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- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
The Ukrainians a determined, fierce, and awfully brave.
Just a few minutes ago on CNN, William Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine, argued that the Ukrainians will never allow a Russian-back puppet regime in Kiev. People will take to the streets. Strings will be cut and puppet squashed.
Russian forces have struck targets across Ukraine and seized key facilities and swaths of territory. The Ukrainian military is no match for this Russian juggernaut. Although some reports suggest Ukrainian troops have rebuffed attacks in certain parts of the country, it seems more likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin will decide just how far Russia goes into Ukraine. As a retired Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who served in Central Asia and managed agency counterinsurgency operations, I did not think Putin would have attacked Ukraine unless he had already devised a reliable end game, given the costs of an intractable conflict. But Putin’s best-laid plans might easily unravel in the face of popular Ukrainian national resistance and an insurgency.
If Russia limits its offensive to the east and south of Ukraine, a sovereign Ukrainian government will not stop fighting. It will enjoy reliable military and economic support from abroad and the backing of a united population. But if Russia pushes on to occupy much of the country and install a Kremlin-appointed puppet regime in Kyiv, a more protracted and thorny conflagration will begin. Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that could spread across multiple borders, perhaps even reaching into Belarus to challenge Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s stalwart ally. Widening unrest could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit, such as Kazakhstan, and even spill into Russia itself. When conflicts begin, unpredictable and unimaginable outcomes can become all too real. Putin may not be prepared for the insurgency—or insurgencies—to come.
WINNER’S REMORSE
Many a great power has waged war against a weaker one, only to get bogged down as a result of its failure to have a well-considered end game. This lack of foresight has been especially palpable in troubled occupations. It was one thing for the United States to invade Vietnam in 1965, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003; likewise for the Soviet Union to enter Afghanistan in 1979. It was an altogether more difficult task to persevere in those countries in the face of stubborn insurgencies.
Russia can likely seize as much of Ukraine’s territory as it chooses. But plans to pacify Ukraine will require far more than the reserve forces Putin has suggested might occupy the territory as “peacekeepers” after initial combat objectives are met. Thanks to Putin’s aggression, anti-Russian fervor and homegrown nationalism have surged in Ukraine. Ukrainians have spent the last eight years planning, training, and equipping themselves for resisting a Russian occupation. Ukraine understands that no U.S. or NATO forces will come to its rescue on the battlefield. Its strategy doesn’t depend on turning back a Russian invasion, but rather in bleeding Moscow so as to make occupation untenable.
Any future insurgency will benefit from Ukraine’s geography. The country is bordered by four NATO states: Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Belarus, a Russian ally, is itself bordered by Poland on the west and another NATO member—Lithuania—on the north. These long borders offer the United States and NATO an enduring way to support Ukrainian resistance and a long-term insurgency and to stoke unrest in Belarus should the United States and its allies choose to covertly aid opposition to Lukashenko’s regime...
SINGAPORE — With no appetite for military confrontation, the U.S. and its allies are relying on sweeping economic sanctions to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull out of Ukraine.
But the effectiveness of those measures are anything but certain, relying on a host of factors that includes how much China is willing to come to Moscow’s aid.
Placing a stranglehold on Russia’s $1.5-trillion economy will not be easy, especially since it began trying to buffer itself from international sanctions after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia has sidelined growth to pare down its debt and built up its reserves of foreign currency and gold — so much so that it reached record levels this year at over $640 billion.
The reserves help soften the financial blowback of Russia’s invasion. On Thursday, the Russian central bank pumped liquidity into the country’s banking system and sold foreign currency for the first time in years to prop up the ruble, which plunged to its weakest level since 2016.
President Biden announced Thursday that U.S. and European allies would sanction five Russian banks holding about $1 trillion in assets and block high-tech exports. Russian oligarchs, said to be members of Putin’s inner circle, were also targeted by sanctions.
As it stands, those measures are highly unlikely to inflict enough pain on Moscow to trigger a reversal in Ukraine, analysts said, noting that any sanctions imposed now are likely to be too little, too late...
China’s leader Xi Jinping on Friday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate with Ukraine, the most recent twist as Beijing modulates its embrace of Russia.
