The Russia-Ukraine Conflict: A Warning to the Kremlin and the Future of the Cold Cold War in the Cold Middle East

The Russian government signed a decree on Friday to make four Ukrainian regions part of Russia in an effort to solidify their hold over Ukrainian territory.

The Russian leader spoke in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace — the same place where he declared in March 2014 that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was part of Russia.

Hundreds of Russian members of Parliament and regional governors sat in the audience for Mr. Putin’s speech, as well as many of his cabinet ministers and the four Russian-imposed leaders of the occupied Ukrainian regions.

At the United Nations, Putin is more isolated every day. The General Assembly voted to reject the annexation of Ukrainian territory by a wide margin with at least 35 abstentions. Previous UN resolutions condemning Russia were overwhelmingly approved.

With the war in Ukraine taking a toll on the Kremlin, its dominium over its old Soviet empire is showing signs of unraveling. China and the former Soviet satraps are moving to fill a vacuum that Moscow has created due to its loss of aura.

He laid out the military actions of the western world over the centuries including the British Opium War in China, the Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

The United States is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war. “By the way, they created a precedent,” Mr. Putin added in an aside.

But with the ability to target major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Russia has shown that it can still cause immense damage and dislocation. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has become more dangerous since Monday’s strikes. The tension was high after Putin suggested that tactical nuclear weapons remain on the table.

The moves are part of a carefully orchestrated process designed to provide a veneer of legality for the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces in the south.

We need to win this war as soon as possible because after Russia is defeated, we will have our peace back here.

There is a celebration on Red Square. Official ratification of the decrees will happen next week, said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman.

Nuclear Force in the Cold War – How Do We Look At It? The Case for Strategic and Tactical Nuclear Forces in the United States

The referendums were held in occupied territory and were in defiance of international law. Many people have left the country since the beginning of the war, and in some cases they were taken captive and held at gun point.

At a time when Russia is accused of not doing enough to prevent recent gains by the Ukrainian army, it would be nice to cement Russia’s hold over the two eastern regions.

Mr. Putin faces big hurdles to regain control of the war, including the recent draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians into military service that has encountered opposition in Russia.

The question of nuclear force lingers still, chiefly because Putin likes regularly to invoke it. But even here Russia’s menace has been diminished. NATO has been sending signals about conventional destruction if a nuclear device were to be used. Secondly, Russia’s fairweather allies, India and China, have quickly assessed its losing streak and publicly admonished Moscow’s nuclear rhetoric. Their private messaging has been more fierce.

How worried should we be? The former British army officer and commander of the UK & NATO Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Forces explains the crucial differences between tactical and strategic weapons.

These warheads are fitted to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which can travel thousands of miles and are aimed at key sites and cities in the US, UK, France and Russia.

Tactical nuclear weapons offer a yield of up to 100 kilowatts of detonation power, which compares with the 1,000 kilowatts of detonation power for strategic nukes.

The most likely nuclear scenario is, I believe, an attack by Russia on a nuclear power station in Ukraine. This could have a similar effect to a tactical nuclear explosion but would be easier to deny for the Russians, who accuse Ukraine of deliberately bombing their own power stations.

It is only Russia that has tactical nuclear weapons in this conflict, so it would be undeniable if they’re used that Russia is responsible, and hence trigger NATO action. So degraded are Russian conventional forces, that they would likely be quickly overcome by NATO forces if it came to that, which even with Putin’s other failings, presumably he realizes.

But this is likely not the case for the tactical weapons. The vehicles the missiles are mounted on are not in good working condition but I think they have good authority because of that. Judging by the state of the rest of the Russian Army equipment on show in Ukraine, this is a fair assumption.

It is likely that they would have to travel hundreds of miles in order to get to a location where they could launch an attack on Ukraine. But from a mechanical perspective it’s unlikely, in my opinion, that they would get that far.

All of this points to a greater desperation by Russia to get vital parts for production of high-tech weaponry that is being held up by western sanctions.

At the heart of this move is attacking civilians rather than opposition forces. This manifests itself with attacks on hospitals, schools and ‘hazardous’ infrastructure, like chemical plants and nuclear power stations. They can be made into chemical or nuclear weapons if they are attacked.

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

Meteorological conditions at the moment indicate that all this contamination would also head west across Europe. NATO can make use of Article 5, which would allow it to strike back at Russia, if this were seen as an attack on NATO.

De Bretton-Gordon: The use of strategic nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely in my opinion. This is a war nobody can win, and at the moment it does not seem likely that this regional conflict in Europe would lead to a global nuclear war which could destroy the planet for many generations.

I am sure the checks and balances are in place in the Kremlin, as they are at the White House and 10 Downing Street to make sure we are not plunged into global nuclear conflict on a whim.

I believe Putin’s tactical nuclear weapons are unusable. The minute they turn their engines on to move, they will be picked up by US and NATO intelligence.

De Bretton-Gordon: I believe the Russians developed their unconventional warfare tactics in Syria. (Russian forces entered Syria’s long civil war in 2015, bolstering ally President Bashar al-Assad’s regime). I do not believe Assad would still be in power had he not used chemical weapons.

The nerve agent attack on the rebels stopped them from overrunning Damascus. The four-year conventional siege of Aleppo was ended by multiple chlorine attacks.

Vladimir Putin’s latest display of brutality and vengeance might be a fit of fury over his signature Crimean bridge being blown up. His indiscriminate targeting of Ukrainian civilians raises the possibility of a new turn in the war.

However Soviet doctrine, which the Russians still seem to be following, allows local commanders to use tactical nuclear weapons to stave off defeat, or loss of Russian territory.

The attempted annexation of four districts through the current sham referendums makes the likelihood of tactical use very high, if these places are attacked. One would think that the commanders would defer to Putin first before pressing their own red button.

