Russian President Vladimir Putin forcibly annexed a large area of Ukraine: a response to Putin’s frustrations with the Soviet Union

Putin is calling up 300,000 more troops, and he annexed a large area of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Some criticism has also come from Russian-appointed quislings who have been installed by Moscow to run occupied regions of Ukraine. In a recent four-minute rant on the messaging app Telegram, the Russian-appointed deputy leader of Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, lambasted Russian military commanders for allowing “gaps” on the battlefield that had allowed the Ukrainian military to make advances in the region, which is illegally claimed by Russia.

Despite reports from the ground that voting took place at gun point, Putin insisted that the referendums reflected the will of millions of people.

“Ukrainians surprise,” he said. “Ukrainians are applauded. Ukrainians inspire. Is there anything that scares us? No. Is anyone in the area capable of stopping us? No. We are all together. It is what we are trying to get. One for each other.”

The Russian president framed the annexation as an attempt to fix what he sees as a great historical mistake that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Putin’s many statements in recent years made clear he wanted to renew the Russian empire. This was a warning to me that this war was going to happen,” he said.

Despite international condemnation, Russia is going forward with plans to fly its flag over 100,000 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, the largest forcible annexation in Europe since 1945.

The leader spoke in the grand St. George’s Hall of the Kremlin Palace, where he declared in March of that year that the Ukrainian peninsula of the same name was part of Russia.

A large group of Russian members of parliament and governors sat in the audience for Mr. Putin.

Russian President Putin has been more and more skilled at creating new enemies, as well as expanding the number of enemies he would attempt to conquer. At home and abroad, there is no limit to the desire of Putin to destroy everything and everyone that moves his way.

He reeled off a litany of Western military actions stretching over centuries — from the British Opium War in China in the 19th century to Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

Vladimir Putin and the Human Rights Council: The Continuum of Moscow’s Nuclear War and the Implications for the Future of the Cold Cold War

Putin has periodically mentioned his potential use of nuclear weapons due to an increasing influx of advanced Western weapons, as well as the inflammatory statements of Western leaders. When a member of the Human Rights Council asked him Wednesday to pledge that Russia would not be the first to use such weapons, Putin demurred. If Russia agreed not to use nuclear weapons first, then came under a nuclear attack, it would not be able to use them again, he said.

Russia has unleashed a wave of air strikes onUkrainian civilian infrastructure in an attempt to keep it out of submission during the winter. The bombing campaign in Ukraine has made life miserable, there are no signs of people backing down.

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

There were staged referendums held in occupied territory during a war in defiance of international law. Much of the provinces’ civilian populations has fled fighting since the war began in February, and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint.

The control of the two eastern regions which Mr. Putin considers his primary prize, could allow the Kremlin to declare victory, even if they did not do enough to stop Ukrainian forces.

Russians who had felt unaffected by the war have been brought to tears after Mr. Putin ordered the military to be drafted. Many men were drafted but were not eligible due to their age or disability.

According to his spokesman, Mr. Putin is expected to give a speech. He is likely to downplay the struggles of his military. He will probably ignore worldwide denunciations of discredited referendums held in occupied Ukraine on joining Russia, where some were made to vote at gunpoint.

“The people made their choice,” said Putin in a signing ceremony at the Kremlin’s St. George hall. “And that choice won’t be betrayed” by Russia, he said.

The situation is complicated by the fact that there is no prospect of a diplomatic process to end the war. Russia’s incursion into Ukraine has resulted in human carnage and the country is not interested in talking about it. The war will look like a total victory for Putin if it ends in a loss even though he has control over the Russian media.

The Kremlin is Back: Putin’s Nuclear Threat in Ukraine rekindled after the Russian-Ukraine Warsaw Crisis

Outside the Kremlin, preparations were under way for an evening concert and rally with banners saying Russia and the newly integrated territories are “together forever.”

It was a week in which the Kremlin allegedly arranged referendums in Russian-occupied territories that delivered overwhelming majority in favor of joining Russia.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” Biden said. The results were fabricated in Moscow and the referenda were a sham.

Putin, however, framed the decision as a historical justice following the breakup of the Soviet Union that had left Russian speakers separated from their homeland — and the West dictating world affairs according to its own rules.

Once again, Western powers accused Russia this month of using the guise of staged votes to justify its annexation of Ukraine’s territory — often at the barrel of a gun.

The territories will be formally accepted into the Russian Federation, which will be approved by Russia’s parliament and constitutional court.

At the same time as the Russian government is working to deploy 300,000 more troops, it is facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and northeast of the country.

Meanwhile, Russian officials have openly warned that the newly incorporated territories would be entitled to protections under Russia’s nuclear umbrella.

Russian President Putin reached for the threat of nuclear weapons because of his forces retreating in the Ukraine crisis, which revived Western fears of atomic apocalypse.

Strategic nuclear weapons are basically Armageddon, according to deBretton-Gordon. The Federation of Nuclear Scientists estimates that Russia and the West have 6,000 warheads, which is sufficient to change the world as we know it. This is referred to as mutually assured destruction.

The ICBMs fitted to these warheads can travel thousands of miles, and they are aimed at key sites in the US, UK, France and Russia.

Tactical nuclear weapons meanwhile are much smaller warheads with a yield, or explosive power, of up to 100 kilotons of dynamite – rather than roughly 1,000 kilotons for strategic warheads.

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.

This is likely to not apply to the tactical weapons. The missiles are in good condition but the vehicles they are mounted on are in poor condition. Judging by the state of the rest of the Russian Army equipment on show in Ukraine, this is a fair assumption.

If Russia used a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, it would be the first time a nation state had done so since the United States bombed Nagasaki in 1945. It would also be alms to the increasingly aggressive pundits and influencers who have worked overtime to keep up support for the war at home.

The desperation of Russia to get components for the production of high-tech weaponry, which are held up by western sanctions and embargoes, point to an increasing desperation by Russia.

The move is attacking civilians, not opposition forces. This is manifest in attacks on hospitals, schools and ‘hazardous’ infrastructure. These can become weapons of mass destruction if they are attacked.

The war beyond Ukraine could be a focus for the Kremlin, which is hesitant so far to escalate it. Such efforts might involve attacks on NATO satellites or other reconnaissance assets, jamming or “sensor blinding” them to render them temporarily or permanently inoperable. To inflict domestic costs on Kyiv’s supporters, Russia could also conduct cyberattacks against Europe or the United States, targeting critical infrastructure like energy, transportation and communications systems. The war then would no longer be confined to the borders of Ukraine.

All the contaminates would head west across Europe right now. NATO could use this as a reason to hit back at Russia, as an attack on one ally would be seen by NATO as an attack on all allies.

De Bretton-Gordon: The use of strategic nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely in my opinion. The conflict in Europe is not likely to cause a global nuclear war, as nobody can win it, and since no one can win it, we don’t believe it would cause a crisis that would lead to a war.

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 don’t end up in a nuclear conflict on a whim.

I believe Putin’s tactical nuclear weapons are unusable. If their vehicles don’t work, the minute they turn their engines on, 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). Had Assad not used chemical weapons, he wouldn’t still be in power.

The nerve agent attack stopped the rebels from over running Damascus. Multiple chlorine attacks ended the four-year siege of the city.

Vladimir Putin’s latest display of brutality and vengeance might be a fit of fury over his signature Crimean bridge being blown up. He has targeted Ukrainian civilians in a way that raises the likelihood of a new war.

The Soviet doctrine allows local commanders to use nuclear weapons against Russia if they are in danger.

The attempted annexation of four districts through the current sham referendums makes the likelihood of tactical use very high, if these places are attacked. Local commanders should defer to Putin first before pressing a red button, according to one expectation.

Military sources say that Putin is getting involved in the battle and is giving orders to low-level commanders. This is extraordinary – it appears that only now Putin has lost faith in his generals after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the north-east earlier this year – and suggests a broken command and control system, and a president who doesn’t trust his generals.

Even in an attack on a power station one assumes Putin would be involved, as the West would likely construe it as an improvised nuclear weapon and act accordingly.

This is the time to call Putin’s bluff. We must not give him a chance to regain his hold. Russia’s forces are now so degraded that they are no match for NATO and we should now negotiate, with this in mind, from this position of strength.

That is the thing that is worrying. In Russia’s bellicose information space, the talk isn’t about ending a horrific and wasteful war: It’s about correcting the mistakes that forced a Russian retreat, reinforcing discipline, and doubling down in Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian men left the country in an attempt to avoid the draft after Putin ordered 300,000 more troops to be sent in September.

Western analysts have noted Russia has grumbled consistently about these deliveries, but been relatively muted in its practical response to the crossing of what, as recently as January, might have been considered “red lines.”

Kortunov understands the public mood about the huge costs of the war, even though he doesn’t know what is going on in the Kremlin. Many people would start questioning what caused us to get into this mess. We lost a lot of people.

In the past he has used the same tactic of annexing a territory in another country and now threatens to use nuclear weapons should that country try to take it back.

