 million superyacht linked to Russian energy and fertilizer magnate Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. Several other yachts have been seized in recent weeks in Italy, Germany and Fance.

Sullivan: US nuclear posture hasn’t changed

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday the U.S. has seen no reason to change its nuclear posture in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine or threats involving nuclear weapons. In the opening days of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin indicated that if the U.S. and other NATO allies continued to impose heavy sanction against the Russian economy, or if they attempt to aid Ukrainian forces, the Kremlin would be ready to respond with nuclear weaponry.

“We are watching this extremely closely. And obviously the escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict and other conflicts the American people have seen over the years,” Sullivan said. He noted that “as things stand today” the U.S. isn’t making an adjustment to its nuclear posture, “but it is something that we monitor day by day, hour by hour.”

USA TODAY/Suffolk polls: Russian Americans, Ukrainian Americans oppose war

U.S. residents who identify with Russian or Ukrainian heritage express strikingly similar views about the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, a pair of exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls finds. The two groups are united in their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war being fiercely fought on his orders.

The invasion is opposed by nearly everyone in both groups: 87% of Russian-Americans and 94% of Ukrainian-Americans. Those of Russian descent have a more positive view of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (72%) than they do of Putin (6%). By nine-to-one, they say Putin should be removed from office.

“Somebody just needs to extract him,” said Dina Sarkisova, 44, who owns a spa in San Diego and participated in the survey. Half-Russian and half-Azeri, she came to the United States as a refugee in 1990, fleeing conflict in Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. “There’s no reasoning with him.”

Death toll in battered Mariupol surpasses 1,500, mayor says

In Mariupol, which has endured some of the worst punishment since Russia invaded, efforts to bring food, water and medicine into the port city of 430,000 and to evacuate civilians, were prevented by unceasing attacks. More than 1,500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according to the mayor’s office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves. Russian forces shelled a mosque sheltering over 80 children and adults in Mariupol, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.

“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach Mariupol and blocked another, Ukrainian officials say. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces captured Mariupol’s eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine government: 85 children killed by Russian attacks

Since Russian attacks on Ukraine began, 85 children have died, the Ukrainian government said Sunday morning. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova gave the casualty number in a tweet, adding the toll the war has taken on schools.

“Deliberate and brutal shelling of civilians continues. 369 educational institutions were damaged, 57 of which were completely destroyed,” she said.

Bus with refugees overturns in Italy, 1 dead

Italian state radio says a bus carrying about 50 refugees from Ukraine has overturned on a major highway in northern Italy, killing a passenger and injuring several others, none of them seriously. RAI radio said one woman died and the rest of those aboard the bus were safely evacuated after the accident early Sunday near the town of Forli’. It wasn’t immediately clear where the bus was headed.

About 35,000 Ukrainians refugees who fled the war have entered Italy, most of them through its northeastern border with Slovenia. Forli’ is in the region of Emilia-Romagna, which borders the Adriatic Sea and which so far has taken in about 7,000 refugees.

The accident is under investigation.

A third Russian general has died in fighting, Ukraine officials say

A Russian general was killed in fighting at Ukraine’s southern city Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said.

Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general to die since the invasion of Ukraine began, making an unusual loss of such a high-ranking military official during fighting. Kolesnikov was the commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District, according to Ukraine’s military.

Russia did not confirm Kolesnikov’s death, and has not shared many details about its military losses during the invasion of Ukraine. Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, who had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya, had previously been reported killed.

Ukraine: 7 dead, including one child, in attack on humanitarian corridor

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said Saturday that seven people, including one child, were killed Friday by Russian soldiers while traveling along a humanitarian corridor, calling the act a “military crime.”

The ministry claimed Russian soldiers shot at a group of civilians, consisting primarily of women and children, behind “the agreed ‘green’ corridor.” The attack allegedly occurred during an evacuation attempt in the village of Peremoga, which is in the Baryshevskyi district of the Kyiv region. The number of non-fatal injuries from the shooting is unknown, the agency said.

The defense ministry additionally claimed that after the shooting, Russian soldiers would not allow other individuals to escape.

“At present, it is practically impossible to contact them, as well as to provide humanitarian and medical care,” the agency said.

– Ella Lee

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

The News Times

How to read Vladimir Putin

By Carlos Lozada – March 11, 2022

The moment is etched in the lore of Vladimir Putin: The Berlin Wall had just succumbed to hammers, chisels and history, and a KGB officer still shy of 40 and stationed in Dresden, East Germany, was in a panic, burning documents and requesting military support as a crowd approached. “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow,” Putin was told on the phone. “And Moscow is silent.” In an interview appearing in his 2000 book, “First Person,” Putin recalls that dreadful silence. “I got the feeling then that the country no longer existed,” he said. “That it had disappeared.” Two years after the wall went down, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did, too. A decade after, Putin would ascend to power in Russia, talking about a revival.