Beijing has been flailing to adjust its position on the Ukraine situation ever since Mr. Xi signed on to an extraordinary solidarity statement with Mr. Putin early this month, a decision influenced by a Chinese foreign-policy establishment stuck in a belief that Mr. Putin wasn’t out for war.
“China supports Russia and Ukraine to resolve issues through negotiations,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin in a phone call, while pledging to safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core, China’s state media reported. Mr. Putin told the Chinese leader he was prepared for talks with Ukraine based on “signals just received from Kyiv,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call.
For weeks, China’s foreign-policy establishment dismissed a steady stream of warnings from the U.S. and its European allies about a pending Russian invasion, and instead blamed Washington for hyping the Russian threats.
Now, China is trying to regain its balance after making a calculation that could seriously undermine a position it has tried to build for itself as a global leader and advocate for developing nations.
As late as this week, with signs looming of an impending invasion, when a well-connected foreign-policy scholar in China gave a talk to a group of worried Chinese investors and analysts, he titled the speech “A War That Won’t Happen.”
“We see little chance of Russia unilaterally declaring war on Ukraine,” Shen Yi, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s Fudan University who advises the government, said at the Tuesday teleconference held by a securities firm, according to people who dialed into the call.
Less than 48 hours later, Mr. Putin launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine...
Actually, this wouldn't fit in the headline:
Brandon shared secret intelligence with China to prove Russia was about to invade. China showed how much it Feared and Respected Brandon by immediately giving that US intelligence to Russia.
America is Back, baby...
WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.
Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.
The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.
This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.
China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.
But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.
In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.
Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.
The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.
In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.
On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”
“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”
She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists...
I watched Biden's speech and press conference live this morning. He looked sharp, actually. Seemed fired up and outraged by Russia's invasion and he announced some serious motherfucking sanctions. The U.S. is going hit Russian financial institutions hard, basically shutting down four major banks controlling $100s of billions dollars, and going directly after the assets of Vladimir Putin's billionaire oligarch stooges.
There's still much economic damage the U.S. can inflict. On the military side, the Pentagon's announced it's sending 7,000 U.S. service personnel to Europe, to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.
There's so much on the line and the news coverage is voluminous and literally impossible to read and view it all. I'll have updates through the night.
WASHINGTON—President Biden promised to make Russian President Vladimir Putin an international pariah as he announced a wave of new sanctions intended to cripple Russia’s economy, military and elites, the latest effort to punish Moscow for launching a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war and now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Mr. Biden said during a speech at the White House on Thursday.
The president said the coming sanctions would stunt Russia’s military growth, limit the country’s ability to compete on the world stage and put restrictions on its largest state-owned enterprises. The Treasury Department said the actions target 80% of all banking assets in Russia and limit the country’s access to the global financial system.
Taken together, the sanctions announced by the Biden administration this week are unprecedented in their scope and impact on Russia’s post-Soviet relations with the West. Moscow’s markets are signaling the scale of the potential impact on Russia’s economy. Since Western nations began warning three months ago that they would respond with a tough sanctions package, the Moscow Exchange has lost 50% of its value and the ruble depreciated by 20%.
Senior Biden administration officials have said the threat of sanctions was intended in part to deter Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine. But the Russian leader attacked the country anyway. Mr. Biden said it would take time for Moscow to feel the effects of the financial penalties. ”Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working,” he said.
Thursday’s announcement, which Mr. Biden said was coordinated with the Group of Seven countries, came after lawmakers of both political parties called on the U.S. president to come down on Mr. Putin with the full suite of sanctions at the government’s disposal.
Among the targets of the new sanctions: Russia’s first- and second-largest financial institutions, Sberbank and VTB. The package sanctions additional Russian elites and their families, and places new restrictions on exports to Russia of technological goods used in the country’s defense, maritime and aerospace sectors.
The restrictions on goods destined for Russia, which took effect Thursday, apply to technology such as semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, information security equipment, lasers and sensors. They cover items produced in the U.S., as well as foreign items made using U.S. equipment, software and blueprints, the Treasury Department said in a statement. U.S. officials said they are also restricting exports to 49 additional Russian military entities, placing them on a blacklist.