Russian nuclear sabotage in the first day of the Ukrainian-Russian war and how Putin could push Ukraine to resolve its conflict with Russia

The first detonation at around 2 a.m. local time was recorded by both Danes and Swedes and it registered 2.3 on the seismology’s scale.

After roiling patches of sea were discovered, Danes and Germans sent warships to secure the area, while Norway increased security around its oil and gas facilities.

So far, at least four leaks in Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines 1 and 2 have been discovered, each at the surface resembling a boiling cauldron, the largest one kilometer across, and together spewing industrial quantities of toxic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Brennan’s analysis is that Russia is the most likely culprit for the sabotage, and that Putin is likely trying to send a message: “It’s a signal to Europe that Russia can reach beyond Ukraine’s borders. Who knows what he is going to do next.

It wasn’t feasible to run Nord Stream 2 because of the constraints on Russian supplies as Europe raced to replenish gas reserves ahead of winter.

President Putin and Russia are not interested in any kind of meaningful diplomacy. And unless and until they do, it’s very hard to pursue it,” Blinken said.

Volker expects Putin to pitch France and Germany first “to say, we need to end this war, we’re going to protect our territories at all costs, using any means necessary, and you need to put pressure on the Ukrainians to settle.”

Despite the fact that the war has favored Ukraine, American and Ukrainian officials believe that the fighting is likely to continue for months more. And a number of variables could become particularly pertinent in shifting the trajectory of the conflict: more difficult fighting conditions in December, the extent to which President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to escalate the fight, whether Europe’s unity can be maintained this winter as energy prices soar and the potentially changing political environment in the United States that could result in a decrease of military support to Ukraine.

Russia’s retreat from Lyman, which sits on a riverbank that has served as a natural division between the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, came after weeks of fierce fighting.

Two powerful Putin supporters called for harsher fighting methods because they felt that Lyman had fallen as Moscow said that the illegally annexed region would be Russian forever.

Russian troops were faced with desertion, poor planning, and a delayed arrival of reserves in the last few days of their occupation according to an article published by Komsomolskaya Pravda.

On Russia’s flagship Sunday political show, “News of the Week,” on Channel 1, the fall of Lyman wasn’t even mentioned until after more than an hour of laudatory coverage of Russia’s growth from 85 to 89 regions in an annexation most of the world views as illegal.

“We are going to war with the West,” said Evgeny Poddubny, deputy commander of the Russian battalion on the Sunday broadcast

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. They are part of a systematic and clear offensive by the army and NATO forces,” the unnamed deputy commander of one Russian battalion told the show’s war correspondent, Evgeny Poddubny. The soldier said his unit was listening in on conversations between the soldiers of Poland and Romania.

This nuclear propaganda is meant to “scare the West and appease the audience—and take their mind away from failures,” says Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the US think tank Institute for the Study of War and a frequent watcher of Russian TV.

In the interview, with the father of a nationalist who was killed by a car bomb, the idea was repeated that Russia is fighting a broader campaign.

“There is just one thing left to do: to fulfill them before it’s too late. The Russian army will take care of itself if that’s not the case. “With regard to the duration of the conflict, the ball is now in the court of Washington and its regime,” he added, again referring to Ukraine as a puppet of the US.

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.

He said the West already accused us of blowing up the gaspipeline. The war with the West is on a scale and extent that we must understand. We need to join the fight against a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means to achieve their goals.

The nonstop messaging campaign may be working, at least for now. Many Russians feel threatened by the West, said Aleksandr Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who is from Russia.

Tehran and Moscow wanted to spread their ideology across the globe. The struggles of the Ukrainian and Iranian people will have repercussions outside their countries.

Putin had ordered the deployment of 300,000 reserve forces in September, and he talked about it at his meeting. He said only about 150,000 have been deployed so far to combat zones and the rest are still undergoing training. Addressing speculation that the Kremlin could be preparing another mobilization, Putin said: “There is no need for the Defense Ministry and the country to do that.”

Thousands have been killed, entire villages wiped out and billions of dollars of infrastructure destroyed since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24.

Key is just how unexpectedly unified the West has been. Despite being split over Iraq, fractured over Syria, and partially unwilling to spend the 2% of GDP on security the United States long demanded of NATO members, Europe and the US have been speaking from the same script on Ukraine. Washington has seemed warier at times, but there have been outliers like Hungary. The shift is not towards disparity. That’s quite a surprise.

You can read past recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

The primary utility, many U.S. officials say, would be as part of a last-ditch effort by Mr. Putin to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensive, by threatening to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe some of the most sensitive discussions inside the administration.

The fight for freedom: The story of two protests in Ukraine and Iran, and how the world will be able to tell it without knowing it

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. She has her own opinions in this commentary. CNN has more opinion on it.

Two groups of protesters came together in London on Sunday. The one waving the flags was from Iran. They yelled, “All together we will win,” when they met.

Nobody knows what happens next. Everyone is not sure how this ends. The world stands at an point as the people in Iran and Ukraine fight for their freedom. History is waiting to be written.

These battles show bravery that is almostimpossible for the rest of us, and is inspiring equally brave support in places like Afghanistan.

The Crimes of Mahsa Amini: Iran and Russia, and the Crimes against Democracy in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen

In Iran, the spark was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last month. She died in the custody of morality police who arrested her because she disobeyed the rules which required women to dress modestly.

In defiance of the regime, Iranian women have danced around fires in the night, stripped to their hijabs and thrown them into the flames.

It’s why women are standing on cars, waving their hijabs in the air like a flag of freedom, and in universities, where security forces are shooting at them to try and silence them.

Russia, which has been a dominant military force in Syria since 2015 and helps maintain the government’s grip on power, still keeps a sizable presence there. One of the world’s most complicated conflict zones could see a change in the balance of power, as well as Israel rethinking its stance toward the Ukraine conflict.

The Ukrainian president sent a message to his country and the world as he was warned that Zelensky was a prime target for Russian aggression.

The Russian air assault on the Ukrainian cities happened yesterday, hitting at least 11 of them with missiles. Many people stayed for only a few hours after the destruction. Some quickly went back to their lives. As Megan Specia was leaving a shelter in Kyiv, she saw residents walking dogs and riding electric scooters.

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.

The weaponry that is being used in the attacks onUkrainians is from Iran, which supplies Russia with hundreds of deadly drones.

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.

Multiple Putin critics have suffered mysterious deaths. Many fell out of windows. And both Iran and Russia have become leading practitioners of transnational repression, killing critics on foreign soil, according to Freedom House and other democracy research and advocacy groups.

For people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, there’s more than passing interest in the admittedly low probability that the Iranian regime could fall. It would have a big impact on their countries and their lives. Iran’s constitution calls for it to spread its revolution.

The Nuclear Age: Why the President is So Unsure About his Nuclear Warfare, And What He Has to Tell Us About His Presiders

Putin is a tragic example of how one individual’s delusions can be used to shape events without challenge. Autocrats who put their cronies into key positions, control the media to crowd out discordant voices … are able to command their subordinates to follow the most foolish orders.”

But Biden’s comments also show that, in one way at least, Putin’s nuclear threats have worked: They have left his adversaries unsure how he might behave.

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” Kennedy said.

“He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

Presidents are often less guarded when raising money for their political causes and a press pool is allowed in for some remarks. So it’s possible that the President’s comments – his most stark on the nuclear question since the war in Ukraine started – might not have happened in a more conventional setting like a news conference. The White House walked back presidential comments about how the US would respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Biden is trying to figure out what’s going on. “Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself right now, that he is no longer in control of his country? Biden said something.

The President may have been thinking of Kennedy’s commencement address at American University in Washington in 1963 in which he reflected on the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis and the risks posed by weapons that could end the world.

The nuclear age would only show the extent of our policy’s bankruptcy, or a collective death-wish for the world.

The idea that a tactical nuclear weapon inUkraine could be contained and not lead to a bigger conflagration is incorrect, according to an argument Biden made to Putin.

The logic behind maintaining nuclear weapons for self-defense is that they are too horrible to be used and any nation that does would have their own death warrant.

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” Biden said at the fundraiser.

His comments underscore the most important mission of his presidency – shepherding the world through the most dangerous nuclear brinkmanship in 60 years.

Peter Bergen was a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Vladimir Putin’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine During the First World War, and When the Soviet Union Fails: The Case of the Afghan Crucible

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Wednesday that his “special military operation” in Ukraine is taking longer than expected but said it has succeeded in seizing new territory and added that his country’s nuclear weapons are deterring escalation of the conflict.

(Indeed, his revisionist account defines his rationale for the war in Ukraine, which he asserts has historically always been part of Russia – even though Ukraine declared its independence from 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.

The US initially refrained from increasing its military support for the Afghan resistance because they were afraid of a larger 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.

In 2022, American weapons are again playing a decisive role in Russian fortunes on the battlefield. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the US was also initially leery of deeper involvement, fearing a wider conflict with the Russians.

The air defense systems are making a difference since many of the incoming missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defense systems.

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.

The loss of the Russian empire in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. A Bolshevik firing squad killed a large part of the Romanov family.

