Few Ukrainians Thought Vladimir Putin Would Would Launch Full-Scale Invasion

At the editors' note appended to the top of this article: "On February 24, six hours after this article was filed, Russia began an all-out attack on Ukraine."

It's Tim Judah, at the New York Review of Books, "Ukraine on the Brink":

It is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm.

People in Kharkiv may not believe much in a Russian attack, but by the time you read this it may have begun. When I started writing it in the Half an Hour café in Kharkiv, there was news that the puppet regime in separatist-controlled Donetsk was evacuating the population, which sounded like a prelude to war. By the time I finished it, Russian troops were reported to be arriving there. Meanwhile they were playing Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” in the café, which was full of earnest young people poring over their laptops or relaxing.

In my experience it is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm that will change your life forever—or kill you.

In 2014 I was invited to a Passover Seder by the Donetsk Jewish community. During the dinner the rabbi said unexpectedly, “We have a foreign guest, he can make a speech!” I said that “Next Year in Jerusalem” was all well and good but there were separatists constructing checkpoints on the highway into the city, so “Next year in Donetsk” might be more apt. “Nah,” they said, “it will all be fine!” A few weeks later they probably all fled. It was the same in Bosnia and Herzegovina just before the war in 1992. People said that since everyone knew that tens of thousands would die, there would be no war.

I met a teacher who told me that she veers between panic and shrugging it all off. In January Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russians might try to occupy Kharkiv, which alarmed people here. President Joe Biden was said to have told Zelensky a few days later to “prepare for impact,” though that was later denied. But then you think about it rationally, which of course Putin may not be doing, and you wonder how he could hope to seize a city of some 1.5 million people, let alone much of the rest of Ukraine.

In Kharkiv’s history museum there is a section devoted to World War II. Battles here were as bloody and devastating as anywhere in Europe. Millions of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death. Then something caught my eye: a panel explained that by the time the Red Army expelled the Germans from Soviet Ukraine in 1944, it numbered 2.3 million men. Putin has amassed anywhere between 150,000 and 190,000 on Ukraine’s borders, we are told, not all of whom of course will actually fight. Some are quartermasters, mechanics, and cooks. One of the videos circulating on social media, also allegedly from Belgorod, showed army mobile kitchens—identifiable by the chimneys poking out from under their tarpaulins—flowing past in a convoy.

In Lviv, in western Ukraine, I saw Ukrainian soldiers practicing with new antitank missiles that the British had given them. Some commentators scoffed that, in the face of overwhelming Russian military might, these were symbolic. Oh no, said the Ukrainian soldiers, these were great for the 200-400-meter range, which they did not possess, and were especially suited for urban warfare. When he talks about Ukraine, it is clear that Putin believes many Russian myths and has outdated views about its people. He published a long essay last year on the “historical unity” of Ukrainians and Russians. But what he and even many liberal, intellectual Russians may not appreciate is that Ukraine is not the same place it was when Mikhail Bulgakov grew up in Kyiv at the beginning of the last century. It is not the same place it was at independence in 1991 or at the time of the Orange Revolution in 2004, nor is it the same country that was wracked by revolution and war in 2014.

In Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and finally Kyiv, something struck me for the first time after many years of coming here: their post-Soviet feel has finally been cast off. That is not the case in smaller Ukrainian towns, but for the first time these big cities feel like anywhere else in Europe.

Unlike Russians, Ukrainians have not needed visas to visit Europe’s twenty-six-country Schengen area since 2017, and thanks to cheap flights millions have done so. Most young Ukrainians, who have no memory of the Soviet era (for which you need to be close to forty), are now just like other Europeans. They are no longer people from Russia’s periphery who mentally, culturally, and socially orbit Moscow. I can imagine that older Russians like Putin, if he knows this, must hate it. It relates directly to the wise maxim of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” As the links that have bound Russia and Ukraine for centuries slowly snap with every passing year, no wonder Putin is worried and thinks this is his last chance to suborn and subordinate.

