Citizen Cartwright

Ukraine defenders hold on, the test of the crisis for China

The best free live coverage I’m finding of the assault on Ukraine continues to be from BBC News, which is reporting new developments every few minutes as I write this.

 

Among the major developments, as summarized by the Wall Street Journal:

 

— Ukrainian and Russian officials are getting ready for their first talks since Russia’s invasion Thursday.

 

— Ukraine’s defenders have held on to the capital, Kyiv, and pushed back Russian troops in urban combat in Kharkiv, the second-largest Ukrainian city.

 

— Russian President Putin ordered his country’s nuclear-deterrence forces to be put on alert. It’s unclear how his action might have changed the status of Russian nuclear forces, if at all, says The Associated Press.

 

— Russia's central bank raised its key interest rate to 20 percent from 9.5 percent as Western sanctions sent the ruble into a dive and threatened the Russian economy.

 

— The European Union for the first time will fund the purchase and delivery of weapons, in a show of support for Ukraine. The EU also is barring Russian planes from its airspace.

 

— Western governments say they'll cut off a number of Russian banks from the Swift network, an international payment system.

 

Meanwhile, BBC News and other media are reporting on the challenge of the Ukraine crisis for China.

Three weeks ago, the leaders of China and Russia declared that the friendship between their countries “has no limits” as they met in Beijing for the Winter Olympics. 

The nuclear-armed neighboring nations have grown closer in recent years, raising the specter of an alliance of authoritarian states that could challenge a U.S.-led democratic West in a new Cold War, says an AP analysis. 

 

Yet the emergence of a China-Russia axis is far from a foregone conclusion, says AP. Trade with Europe and the United States is a major driver of China’s economic growth, even as its estrangement with the United States and energy needs have led it to deepen ties with Russia.

 

“The ongoing conflict in Ukraine will reveal whether there is a deeper bond or whether the relationship is essentially transactional,” says Anthony Saich, a China expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

 

On Chinese social media, Putin’s invasion is getting cheers, says The New York Times.

 

Putin’s portrayal of Russia as a victim of the West’s political, ideological and military aggression has resonated deeply with many Chinese on social media, the Times says. It dovetails with China’s narrative that the United States and its allies are afraid of China’s rise and the alternative world order it might create.

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Russians' 'shock' over Putin’s full-scale assault on Ukraine

The Russian attack on Ukraine is moving so quickly that I’ll direct you to BBC News’ live coverage for the latest.

 

The most informative article I’ve come across this morning focuses on Russians' shock over Putin’s "full-scale assault against what Russians of all political stripes often refer to as their 'brotherly nation.'"

 

"For most of his 22-year rule, Vladimir V. Putin presented an aura of calm determination at home — of an ability to astutely manage risk to navigate the world’s biggest country through treacherous shoals,” says New York Times Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski. "His attack on Ukraine negated that image, and revealed him as an altogether different leader: one dragging the nuclear superpower he helms into a war with no foreseeable conclusion, one that by all appearances will end Russia’s attempts over its three post-Soviet decades to find a place in a peaceful world order.”

 

Many Russians had bought into the Kremlin narrative that theirs was a peace-loving country and Putin a careful and calculating leader. Many Russians still believe it was Putin who lifted their country out of the poverty and chaos of the 1990s and made it into a place with a decent standard of living and worthy of international respect.

 

From St. Petersburg to Siberia on Thursday, thousands of people took to city streets chanting “No to war!,” clips posted on social media show, despite an overwhelming presence by police officers. OVD Info, a rights group, says more than 1,700 people were arrested across the nation.

 

In Moscow’s foreign policy establishment, where analysts overwhelmingly characterized Putin’s military buildup around Ukraine as an elaborate and astute bluff in recent months, many admitted on Thursday that they'd monumentally misjudged a man they had spent decades studying, Troianovski says.

“Everything that we believed turned out to be wrong,” said one analyst.

“I don’t understand the motivations, the goals or the possible results,” said a second analyst. 

 

“I’ve always tried to understand Putin,” said a third analyst, Tatiana Stanovaya of the political analysis firm R. Politik. But now the usefulness of logic seemed at a limit, she said. “He has become less pragmatic, and more emotional.”

 

Ksenia Sobchak, a television celebrity whose father was mayor of St. Petersburg and a 1990s mentor to Putin, posted on Instagram that from now on she would only “believe in the worst possible scenarios” about her country’s future. Days earlier, she'd praised Putin as a “grown-up, adequate politician” compared to his Ukrainian and U.S. counterparts.

 

During the pandemic, analysts had noticed a change in Putin — "who isolated himself in a bubble of social distancing without parallel among Western leaders,” according to Troianovski. In isolation, Putin appeared to become more aggrieved and more emotional, and increasingly spoke about his mission in stark historical terms. His public remarks descended ever deeper into distorted historiography as he spoke of the need to right perceived historical wrongs suffered by Russia at the hands of the West over centuries.

The political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky, a close adviser to Putin until falling out with him in 2011, said he was stunned by the president’s dark description of Ukraine as a dire threat to Russia in his hourlong Monday speech to the nation.

“I have no clue where he got all that — he seems to be reading something totally strange,” Pavlovsky said. “He’s become an isolated man, more isolated than Stalin was.”

 

An article by The Associated Press notes Putin’s warnings in his pre-invasion address early Thursday that he has nuclear weapons available if anyone dares to use military means to try to stop Russia’s takeover of Ukraine.