More than seven months into the war, the “genius” myth has unraveled. Over 200,000 Russian men voted with their feet in the past two weeks to flee Putin’s partial order. They realize that the war is a bloodbath for Russia.

In 1917, as the First World War was ending, and in 1991, as the Soviet Union fell, the Russian empire was dissolved.

In a recent interview with Russian arch-propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, the head of the defense committee in Russia’s State Duma demanded that officials cease lying and level with the Russian public.

The Ministry of Defense was hiding the truth about Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions, said Kartapolov.

There is a border with Ukraine in the Belgorod region. When it comes to striking Russian targets across the border, Kyiv usually adopts a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance.

There is no need to place a shadow over the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of incompetent commanders, who did not bother and were not accountable. Many say that the Minister of Defense could have committed suicide if he’d allowed the situation to happen. You know, the word officer is new to many.

Kadyrov has been less reticent about blaming Russian commanders after the retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman.

Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that he blamed Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, the Central Military District commander, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from subordinates and not providing enough for his troops.

The Russian information space has deviated significantly from the narratives used by the Kremlin and the Russian MoD to state that things are generally under control, I SW noted in its recent analysis.

Kadyrov – who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general – has been one of the most prominent voices arguing for the draconian methods of the past. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.

The Disaster of Kyrgyzstan: The First Day of the Operational Operation and the State of the Art in Ukraine’s Military Alliance

With that deal, which came to light only later, a disaster that could have killed tens of millions of Americans and untold numbers of Soviet citizens was averted.

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.

Multiple explosions shook theUkrainian capital and other cities on Monday morning, as Russia launched a huge wave of violent air strikes that had echoes of the initial days of its invasion.

The underground stations of the subway were used as a “bunker” for several hours on Monday. Rescue workers were trying to get people out of the rubble caused by the strikes when the air raid alert was lifted.

A total of 11crucial infrastructure facilities in eight regions have been damaged according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Demys Shmygal.

The electricity supply was cut in several places around the country as of Monday afternoon. In the rest of the country, electricity was partially disrupted.

Putin held an operational meeting of his Security Council on Monday, a day after he called the explosions on the Crimea bridge a “terrorist attack” and said the organizers and executors were “Ukrainian special services.”

A series of explosions, including along a key bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, have put into question Russia’s ability to defend its own strategic infrastructure.

“Good news” was the word that Sergey Aksyonov used when he said that Russia’s approach to its military operation in Ukraine has changed.

“I have been saying from the first day of the special military operation that if such actions to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure had been taken every day, we would have finished everything in May and the Kyiv regime would have been defeated,” he added.

Alexander Vindman is a former director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, and he says that by attacking targets designed to hurt Ukrainian soldiers, Putin is sending a message about how he will prosecute the war in the coming months.

“They are trying to annihilate us and wipe us off the face of the earth,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram on Monday as the scale of the attacks became clear. That is all, in a nutshell. They are trying to slaughter our people who are sleeping in their homes in Zaporizhzhia. People are on their way to work in Dnipro when they are attacked.

After the strikes in Ukranian, the Western allies doubled their support for the country, with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell Fontelles posting on his verified account that more military support from the EU is on its way.

“Again, Putin is massively terrorizing innocent civilians in Kyiv and other cities,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. “[The Netherlands] condemns these heinous acts. The will of the Ukrainian people is not something that Putin can comprehend.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the attacks “another unacceptable escalation of the war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price.”

The Kremlin-Zaporizhia tragedy: From the Soviet Union to the Red Line of the Second World War: CNN Opinion

The G7 group of nations will meet via video conference on Tuesday, Zelensky said on a social media platform that he would address the meeting.

Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He writes about the subject of CNN Opinion. His opinions in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Fears of Russian retaliation were never far away, even as the country celebrated in the wake of the enormous explosion that hit the very important and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge.

The significance of the strikes on central Kyiv, and close to the government quarter, cannot be overstated. Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed on this 229th day of the war.

As of midday, the area surrounding my office in Odesa was very quiet between air raid sirens and reports that three missiles and five drones were shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

After Zaporizhia was hit by a number of strikes on apartment buildings, the attacks on Monday came just a few hours later. At least 17 people were killed and a number of others injured.

The Energy Minister ofUkraine said that 30% of energy infrastructure in the country was hit by Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday. The minister told CNN that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

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 mood was cheerful,” its owner, Vladyslav Pyvovar, told The Times. “People drank, had fun and wondered when the electricity will resume.” The power came back hours later.

More than ten million people will be in bomb shelters across the country at the urging of officials, who have asked businesses 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.

There was a day of high drama in a war that is still playing out. Viatrovych sees the actions of Putin as part of a pattern of behavior by Russian leaders.

A penchant for dictators, especially hardwiring new territory with expensive infrastructure projects, seems to be part of the reason. Putin opened the bridge by driving a truck across it. Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong, and the Chinese President decided to connect the former Portuguese and British territory with the world longest sea crossing bridge. Two years of delays, culminated in the opening of the road bridge.

The Explosion of Monday, July 18th, 2015: Ukrainians cried out in support of the Kiev-Suzanne resolution of the Ukraine crisis

The explosion lit up social media in a funny way for Ukrainians. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

The message was obvious for the world to see. Putin isn’t planning to be humiliated. He will not admit defeat. He is prepared to cause civilian carnage and terror in response to his battlefield reversals.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

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.

What is important now is that Washington and other allies use telephone diplomacy to persuade China and India not to use more deadly weapons while still having some leverage over Putin.

Third, the West should make clear to a wide range of Russian audiences that it is safe to end the war by leaving Ukraine. An orderly withdrawal is not likely to result in regime change or the break up of Russia. Neither outcome is an official goal of Western policy and talking of them is counter-productive. Some in the West will resist the idea of any such reassurance. If Russia concludes that it would be better for them to leaveUkraine than stay, they don’t have any incentive to press for an end to the war. Reassurance is not synonymous with compromise.

The attack of Monday on Kiev ejected by the Ukranian army in a desperate war of aggression: US and EU allies in Kyiv

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

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.

The attacks have left city dwellers fearing more strikes, and taken away the semblance of normality they had recuperated from in the subways.

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 on Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President would cause as winter sets in, even as he retreats his forces in the face of Ukrainian troops.

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.

The meeting of Biden and Zelensky, who have spoken a number of times by phone and video link-ups but have not seen each other in person since the invasion, comes at a crucial moment in the war. Biden has carefully adjusted US arms shipments to ensure that the conflict in Ukranian isn’t used to begin a war between NATO and Russia. He, for instance, rejected Ukrainian calls for the West to enforce a no-fly zone over the country. The Patriots – a long range-aerial defense system – would represent the deepest US dive into the conflict so far.

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. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Kirby was also unable to say whether Putin was definitively shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to pummel civilian morale and inflict devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested it was a trend developing in recent days and had already been in the works.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea bridge might have accelerated some of their planning,” Kirby said.

France’s PresidentEmmanuelMacron underscored Western concerns that the attacks in Ukraine could lead to another pivot in the conflict.

As we move into the winter, he was telling us where he was going. He is going to try to force the Ukrainian population to compromise, to give up territory, by going after this infrastructure,” Vindman said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“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 horrible war is that everything Putin has done to fracture a nation he doesn’t believe has the right to exist has only strengthened and unified it.

Olena Gnes told Anderson Cooper live from her basement in Ukranian on Monday that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to peoples lives in her country.

“This is just another terror to provoke maybe panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant, he is still powerful and look what fireworks we can arrange,” she said.

The knee-jerk reaction to these attacks — “strike back at the barbarian Russians” — must be held in check. Instead, now is the time for renewed pressure for a cease-fire.

In the age of nuclear weapons, all accepted modes of just war — self-defense, justice and punishment for wrongdoers, recovery of international borders; in essence, all notions of right and wrong — are irrelevant. It really doesn’t matter who was the aggressor, who the aggrieved, who committed crimes against civilians, who was merely acting in self-defense.

In an asymmetrical exchange of nuclear missiles in which hundreds of millions could die, it does not really matter who was right and who was wrong. Historians will not survive to tell the story.

President Biden should dispatch his diplomats to Russia to let Putin know he’s not welcome. An immediate cease-fire must occur, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine must be pressured to agree.

Russia massed tens of thousands of troops in Belarus before invading it in February, then used it as a staging ground for its assault on the Ukrainian capital. Moscow still has hundreds of troops in Belarus, from which it launches missiles and bombing raids, but their number is now expected to increase sharply.

“This won’t be just a thousand troops,” Mr. Lukashenko told senior military and security officials in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, after a meeting over the weekend with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in St. Petersburg.

According to Mr. Lukashenko, work on forming a joint regional group of troops to counter possible aggression against the country by NATO and Ukraine has already begun.

Current or future events are not always based on Mr. Lukashenko’s statements. Just days before Russian troops stationed in Belarus attacked Ukraine in February, he emphatically denied that his territory would be used by Russia, a close ally, to attack his country’s southern neighbor.