Western military sources say that Putin is getting involved in the close battle and seems to be giving fairly low-level commanders their orders. It seems that only now does Putin have lost faith in his generals, after the capture of large swathes of the north-eastern part of the country by the Ukrainians earlier this year.

Even if Putin were involved in an attack on a power station, the West would likely see it as a nuclear weapon and act accordingly.

This is the time to call Putin’s bluff. He’s hanging on by his fingertips, and we must give him no chances to regain his hold. We should negotiate from this position of strength because our forces are now so bad that they aren’t a match for NATO.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. The entire Donetsk region was annexed by Russia, just as Putin bragged about it.

A day earlier, two powerful Putin supporters railed against the Kremlin and called for using harsher fighting methods because Lyman had fallen just as Moscow was declaring that the illegally annexed region it lies in would be Russian forever.

But the soldiers interviewed on the Sunday broadcast said they had been forced to retreat because they were fighting not only with Ukrainians, but with NATO soldiers.

“These are no longer toys here. The deputy commander of one Russian battalion told the war correspondent that they were part of a systematic and clear offensive. The soldier said his unit had been intercepting conversations by Polish and Romanian soldiers on their radios.

The broadcast tried to convince Russians that if they are upset over the war and don’t like the plan to call 300,000 people up, then they will be blamed by the West for helping to destroy Russia.

The idea of Russia fighting a broader campaign was once again raised in an interview with a father who lost his daughter in a car bomb.

Mr. Dugin, like Mr. Putin, has accused Western countries of damaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which ruptured after underwater explosions last month in what both European and Russian leaders have called an act of sabotage.

The West accuses us of blowing up the gas line ourselves. We must understand that our war with the West is on a scale and extent we haven’t seen before. In other words, we must join this battle with a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.”

The campaign is working at the moment. Many Russians feel threatened by the West according to a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Instead of focusing on the war, some far-right parties now hold demonstrations criticizing the high cost of living made worse by Western sanctions against Russia. On the surface it’s a populist position, all about helping the people at home. Beneath the slogans, however, there’s a message that helps Putin by attacking economic sanctions and raising pressure on politicians to ease up on support for Ukraine.

David vs. Goliath: The Emergence of a Syrian Women’s March on the London Night of March 21st

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN and a columnist for The Washington Post. The views she expresses in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

On Sunday, almost by accident, two groups of demonstrators came together in London. The person was waving two flags: one Ukrainian and one Iranian. When they met, they cheered each other and shouted “All together we will win”.

While democracies were looking almost spent, autocrats were gaining ground. Suddenly, when we least expected, there is a ferocious pushback against the two most brazen tyrannies. In Ukraine and in Iran, the people have decided to defy the odds for the sake of their dignity, freedom and self-determination.

These David v. Goliath battles show bravery that is almost unimaginable to the rest of us – and is inspiring equally courageous support in places like Afghanistan.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last month in Iran triggered the spark. Known as “Zhina,” she died in the custody of morality police who detained her for breaking the relentlessly, violently enforced rules requiring women to dress modestly.

Iranian women dressed in makeup have thrown their hijab into the fire while dancing around fires in the night.

Their peaceful uprising is not really about the hijab; it’s about cutting the shackles of oppression, which is why men have joined them in large numbers, even as the regime kills more and more protesters.

The Real Playbook of Putin’s Cyber War in Syria and Iran: How Vladimir Putin and the Iranian Regime Leptofied Moscow in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen

Just a little over a decade ago, the Russian military entered Syria in order to help save the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

After less than a year in office, Zelensky was put to the test in his first face-to-face meeting with Putin.

But looking back on nearly a year of Vladimir Putin’s full-blown war in Ukraine, it’s now clear that Russia’s earlier cyberwar in the country also served as a different sort of harbinger: It foreshadowed exactly how Russia would carry out its full-scale physical attacks on Ukraine, with a vastly greater human cost. In 2022’s war, just as in that earlier digital blitz, Russia’s real playbook has proven to be one of ruthless bombardment of civilian critical infrastructure, with no tactical intention other than to project its power and inflict pain hundreds of miles past the war’s front lines.

The repressions extend elsewhere: organizations and individuals are added weekly to a growing list of “foreign agents” and “non-desirable” organizations intended to damage their reputation among the Russian public.

Is it any wonder that Putin’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the start of his Ukraine war was to Iran? Is it any wonder that Iran is training Russian forces in order to kill Ukrainians?

These are two regimes that, while very different in their ideologies, have much in common in their tactics of repression and their willingness to project power abroad.

Niloofar hamedi was the first journalist to report on what happened to Mahsa Amini. In Russia as well, journalism is a deadly profession. So is criticizing Putin. After trying and failing to kill opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s people manufactured charges to keep him in a penal colony indefinitely.

For people in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, there is more to it than just the chance that the Iranian regime could fall. It would be transformative for their countries and their lives, heavily influenced by Tehran. After all, Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its Islamist revolution.

The cost of war: Putin’s tragic example of how delusions and illusions can manipulate events without critical challenge. A CNN security analyst writes Bergen about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

Freedman writes that Putin is “a tragic example of how the delusions and illusions of one individual can be allowed to shape events without any critical challenge. Autocrats who put their cronies in key positions, control the media to crowd out conflicting voices are able to command their subordinates to follow the most foolish orders.

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of a book called The Cost of Chaos. The views he expresses are of his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

Putin had a plan to move quickly to take over Ukraine. Those plans dissolved from the first days of the Russians’ invasion with their failure to capture Kyiv.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has grabbed key pockets of Russian-controlled territory, including the transportation hub city of Lyman, in recent days.

With his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilize, Putin has once again taken to making vague speeches that offer his distorted view of history.