And Putin’s war since 2014 has made a big difference here. There are no longer direct flights or trains between the two countries. At Hoptivka, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Trubachev of Ukraine’s Border Guard Service told me that before 2014 some 25,000 people crossed there every day. Now that figure is 2,500, and even if you discount the effect of Covid it is symbolic of the frayed ties. While I was there a two-mile line of trucks was waiting to enter Russia. A driver told me they had been there for perhaps three days, and it was the same to enter Ukraine. There is no logical reason for this, but as Taras Danko, a professor of international business in Kharkiv, noted tartly, “You need the cooperation of the border authorities and for that you need the cooperation between states, not talk of one state invading another.”... 

Keep reading.

 

New U.S. Containment Policy Against the Soviet Union Russia

I don't think most people realize, especially the weird right-wingers siding with Russia over Ukraine (something I haven't completely figured out, except for maybe Tucker Carlson?), that it's a new era. Big time.

NATO's never before authorized armed mobilization under the NATO Charter's Article V, which calls for "collective defense" in the event of a military attack against any NATO member. If there's an attack, each other NATO member is committed to providing mutual aid to any other member state of the alliance. There are 30 members, but without the U.S. it's pretty weak. 

The fighting in Ukraine, its initiation and its conclusion, will either dramatically shift the world balance of power or dramatically alter the perceptions of the world balance of power, regardless of the material qualitative/quantitative indices of national capabilities. 

The U.S. already looks weak after basically 20 years of unsuccessful wars, with the punctuation mark being the Biden administration's debacle in Afghanistan last summer. My sense, in the short term, is that China will quickly pocket whatever relative gains there may be. It's not a combatant, for one thing. Russia's now a total client state to Beijing. And the U.S. will be seen for clumsy, noncommittal strategic restraint. If Ukraine can't hold out, the U.S. will once again look the weaker, nothing like we were after World War II, when only the Soviets could claim to be a peer rival. 

No matter what happens, current events show how much things have change. The post-WWII international order is collapsing, or has already collapsed.

To even mention "containment" in the same breath sounds strange. During the Cold War, the U.S. was fully ready to back up its deterrence posture with hard force, anywhere in the world, and especially with our strategic nuclear weapons.

In any case, at the New York Times, "Biden Targets Russia With Strategy of Containment, Updated for a New Era":

WASHINGTON — More than 75 years ago, faced with a Soviet Union that clearly wanted to take over states beyond its borders, the United States adopted a Cold War approach that came to be known as “containment,” a simplistic-sounding term that evolved into a complex Cold War strategy.

On Thursday, having awakened to a violent, unprovoked attack on Ukraine, exactly the kind of nightmare imagined eight decades before, President Biden made clear he was moving toward Containment 2.0. Though it sounds a lot like its predecessor, it will have to be revised for a modern era that is in many ways more complex.

The nation that just moved “to wipe an entire country off the world map,” in the words of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, also remains a key supplier of natural gas to keep Germans and many other Europeans warm. That explains why Mr. Biden has been constrained from cutting off the valuable export. And the Russia of today has a panoply of cyberweapons that it can use to strike at the United States or its allies without risking nuclear Armageddon — an option to retaliate against American sanctions that was never available to President Vladimir V. Putin’s predecessors.

Those are only two examples of why containment will not be easy. But Mr. Biden has been clear that is where he is headed.

For three decades, American presidents described a series of Soviet and Russian leaders as “businesslike” or even “partners.” They celebrated “glasnost” and ushered Moscow into the World Trade Organization and the Group of 7 industrial nations. Washington even entertained the idea in the 1990s — very briefly — that one day Russia could join NATO. No one has talked that way in years. But Mr. Biden, who came to office last year talking about establishing a “stable, predictable” relationship with Moscow, spoke of a completely ruptured relationship on Thursday.

“Now the entire world sees clearly what Putin and his Kremlin allies are really all about,” Mr. Biden said in a speech from the White House. “This was never about genuine security concerns on their part. It was always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary, by bullying Russia’s neighbors through coercion and corruption.”