 

It's been a long time since the threat of using nuclear weapons has been brandished so openly by a world leader, AP says.

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BBC News: The latest world reaction to Ukraine invasion

 

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Poor Ukraine, so far from God and so close to Russia

What we humans do to each other. What it can be like for a country trying to live next to a stronger power. 

 

What’s happening in Ukraine reminds me of the quote I first heard long ago when I was on a congressional visit to Mexico:

 

“Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” After losing the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, Mexico ceded to the United States land that is now Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.

 

So I’ll echo a tweet from leaders of the European Union: “In these dark hours, our thoughts are with Ukraine and the innocent women, men and children as they face this unprovoked attack and fear for their lives.”

 

After weeks of denying plans to invade, Russian President Putin justified Thursday’s military attack on Ukraine as needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine — a false claim the United States had predicted he would make as a pretext for an invasion.

 

Cyberattacks Wednesday on Ukraine's defense and foreign ministries, the Council of Ministers and Privatbank, the country’s largest commercial bank, were blamed by the United States and Britain on Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.

 

Here is live coverage of the invasion, without a paywall, from BBC News.

 

EU officials on Wednesday imposed sanctions on some of Russia's highest ranking officials, the top Russian military leadership, senior bank executives, a news anchor, the head of a global television network and a Russian businessman with links to a mercenary group. 

 

The nearly 600-page list of penalties — including travel bans and asset freezes — was a response to the recognition on Monday of the so-called republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and came with a promise of more sanctions as necessary.

 

President Biden stepped up sanctions as well, a day after blocking two large Russian financial institutions from Western finance and limiting Russia’s access to debt markets. He said the new measure was aimed at a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, which built the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

 

Russia and Ukraine together account for less than 2 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, but their conflict still raises risks for the global economy, says The Associated Press.

 

There’s concern in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that they could be Russia's next target, says a separate AP article. They were ruled by Moscow for most of the past 200 years, first by the Russian Empire, then for the half-century after World War II by the Soviet Union. They became independent again with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined NATO in 2004.

 

What do the Russian people think about the invasion?

 

“Many Russians still subscribe to the Kremlin narrative of a Russia forced to fight back against Western powers determined to destroy it,” says Anton Troianovski, Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. Many older Russians still are smarting from the poverty that followed the fall of the Soviet Union and the lost prestige that accompanied it, he says.

"But for others, especially younger people, a war and the possibility of another downward spiral in relations with the West could mean losing what freedom and opportunity they feel remains in Russia,” Troianovski says.

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Is Putin’s ploy paying off?

The standoff over Ukraine escalated Tuesday, as Russian lawmakers authorized President Putin to use military force outside his country and President Biden and European leaders responded by imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs and banks.

 

The Biden administration says tougher sanctions will be imposed if there's further aggression.

 

At a news conference Tuesday, Putin demanded that Ukraine vow never to join NATO, give up the advanced weapons the West has delivered to it, recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea and negotiate directly with the Luhansk and Donetsk separatists who are seen in Kyiv and Western capitals as illegitimate Kremlin proxies.

 

An open question is whether Putin has become weaker or stronger as a result of his actions on Ukraine, says a New York Times analysis.

 

In some respects he's achieved the opposite of his intentions, the Times says. American officials say he's galvanized and united the NATO alliance. He's shifted Ukrainian public opinion decisively against Russia and toward an embrace of NATO and the West. He's damaged his already vulnerable, undiversified economy, with Germany’s blockage on Tuesday of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline just the latest blow.

At the same time, Putin has been effective on several fronts, says the Times. 

 

"The humiliated Russia of the immediate post-Cold-War years struts the global stage once more, winning the end game in Syria, working effectively through paramilitary surrogates in Africa, cementing a bond with China,” the Times says.

Putin has suspended Ukraine in strategic limbo through the conflicts he's created there. NATO membership for Ukraine "seems infinitely distant, almost unimaginable, even to its closest Western allies,” the Times says.

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Putin’s declaration of independence of 2 Ukraine regions

Russia is setting the stage Tuesday for a quick move to secure its hold on Ukraine’s rebel regions with new legislation to authorize the deployment of troops there, as the West prepares to announce sanctions against Moscow amid fears of a full-scale invasion, The Associated Press reports.

 

The new Russian bills are likely to be quickly rubber-stamped by the Kremlin-controlled parliament, a day after President Putin recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. The legislation could be a pretext for a deeper move into Ukrainian territory that the United States and its allies have feared.

 

Russian officials so far haven’t acknowledged any troop deployments to the rebel east, but Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist local council in Donetsk, told reporters that the Russian troops had moved in.

 

Putin’s decision to recognize the rebel regions as independent states follows a nearly eight-year separatist conflict that's killed more than 14,000 people and devastated Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, called Donbas.

 

Ever since the conflict began weeks after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Moscow of backing the separatists with troops and weapons. Russia has denied the charges, saying Russians who fought in the east were volunteers. Putin’s move on Monday formalizes Russia’s hold on the regions and gives it a free hand to deploy its forces there, AP says.

 

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to his country at 2 a.m. local time on Tuesday: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.” His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington later in Tuesday.

 

The White House issued an executive order Monday to prohibit U.S. investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures are to be announced Tuesday. Western allies say they're planning to announce sanctions.

 

World leaders are condemning Putin’s actions, and China, a traditional ally of Russia, has called for restraint and a diplomatic solution, says a separate AP article.

 

Here is background on the rebel-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, from AP.

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