Andrei Sannikov, who served as deputy foreign minister under Mr. Lukashenko during his early period in power but fled into exile after being jailed, said Mr. Lukashenko was “running scared,” caught between pressure from Russia to help its demoralized forces in Ukraine and the knowledge that sending in Belarusian troops would be hugely unpopular, even among his loyalists.

The Syrian Kurdish-Kyiv War: Why Do We Have to Keep It Up? The Ukranian Embassy and the Kremlin

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed a scene of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

The wide bombardment echoed the early days of Russia’s scattershot initial invasion in February, but also underlined that the conflict in Ukraine, which for months appeared to be descending into a slow and painful grind in the Donbas, has erupted once again as winter nears.

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

It means that, as winter approaches, the stakes of the war have been raised once more. Giles believes that Russia would like to keep it up. The Ukrainian successes have sent a direct message to the Kremlin. Giles said, “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it.”

Oleksii Hromov, a senior Ukrainian military official, said last week that there are 120 settlements that Kyiv has reclaimed as they advance in the eastern parts of the country. On Wednesday, it was reported that more settlements had been liberated in the push in Kherson.

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.

Since the end of the summer, the ground war in eastern and southern Ukraine has been defined by a series of decisive counter-attacks that have pushed back Russian forces and crystallized Western optimism that Kyiv can win the war.

If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking exactly the same, that will be a success for the Russians.

If Ukraine were to get a big blow in Donbas, they would be eager to improve upon their gains before the battlefield gets cold and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

Giles said that there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

The Ukrenergo electricity company says it has been able to keep the power flowing to the central regions of Ukraine after the Russian missile attacks. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

Russia’s War on the Front: The Challenge of Reopening the Northern Front and the Discovery of a New Route into the Kharkiv Oblast

But Moscow is struggling to equip and rally its conventional forces, and, with the exception of its nuclear forces, appears to be running out of new cards to play. It is less likely that aNuclear force will be used as China and India joined the west in open statements against it.

Russian commanders on the ground know that their supplies are about to run out, and the UK’s spy chief said that in a speech on Tuesday.

That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”

Exactly how much weaponry each side has available will be crucial to determining how momentum will shift in the coming weeks. On Tuesday and Monday, Ukraine said it succeeded in intercepting at least 18 cruise missiles, but it is calling on its Western allies to give it more equipment to repel future attacks.

There will be occasional shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians do not have the stock of precision weaponry to sustain that type of high paced missile assault into the future.

The impact of such an intervention would be limited because the number of active duty troops is small in comparison to Russia. It will threaten another assault on the Ukrainian side of the border.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

As the New Year approached, Mr. Zelensky recounted moments of despair and triumph alike, and heralded the resolve of his fellow Ukrainians. He said that the first missiles had destroyed the illusions and showed Ukrainians what they were capable of.

Ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Belgian capital, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that Ukraine needed more systems to halt missile attacks.

The systems that arrived this week from Germany and the United States were desperately needed in Ukraine, according to Bronk.

Sergey Surovikin, the commander of Russian air force operations in Ukraine, meets Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on December 28, 2017

Russia named a new commander for its operations in the war last Saturday after Ukrainians recently regained more territory than they had lost.

Notably, he previously played an instrumental role in Russia’s operations in Syria – during which Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held areas – as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, also told CNN this week that Surovikin’s appointment “reflects the ascendancy of a lot of hardline voices inside Russia… calling on Putin to make changes, and to bring in someone who would be willing to execute these ruthless attacks.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Russian Armed Forces service personnel who took part in operations in Syria, including Sergey Surovikin, at the Kremlin on December 28, 2017.

Surovikin personally signed Irisov’s resignation papers from the air force, he says. Now, Irisov sees him put in charge of operations in Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine – but what impact the general will or can have is not yet clear.

The invasion of Ukraine by Putin changed everything, as the security service and defense ministry ordered everyone to execute the propaganda scheme.

He lives next to the suburb of Bucha, which the Russians conquered in the first days of the war. After the Russians invaded Ukraine, Viatrovych immediately took his wife and son to westernUkraine.

While serving at Latakia air base in Syria in 2019 and 2020, the 31-year-old says he worked on aviation safety and air traffic control, coordinating flights with Damascus’ civilian airlines. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

He made a lot of people very angry, and they hated him for the way he implemented his infantry experience into the air force.

Irisov says he understands Surovikin had strong connections with Kremlin-approved private military company the Wagner group​, which has operated in Syria.

In 2004, according to Russian media accounts and at least two think tanks, he berated a subordinate so severely that the subordinate took his own life.

In August 1991, when the attempted coup against former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev failed, three people were killed by soldiers under his command and he spent six months in prison, says a book by the think tank.

In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named him as “someone who may bear ​command responsibility” for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war​” during the 2019-2020 Idlib offensive in Syria. The attacks killed at least 1,600 civilians and forced the displacement of an estimated over one million people, according to a report by HRW.

Vladimir Putin and the Syrian Aerospace Forces: a tough nationalist face in the war on Syria, or how Russian forces might be deployed in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin (left) toasts with then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev next to Sergey Surovikin after a ceremony to bestow state awards on military personnel who fought in Syria, on December 28, 2017.

In February of this year, the European Union put sanctions on the head of the Aerospace Forces for his involvement in actions that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine as well as the stability or security in Ukraine.

But Clark, from the ISW, suggests the general’s promotion is “more of a framing thing to inject new blood into the Russian command system” and “put on this tough nationalist face.”

His appointment “got widespread praise from various Russian military bloggers as well as Yevgeny (Prigozhin), who’s the financier of the Wagner Group,” Clark said.

Clark said that the commander of one of the groups of Russian forces had a master reputation in Syria and had earned the title of the ‘butcher of Aleppo.’

Dvornikov was also seen at the time as the commander “that was going to turn things around in Ukraine and get the job done,” he added. It is difficult for an individual commander to improve how entwined Russian control is at this point in the war.

According to Clark, “there isn’t a good Kremlin option if Surovikin doesn’t perform or if Putin decides that he is also not up to the task. There aren’t many other senior Russian officers and it’s just going to lead to a further degradation of the Russian war effort.”

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. If used as support roles like drivers, they could ease the burden on the last parts of the professional army in Russia. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are not likely to become a fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.

In that case, Mr. Putin could lash out more broadly against Ukraine. The attacks of the past week — particularly striking critical civilian infrastructure — could be expanded across Ukraine if missile supplies hold out, while Russia could directly target the Ukrainian leadership with strikes or special operations.

“Even if President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy reached the conclusion that we should negotiate and stop the punishment. I think that he can’t do that now because of the conviction of the Ukrainian people.

A Tale of Two Bridges: From the Ukraine to the Middle East, or How Putin is Going to Stay With Putin, or Does Putin Really Wanna Stay With Us?

Petraeus spoke at an annual conference in Sea Island, Ga., run by The Cipher Brief, which brings together members of the national security community — current and former — to stand back and look at the big picture on global security.

A top Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to President Zelenskyy, told the conference the conflict needs to end with a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield.

But Paul Kolbe, a former CIA officer who runs the Intelligence Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, says the Russian leader is not looking for a way out of the conflict. In fact, he says, just the opposite. “Putin’s memory is so sharp that he can escalate when he runs into something,” said Kolbe. “There’s a lot of tricks he can still pull out to try to undermine morale in Ukraine and in the West.”

This annexation is a huge deal. Dmitri Alperovitch runs a policy think tank and says that Putin is betting his presidency on staying in Ukraine.

“That is essentially a metaphorical burning of bridges,” said Alperovitch. “What this means is that this war is likely to continue for many, many months, potentially many years, as long as he’s in power and as long as he has the resources to continue fighting.”

Meanwhile, the fast approaching winter will likely slow the pace of the war, but is not expected to halt the fighting. The Ukrainians are favored on the battlefield because of the harsh weather. If the Ukrainians are willing to knock on the door, they can be taken to a bowl of soup from their fellow citizens. He said that the Russian occupiers are trying to kill the liberators, but they are welcomed as liberators.

At the Georgia conference, in a ballroom filled with experienced national security types, no one suggested the war was near an end. “Most wars end with some sort of negotiated solution, whether that comes out of stalemate or defeat, but I don’t see any prospects of talks in the near term,” said Paul Kolbe, the former CIA official.

This war began with a Russian invasion in 2014, he noted, and is now as intense as it’s ever been. Greg Myre is an NPR journalist. Follow him @gregmyre1.

Vladimir Putin’s warning message to Ukraine after the invasion of Kyiv, Ukraine: and why the U.S. is willing to do what it wants

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. No measures are currently being introduced which limit the normal rhythm of the city’s life according to Mr. Sobyanin.

The regional governors of four of the five provinces said that entry and exit restrictions would not be imposed because of the new power granted them by Mr. Putin.

It is the first time since World War II that Moscow has declared martial law and many Russians will see that warning message.

“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.

According to three senior Middle East officials, Russia redeployed troops from Syria in a signal that the invasion of Ukraine has diminished Moscow’s influence in other parts of the world.