The administration expanded its bans on trade of new government debt, adding short-term securities and new equity of 11 Russian state-owned companies and two major privately owned firms in the financial services sector. Those include the natural-gas behemoth Gazprom; Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest maritime and freight shipping company; plus its biggest telecoms firm and the No. 1 power company.
“We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize a long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies,” Mr. Biden said.
The administration also announced sanctions on 24 Belarusian individuals and entities, including two state-owned banks and nine defense firms, for supporting the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Biden said in his remarks that any country that helped Russia would be “stained by association.”
The new effort doesn’t take steps to disconnect Russia from the Swift global payment system, a move that policy makers said could be a significant blow to Moscow.
“The sanctions that we have imposed on all their banks are of equal consequence, maybe more consequence, than Swift, No. 1,” Mr. Biden said. “No. 2, it is always an option, but right now that is not the position that the rest of Europe wants to take.”
The blacklisting won’t hit Russia as hard, nor cause the collateral damage to Europe or the world economy that cutting off the world’s 12th-largest economy—and a top oil exporter—from the global-payments system would wreak, say economists and former U.S. officials.
Top officials in Ukraine and countries along the European Union’s border with Russia, as well as U.S. lawmakers from both parties, called for Moscow to be disconnected from the Swift system. Some U.S. lawmakers have privately pressed the White House on the issue, according to people familiar with the matter.
Removing an economy of the size and geopolitical importance of Russia’s from Swift would be an unprecedented sanction by Western allies—one that would eliminate Russia’s ability, at first, to conduct basic commerce with the outside world. But opponents say such a move could help build up workarounds to circumvent the global American-led financial order.
The Swift option is a bludgeon in the economic warcraft arsenal, compared with targeted sanctions, which provide precision and diplomatic flexibility for policy makers. The West has much better control of the flow of international finance and can raise or lower the pressure. Cross-border payments are still possible under the current package, and governments could carve out exemptions.
Mr. Biden suggested on Thursday that he is weighing additional economic penalties. He told reporters that he would consider sanctioning Mr. Putin directly...
As certainly everyone now by knows, Russia is now undertaking a full-black military attack on Ukraine. (Headlines at Memorandum.)
Most major Ukrainian cities are being enveloped by rocket fire, artillery shelling, and airstrikes. Casualties have been reported (though not by officialU.S. sources.) That war has broken out now, at this moment, when Russia's Vladimir Putin has had his eyes on taking Kiev (Ukraine's capital) since at least 2014, is no surprise to those who've followed events closely with a realist eye on Moscow's ultimate designs.
This is not a partisan moment.
Presidents, diplomatic, intelligence, and defense officials in both parties are in one way or another implicated in what must be seen as a major failure of U.S. foreign policy, and that too of the institutional/diplomatic/military leaders in Europe, at NATO and the E.U., etc., not to mention presidents and prime ministers in the leading capitals across the continent. For 77 years, the policy of the Western democracies has been to deter a Soviet/Russian war in Western Europe, but here we are.
At the video below, CNN correspondents were reporting live last night (our time) from Ukraine as the first artillery fire hit cities in the east. It's been reported that most all the major population areas are under attack and regime change in the Ukrainian capital city is a real possibility.
The is the first large-scale land war in Europe since 1945. It's a BIG deal with major implications for the United States and the world.
It's actually very sad. Russia and the Ukrainians signed a non-aggression pact in 1994, when the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union's Cold War arsenal. The U.S. then made guarantees to Kiev's protection but it looks now they've been betrayed, by parties all around.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China—Eileen Gu snapped up another gold medal for Team China at the freestyle skiing halfpipe event on Friday, capping off the 18-year-old’s first Olympics with three medals (two golds and a silver) and cementing herself as the belle of the Games in the host country.
She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics. The big air event, in which Gu won a surprise gold, debuted at these Games. Gu earned a silver medal in the slopestyle event earlier this week.