He vowed to make Russia pay “dearly, economically and strategically,” and to make Mr. Putin a “pariah on the international stage.” Those words might have even been familiar to George F. Kennan, the American foreign service officer who became famous as the grand strategist who invented containment, though he later warned, at age 94, that expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was a bad idea, bound to become “the beginning of a new Cold War.”

The “containment” Mr. Kennan described in his famous “Long Telegram,” an 8,000-word dispatch from the American embassy in Moscow, was primarily aimed at putting geographical limits on Soviet ambitions. But even though the Long Telegram was long, it spent the most time explaining the psychology of Stalin’s regime, which Mr. Kennan described as paranoid, viewing the outside world to be “evil, hostile and menacing.”

The similarities to Mr. Putin’s speech on Monday night, in which he accused Ukraine of triggering genocides and seeking nuclear weapons — both false claims — and the United States of seeking to use Ukrainian territory to strike at Moscow, are striking. So was his description of America’s “empire of lies.”

But as Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Thursday, “It’s much more complicated to make containment work today.”

The Soviet Union largely presented a military and ideological challenge, he noted. Yet modern-day Russia is a provider of needed fuel and minerals, “and that gives them leverage over us, even as we have leverage over them.” The force of that leverage was made clear from Mr. Biden’s answer to a question on Thursday about why Russia had not been thrown out of SWIFT, the global communication system for financial transactions.

Barring Russia from that system would be a devastating move, cutting off its government from oil and gas revenue. That accounts for about 40 percent of its incoming cash and would be the one sanction almost certain to hurt Mr. Putin like no other.

But Mr. Biden noted in his speech that “in our sanctions package, we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.” When asked about barring Russia from SWIFT, he added, delicately, “Right now, that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.” In fact, the debate over SWIFT has been a source of tense behind-the-scenes exchanges, chiefly with Germany. The German objection is clear: If the country cannot pay for its gas, Russia will not deliver it.

But the second reason containment may not work is that Russia has a new, if not very enthusiastic, partner in standing up to the West: China...

Keep reading.

 

Vladimir Putin's Trifecta

From Allahpundit, at Hot Air, "Is Putin trapped?":

His [Putin's] decision to attack Ukraine is frequently described as a “gamble” but consider how much of a gamble it is. He didn’t merely place a huge bet, he bet on a trifecta. First, that Russia could take Ukraine quickly without much blood spilling. Second, that Zelensky would go wobbly and Ukrainian resolve would break, clearing the way for a puppet ruler to be installed without much resistance. And third, that the west would be too weak and divided to impose painful sanctions on Russia at a moment of high inflation, knowing how westerners will end up sharing that economic pain.

That first bet is still winnable, I suppose, but each day that passes makes it less likely. “We have indications that the Russians are increasingly frustrated by their lack of momentum over the last 24 hours, particularly in the north parts of Ukraine,” a senior defense official told Fox News. “We also continue to see indications of viable Ukrainian resistance.” A British defense minister claimed last night that Russian battle plans are way off schedule. Ukrainian air defenses are reportedly still operating despite Russia’s best efforts to eliminate them...

A good post. More here.

Ukraine Soldier's Viral Tweet on Russian Invasion: 'We've got everything. Your ass is ours, fellows!' (VIDEO)

Except for those fleeing the country (for good reason), Ukrainians are very upbeat. Yesterday morning it was all gloom and doom on the telly, but today it's looking like a long grind --- and the more we see of Russian forces, the less formidable they look. 

Added subtitles.

Translation by @joelreymont and @SandiResistz . pic.twitter.com/dYhwu8DshA

— Peedu Tuisk (@peedutuisk) February 25, 2022

Ukraine's Reckless Blunder

This is the hardest, most brutally honest piece I've read on the conflict thus far, "Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble":

Russian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?

Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.

While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.

That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining.

Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States....