KYIV, Ukraine — Sitting on a park bench by a tram stop in Kontraktova Square, Marta Makarova, a 21-year-old budding social media influencer, takes a break from talking with two friends about Instagram to talk instead about the war. Makarova explains how much of their safety depends on U.S. support.

He says the top issues trending on his social media channels are the upcoming U.S. elections and billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial comments about negotiating an end to the war.

Conscious of pressure from his right flank, the possible next speaker, GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, has warned that Ukraine should not expect a “blank check” from the new House. Even though Ukraine still has strong Republican support in the Senate, this makes it appear that the US will not keep up its resolve in the conflict that Putin is most likely to survive.

He said in an interview that people will be sitting in a recession and won’t write a blank check to Ukranian.

Ukraine is receiving more than $60 billion in U.S. aid: Why the Russians can’t stop spending money on the war against Ukraine

While the US has offered more than $60 billion in aid under Biden, only Republicans voted against the latest aid package.

A line of Ukrainian politicians, activists — even soldiers — have been traveling to Washington in advance of the midterms to keep up relations and lobby for more aid.

Yevheniia Kravchuk is a member of parliament with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party. She’s traveled twice to Washington since the beginning of the war to meet with administration and congressional leaders, making sure to meet with both Democratic and Republican leaders.

But Kniazhytskyi worries about the influence of a vocal group of Republicans, many aligned with former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative TV personalities who have been speaking out against the billions of dollars going to Ukraine.

In May, 50% of Americans said they were very or extremely concerned about the outcome of the game, but that number dropped to 38% in September.

Yes. There is an enormous $45 billion aid package in the works, and while not all military, it is part of a consistent drumbeat from the Biden administration. The message is simple, Ukraine is receiving aid as much as Washington is giving, and that aid won’t stop because they have boots on the ground.

Zelenskyy almost submitted to Trump’s demand to announce an investigation into the family of Joe Biden before he became president, but was sucked into his first impeachment.

The director of international studies at Odesa Mechnikov University thinks that a lot of Ukrainians don’t understand U.S. politics.

When there is someone in the House, they’d like to speak about why they’re spending money on a country that’s corrupt and not winning. People in Ukraine hear that and say, “Oh my God.”

The balance of power in Washington means that a few Republicans can’t change the direction of U.S. support for the war, he believes. He argues that the bigger problems of Ukraine are more important than those of the U.S.

The Ukraine Crisis: Why the U.S. Senate is so close to NATO in the Cold War? Revised Opinions of Dean Obeidallah

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. He can be followed by Dean Obeidallah. The opinions are of his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The GOP Senate Candidate in Ohio now says he wants the Ukrainians to be successful. But as The Washington Post detailed on Sunday, Vance’s original remark is causing Ukrainian Americans who are lifelong Republicans to support his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, in that too-close-to-call Senate race.

President Biden criticized McCarthy and other Republicans who wanted to end or reduce aid to Ukraine, saying they don’t get it. It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine — it’s Eastern Europe. It is NATO. It is real, serious, consequential outcomes.

The idea that Kevin McCarthy will be the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is amazing. It’s dangerous,” Cheney said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He knows better than to suggest that America will no longer accept free will in order to curry favor with his political enemies.

The Last Stand before the Russian Revolution: A Commentary on CNN’s Tucker Carlson, Mike Ingraham, Vladmir Putin, and David A. Andelman

The Republican lawmaker stated that if her party regains control of the House, she expects Majority Leader McCarthy to give her a lot of power and a lot of latitude.

Conservative Fox News stars, including Laura Ingraham and especially Tucker Carlson, have been laying the groundwork with members of the Republican base, readying them for the possibility of an end to US assistance for Ukraine.

Carlson, whose show was about a potential conflict between the neighboring countries that he was “rooting for Russia,” did his best to paint Ukraine in an unfavorable light in the months before Putin launched his attack. Carlson said Ukrainian leader Zelensky was a puppet of Biden’s administration and also claimed that Ukraine was not a democracy.

In just last week, Ingraham criticized former Vice President Mike Pence for saying that the United States is the worst of democracy in the world, and suggested our huge military is too small to help other countries. During that same episode, Ingraham welcomed Jim Banks, a GOP congressman from Indiana, who agreed with McCarthy that we shouldn’t send aid to foreign countries to solve their problems.

Some Republicans may or may not get it, as Biden suggested. But there’s one person who fully gets it: Vladmir Putin. Most people will have reason to celebrate if the GOP wins back control of the House.

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 was a CBS News correspondent in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

First, he’s seeking to distract his nation from the blindingly obvious, namely that he is losing badly on the battlefield and utterly failing to achieve even the vastly scaled back objectives of his invasion.

Predictions for the European Parliament’s Winter Confidence summit on Energy, Natural Gas, and the Kremlin’s Agenda

The ability to keep going depends on a number of variables including the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, the popular will across a broad range of nations, and often conflicting priorities.

EU powers agreed in the early hours of Friday to find a way to control energy prices that have been going up, as a result of Russia’s ban on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies.

There was an emergency cap on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, and permission for EU gas companies to create a price band for gas on the international market.

While he boasted that the summit had maintained Europe’s unity, he conceded that there wasn’t 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. Energy ministers must work out details with Germany about how caps on consumption would affect supplies.

These divisions are all part of Putin’s fondest dream. Manifold forces in Europe could prove central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, which amounts to the continent failing to agree on essentials.

Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. The two leaders scheduled a conference call for Wednesday in the hopes of reaching some agreement.

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

Italy’s First Woman Prime Minister and the Changing Faces of the Italian Left-Right Symmetric Coalition: How President Silvio Berlusconi, Putin, Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States have

A new government has been formed in Italy. The post-fascist aura of the party has been removed by Giorgia Meloni, who is Italy’s first woman prime minister. One of her far-right coalition partners meanwhile, has expressed deep appreciation for Putin.

Silvio Berlusconi, himself a four-time prime minister of Italy, was recorded at a gathering of his party loyalists, describing with glee the 20 bottles of vodka Putin sent to him together with “a very sweet letter” on 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.”

Poland and Hungary were friends for a long time, but now have different opinions over the direction of the EU. Poland takes offense at the feelings of Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban.

The Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia on an end to the conflict while its troops are still in the country and its missiles and drones are hitting deep into the interior.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Antony Blinken called his counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and renewed America’s support.

The West continues to try and crimp Russian energy profits, by capping the amount countries will pay for Russian oil and limiting seaborne oil imports. There are signs that the efforts are reducing profits.

Putin has also tried, though he has been stymied at most turns, to establish black market networks abroad to source what he needs to fuel his war machine – much as Kim Jong-un has done in North Korea. The United States has already uncovered and recently sanctioned vast networks of such shadow companies and individuals centered in hubs from Taiwan to Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, and Luxembourg to source high-tech goods for Russia’s collapsing military-industrial complex.

The Justice Department also announced charges against individuals and companies seeking to smuggle high-tech equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.

The strengthening relationship between Moscow and Tehran has drawn the attention of Iran’s rivals and foes in the Middle East, of NATO members and of nations that are still – at least in theory – interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which aimed to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb.

The historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued that no less than the direction of human history is at stake, because a victory by Russia would reopen the door to wars of aggression, to invasions of one country by another, something that since the Second World War most nations had come to reject as categorically unacceptable.

Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has repercussions there. The US accused the Saudis of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues when they decided last month to slash production. The Saudis deny the accusation.

The War in Ukraine Has Been Declared: Implications for the Economy and Politics of the Middle East, and the Inflationary Impact on the World

As others have noted, Israel is reluctant to let go of its defensive systems partly because it could need them for its own defense. Hezbollah in the north has missiles, while Hamas in the south has rockets.

A UN and Turkey-brokered agreement allowed Ukraine’s maritime corridors to reopen, but this week Moscow temporarily suspended that agreement after Russian Navy ships were struck at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Putin’s announcement was immediately followed by a surge in wheat prices on global commodity markets. Prices for bread in Africa and around the world are affected by those prices.

In fact, the war in Ukraine is already affecting everyone, everywhere. The conflict has also sent fuel prices higher, contributing to a global explosion of inflation.

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they come with such powerful momentum, they pack a political punch. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

Is it possible to build a bomb on Russia? a Kremlin Telegram account of Lavrov’s alleged far-right organization

“Our information on Ukraine’s potential provocations involving the use of a nuclear bomb is sufficiently reliable,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told a press conference on October 24. According to read-outs from the Russian government, the defense minister gave information to the 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 account warned that a bomb would be used against Russian troops in the event of an invasion.

The video, however, was quickly debunked—the Ukrainian-language video is rife with spelling mistakes and shows common industrial equipment, according to the Ukrainian fact-check organization StopFake. 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.

The talks were apparently productive. The Chinese called them “thorough, frank, and constructive.” Biden said, “We were very blunt with one another” but agreed to try to avoid a new Cold War. It wasn’t “Kumbaya,” the President said, but the two sides are perhaps less likely to start an accidental war against each other.