He states in his revisionist account that the war in Ukraine is a result of Russia’s annexation of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they planned to install a puppet government and get out of the country as soon as it was feasible, as explained in a recent, authoritative book about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, “Afghan Crucible” by historian Elisabeth Leake.

During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US was initially reluctant to escalate its support for the Afghan resistance, fearing a wider conflict with the Soviet Union. It took until 1986 for the CIA to arm the Afghans with highly effective anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which ended the Soviets’ total air superiority, eventually forcing them to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.

Failure to demonstrate further progress on the battlefield with billions of dollars worth of military kit could stir unease among Western backers. But capitulation to Russia would be a political death sentence.

American-supplied anti-tank Javelin missiles, high mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and other missiles have helped the Ukrainians push back against the Russians.

The “Genie” Myth of Putin: Two Years after the Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Ruin of a Small Village in West Kyrgyzstan

Putin is also surely aware that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was hastened by the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years earlier.

He should know that the loss of Russia in the war in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.

The “genius” myth has completely fallen into place after more than seven months. During the past two weeks, at least 200,000 Russian men have voted with their feet to flee Putin’s partial mobilization order. They understand – despite the Herculean efforts of Putin’s propagandists – that this war is a bloodbath Russia is losing.

The economic damage has already put an end to Putin’s two-decades strong reputation for providing “stability” — once a key basis for his support among Russians who remember the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the USSR.

On the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in just one remote village has been devastating: homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.

All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.

The aftermath of Kiev attacks on Kiev’s bridge during the Ukraine War II: The energy minister in Zaporizhzhia and the impact on business confidence

A global affairs analyst is named Michael Bociurkiw. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

It was not a surprise that Monday’s attacks were not new, as Russian President Vladimir Putin had accused the Ukrainians of attacking the bridge on Sunday.

The significance of the strikes on central Kyiv, and close to the government quarter, cannot be overstated. It should be seen as a red line by the western governments.

There were three air raid sirens that went off as of midday local time, but there were no reports of missiles being shot down. Normally during this time of the day nearby restaurants would be crowded with customers and talking about weddings and parties.

A few hours before the Monday attacks, Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings. Several people were killed and many were injured.

Russian air strikes on Monday and Tuesday hit about thirty percent of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine, according to the Energy Minister. This was the first time from the beginning of the war that Russia has targeted energy infrastructure, according to the minister.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which has seen more bombardments than Kyiv, residents shifted to war footing and stocked up on canned food, gas and drinking water. Yet they also entertained themselves at the Typsy Cherry, a local bar. The owner told The Times the mood was good. People drank, had fun and wondered when the electricity would come back. Hours later, the power came back.

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

These attacks began at the outset of the war and have only increased in scope and virulence since Ukrainian forces last month attacked a bridge – one particularly close to Putin’s heart – between mainland Russia and Crimea, which the Russians annexed in 2014.

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. The europe’s longest bridge was opened by Putin. One of the first things the Chinese government would do was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with a bridge. Two years of delays resulted in the opening of the road bridge.

Ukrain Sensitivities to Ukraine’s Explosion: When Putin isn’t Heaps on Ice, Or Does Washington Need to Be Persistent?

The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

The world was able to see the message. Putin does not plan on being humiliated. He will have no desire to admit defeat. He is prepared to cause civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his battlefield reversals.

Putin has been placed on thin ice due to the increased criticism at his home, an act of self- desperation.

Before Monday’s strikes, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, had told Ukrainian journalist Roman Kravets in late August that, “by the end of the year at the minimum we have to enter Crimea” – suggesting a plan to push back Russian forces to pre-2014 lines, which is massively supported by Ukrainians I’ve spoken to.

It is important that Washington and other allies use urgent telephone diplomacy to tell India and China not to use even more deadly weapons, given the leverage they have over Putin.

Against a man who probes for weakness and tends to exploit divisions, the most important thing for the West right now is to show unity and resolve. Western governments have to realize that the rhetoric and sanctions they have in place won’t affect Putin’s actions. Even if sending military experts closer to the battlefield is required to speed up the integration of high technology weapons, they need to continue to give Ukrainians urgent training and arms.

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.

Russian attacks on a Ukrainian civilian population: a signal for a new pivot in the fight against Russia and the invasion of Ukraine, as observed by the Ukranian subways

The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.

Since the war in the subways ended, city dwellers have been able to return to regular life but fear new strikes after the attacks snatched away the semblance of normality.

But the targets on Monday also had little military value and, if anything, served to reflect Putin’s need to find new targets because of his inability to inflict defeats on Ukraine on the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.

The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, also drove new attention to what next steps the US and its allies must take to respond, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine in an effective proxy war with Moscow.

President Joe Biden Monday spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks, but the White House did not specify exactly what might be sent.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. He told Kate the best they could do was in the subsequent packages.

Kirby was unable to say if Putin was shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to hurt the civilian population and destroy infrastructure in the Ukranian area, though he speculated that it had already begun.

It was something that they had been planning for a long time. Kirby said that the explosion on the bridge didn’t accelerate some of their planning.

The French President said that the rush-hour attacks in Ukranian could be a sign that another pivot was about to happen.

Alexander Vindman, a retired director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, said that by attacking targets designed to hurtUkrainians, Putin was sending a message about how he will prosecute the war in coming months.

“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.

The lesson of this war is that everything Putin has done to fragment a nation he doesn’t believe has a right to exist has strengthened and unified it.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper live from her basement in Ukraine on Monday that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian “terror.”

She said that this was just another terror to cause panic to scare you in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant.