What kind of strategy dictates that a state hand over its security vis-a-vis local actors to a country [the United States] half the world away? No strategy at all. Ukraine was not able to transcend its natural geography as a buffer state—and worse, a buffer state that failed to take its own existence seriously, which meant that it would continue to make disastrously bad bets. In 2013, the European Union offered Kyiv a trade deal, which many misunderstood as a likely prelude to EU membership. Young Ukrainians very much want to join the EU, because they want access to Europe so they can flee Ukraine, which remains one of the poorest countries on the continent.

The trade deal was an ill-conceived EU project to take a shot at Putin with what seemed like little risk. The idea was to flood the Ukrainian market, and therefore also the Russian market, with European goods, which would have harmed the Russian economy—leading, the architects of this plan imagined, to popular discontent that would force Putin himself from office. Putin understandably saw this stratagem as a threat to his country’s stability and his personal safety, so he gave Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych an ultimatum: either reject the deal and accept Moscow’s $15 billion aid package in its place, or else suffer crippling economic measures.

When Yanukovych duly reneged on the EU deal, the Obama administration helped organize street demonstrations for what became history’s most tech-savvy and PR-driven regime change operation, marketed to the global public variously as Maidan, EuroMaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, etc. In February 2014, the protests forced Yanukovych into exile in Moscow. Consequently, Nuland and other Obama administration officials worked to assemble a new Ukrainian government friendly to the United States and therefore hostile to Russia.

In late February, the Russians responded to the American soft coup in Ukraine by invading Crimea and eventually annexing it and creating chaos in Eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration declined to arm the Ukrainian government. It was right to avoid conflict with Moscow, though by leaving Kyiv defenseless, it showed that the White House had never fully gamed out all the possible scenarios that might ensue from setting a client state on course for conflict with a great power. Instead, Obama and the Europeans highlighted their deadly miscalculation by imposing sanctions on Moscow for taking advantage of the conditions that Obama and the Europeans had created.

The White House seems to have taken a perverse pride in the death and destruction it helped incite in Eastern Europe. In April 2014, CIA Director John Brennan visited Kyiv, appearing to confirm the agency’s role in the coup. Shortly after came Vice President Biden, who took his own victory lap and counseled the Ukrainians to root out corruption. Naturally, a prominent Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, which was then under investigation for corruption, hired Biden’s son Hunter for protection.

By tying itself to an American administration that had shown itself to be reckless and dangerous, the Ukrainians made a geopolitical blunder that statesmen will study for years to come: A buffer state had staked its future on a distant power that had simply seen it as an instrument to annoy its powerful neighbor with no attachment to any larger strategic concept that it was willing to support. Russia then lopped off half of the Donbas region on its border and subjected Ukraine to a grinding, eight-year-long war, intended in large part to underline Russian capacity and Ukrainian and American impotence.

Ukraine then made a bad situation even worse. When the same people who had left them prey to Putin asked them to take sides in an American domestic political conflict, the Ukrainians enthusiastically signed on—instead of running hard in the opposite direction. In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign came calling on Ukrainian officials and activists to lend some Slavic authenticity to its Russia collusion narrative targeting Donald Trump. Indeed, Russiagate’s central storyline was about Ukraine. Yes, Trump had supposedly been compromised by a sex tape filmed in Moscow, but Putin’s ostensible reason for helping Trump win the presidency was to get him to drop Ukraine-related sanctions. Here was another chance for Ukraine to stick it to Putin, and gain favor with what it imagined would be the winning party in the American election.

With the CIA’s Brennan and a host of senior FBI and DOJ officials pushing Russiagate into the press—and running an illegal espionage campaign against the Trump team—Ukrainian political figures gladly joined in. Key participants included Kyiv’s ambassador to Washington, who wrote a Trump-Russia piece for the U.S. press, and a member of the Ukrainian parliament who allegedly contributed to the dossier. The collusion narrative was also augmented by Ukrainian American operatives, like Alexandra Chalupa, who was tied into the Democratic Party’s NGO complex. The idea that this game might have consequences for Ukraine’s relations with its more powerful neighbor doesn’t seem to have entered the heads of either the feckless Ukrainians or the American political operatives who cynically used them...