The Biden-Xi Meeting of the World Democracy Dilemma: The End of a Triumphant Return to Kherson

After years of turmoil and anxiety, there are signs that the democratic world may just be starting to reverse the tide of autocracy, or at least its most dangerous elements. But it’s too early to tell how strong the global democratic push will be.

That is one reason that the meeting occurred, but it is not the only reason: The meeting was perfect from the standpoint of democracy and the United States.

As Biden and Xi were meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional, triumphant return to the devastated, now liberated city of Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.

Putin’s adventure turned to disaster as the Ukrainians defended their country with unexpected tenacity and as Biden rallied allies in a muscular push to support Ukraine.

By the time Xi and Putin met again in September, China had done little to support Russia militarily, and Putin admitted that Xi had “questions and concerns” about Ukraine. More recently, after the Russian President thinly threatened to use nuclear weapons, Xi rebuked him.

Putin chose not to attend the G20 summit in Indonesia, avoiding confrontations 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

Putin, Russia and the Ukraine crisis: Xi, Russia, the EU, the NATO, Poland, Moldova, and the Russian rockets

Biden is not the only leader with a strong hand. Xi has just secured an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, and he can now effectively rule for as long as he wants. He does not have to deal with elections, a critical press or a vociferous opposition 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. The economy has slowed down so much that China is reluctant to reveal economic data. China’s Covid-19 vaccine, once a tool of global diplomacy, is a disappointment. And partly because of that, China is imposing draconian lockdowns as the rest of the world gradually returns to normalcy after the pandemic.

It is important that democracy is shown to work by defeating efforts of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia to undermine it and proving that unprovoked wars of aggression will not succeed.

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

One thing is clear, no matter the circumstances of the missile. NATO Secretary General Jens Mossadtenberg said that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for its illegal war against Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin’s “I want to live” campaign in Ukraine: the case of a future combat air-borne jet fighter for the Future Combat Air System

A hotline and Telegram channel were launched by a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live”, designed to assist Russians who are interested in defecting.

He told me last week that like many of his countrymen, he may not be able to return to his homeland, but he was prepared to accept the reality.

There was good to 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.

Putin had hoped that the conflict would drive wedges into the Western alliance, but they are proving unfulfilled. The French-German joint project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System was beginning to move forward after rumors began circulating on Monday.

Nine months have passed and the Russians have not yet seized control of the Ukrainian territories, largely because of the defensiveness of the army across more than 500 miles of battle lines.

The only way for the Russian leader to win at the moment is through negotiations, as his manpower and weapons are running out.

Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the CNA think tank and a leading expert on the Russian military told me in an interview that a premature truce allows both parties to re-arm.

Already, Russia is beginning to rearm, experts say. Kofman said that themunition availability was one of the most important aspects of the war. You cannot make them in a month if you burn through 9 million rounds. What is the rate of production of bullets and what can be done to mobilize them? He said so.

Kofman cited available information showing that the manufacture of munitions – which have been the staples of the exchanges so far along Ukrainian front lines – has gone from two, and in some factories to three, shifts a day in Russia. He said that this suggests they wouldn’t double and triple shifts if they had component parts.

The Russians are Efficient in the War of the 2022 Ukrainian Revolution, and Can the US and its Allies Go Back to the War?

“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff said recently.

He said the Ukrainian leadership refused itself to conduct negotiations, which was the reason why they never refused.

I was talking to General Mick Ryan, a fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said that giving the Russians time to regroup would relieve the pressure on their forces. They have been working hard for nine months. Their forces are exhausted.”

The images showed that “in total, at least 52 Russian ammunition depots have been hit by the Ukrainian military since the end of March 2022.” It’s a good chunk of the 100 to 200 Russian depots that analysts believe are on the Ukrainian front, according to the report.

But at some point, they’ll also get tired of this war, he added. The Russian mindset may change to “we may not have everything we wanted”. But we’ll have a big chunk of the Donbas and will annex that into Russia and we’ll hold onto Crimea. And I think that’s kind of their bet right now.”

The West can rebuild rapidly-depleted arsenals that have been drained by materiel sent to Ukranians if there is a truce.

There’s a real question as to whether the US and its allies would be willing to go back to the war in the future, even if it was just for a short time.

Vladimir Putin, the Great, and the State of the Interior: Exploring the Northern Sea to Make Sense of Russia with Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence

Speaking in a televised meeting in Russia with members of his Human Rights Council, Putin described the land gains as “a significant result for Russia,” noting that the Sea of Azov “has become Russia’s internal sea.” In one of his frequent historic references to a Russian leader he admires, he added that “Peter the Great fought to get access” to that body of water.

“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it, either, because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.

Putin rejected Western criticism that his previous nuclear weapons comments amounted to saber-rattling, claiming they were “not a factor provoking an escalation of conflicts, but a factor of deterrence.”

“We haven’t gone mad. Putin said they were aware of nuclear weapons. He said that the nuclear power we have is more advanced and state-of-the-art than any other power.

The Russian leader didn’t speak about Russia’s battlefield setbacks or its attempts to cement control over the seized regions but did acknowledge problems with supplies, treatment of wounded soldiers and limited desertions.

The governor of the region shared photos of the new concrete anti-tank barriers in open fields. On Tuesday, the governor had said a fire broke out at an airport in the region after a drone strike. In neighboring Belgorod, workers were expanding anti-tank barriers and officials were organizing “self-defense units.” The governor of Belgorod said that Russia’s air defense systems shot down incoming rockets from cross-border attacks.

In brazen drone attacks, two strategic Russian air bases more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the Ukraine border were struck Monday. Moscow blamed Ukraine, which didn’t claim responsibility.

In the past two months, Ukraine’s power grid has come under relentless bombardment by Russian bombs, taking down as much as half of the country’s electric infrastructure and at times leaving the majority of the country without power. In Kyiv, more than 200 miles away from the fighting in the Donbas region, Ukrainians have to hunt for generators, store their food outside to prevent it from spoiling, and keep backups of water and food. Water supplies have been paralyzed at times, too, along with portions of the country’s electrified rail system. And winter, with only a fraction of the country’s heating systems operational, still looms ahead.

It requires a relatively large number of personnel to be trained, according to CNN’s Barbara Starr and Oren Liebermann, who were first to report the US is close to sending the system to Ukraine.

“Earlier, many experts, including those overseas, questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of directly dragging the US army into combat,” Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked for the US Army’s Patriot – an acronym for Phased Array Tracking Radar for intercept on Target – system, as it is considered one of the most capable long-range air defense systems on the market.

Asked Thursday about Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be “provocative,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said those comments would not influence US aid to Ukraine.

“I think it is ironic and very telling that the officials from the country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion chose to use words like provocative to describe systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians.”

Russia’s defense ministry shared a video of the installation of a Yar’s intercontinental missile into the silo in Kaluga region, where it was sent to be used by the Kozelsky missile formation.

Appearing this week on Russian state TV, Commander Alexander Khodakovsky of the Russian militia in the Donetsk region suggested Russia could not defeat the NATO alliance in a conventional war.

The Russian Patriot Missiles What Matters: Why Russian forces need a mortar shell to operate their missiles? A CNN comment on the case of Donbas and Crimea

Unlike smaller air defense systems, large crews need to be put in place to properly operate the missiles. The training for Patriot missile batteries normally takes multiple months, a process the United States will now carry out under the pressure of near-daily aerial attacks from Russia.

The system is one of the most capable long range weapons to defend airspace against missiles as well as aircraft. Russian missiles and aircraft can be shot down by its high altitude and long-range capability.

Zelensky denied the idea in an interview with The Economist that the area of the Russian-controlled areas of Donbas and Crimea should not be included in any attempts by the Ukrainian government to get back land seized by Russia.

“We don’t have NATO troops on the ground. We don’t have NATO planes in the air over Ukraine. We are supportingUkraine in their right to defend themselves.

Old gun. CNN spoke to a US military official this week who said that Russian forces were having to use 40-year-old mortar shells because their supplies of new mortars are running out.

The official said that if the bullets fire or explode, you cross your fingers.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/politics/russia-patriot-missiles-what-matters/index.html

“The Russian Empire is Coming”: Will Ripley, President of the Kyiv House of Teachers, during the 1991 Ukrainian War of Independence

In the trenches. CNN’s Will Ripley filed a video report from trenches and fortifications being built along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, where there is growing concern about Russia once again assembling troops. Ripley talks to a sewing machine repairman turned tank driver.

“The Russian empire started to expand with Ukraine. Many Russians think that their empire cannot exist without Ukraine. Volodymyr Viatrovych, member ofUkraine’s parliament and a prominent historian, said that they keep coming back because of that.

He then drove to Kyiv for an emergency session of parliament, which declared martial law. He received a rifle that day to help defend the capital.

Ukraine first declared independence from Russia in 1918, doing so in an elegant, whitewashed building in the center of Kyiv that still stands and now serves as the offices for the Kyiv House of Teachers.

A reminder of that history came two months ago. That’s when a Russian missile slammed into the street outside the Kyiv House of Teachers.

The windows were shattered in the hall where independence was declared in 1918. The windows have been boarded up. Shards of glass still cover the floor.