State TV reported on the suffering, but also showed it. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

The sharp shift was a sign that domestic pressure over Russia’s flailing war effort had escalated to the point where President Vladimir V. Putin believed that a brutal show of force was necessary — as much for his audience at home as for Ukraine and the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-far-disastrous invasion of Ukraine is turning the former idol of the far right into a toxic figure among many who used to be his greatest admirers.

The daily images of bombed-out schools, hospitals, playgrounds, and apartment buildings has caused many former fans to reconsider their admiration.

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy and slated to become prime minister, said she’d continue sending weapons to help Ukraine even though she had previously warm words for Putin. Likewise, Matteo Salvini, who once called Putin “the best statesman on Earth” and used to sport a shirt with Putin’s face on it, now insists he supports Ukraine.

The source of their reconsideration may be found in a separate Pew poll that revealed favorable opinions of Putin and Russia among far-right members have collapsed since Russia invaded Ukraine. Among Salvini’s Lega backers, confidence in Putin to do the right thing regarding world affairs collapsed, from 62% last year to 10% now.

Pro-Russia positions are so poisonous that the RN’s acting president, Jordan Bardella, threatened to sue anyone who suggests there are financial ties between the party and Russia. The Russian government lent Le Pen’s presidential campaign millions of dollars. Le Pen said French banks wouldn’t give her a loan.

In Germany, the leadership of the Alternative for Germany party has tried to keep silent about their support for Russia because they are afraid it will cause hardship for Germans.

A couple of weeks ago, CPAC, the conservative political action group, issued a cringeworthy message that linked the conflict to Putin’s preferred lines and called on Democrats to “end gift-giving to Ukraine” and focus on the US. The group soon deleted the post, apologetically, with claims that it didn’t go through proper vetting.

At the February edition of the America First Political Action Conference, founded by notorious White nationalist Nick Fuentes, he asked for a round of applause for Russia.

At the same, at the CPAC conference, former President Donald Trump, long a Putin admirer, was already under fire. When Putin declared parts of eastern Ukraine to be independent, Trump sided with him, calling his approach to the region a genius.

Even the leaders of former Soviet Republics, including autocratic ones Putin protected in the past, are letting him down. Alexander Lukashenko is the only one of the two who has been with the Kremlin.

A few prominent far-right figures in the US still defend Putin after he threatened to use nuclear weapons.

Speaking about Russians as “us” had begun to feel wrong because he deeply disagreed with Russia’s actions, he said. But saying “Russians” didn’t seem right either. “Because of course, I’m Russian, I also have some partial responsibility for what is going on and I do not want to hide from it.”

The Russian-Russia War in Ukraine: Implications for the Future of the War and the Challenge for Western Power Markets in the Near-Term

With the cold months nearing and likely bringing a slowdown in ground combat, experts say the next weeks of the war are now expected to be vital, and another potential spike in intensity looms over Ukraine as each side seeks to strike another blow.

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme, said that the war was the third, fourth, or fifth different war they had been observing.

“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. The response from Russia will likely escalate further.

The flag of the country was hoisted over a building in Vysokopillya in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.

Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Ukraine’s offensive continued to make gains in the region. The announcement came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest indication that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

These counter-offensives have shifted the momentum of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia during the summer, that while Ukraine could stoutly defend territory, it lacked the ability to seize ground.

“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. Europe’s winter energy crisis, as well as the power disruptions inUkraine, will always be a challenge for the Ukrainians and their Western backers.

NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. Ukrainian Prime Minister warned of a lot of work to be done to fix damaged equipment and asked citizens to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground know their supplies are running out.

“Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives,” the ISW assessed.

How much weaponry and manpower each side has left in reserve is critical to determining how the momentum will shift. Ukraine said it intercepted 18 cruise missiles on Tuesday and dozens more on Monday, but it is urging its Western allies for more equipment to repel any future attacks.

“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.

Any further Belarusian involvement in the war could also have a psychological impact, Puri suggested. He said that everyone in Ukraine and the West has a similar idea about fighting one army. The war would be more about the reunification of the lands of ancient Rus states than about Russia joining the invasion.

Giles believes the reopening of a northern front would pose a new challenge to the country. If Putin prioritized taking back the territory of the region that has been wrested from him, then Russia would be given a new route into it.

Zelensky wants to drive the gains home and will be looking for more supplies in the short-term. More than half of the missiles and drones launched in a second wave of strikes at Ukraine were brought down, according to the leader.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

There are modern systems expected from the US and Germany, and they arrived in Ukraine this week.

Russia’s Military Forces as a Force for Defense and Security: Remaining a Challenge for the European Union in the Post-Publikum Era

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. The burden on the rest of Russia’s exhausted professional army may be lessened if support roles like drivers or refuelers are used. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are, however, unlikely to become a capable fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.

It is possible that Mr. Putin will do a lot more against Ukraine. If missiles hold out, the attacks of the past week that struck critical civilian infrastructure could be expanded across Ukraine, while Russia could target the Ukrainian leadership.

Europe will blink first when it comes to sanctions due to Europeans becoming angry with soaring energy costs at home, said President Putin. He announced a five-month ban on oil exports to countries that abide by the price cap, a move likely to make the pain more acute in Europe.

But even now some goods and sectors remain conspicuously exempted. A few items reveal back-room bargaining and arm-twisting by some nations and private industry to protect sectors they deem too valuable to give up, as well as compromises the European Union has made to maintain consensus.

The Belgians have shielded trade in Russian diamonds. The Greeks ship Russian oil unimpeded. France and several other nations still import Russian uranium for nuclear power generation.

Moscow’s First Martial Law Declared in Ukraine – The Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin and the Commander of the Russian Invasion

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. Mr. Sobyeanin wrote on his Telegram channel that there are no measures being taken to limit the city’s life rhythm.

And despite the new power granted them by Mr. Putin, the regional governors of Kursk, Krasnodar and Voronezh said no entry or exit restrictions would be imposed.