RTWT.

 

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands

At Amazon, Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

Ukraine's Leader Zelensky Is 'Target Number One' for Putin

After watching the news most of the day, and of course posting most of the articles I've been reading, it's difficult for me to determine how long Kiev can hold out, and especially what's to happen to President Zelensky and his government should they be captured. That's the most intense thing to me. Putin is said to despise Zelensky and it looks like he's made "decapitating" the Ukrainian regime an obsession, in more ways than one. 

The battle for the capitol is on, right now. It's a life and death situation unfolding in real time, live on cable news. I have many thoughts 

But for now, at the Wall Street Journal, "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine aims to overthrow the leadership in Kyiv, but President Volodymyr Zelensky remains defiant":

On Friday, as Russian troops closed in on Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video of himself in the heart of the capital city, dressed in fatigues.

“The president is here. We are all here. Our troops are here,” he said, surrounded by his top aides. “We are defending our independence, our state, and that will continue.”

The Ukrainian leader says that Russian forces pushing toward Kyiv have placed a target on his back. Russia has made clear that the aim of its attack—the biggest invasion of a European country in over half a century—is to remove Ukraine’s government and install a leadership more friendly to Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the Ukrainian army Friday to overthrow its political leaders, whom he called “terrorists,” and cut a deal with Moscow—an unlikely scenario as even Mr. Zelensky’s critics and political rivals have rallied to Ukraine’s defense.

Advisers to Mr. Zelensky said they are concerned Russian sabotage groups could try to infiltrate the government district in Kyiv and attempt to assassinate the 44-year-old. Security forces are deployed around government buildings in full battle dress.

In a video call with European Union leaders late Thursday, Mr. Zelensky drove home the personal stakes.

“This may be the last time you see me alive,” he told the leaders, according to two European officials familiar with his comments.

Russian disinformation campaigns have tried to sow the impression since Thursday that Mr. Zelensky had fled his capital city.

A person with the president said that he is in good spirits and determined to remain in Kyiv.

Russian disinformation campaigns have tried to sow the impression since Thursday that Mr. Zelensky had fled his capital city.

“The president is ready to die, but will stay,” the person said.

“The enemy has marked me as target number one, my family as target number two,” Mr. Zelensky told Ukrainians in a televised address in the small hours of Friday morning. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of the state.”

His voice echoed off the walls of a media-briefing room devoid of journalists because of increased security measures around him.

On Friday, Ukraine’s army was putting up a stern resistance to the Russian invasion, slowing its progress. Mr. Zelensky switched from a suit to a khaki T-shirt and delivered calm but firm speeches from behind a lectern at the presidential administration building in central Kyiv.

Mr. Zelensky went from political novice to president after winning a landslide victory in a 2019 election on a peace ticket, pledging to end the low-level war festering in Ukraine’s east since Russia carved out two breakaway statelets there in 2014.

In the past 48 hours, he has transformed again into wartime leader at the top of Moscow’s kill-or-capture list, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

Mr. Zelensky rose to popularity as a stand-up comic and actor in a sitcom on which he portrayed a schoolteacher turned president. Now, Ukraine’s president is using his characteristic raspy voice not to raise laughs but to lash Russia, rally Ukrainians and exhort world leaders to help Ukraine and levy tougher sanctions on Moscow.

“We aren’t afraid of anything,” he said early Friday. “We aren’t afraid to defend our country. We aren’t afraid of Russia.”

Mr. Zelensky’s firmness is winning him praise even among former critics.

“President Volodymyr Zelensky has made many really bad mistakes, and I’m sure will make many more, but today he’s showing himself worthy of the nation he’s leading,” Olga Rudenko, chief editor of the Kyiv Independent news website, wrote on Twitter on Friday...

Keep reading.