“There are, of course, parallels to a century ago,” said Steshuk Oleh, the director of the House of Teachers. “This building was also damaged in the fighting back then. And it was damaged again. But don’t worry. We will rebuild everything.”

“Ukraine has experienced many difficulties over the last 100 years, and they are vast, and this is the moment where they need to do something about them,” he said.

Ukrainians thought this matter was finally resolved in December 1991, when they held a referendum on independence. Ninety-two percent voted in favor of going their own way. The Soviet Union collapsed later that month.

“I believe our generation has an opportunity to put an end to this. Ukrainians are more united, more mobilized, more ready to fight than in 1918,” he said.

He said that if he was losing a war, he wouldn’t survive. “The outcome may signal the end, not just of Putin’s era, but the era of the empire. It’s 21st century. Empires have to go.

When Kasparov entered politics 15 years ago, he challenged Putin’s hold on power. When it became clear his safety was at risk, he left Russia, and now lives in New York.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/16/1142176312/ukraine-ongoing-fight-to-free-itself-from-russia

What will Ukraine learn from Zelensky’s victory at the CIO of the Embryo of the Élysée Palace?

Many military analysts say the war is unlikely to produce a clear end in the battlefield. They say it’s likely to require negotiations and compromises.

The region would be more stable ifUkraine joined NATO, according to Valeriy Chaly, a former ambassador to the United States. It is unlikely that the government will join the alliance in the near term.

“Being a buffer zone or gray zone is not good from a geopolitical point of view,” he said. Everyone wants to take a step in the gray zone between the two security blocs. This has happened with Ukraine.”

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, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

While the history of most wars is written by the victor after the fact, Mr. Zelensky has created a story line of the war against Russia in real time, a running narrative telling Ukrainians in nightly video addresses how they should view the battles, justify their hardships and believe in the country’s ultimate success.

This is the leader who when offered to leave the US when Russia began its invasion quipped, “I need bullets not a ride.”

Zelensky’s political skills were put to use earlier in his career when he stood up to Donald Trump, who tried to bamboozle him in the quid pro quo scandal.

It all seems like a long time ago since Zelensky thanked his fans in a triumphant speech at his campaign function in a different nightclub than what we are seeing today. 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. The G7 imposed a price cap on Russian crude in order to hurt the Kremlin, despite pleas from Zelensky that it shouldn’t have been set at $60 a barrel.

Zelensky is the brand: from politician to digital native to the Kremlin in the midst of a war and the security crisis

His previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatre group Kvartal 95 includes many people in his bubble. 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 well the solace his nightly televised addresses brought in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions, when he was comforter in chief.

Beyond the man himself, there is Zelensky the brand. It’s almost impossible to not notice the Ukrainian leader wearing his olive green t-shirts when meeting everyone from military commanders to world leaders.

“He is probably more comfortable than Putin on camera, too, both as an actor and as a digital native,” she added. Zelensky is doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility, and I think that both of them want to come across as similar.

Journeying to where her husband can’t, Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora – projecting empathy, style and smarts. She and King Charles met at the refugee assistance center at the Holy Family Cathedral in London. Zelenska was not on the cover ofTIME magazine, but only a reference in the supporting text.

As Zelensky said in a recent nightly video address: “No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.”

The Kremlin criticized the trip as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy returned from D.C., having obtained billions of dollars in U.S. aid and standing ovations in Congress.

When Zelensky arrives in Washington, he might well experience the same revelation that Churchill did over the capital’s blazing lights at Christmas after months in the dark of air raid blackouts back home.

His visit is unfolding amid extraordinary security. Pelosi would not confirm early reports that she would allow Zelensky to speak at the US Capitol. We just don’t know.”

The War in Ukraine is at a turning point, and so should American troops be sent to Ukraine, as promised by General Relativity

“Patriots are a defensive weapons system that will help Ukraine defend itself as Russia sends missile after missile and drone after drone to try and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and kill Ukrainian civilians,” she said. Russia should stop sending missiles into Ukraine if they don’t want them to be shot down.

Zelensky’s trip shows a critical moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine when upgraded US support could decide the outcome of the conflict.

Republicans will take over the majority in the House in the new year, and that will lead to a lot of debate on Capitol Hill over the aid for Ukraine. Some pro-Donald Trump members, who will have significant leverage in the thin GOP majority, have warned that billions of dollars in US cash that have been sent to Ukraine should instead be shoring up the US southern border with a surge of new migrants expected within days.

Zelensky has mastery of historical allusion and public relations theater. He brought up the Battle of Saratoga to make a point that the War in Ukraine is at a turning point. He evoked the heroism of US soldiers dug into freezing foxholes in the Battle of the Bulge during Christmas 1944, which thwarted the last effort by Nazi Germany to repel the allied liberation of Europe. FDR made a promise to victory for freedom during the war.

“Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Zelensky said to just remember it. September 11, 2001 is remembered as a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities into battlefields. When innocent people were attacked, you couldn’t stop it. Our country experiences the same every day.”

The Cold War Is Far From Home: A Memorandum from a King, the British Prime Minister, and the President of the United States

The British leader sailed to the United States aboard a flagship in the winterized Atlantic before flying to Washington, DC, where he met the President Franklin Roosevelt on December 22, 1941.

Two leaders plotted the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and laid the foundation of the Western thanks to a diet of sherry with breakfast, Scotch and sodas for lunch, champagne in the evening and a bottle of 90-year-old brandy before bed.

Churchill, who had pined for US involvement in World War II for months and knew it was the key to defeating Adolf Hitler, said during his visit, “I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.”

The historical parallels are likely to impress the leader of Ukranian. He paraphrased one of Churchill’s most famous wartime speeches in an emotional address to British members of parliament in March.

There are two key deliverables, the first being the Patriot missile systems. Complex, accurate, and expensive, they have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO cares for them and they require the personnel who operate them to be properly trained.

More precision weapons are vital: they ensure Ukraine hits its targets, and not any civilians remaining nearby. It means Ukraine doesn’t go through the hundreds or thousands of shells Russia burns through in bombardments.

The Biden administration said on Wednesday it would give another $1.85 billion in military assistance to Ukranian, including for the first time a Patriot Air Defense System. Since the beginning of the war, we’ve supplied one of the most advanced and expensive defense systems.

Biden wants Putin to hear headline figures in billions of dollars to distract him from military aid and to encourage European partners to help more, and make Ukraine’s resources seem unlimited.

This is trickier. Congress’s likely new Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, has warned the Biden administration cannot expect a “blank cheque” from the new GOP-led House of Representatives.

The End of the War? Hillary Clinton’s Theoretical Address to Ukrainians in the Light of Zelensky’s War

The remnants of the Trumpist party have reservations about how much help the US should give to eastern Europe.

Realistically, the bill for the slow defeat of Russia in this dark and lengthy conflict is relatively light for Washington, given its near trillion-dollar annual defense budget.

The speech was related to the struggle of Ukrainian people, to the feelings that we want to be warm in our homes for Christmas, and to the families that are on the frontlines of the revolution, to get us to think about them.

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.

“I also think no one is asking for a blank check,” Clinton added. “I believe that the Ukrainians have proven that they are a really good investment for the United States. They don’t want us to fight their war. They are fighting on their own. They are asking us and our allies how to defend ourselves and actually win.

“I hope that they will send more than one,” she added. She pointed out that there had been reluctance by the US and NATO to provide advanced equipment because of how effective the Ukrainian military was.

Clinton said the leader was “impossible to predict” as the war in Ukraine began to favor the Ukrainians and his popularity waned at home.

Zelensky’s Flag to the U.S. Congress During the February 11, 2001 Blitzkrieg: The Ukrainian Heroes Who Won’t Forget Their War

CNN’s Meanwhile in America had an email daily about US politics that was adapted into this story. Click here to get past editions.

The fate of millions of Ukrainians is currently in the possession of American lawmakers, taxpayers and families, at a time when there is growing skepticism about the cost of US involvement.

Zelensky gave a Ukrainian flag to Pelosi and Harris during his speech, as they watched from the gallery.

“Our heroes … asked me to bring this flag to you, to the US Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people,” he said.

His bigger message was that the fight between Ukraine and the soviets wasn’t just a flash point over an old grudge. America and everyone are fighting the same fight to hold back tyranny and save global democracy.

— To Putin, who thought he would topple Zelensky and his nation in a February blitzkrieg, he sent a signal of heroic resistance embraced by the US – after flying to Washington on an US Air Force jet, seeking to show Russians are now fighting a war that can never be won.

— To Americans, Zelensky professed deep thanks for tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid offered and to come. Implicitly, he argued they couldn’t abandon this gritty, independence hero without also suppressing something of their own patriotic national identify.

— To the incoming House Republican majority, some of whose members want to halt aid, the Ukrainian leader’s hero’s welcome in the chamber suggested they would be shamed if they choose to forsake him.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/world/volodymyr-zelensky-grit-defiance/index.html

Zelensky Grit Defiance: How Will the West Thrive if there is No Electricity? “I hope that the Russians understand what Putin has to say”

— To Europeans, enduring their own grim winter of high electricity and heating prices after cutting off from Russian energy, and who may be minded to push for an end to the conflict on Putin’s terms, Zelensky showed that the West is united and that Biden means it when he said Wednesday the US is in “for as long as it takes.”