But many Russians are sure to see a warning message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, analysts say.

“People are worried that they will soon close the borders, and the siloviki” — the strong men close to Mr. Putin in the Kremlin — “will do what they want,” Ms. Stanovaya said.

On Tuesday, the newly appointed commander of the Russian invasion, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, acknowledged that his army’s position in Kherson was “already quite difficult” and appeared to suggest that a tactical retreat might be necessary. General Surovikin said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about military deployments, but did not say more about what those might be.

In a signal that the faltering invasion of Ukraine has eroded Moscow’s influence elsewhere, Russia has recently redeployed critical military hardware and troops from Syria, according to three senior officials based in the Middle East.

The European War Between the French and the European Union: Andelman’s Contributions to the News, with an Emphasis on the Future

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He worked as a correspondent for CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

First, he wants to distract his nation from the fact that he is losing badly on the battlefield and not achieving anything even as small as he wanted.

This ability to keep going depends on a host of variables – ranging from the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, to the popular will across a broad range of nations with often conflicting priorities.

In the early hours of Friday in Brussels, European Union powers agreed a roadmap to control energy prices that have been surging on the heels of embargoes on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies at a whim.

These include an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub – the Dutch Title Transfer Facility – and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartel to buy gas on the international market.

While French President Emmanuel Macron waxed euphoric leaving the summit, which he described as having “maintained European unity,” he conceded that there was only a “clear mandate” for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

Still, divisions remain, with Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, skeptical of any price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.

Putin wanted these divisions to be part of his dream. European Manifold forces are central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint since the region fails to agree on essentials.

Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. The conference call will be held on Wednesday in an effort to reach some kind of compromise.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html

Italy’s new prime minister and far-right coalition partners have fought back against the EU/Russia border wall crisis and the US/Russia aid package

And now a new government has taken power in Italy. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far-right coalition partners meanwhile, has expressed deep appreciation for Putin.

At a gathering of his loyalists, Berlusconi was recorded telling of the 20 bottles of liquor Putin sent him to celebrate his 86th birthday.

The other leading member of the ruling Italian coalition, Matteo Salvini, named Saturday as deputy prime minister, said during the campaign, “I would not want the sanctions [on Russia] to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them.”

At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban is pro-Putin and Poland is angry about it.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House GOP and a possible Speaker of the House if the Republicans take control in November, thinks that people are going to sit in a recession and not write blank checks. They just won’t do it.”

Meanwhile on Monday, the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia on ending the conflict while its troops are still occupying vast stretches of the country and its missiles and drones are striking deep into the interior.

Mia Jacob, the chair of the caucus, sent reporters a statement to clarify their support for Ukraine. The secretary of state called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba to say that America was behind him.

Since Biden took office, the US has proffered more than $60 billion in aid, but only Republicans voted against the latest aid package.

Keeping Up with the West: The Costs of Russian Nuclear Technology for the Defense of the Mid-Inflationary Era in the Cold War

There is every incentive for Putin to prolong the conflict so as to allow the forces in the West to kick in. A long, cold winter in Europe coupled with persistently high inflation and higher interest rates leading to a recession is likely to put pressure on leaders to dial back financial and military support.

At the same time, the West is turning up the pressure on Russia. Last Thursday, the State Department released a detailed report on the impact of sanctions and export controls strangling the Russian military-industrial complex.

A day before this report, the US announced seizure of all property of a top Russian procurement agent Yury Orekhov and his agencies “responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end-users…including advanced semiconductors and microprocessors.”

The Justice Department announced that individuals and companies were charged for violating sanctions by ferrying high-tech equipment into Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference on October 24 that the information he has about the use of a nuclear bomb in Ukraine is reliable. According to read-out from the Russian government, Sergei Shoigu had given this information to leaders of the US, UK, France, and Turkey.

One popular account with nearly 100,000 followers uploaded a video in early February claiming to show a far-right Ukrainian organization constructing such a bomb: Hands clad in black gloves adjusted a radiological meter atop a barrel, supposedly, of nuclear material. The bomb was to be used against Russian troops in the event of an invasion.

According to a Ukrainian fact-check organization, the video contains spelling mistakes and shows equipment that’s common in the industrial sector. Nevertheless, the basic claim remained a constant reference for those pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts—appearing in hundreds of posts over the last eight months, being viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Meeting the Xi-Mills (Vlasov) president in Jakarta, a pivotal moment for democracy in the U.S.

The White House and the Chinese government both stated that it happened. The two sides disagreed over Taiwan’s independence, the war in Ukraine and China’s human rights record. Climate change and global health were two areas that were broached with potential cooperation.

A well-functioning democratic process in the US is likely disappointing to Xi and other autocrats hoping that deep divisions not only continue to weaken the country from within but also prove that democracy is chaotic and ineffective, inferior to their autocratic systems, as they like to claim. The American President was given a stronger hand to play in the mid-terms.

That is one of the reasons why this was the perfect moment to hold the meeting, it is the United States and for democracy in particular.

As Biden and XI were meeting, the president of Ukranian made an emotional return to Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.

The Ukrainians had unexpected perseverance and Biden rallied his allies to support the country in its fight against Russia.

By the time they met again in September, China had mostly refrained from supporting Russia and Putin admitted that he had a lot of questions about Ukraine. After the Russian President made his threats, he was rebuked by Xi.

Putin chose not to attend the G20 summit in Indonesia, avoiding conflicts with world leaders as he becomes a pariah on the global stage.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/opinions/biden-xi-meeting-democracy-ghitis/index.html

The fate of Xi is determined by the outcome of the 2016 Russian missile attack and the consequences for the defence of the Polish national security (and the case of Ukraine)

To be sure, Biden is not the only leader with a strong hand. After securing a third term as China’s leader, Xi can now rule for as long as he wants. He doesn’t have to worry about elections, the press or a party. He is essentially the absolute ruler of a mighty country for many years to come.