Joe Biden's Failure in Ukraine

Pamela Geller features the Epoch Times, "Washington’s Policy Failure in Ukraine":

The Biden administration seems to have thought it could scare the Russians away from Ukraine, so refused, on principle, to negotiate. The Russians weren’t scared off, and we and our allies (not to mention the Ukrainians) are without much of a policy.

A superpower shouldn’t make threats that won’t be backed up. The United States and NATO—who don’t agree on very much—do agree that no one will use military force to defend Ukraine. That means all the threats are economic and political.

This is necessary, because America’s ability to defend Eastern Europe militarily is, to say the least, questionable. We have few ground forces, no in-depth defenses against Russian missiles and rockets, and little assurance that NATO can fight even if it chooses to. The expansion of NATO in the 1990s came when most of our allies had disarmed as part of the “peace dividend” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The United States did some serious disarming as well, and the result is that no NATO member outside of the United States can really defend its own territory, let alone someone else’s. And keep in mind that Ukraine isn’t a NATO member.

In addition, U.S. forces are weaker today because of long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, throwing away trillions of dollars and leaving a lot of our forces unable to be summoned to a fight. Readiness levels remain appallingly poor despite some improvements during the prior administration. In addition, the Pentagon continues to ignore important defense systems, including tactical and strategic air defenses; we have sent our soldiers to war with no air cover against missile and drone attacks. War stocks, too, which take years to replenish, are at bare minimum levels or below.

Objective conditions leave any U.S. leader with an almost empty military hand.

The right move, the clever move, would have been serious arms control negotiations with Moscow when Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded them. Putin handed the administration a clear opportunity, because it appears the Russians are afraid of NATO. It appears—it may not be true—but if they are afraid of NATO, we could work out deals to protect European security and Russian security, something the Russians not only say they want, but also put their “want” in the form of demands.

The same possibility for negotiations had applied to Ukraine. The Russians argued that the Ukrainians should negotiate the terms provided for by the Minsk Protocols. Washington, however, applied no pressure on Kyiv, although it’s a signatory along with the two Donbas “republics.” The core issue there was limited autonomy for those “republics,” which the Russians have now recognized as independent and to which they have sent “peacekeepers.”

Certainly, it would have been difficult, but Ukraine would have held onto the “republics” and taken away the Russian excuse to threaten Ukrainian independence. But the Ukrainians really were convinced, wrongly, that support from Washington would get them back the lost areas with no compromise and chase the Russians away. Washington should never have been allowed that fantasy.

There’s a reason that Ukraine isn’t in NATO—and that adding it isn’t on the NATO agenda...

 

190,000 Troops Won't Be Enough for Russia to Take and Hold Ukraine

As I wrote earlier, "If he [Putin] goes in big, like the U.S. in the Gulf, he'll need at least 35-40 divisions [say, 475,000 troops], perhaps more."

Geopolitical strategist Edward Luttwak has been hammering this point:

Russians still do not have enough troops to conquer Kiev, Lviv to the west, Odessa to the south and all the way east to the territories long held by the Russians. From there they could advance westwards to conquer the rest of the two regions, but that is it. Sanctions ?Feeble

— Edward N Luttwak (@ELuttwak) February 24, 2022

Lindsey Pelas Bikini Break

We'll be getting back to Ukraine blogging momentarily. Meanwhile, rest your eyes on this woman.

Russia's Invasion Could Unleash Forces the Kremlin Can't Control

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.

And now, at Foreign Affairs, see Douglas London, "The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency":

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...

RTWT.

 

Biden’s Public Approval Tanking as Russia Prepares to Take Kiev

At the Federalist, "Biden’s Approval Sinks Further As Russia-Ukraine Crisis Heightens."

A freakin' 56 percent majority thinks the Biden presidency has been a failure.

The president's at 39 percent approving for his handing of the Ukraine crisis. 

Brutal. 

The full results are here, "NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll: The Biden Administration Heading into the State of the Union Address, February 2022" (via Memeorandum). 

WATCH: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Posts Video Assuring Citizens, 'All of us here are protecting the independence of our country...'

This guy something else. A true wartime leader.