“We will celebrate Christmas, maybe candlelit. Not because it is more romantic, but because there will be no electricity. “We’ll celebrate Christmas and even if there is no electricity, the light of our faith, in ourselves, will not be put out.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/world/volodymyr-zelensky-grit-defiance/index.html

Zelensky and the “regime in Kyiv”: What will we learn from the fight against Russia if we don’t cooperate?

What will happen afterPatriots are installed? After that, we will send another signal to President Biden that we would like to get more Patriots,” Zelensky said during a White House news conference. In his speech to Congress, he said, “Yes, thank you.” We have it. Is it enough? Honestly, not really.” Both times, he was joking but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t deadly serious. In his address to congress, Zelensky pleaded with the congress to send more offensive weapons.

The president has limited the potency of the weapons he sends into the battle, balancing the need to defend a European democracy with the desire not to trigger a disastrous direct clash with Russia and to avoid crossing often invisible red lines whose locations are known only to Putin.

“Now you say, why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?” Biden said at the White House, explaining that pushing overwhelming force into Ukraine would risk fracturing the transatlantic consensus needed to support the war.

However, given partisan fury that will erupt in a divided Washington next year, there is no guarantee that America’s lawmakers will even be able to fund their own government – let alone one fighting for its survival thousands of miles away.

Following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington, Moscow said that Ukrainians and their Western allies are set for a long confrontation with Russia.

Russia decried the “monstous crimes” of the “regime in Kyiv” after US President Joe Biden promised more military support to Ukraine during Zelensky’s summit at the White House.

“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.

Zelensky said during his joint press conference with Biden that a just peace would not compromise the country’s sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity.

Pesov told journalists that the US was being aggressive in its actions against Russia, downing them to the last Ukrainian.

The Kremlin has also been selling that line to the Russian public, who is largely buying it, says Sergey Radchenko, a Russian history professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Dismissing accusations of a proxy war, Sloat says Zelenskyy and Ukraine have made clear that they want a “just peace,” and all the U.S. has been doing is help the country defend itself against Russian aggression.

A week ago, Moscow warned that the delivery of missiles toUkraine would be another provocative move by the U.S.

The use of the word “war” in Russia has been illegal since March when the leader of the country signed a law making it a crime to distribute “fake” information about the invasion.

“Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin told reporters in Moscow, after attending a State Council meeting on youth policy. We have been working towards this for a long time.

Nikita Yuferev fled Russia due to his stance against the war, and on Thursday he stated that he had asked Russian authorities to prosecute Putin for spreading fake information.

Yuferev said there was no decree to end the special military operation. “Several thousand people have already been condemned for such words about the war.”

A US official told CNN their initial assessment was that Putin’s remark was not intentional and likely a slip of the tongue. However, officials will be watching closely to see what figures inside the Kremlin say about it in the coming days.

Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday declared the Kremlin would make a substantial investment in many areas of the military. Increasing the size of the armed forces, deployment of a new generation of hypersonic missiles, and faster weapons programs are all part of the initiatives that Putin has said will prepare Russia for inevitable clashes with its adversaries.

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.

The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation said that Ukraine must fulfill Russia’s demands for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukrainian-controlled territories.

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

There is no reason for the West to entertain the possibility of a deal that carves upUkraine or rewardsPutin for invasion.

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.

“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” Kuleba told the AP on Monday. Every war ends after the actions taken at the negotiation table and on the battlefield.

The UN would be the most natural broker, said the Foreign Minister. “The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”

There is a path to nuclear safety, food security, and a final peace treaty with Moscow. He also urged G20 leaders to use all their power to “make Russia abandon nuclear threats” and implement a price cap on energy imported from Moscow.

Zelensky, Russia, and the Wannabe Cyberattacks of the Internet: The cost of protecting civilians in a war of aggression

Both sides are digging in for a long and grinding conflict, even if a swing on the battlefield in the New Year could change the balance of power.

Zelensky traveled to the US for his first overseas trip in ten months and it showed how he intended to keep his allies focused on the conflict.

The central nervous system in the human body is very similar to this, and if it’s messed with it will leave all sorts of systems out of whack. “It’s not only an inconvenience but an enormous economic cost. It is an attempt to create pain for the civilian population in order to let the government know that they cannot protect them adequately.

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. He says the goal is the same despite being different in the way they’re written. “Demoralizing and punishing civilians.”

At the time, Putin insisted his forces were embarking on a “special military operation” — a term suggesting a limited campaign that would be over in a matter of weeks.

The war has upended Russian life, undoing the post-Soviet period in which the country pursued democratic reforms, at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

War against Ukraine has left russia isolated and struggling with more turbulent-ahelion-like-ness-of-the-momentum

Draconian laws passed since February have outlawed criticism of the military or leadership. The leading independent monitoring group says more than 20,000 people have been taken into custody for demonstrating against the war.

Lengthy prison sentences have been meted out to high profile opposition voices on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army by questioning its conduct or strategy.

The Norwegian Prize co-recipient memorial was forced to stop its activities due to the foreign agents law.

The war inUkraine has led to expansion of Russia’s restrictive anti-gay laws, according to the state.

Dissidents are still targeted for now. Some of the new laws are still unenforced. But few doubt the measures are intended to crush wider dissent — should the moment arise.

Leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative startups were forced to shut down or relocate abroad when confronted with new “fake news” laws that criminalized contradicting the official government line.

Restrictions extend to internet users as well. Social media giants were banned in the US in March. More than 100,000 websites have been blocked by the Russian internet regulators since the beginning of the conflict.

Technical workarounds such as VPNs and Telegram still offer access to Russians seeking independent sources of information. Older Russians like state media propaganda more because of its anger on TV talk shows.

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

War against Ukraine has Left Russia Isolated and Struggling with More Turbulent Ahelion: An Analysis of Putin’s relaunched McDonald’s

Many perceived government opponents left in the early days of the war because of fears of persecution.

Some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus see their economies growing even as Russians remain a sensitive issue for former Soviet republics.

Helped by Russian price controls, the ruble regained value. McDonald’s and several other brands ultimately relaunched under new names and Russian ownership. By year’s end, the government reported the economy had declined by 2.5%, far less than most economists predicted.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. 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.

When it comes to Russia’s military campaign, there’s no outward change in the government’s tone. Russia’s Defense Ministry keeps an eye on the ground. Putin, too, repeatedly assures that everything is “going according to plan.”

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

Russians don’t like talking about the true number of losses, at just under 6,000 men. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

Russia’s invasion has backfired in its primary goal: NATO is going to expand towards Russia’s borders with the addition of long-neutral states.

In Soviet times, it would have been unthinkable for long-time allies in Central Asia to criticize Russia for its actions because of its own sovereignty. India and China have eagerly purchased discounted Russian oil, but have stopped short of full-throated support for 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

The Year of February 24th During Ukraine’s War: A Memories from a Year in the Life of Volodymyr Zelensky

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

The annual December mega press conference that allows the Russian leader to handle more than one question from the pro-Kremlin media was also delayed until 2023.

The Kremlin didn’t give a reason for the delays. Many suspect it might be that, after 10 months of war and no sign of victory in sight, the Russian leader has finally run out of good news to share.

KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a rousing New Year’s Eve address on Saturday night, recalling a year that he said truly “began on Feb. 24” with fear over Russia’s invasion but ended with his country hopeful for victory.

In the midst of darkness standing with a Ukrainian flag rippling in the breeze behind him, Mr. Zelensky talked about many of the more notable moments from the war.

This year has struck our hearts according to a translated transcript on his official website. “We’ve cried out all the tears. All the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say in the middle of the day.

The fate of Ukraine: 2022 is not a year of losses for Europe, but a time for a reversal of fortunes

All Ukrainians — those working, attending schools or “just learning to walk” — are participating in Ukraine’s defense, Mr. Zelensky said. And although 2022 could be called a year of losses, he said that was not the right way to think of it.

The world has rallied around Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said, from the main squares of foreign cities and their halls of government to the top of Google’s search results.

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.

Still, as 2022 closes, Europe is left dealing with a set of known unknowns, unimaginable as recently as in January. The military once thought of the third most formidable has invaded its smaller neighbor, which excelled a year ago in IT and agriculture.

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 also be surprised that Russia’s red lines appear to shift constantly, as Moscow realizes how limited its non-nuclear options are. None of this was supposed to happen. So, what does Europe do and prepare for, now that it has?

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 patience over weapons shipments in favor of economic needs, pushing for a peace unfavorable to Kyiv. At this moment, it seems unlikely.

“Red Lines” and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Do We Live in a Red Line Universe? Why Does the West Think that America Accepted the Cold War?

America has done this before. In a matter of days the Soviet Union shifted their stance and accepted the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis that favored the West. Had “red lines” thinking been in vogue, America might well have accepted an inferior compromise that weakened its security and credibility.