Gu’s performance was so dominant that her final trip down the halfpipe was a de facto victory run, as her 95.00-point second run was the highest in the field by nearly five points. Defending gold medalist Cassie Sharp of Canada attempted a third run with the highest degree of difficulty of any competitor in the field, but fell short, earning 90.75 points—placing her in silver medal position. Rachael Karker, also of Canada, took bronze with a 87.75-point run.
Of all the medals Gu won in Beijing, her gold on Friday was the most expected. Across five competitions during the 2021-22 season, Gu was undefeated in the event. She made her victory on Friday all but a foregone conclusion with a solid first run that scored 93.25 and vaulted her to the top of the standings.
When it came time to climb the podium, she did so wearing an Anta-branded panda hat, a nod to the Beijing Olympics’ pudgy panda mascot Bing Dwen Dwen.
“I have an Olympics panda hat. This is the coolest thing ever,” Gu said, pointing to the Bing Dwen Dwen mascot sewn on the left side of her hat. “Bing Dwen Dwen is very hard to get now so I want to wear it and show off,” she said in Mandarin.
The skiing supernova spent nearly an hour walking through the mixed zone to take questions from broadcast and print media. Looking back at her two-week Olympic run fraught with both plaudits and controversies, Gu said: “These few weeks have been emotionally the highest I have ever been and the lowest I have ever been.”
“At the end of the day, I feel very proud, and feel very grateful for the people who have supported me. And for the people who don’t support me, I’ve actually genuinely made peace with it. I’ve dismissed it,” she said.
“My motto is now if they don’t think I’m doing good in the world, then they can go do better,” she added.
Though the score from her first run was high enough to win the competition, Gu improved upon her margin on the second run. She laid down a more difficult final trick involving twists on two different axes and put up 95.25 points. It was the third-highest score she has posted this season, having put up 97.50 points at a World Cup event in California in January.
“She’s competing against herself now,” said the announcer at the Genting Snow Park, as Gu readied for her second run. Starting last in a field of 12 women, her score from the first run topped the field even after the other 11 women had completed two trips down the pipe.
After Sharp failed to top Gu’s score during her third run, despite landing a combination of tricks that no other woman in the field attempted, Gu just needed to wait for two more skiers to throw down. Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru, bronze medalist in the women’s slopestyle competition earlier in the week, scored 85 points; Karker fell.
With a gold medal assured, Gu appeared visibly emotional ahead of her third and final run. She slid down the halfpipe with a few effortless tricks, appearing to have fun by posing with her poles between spread legs after catching big air and whizzing to the bottom to a euphoric home crowd.
Seems like Putin's going to get just about everything he wants. He's in the driver's seat for sure. Declaring "independence" of Donetsk and Luhansk is a prelude to reincorporating these areas into the Russian Federation, just like swiping the Crimea was in 2014.
Am I right about this? Who the fuck knows?
I was talking with a buddy the other day, before the latest round of chest-thumping, nuclear-military demonstrations, and mentioned Putin's most likely to destabilize Kiev with targeted assassinations, including the murder of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. While that Foreign Policy piece was way more detailed than my conjectures, I'm not surprised the intelligence community came up with that angle. While a massive ground "incursion" --- the hip term for the media's CNN-Democrat-MSNBC nightly news psyops --- it's unlikely at this point. Modern warfare is waged on a multilevel cyber-disinfo-techno grid (so it's complicated), and don't forget Russian propaganda, the oldest disinformation technique in the book, and Moscow's psychological warfare spooks are the world's best.
In any case, a full-on invasion of Ukraine's going to take more than 150,000 troops. Putin needs to go in like the U.S. in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, in Operation Desert Storm of January 17th of that year. It took the Pentagon six-months to get enough troops on the ground. Putin seems to be assembling a massive Russian Army of the Donbas. If he goes in big, like the U.S. in the Gulf, he'll need at least 35-40 divisions, perhaps more. That'll take a long time to organize, equip, and establish an experienced officer corps.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of Russian troops to two breakaway regions of Ukraine after recognizing their independence, a move that threatened to scuttle negotiations with the West over the future security of Eastern Europe.