Invasion of Ukraine and the Rise of America's Isolationists

Interesting piece, from Zoe Strimpel, at Bari Weiss's SubStack, "America Is Afraid of War. Putin Knows It":

The problem is not just that the United States has, over the past two decades, waged two unsuccessful wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor is it just that Americans are tired of fighting and don’t care about the former Soviet Union, although there’s some of that. (In a poll just released by the Associated Press, just 26 percent of Americans say the U.S. should play a major role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.) Nor is it just that Joe Biden is a weak president who lacks the energy needed to do battle with the likes of Vladimir Putin. (See, for example, the statement Biden put out shortly after the invasion was announced.)

It’s that the United States seems to have forgotten the point of waging, or threatening to wage, war. Peace is earned through strength. We can’t ask for it. We can’t talk our way into it. We can’t simply impose (or lift) sanctions. We have to achieve it by threatening—credibly—to pummel into oblivion anyone who gets in the way.

There is a reason that Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1901 pronouncement—“Speak softly, and carry a big stick”—has become something of a cliché. It’s because it works.

This used to be understood, or taken for granted, not only in Washington but in London, Paris and every other NATO capital. That is no longer the case—in no small part because both left and right, while moving further apart from each other in almost every other respect, have converged on a shared neo-isolationism. Today, almost no one in any position of authority is willing to make a moral argument for going to war.

If you grew up in the second half of the 20th century, during the Cold War or immediately after, you heard often about America being the world’s policeman. During this time, Britain watched its empire collapse and the American empire, which the Americans never called an empire, rise. America promised to respect freedom, democracy and minority rights, and it backed that up with force: a sprawling conventional army, a vast navy, thousands of fighter jets, a nuclear umbrella that extended across the West.

I felt the safety of this promise keenly as a child in London. Most of my extended family had been decimated by the Third Reich, and the idea of a liberal and humane controlling authority was enormously reassuring.

Of course, America had many faults. There were plenty of Vietnamese who did not regard it as a beacon of freedom. The same was true in large pockets of Latin America and Africa. And it was haunted still by slavery. It had gotten much wrong, at home and overseas.

But still. America was the crown jewel of the West, the culmination of a 2,500-year-old evolution that stretched back to the Athenian polis. It had hurtled human progress forward, created gleaming skylines and world-renowned universities and an American Dream that—amazingly—was open to the entire world. It was an invitation to everyone. At the heart of all this was a new kind of civilization that transcended ancient bloodlines and tribal affiliations. It was rooted in the Enlightenment, and its radical promise—that all men are created equal—offered dignity and hope. It was held together by a democratic tradition, an individualism that was rugged but tempered by a sense of community and duty, and the rule of law.

All of this is blindingly obvious but has become almost embarrassing to say out loud. That’s because we no longer know who we are or why it matters...

RTWT.

 

Putin Taking Long Game on Economic Sanctions

Vladdy's been preparing for Russia to take massive sanctions hits for quite a while.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Russia has spent years preparing for international sanctions":

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 Rethinking Embrace of Putin?

Following up, "'Brandon's Big Plans for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO STOP RUSSIA...'"

Hey, Maybe China is a little scared of the U.S. after all.

At WSJ, "China Adjusts, and Readjusts, Its Embrace of Russia in Ukraine Crisis":

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...

Thing go wrong during wartime, badly wrong. 

Keep reading.

 

'Brandon's Big Plans for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO STOP RUSSIA...'

Heh.

Ace's comments on NYT's burning skull report of the Biden administration pressing Beijing to prevent war in Ukraine.

At AoSHQ,  "America is BACK: Brandon's Big Plan for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO PRESSURE RUSSIA; Instead of Helping Brandon, China Betrayed Him and Told Russia All About His Undignified Groveling":

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...

RTWT. 

Clearly Trump at Fault for Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

This is clever, via Instapundit:

Biden Administration Pressed Beijing to Help Avert War in Ukraine

At the New York Times, "U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine":

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...

More.