And yet Xi faces a mountain of daunting problems. China is reluctant to reveal data about the economy because of the slow down. The Covid-19 vaccine, once a tool of global diplomacy, is a disappointment. China is imposing a series of strictures as the world slowly returns to normal after the Pandemic.

In regard to the competition between the two systems, one of the more important things is proving that unprovoked wars of aggression will not succeed and that democracy works, defeating efforts of countries such as China and Russia to undermine it.

Now Poland is facing the repercussions from these attacks – and it’s not the only bordering country. The Polish incident drew more attention than Russian rockets knocked out power across neighboring Moldova, which is not a NATO member.

Whatever the exact circumstances of the missile, one thing is clear. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Russia has ultimate responsibility for the war against Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin’s debacle in the fight against Russian missiles in the FACS: When a fighter jet is ordered to fall, how will Russian troops get there?

The hotline and Telegram channel was designed to help Russian soldiers wanting to defect and has taken off after two months of operation, booking some 3,500 calls.

The Russian leader believed that it was a good way to rid the Russian society of traitors and spies. The officials from Russia want to take the passports of those who left the country. Russia can thrive if it has many of its best and brightest.

One leading Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar, who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March, told me last week that while he hoped this is not the case, he is prepared to accept the reality – like many of his countrymen, he may never be able to return to his homeland, to which he remains deeply attached.

Yet some good has come from this debacle. Europe knows it must get off its dependence on Russian gas immediately, and hydrocarbons in general in the longer term, as economic dependence on the fossil fuels of dictators cannot bring longer-term stability.

The burden it has on Western countries is proving to be unfulfilled despite Putins dream that this conflict would drive wedges into the Western alliance. On Monday, word began to get out that a long-stalled joint French- German project for a next-gen jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System was beginning to move forward.

Putin spoke at a news conference. He said that the strike was applied to the control points, meaning it could prevent a reprisal strike.

Even if Russia retaliated immediately, the warheads of enemy missiles on the territory of the Russian Federation will fall, as Putin said, this means that they will still fall.

“As for the idea that Russia wouldn’t use such weapons first under any circumstances, then it means we wouldn’t be able to be the second to use them either — because the possibility to do so in case of an attack on our territory would be very limited,” he said Wednesday.

Biden administration officials have previously said that Moscow has been warned at the highest levels of the consequences for use of nuclear weapon in the war.

Volodomyr Zelensky vs. Petro Poroshenko: The long way to a triumphant victory over Putin in 2019

In Paris at the time, I witnessed how Zelensky pulled up to the Élysée Palace in a modest Renault, while Putin motored in with an ostentatious armored limousine. The host, a French President, kissed Putin but did not shake hands with Zelensky.

Zelensky said that a prisoner swap with Russia was a first step towards ending the conflicts in eastern Ukraine, which claimed the lives of over 14,700 people, at the time.

Zelensky achieved something that Putin wanted to accomplish but failed at: to rally support domestically with a patriotic war in order to distract from his failures at home. Michael Popow, a New York-based strategic business analyst, told me that it would be painful for Putin to be shown up by a comedian.

He knew exactly what he needed to do once he got into the position of being bullied by Putin, according to Yevhen Hlibovytsky.

This, after all, is the leader who when offered evacuation by the US as Russia launched its full-scale invasion, quipped: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

It is perhaps easy to forget that Zelensky honed his political muscles earlier in his career standing up to another bully in 2019 – then-US President Donald Trump, who tried to bamboozle the novice politician in the quid pro quo scandal.

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. Standing on stage among the fluttering confetti, he looked in a state of disbelief at having defeated incumbent veteran politician Petro Poroshenko.

Despite the strong tailwinds at Zelensky’s back, there are subtle signs that his international influence could be dwindling. Zelensky wanted the price cap on Russian crude set at $30 so that more pain could be inflicted on the Kremlin, but the G7 imposed $60 a barrel price cap.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/19/opinions/volodomyr-zelensky-profile-ukraine-russia-bociurkiw/index.html

Vladimir Zelensky, a London comedian in the early 1990s, is ready for a long confrontation with Moscow, and he is ready to tell them what he wants

His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. Even in the midst of the war, a press conference held on the platform of a Kyiv metro station in April featured perfect lighting and curated camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

I remember how comforting his nightly addresses were, as the sirens and explosions of air raid raged around him in Lviv.

Zelensky is the brand even beyond the man. It’s almost impossible to avoid the t-shirts worn by the Ukrainian leader when he’s with people such as Vogue journalists and military commanders.

She said that he is more comfortable than Putin on camera and as a digital native. Zelensky is doing a better job of balancing authority with accessibility, although he definitely wants to come across as personable.

Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora when she travels to where her husband cannot. Most recently, she met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. Zelenska was not included on the cover of time magazine, only a passing reference in the supporting text.

If Zelensky is willing to talk to the Russians, he will be able to succeed as well because he will have won on the battlefield, thanks to the help of our European allies and others.

Kyiv and its Western allies are “set for a long confrontation with Russia” following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s momentous visit to Washington, Moscow said as the war in Ukraine approaches 10 months.

Russia decried what it said was the “monstous crimes” of the “regime in Kyiv” after the US President pledged more military support to the country.

“As the leadership of our country has stated, the tasks set within the framework of the special military operation will be fulfilled, taking into account the situation on the ground and the actual realities,” Zakharova added, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Her comments came after Zelensky delivered a historic speech from the US Capitol, expressing gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression since the war began – and asking for more.