The death of the Soviet Union, and Putin’s autopsy of the corpse, helps explain why he has risked a European conflict – and a confrontation with Washington – by launching a brutal assault on Ukraine. The U.S.S.R., he continued in that interview more than two decades ago, collapsed because it was suffering “a paralysis of power.” If the phrase sounds familiar, that’s because Putin repeated it in a defiant speech justifying his new war. The demise of the U.S.S.R., Putin stated on Feb. 24, “has shown us that the paralysis of power … is the first step toward complete degradation and oblivion.” The end of the Cold War, in his view, was not a matter of ideology or economics but of attitude and will. The Soviets blinked, and the Americans seized the opportunity. “We lost confidence for only one moment, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the world,” Putin declared. So much of what has followed – the unipolar era of U.S. supremacy that Putin reviles, the expansion of NATO he decries, the diminishment of Russia he rejects and the restoration he now seeks – only affirms his fixation on that moment.

“What Putin Really Wants” is a perennial topic for cable news debates and big-think magazine covers; the new invasion of Ukraine has prompted questions about the Russian leader’s mental health and pandemic-era isolation. But his motives can also be gleaned in part from his book and his frequent essays and major speeches, all seething with resentment, propaganda and selfjustification. In light of these writings, Russia’s attack on Ukraine seems less about reuniting two countries that Putin considers “a single whole,” as he put it in a lengthy essay last year, than about challenging the United States and its NATO minions, those cocky, illegitimate winners of the Cold War. “Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from?” Putin demanded during his declaration of war. A world with one dominant superpower is “unacceptable,” he has stated, and he constantly warns that this imbalance – exemplified in NATO’s expansion – threatens Russia’s existence. “For our country, it is a matter of life and death,” he contends.

In “First Person,” a collection of interviews with Putin and various relatives and associates, he brags that he received top grades in high school, except for one subject. “I had gotten a B in composition,” he admits. If so, the teacher got it about right.

Associated Press

AP PHOTOS: Day 18: Images capture widespread destruction

The Associated Press – March 13, 2022

As Russian shells hit Irpin, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, two Ukrainian soldiers took cover against a wall Sunday, heads down on the bare ground. Another soldier dug a foxhole.

In an Irpin park, a woman’s body lay amid downed trees and debris. Underground, many people sheltered in basements without electricity.

Irpin is also where Russian troops on Sunday opened fire on the car of U.S. video journalist Brent Renaud, killing him and wounding a colleague.

AP photographers captured scenes of devastation in Irpin and around Ukraine on Sunday, the 18th day of the war. The shells of bombed-out buildings and a damaged kindergarten classroom in Kharkiv. Rubble in besieged Mariupol. Firefighters trying to douse flames in a ruined food storage facility in the capital, Kyiv.

Since their invasion, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, and have besieged several cities, pummeling them with strikes and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

In a hospital in Brovary, the photos show doctors and nurses working on people who were injured and lost limbs.

Other images showed life for refugees in shelters in western Ukraine and in neighboring countries. A boy worked on a puzzle; a family huddled behind a pile of suitcases; a mother read to her young child in a room crowded with beds.

Daily Beast

Here’s What Putin Doesn’t Want You to Know About What’s Happening Inside Russia Right Now

From Russia With Love:

President Putin has effectively banned foreign correspondents reporting on Russia during his war in Ukraine. This is what he doesn’t want you to know.

 Craig Copetas – March 12, 2022 

Listen to article15 minutes

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done more than leave the ruble without a cause. “I don’t have enough to take a shit,” gripes Vadim fumbling for the 60 rubles, about 44 cents, needed to unlock the pay toilet at the Khoroshevo railway station.

Three weeks into the war, Russia’s financial constipation is unmistakable. The West first sanctioned the country’s banking sector. The global financial system then took command and gridlocked practically every money thoroughfare between Russia and the rest of the world. Visa and Mastercard evaporated. Google and Apple shut off their digital payment systems. Insurance policies vanished. The Big Mac is no more.

And now, in St. Petersburg, Sveta—whose name has been changed for her safety like everyone in this story—is seeking blossoms imported from the Netherlands.

“No Dutch flowers?” the 30-year-old woman asks Olga, the florist in the lobby of the Gostinyi Dvor Metro station, site of many of the anti-war demonstrations and where at least 1,000 protesters so far have been arrested. “How are you going to stay open without Dutch flowers?”