His two decrees were published on the Russian government’s legal portal after the conclusion of Mr. Putin’s televised address late on Monday. In it he went through a litany of grievances about the West’s support of Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Western arms deliveries to Kyiv against the backdrop of a massive Russian troop build-up near its borders.
Mr. Putin said Russian forces would act in a peacekeeping role once Russia has signed mutual assistance with the two regions.
“The situation in Donbas is becoming critical,” Mr. Putin said before launching into a lengthy examination of the relationship between the two countries and the Donbas region, where the two breakaway regions are located. “Ukraine is not just a neighbor. It is an inherent part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said.
Before the address, Mr. Putin called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and told them of his decision, the Kremlin said in a statement. The European leaders expressed their disappointment with this development, but indicated their readiness to continue contacts, the Kremlin said.
The decision to recognize the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk came as Kyiv, Ukraine, asked the United Nations Security Council for an urgent meeting to tackle the threat of a Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he made the request Monday after a substantial escalation in military activity between Russian-backed forces and Kyiv government troops.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would also announce additional measures in response to “today’s blatant violation of Russia’s international commitments.” She said those moves would be in addition to economic measures the U.S. has been preparing with allies should Russia invade Ukraine.
In a statement Monday evening, the European Union’s top officials called the step by Mr. Putin “a blatant violation of international law.”
They said the EU “will react with sanctions against those involved in this illegal act.” No further details were provided.
Tensions have been steadily rising across the region, despite signs that diplomatic initiatives had been making tentative progress.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a meeting with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, this week in Europe that could lead to a summit between Messrs. Biden and Putin. On Sunday, in a move brokered in part by Mr. Macron, Mr. Biden agreed in principle to meet the Kremlin leader, provided that Russia pulls back from a potential attack on Ukraine.
Deciding to recognize the two territories in Donbas would likely grant the Kremlin greater sway over these regions, already proxies of Moscow, and hand Mr. Putin an additional trump card in negotiations in his current standoff with the West over the long-term security of Eastern Europe.
A White House official said Monday that President Biden was meeting with his national security team at the White House and was getting regular briefings on the situation with Russia and Ukraine. A White House official said Mr. Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and is also speaking with Messrs. Macron and Scholz.
In response to Mr. Putin’s announcement that he will recognize breakaway regions in Ukraine, the White House said Mr. Biden will issue an executive order that will “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons’’ in those areas.
The White House said the order will also “provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine.” It’s unclear when the order will be issued.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he made the request Monday after a substantial escalation in military activity between Russian-backed forces and Kyiv government troops.
Deciding to recognize the two territories in Donbas would likely grant the Kremlin greater sway over these regions, already proxies of Moscow, and hand Mr. Putin an additional trump card in negotiations in his current standoff with the West over the long-term security of Eastern Europe.
A White House official said Monday that President Biden was meeting with his national security team at the White House and was getting regular briefings on the situation with Russia and Ukraine. A White House official said Mr. Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and is also speaking with Messrs. Macron and Scholz.
In response to Mr. Putin’s announcement that he will recognize breakaway regions in Ukraine, the White House said Mr. Biden will issue an executive order that will “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons’’ in those areas.
The White House said the order will also “provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine.” It’s unclear when the order will be issued.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would also announce additional measures in response to “today’s blatant violation of Russia’s international commitments.” She said those moves would be in addition to economic measures the U.S. has been preparing with allies should Russia invade Ukraine.
In a statement Monday evening, the European Union’s top officials called the step by Mr. Putin “a blatant violation of international law.”
They said the EU “will react with sanctions against those involved in this illegal act.” No further details were provided.
Tensions have been steadily rising across the region, despite signs that diplomatic initiatives had been making tentative progress.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a meeting with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, this week in Europe that could lead to a summit between Messrs. Biden and Putin. On Sunday, in a move brokered in part by Mr. Macron, Mr. Biden agreed in principle to meet the Kremlin leader, provided that Russia pulls back from a potential attack on Ukraine.
On Monday, Mr. Putin appeared to make the case for invading Russia’s smaller neighbor, describing Ukraine as a tool being used by the West for confrontation with Russia that “poses a very large threat” to the country, he said.