One of the most capable long- range air defense systems is the US Army’s Patriot, which is why it has been repeatedly requested by Kyiv.

However, the Kremlin denounced the transaction and said the US supplying Ukraine with Patriot missile systems will prolong the Ukrainian people’s “suffering.”

Zelensky said at the White House press conference that as president he would never compromise on the sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity of the country.

Peskov told journalists, however, that Wednesday’s meeting showed the US is waging a proxy war of “indirect fighting” against Russia down “to the last Ukrainian.”

Days after saying he wanted an end to his war, the Russian President on Sunday repeated his claim that he was ready to “negotiate with everyone involved in this process about acceptable solutions,” the state news agency TASS reported.

While seemingly indicating a willingness to negotiate, the Russian leader refused on Sunday to mention Ukraine as a relevant party and continued to pretend that it is Moscow that is fighting a military operation.

As has often been the case throughout the conflict, the vaguely conciliatory tone from Putin was quickly contradicted by a heavy-handed message from one of his key officials.

If the Russian military took action, it would be for the elimination of threats to Russian security from there, which included our new territories.

The I SW said thatPutin’s December 25 statement was a part of a deliberate information campaign aimed at misleading the west to push Ukraine into making preliminary concessions.

Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to President Zelensky, told CNN Tuesday that Putin’s comments were likely an effort to buy time in the conflict.

Zelensky’s popularity with foreign leaders would affect Putin’s position in case of a deal with Russia.

Declarations that Russia has already lost the war remain premature. There are variables which could still lead to a stalemate in its favor, or even a reversal of fortune. NATO could lose its nerve if it wanted economic convenience over long-term security, and push for a peace unfavorable to the Ukranian government. But that does, at this moment, seem unlikely.

But Zelensky and his officials have said throughout that they will continue to sound out the possibility of negotiations, without raising any hopes that they would achieve a truce.

Kuleba told the AP on Monday that war ends in a diplomatic way. war ends because of actions taken at the negotiating table and on the battlefield.

The Foreign Minister thought the UN would be the best broker for those talks. This is not about making a favor to a certain country and the United Nations could be a good place to hold the summit. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”

A path to nuclear safety, food security and a tribunal for alleged Russian war crimes are included in the steps. He called on the G20 to make Russia abandon its nuclear threats, as well as implement a price cap on energy imported from Moscow.

Zelensky’s legacy as a leader of the Russian war effort: her struggle against the regime and the persecution of dissent

There is a possibility that a swing on the battlefield in the New Year will cause a change in the way the conflict is being waged, but both sides are stuck in what many believe could become a long and grinding conflict.

And Zelensky’s visit to the US – his first overseas trip in ten months – shows his intention to keep his allies focused on the conflict and united in their support.

“It was horrible to live under Putin and it was very far from the idea of democracy, but you still had some established institutions which you would almost take for granted that they would exist no matter what, and all of a sudden, everything collapsed,” he said, pointing to the near complete eradication of any remaining independent media, civil society and human rights groups.

She said that when the war broke out, she grew more worried about attending demonstrations and stopped when it became too dangerous. She doesn’t see a scenario under which the regime in Russia could be overthrown any time soon, she said, pointing out that all of the opposition leaders “are in jail or have been killed.”

CNN is not publishing the woman’s name due to her personal safety and they are using a pseudonym. While talking to the foreign journalists about her involvement in the protests, she risks being arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison time if she uses the word war instead of’special military operation’.

The repression of dissent has been brutal. According to independent human rights monitor OVD-Info, there have been more than 19,400 detentions for protesting against the war in Russia and dozens are prosecuted every week under a new law that made it illegal to disseminate “fake” information about the invasion.

The law was used by a court in Moscow earlier this month to sentenced Kremlin critic, Ilya Yashin, who spoke out about the alleged killing of civilians by Russian troops in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the mass killings, while reiterating baseless claims that the images of civilians bodies were fake.

Russia still has access to independent sources of information via technical workarounds. But state media propaganda now blankets the airwaves favored by older Russians, with angry TV talk shows spreading conspiracies.

There were 36,270 encounters with Russian citizens by the US Border Patrol. The number includes people who were apprehended or expelled by the border force and is significantly higher than the 13,240 and 5,946 recorded in the two previous fiscal years.

TheOK Russians, a non-profit helpingRussian citizens fleeing persecution, said its surveys show those leaving are on average younger and better educated than the Russians as a whole.

If you divide the Moscow liberal intelligentsia into two parts, I would say that 70% are left. People from universities, schools, artists, people with clubs, and journalists are the ones that it is. The foundations in Moscow were closed down, according to Soldatov.

Maria said she remains determined to stay in Russia, even though all of her friends and her son have left. Maria doesn’t want to leave her elderly mother and she can’t travel abroad. “If I knew for sure that the borders would not be closed and I could come at any time if my mother needed my help, it would probably be easier for me to leave. She told CNN she was scared that something else could happen at any moment.

She still thinks her work is important, but she isn’t sure if there is hope for the future. Like Olga, she described her own life as a perpetual cycle of panic, horror, shame and self-doubt.

“You’re constantly torn apart: Are you to blame? Did you not do enough? Can you do something else or not, and how should you act now?” She said it was true. There are no possibilities. I’m an adult, and I didn’t exactly have all my life figured out, but all in all I understood what would happen next. Now nobody understands anything. People don’t even understand what will happen to them tomorrow.”

He said that he began to question his own identity. “The things we held dear, like the memory of the Second World War, for instance, became completely compromised,” he said, referring to Putin’s baseless claim that Russian forces are “denazifying” Ukraine.

The Russian national identity is part of the reason why the army helped win the war against Hitler’s Germany, but now it feels wrong because it was used by Putin. When he researched the pre-war rhetoric in Germany, he was prompted by the favorable reaction to the invasion of Russia.