“Fuck them,” replies the seventy-something flower-seller. “I’ll head back to my village and grow the fucking flowers in the garden.”

Sveta, a lawyer who owns a business consultancy, laments that Putin’s ham-fisted control of Russian media has twisted a majority of the country’s 145 million people into generations of Olgas. “The number of young people who support Putin’s madness is terrifying,” she explains. “We’re all upset about the related bans, like Netflix and Spotify, which only reinforce the suppression of freedom of speech. With no information, Putin’s zombification of Russia will accelerate.”

Yet tapping into Russia’s fondness for dark humor, Sveta adds, “we cannot force McDonald’s to stay, and we may even emerge healthier for it.”

Nearby, outside the Cherneshevskaya Metro Station, a Molotov cocktail’s throw from Putin’s childhood neighborhood, two middle-aged women are having a conversation.

“If Putin didn’t go to the Ukraine they would be on our doorstep this year,” says the first woman. “America were going to send thousands of Nazis into Russia.”

“True,” her friend agrees. “Someone from the Ukraine was writing to me, terrorizing me on my phone. I erased all the messages. That’s how the Ukrainian secret police tracks us.”

“What’s the difference for us,” says the first. “We had kasha, potatoes and herring, and we will still have kasha, potatoes and herring. I don’t need parmesan cheese.”

“We live fine,” is the second woman’s verdict. “Let everyone in Russia live like us.”

Back in Moscow, there’s an argument going on between two old friends in an apartment. They’re reading an article on Russian military actions in Ukraine as described in the popular ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra, which is owned by the 84-year-old novelist and Putin pal Alexander Prokhanov.

The headline blares: Going Forward, the Town of Izyum is Liberated. Nazis are Killing the Un-Loyal. We Liquidate Military Criminals.

“Putin’s propaganda has turned us into bastards, monsters,” says Boris, a 65-year-old translator.

“The President is protecting us from a Nazi invasion,” fires back his life-long friend Nikolai, a doctor and frequent visitor to Miami. “Why do you not support him? On every particular point, Putin’s position is concrete.”

Boris scoffs: “There’s no way to measure that under a totalitarian regime where all the polls are rigged.”

Across Moscow, at the hipster Dada Cafe, Volodya slides the right side of his palm across his throat, an old Russian sekir baska or “axe-head” gesture that signals: “I’m fed up with this” to his companion. Volodya lowers his voice to barely a whisper. “This scum, Putin, should be crushed,” he adds. Volodya then raises his voice for others in the café to hear. “I officially support the operation conducted by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.”

A woman at the adjoining table stiffly nods her head. “NATO is making dirty bombs in the Ukraine,” she says. “They’re all Nazis.”

“What’s most horrifying,” Boris wrote in his last message from Moscow, “is the efficiency of Putin’s propaganda. We are caught in a shitload of fish.”

Russian culture is rich in off-color expressions and double entendres, this one makes it plain that the average Russian has been ensnared in Putin’s shit and there’s nothing anyone can do to escape.

Many of the expressions favored in these parts reflect the great gulf between dreams of what might be and the reality of what is.

Perhaps the illustration that best describes what Putin has created is a line taken from the film version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, the story of a professor who transplants the testicles of a freshly dead, drunken apparatchik into a spotted puppy named Sharik.

The result is Sharikov, an uncontrollable fascist whose lying and thievery makes everyday life in Russia unbearable. “What have I done?” the professor moans. “I’ve turned a perfectly nice little dog into a son of a bitch.”

The professor ultimately manages to neuter Sharikov, much in the same manner the West is using sanctions to spay Putin’s totalitarian regime. For the moment, however, the economic surgery is in large part limited to removing imported Italian cheese from the pasta and Starbucks beans from the iced lattes. That will change soon enough.

The Telegraph

Russia’s economy ‘in crisis’ as banks formally cut out of Swift

Tim Wallace – March 12, 2022

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.”

The Week

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?”

Los Angeles Times

Russia intensifies assault, warns U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine are ‘legitimate targets’

Nabih Bulos, Jenny Jarvie – March 12, 2022

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.

Bulos reported from Kyiv and Jarvie from Atlanta.

Business Insider

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

• 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.”

Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been hit with wide-ranging sanctions targeting oligarchs and their luxury assets. Superyachts have come under particular scrutiny in recent weeks.

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.

Others like Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich are resorting to selling off their assets.

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.

Reuters

Klitschko brothers say Kyiv supply lines open, residents returning to fight

Omer Berberoglu – March 11, 2022

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)