Mr. Putin also accused Ukraine of taking a hostile stance toward Russian-controlled areas of Donbas and said the government in Kyiv wasn’t willing to implement the Minsk cease-fire agreement signed after Ukrainian forces were routed in Donbas in 2015. Ukraine has rejected Moscow’s interpretation of the deal, which it says provides Russia’s proxies in the region a veto over any attempt to align Ukraine more closely with the West.
The Russian leader also repeated his objections to Ukraine being allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, saying that Kyiv would use it as an opportunity to forcibly try to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
“If Russia faces such a threat as the admission of Ukraine to NATO, then the threats to our country will increase,” he said...
You got me why Ukraine's going to the Security Council --- where Russia has the veto and hence no major collective action agreement on sanctions or the authorization of military force can be enacted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.
I don't know. Maybe the Ukrainians just want to foment some international drama and urgency, for without Russia's vote, the Security Council can't do jack.
Xi Jinping is a man on a mission. After coming to power in late 2012, he moved rapidly to consolidate his political authority, purge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of rampant corruption, sideline his enemies, tame China’s once highflying technology and financial conglomerates, crush internal dissent, and forcefully assert China’s influence on the international stage. In the name of protecting China’s “core interests,” Xi has picked fights with many of his neighbors and antagonized countries farther away—especially the United States. Whereas his immediate predecessors believed China must continue to bide its time by overseeing rapid economic growth and the steady expansion of China’s influence through tactical integration into the existing global order, Xi is impatient with the status quo, possesses a high tolerance for risk, and seems to feel a pronounced sense of urgency in challenging the international order.
Why is he in such a rush? Most observers have settled on one of two diametrically opposite hypotheses. The first holds that Xi is driving a wide range of policy initiatives aimed at nothing less than the remaking of the global order on terms favorable to the CCP. The other view asserts that he is the anxious overseer of a creaky and outdated Leninist political system that is struggling to keep its grip on power. Both narratives contain elements of truth, but neither satisfactorily explains the source of Xi’s sense of urgency.
A more accurate explanation is that Xi’s calculations are determined not by his aspirations or fears but by his timeline. Put simply, Xi has consolidated so much power and upset the status quo with such force because he sees a narrow window of ten to 15 years during which Beijing can take advantage of a set of important technological and geopolitical transformations, which will also help it overcome significant internal challenges. Xi sees the convergence of strong demographic headwinds, a structural economic slowdown, rapid advances in digital technologies, and a perceived shift in the global balance of power away from the United States as what he has called “profound changes unseen in a century,” demanding a bold set of immediate responses.
By narrowing his vision to the coming ten to 15 years, Xi has instilled a sense of focus and determination in the Chinese political system that may well enable China to overcome long-standing domestic challenges and achieve a new level of global centrality. If Xi succeeds, China will position itself as an architect of an emerging era of multipolarity, its economy will escape the so-called middle-income trap, and the technological capabilities of its manufacturing sector and military will rival those of more developed countries. Yet ambition and execution are not the same thing, and Xi has now placed China on a risky trajectory, one that threatens the achievements his predecessors secured in the post-Mao era. His belief that the CCP must guide the economy and that Beijing should rein in the private sector will constrain the country’s future economic growth. His demand that party cadres adhere to ideological orthodoxy and demonstrate personal loyalty to him will undermine the governance system’s flexibility and competency. His emphasis on an expansive definition of national security will steer the country in a more inward and paranoid direction. His unleashing of “Wolf Warrior” nationalism will produce a more aggressive and isolated China. Finally, Xi’s increasingly singular position within China’s political system will forestall policy alternatives and course corrections, a problem made worse by his removal of term limits and the prospect of his indefinite rule.
Xi believes he can mold China’s future as did the emperors of the country’s storied past. He mistakes this hubris for confidence—and no one dares tell him otherwise. An environment in which an all-powerful leader with a single-minded focus cannot hear uncomfortable truths is a recipe for disaster, as China’s modern history has demonstrated all too well...
Actually, they're not racist. They're funny, but she's a conservative and if you're conservative you can't say shit like that and keep your job. This country's fucked.
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