Maria, a historian by training, has spent the past 10 years taking part in anti-government protests and described herself as a liberal deeply opposed to Putin. I knew that our country should not be led by someone from the KGB. It is too deeply rooted with horrors, deaths and all that,” she said.

In the West, the expectation is that when people start to feel as though their leaders are doing wrong, that there will be a wave of protests on the streets and call for government change that actually has an effect.

“Almost all opposition leaders and opinion leaders are now either in prison or abroad. People have a huge potential for political action, but there is no leader and no power base,” she said, adding that civilians will not come out against the armed police, the National Guard, and other security forces.

“It is probably difficult for people from democratic countries to understand the realities of life in a powerful autocracy,” she said. It was a frightening feeling to be in front of a giant machine of death and madness.

Putin’s “fake news” cyberattacks on the country’s internet (and the future of Russian society) have been widely condemned, but many are still out there

In the past two months, Russian bombs have devastated the power grid of Ukraine, taking down as many as half of the country’s electric infrastructure and leaving the majority of the country without power. When fighting rages in the nation’s east, Ukrainians are left to search for generators, stores food outside to prevent it from rotting and keep backups of food and water. Water supplies have been paralyzed at times, too, along with portions of the country’s electrified rail system. With only a small portion of the country’s heating systems operational, winter is still to come.

Menon notes, however, that every one of his comments could just as easily apply to Russia’s earlier waves of cyberattacks on the country’s internet—such as the NotPetya malware released by Russia’s GRU hackers, which five years earlier destroyed the digital networks of hundreds of government agencies, banks, airports, hospitals, and even its radioactivity monitoring facility in Chernobyl. “They’re different in the technicalities, but the goal is the same,” he says. It is immoral and punishing civilians.

Putin said his military was embarking on a “special military operation” and would end in a matter of weeks.

The war has disrupted a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued reforms such as financial integration and dialogue with the West, but it has also upended Russian life.

The most revered human rights group in Russia was forced to stop activities due to alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

The state says the war in Ukraine reflects a larger attack on “traditional values”, and that it has greatly expanded Russia’s anti-LGBT laws.

The targets remain for now. Some of the new laws are still unenforced. The measures are intended to crush dissent when the time is right.

When “fake news” laws were passed, leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative companies were forced to relocate or shut down.

Restrictions extend to internet users as well. The American social media giants were banned in March. Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s internet regulator, has blocked more than 100,000 websites since the start of the conflict.

War Against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated And Struturing With More Torturbation Ahedriah: What Have We Learned About Russia?

Thousands of perceived government opponents — many of them political activists, civil society workers and journalists — left in the war’s early days amid concerns of persecution.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled to the borders of other states in an attempt to avoid the draft after Putin ordered 300,000 more troops to be sent.

Some countries that absorbed the Russian exodus predict their economies will grow, even as Russians remain a sensitive issue to former Soviet republics.

Russia’s banking and trading markets looked shaky in the first days of the invasion, as the ruble currency cratered. A number of global brands, such as McDonald’s and ExxonMobil, decided to suspend or even close their operations in Russia.

When it comes to Russia’s military campaign, there’s no outward change in the government’s tone. Russia’s defense ministry gives daily briefings about their successes. Everything is going according to plan, says Putin.

Yet the sheer length of the war — with no immediate Russian victory in sight — suggests Russia vastly underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

Russian troops have not been able to conquer the capitals of both Ukraine and Russia. Kherson, the sole major city seized by Russia, was abandoned amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive in November. Russian forces have been bombarding the city.

The true number of Russian losses – officially at just under 6,000 men – remains a highly taboo subject at home. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

NATO appears to be about to expand towards Russia’s borders, with the addition of long-neutral states Sweden and Finland, as a result of Russia’s invasion.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. China and India alike purchase discounted Russian oil, but they are not very supportive of Russia’s military campaign.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

What Has Russia Done in the Last 10 Months? How Ununified the West has Been with the Kremlin in 2023

A state of the nation address, originally scheduled for April, was repeatedly delayed and won’t happen until next year. The annual “direct line” in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians was canceled.

The annual “big press conference” which allows the Russian leader to handle questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media was tabled until the year 2023.

The Kremlin has given no reason for the delays. After 10 months of war and no sign of victory, there is a hunch that the Russian leader has exhausted the good news to share.

And finally, to those who felt nuclear saber-rattling was an oxymoron in 2022 – that you could not casually threaten people with nukes as the destruction they brought was complete, for everyone on the planet.

Europe is not welcoming during a time of greater security. Even if Russia comes to symbolize the issue of European security more as a threat than a threat, calls for greater defense spending are louder than ever.

Russia has also met a West that, far from being divided and reticent, was instead happy to send some of its munitions to its eastern border. Western officials might be surprised by Russia changing its red lines as Moscow learns how limited its other non-nuclear options are. None of this was supposed to happen. Now that it has, what is Europe doing to prepare?

Key is just how unexpectedly unified the West has been. Europe and the United States have spoken the same script onUkraine despite being divided over Iraq, fractured over Syria and unwilling to spend 2% of GDP on security for NATO members. At times, Washington may have seemed warier, and there have been autocratic outliers like Hungary. But the shift is towards unity, not disparity. That’s quite a surprise.

The Russian could lose against an inferior opponent, but that won’t be the main point. Mouthpieces on state TV talked about the need to “take the gloves off” after Kharkiv, as if they would not be exposing a fist that had already withered. The Russian military will fight for decades to get a semblance of peer status with NATO. That is perhaps the wider damage for the Kremlin: the years of effort spent rebuilding Moscow’s reputation as a smart, asymmetrical foe with conventional forces to back it up have evaporated in about six months of mismanagement.