 

Majority in U.S. Sees Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Critical Threat

It's not a huge majority, but the survey ran from February 1st to the 17th, ending about a week before Russia's attack on Ukraine.

It's all broken down at Gallup, "U.S. Public Sees Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Critical Threat."

President Biden Announces Harsh New Round of Economic Sanctions Against Russia (VIDEO)

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. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Biden Aims Sanctions at Russian Military, State-Owned Enterprises":

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...

 Keep reading.

War in Ukraine

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 official U.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. 

I'll have more throughout the day. 

Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix

At Amazon, Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills. 

Eileen Gu Is Golden Again at the Beijing Olympics After Win in the Freeski Halfpipe

The "Genocide Olympics" end tonight. Thank God! 

And now Eileen Gu/Gu Ailing's being hailed --- after wining three medals --- as the most successful athlete at the Winter Games. 

I didn't see it, but #EileenGuTraitor might as well have been trending on Twitter.

At WSJ, "She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics":

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.

Remi Lindholm: Finnish Cross-Country Skier Gets Frozen Penis During Race at Winter Olympics

Umm, definitely not optimal. 

Yikes!

At CNN, "Cross-Country Skier Remi Lindholm Suffers Frozen Penis":

Lindholm explained that he used a heat pack to try to thaw out his appendage once the race was over.

Well, that was a hard one! 

Putin Orders Deployment of Troops to Breakaway Regions in Ukraine (VIDEO)

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. 

In any case, at the Wall Street Journal, "Putin earlier recognized their independence, escalating tensions with West":

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. 

Still more.

Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists

At Amazon, Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent.

Xi Jinping's Power Grab

From Jude Blanchette, at Foreign Affairs, "Xi’s Gamble: The Race to Consolidate Power and Stave Off Disaster":

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...

Keep reading.

PHOTO CREDIT: "Xi giving a speech at the U.S. Department of State in 2012, with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Vice-President Joe Biden in the background. Seated in the front row is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger." (Wikipedia.)

Sports Reporter Annie Agar Apologized for Old Racist Tweets

I posted this lady on Super Bowl Sunday. 

A blonde bombshell. 

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.

Here, "NFL Reporter Annie Agar Apologizes For Controversial Tweets."

And on Twitter:

I want to apologize for the insensitive tweets from my past. They were written when I was a teenager and do not reflect who I am today. I have the utmost respect for the athletes and teams I cover. I hope you can forgive teenage me and we can get back to laughing together again. 

Lottie Moss

More of this lovely lady.

She's on Instagram.

Boris Johnson, Under Fire, Apologizes for Pandemic Party (VIDEO)

I meant to post this earlier, at the New York Times, "The British prime minister, on the defensive after a series of ethical lapses, said, “There were things we simply did not get right” about a gathering at Downing Street during a lockdown in 2020."

It's never too late for a Jonathan Pie video, though. He's Tom Walker in real life. I posted him once before and I almost fell down laughing.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, British people have been largely law abiding and civic minded. They followed the stay-at-home orders through three lengthy lockdowns, many losing their jobs, missing birthdays, weddings and even the funerals of their loved ones in the process.

So when evidence began to emerge in late November that the staff at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence and the central office of government, had held a Christmas party during lockdown, people were angry, to say the least. But then, after a steady stream of breaking news made clear it was not one or two but at least 16 parties, several of which Prime Minister Boris Johnson knew about and in some cases apparently attended, that anger transformed into fury. On Thursday, four members of his staff resigned, with one citing his reference to a debunked conspiracy theory while speaking to Parliament as a contributing factor.

To explain exactly why the British are so enraged with Mr. Johnson, who was already infamous for his troubled relationship with the truth, we produced a satirical Opinion Video with Jonathan Pie, a fictional broadcast reporter created and performed on YouTube by the comedian Tom Walker, whose acerbic, satirical monologues have gone viral.

The video contains strong language and adult humor you wouldn’t normally see in The Times, but after being taken for fools, the British public is through being polite.

 

Monday Cartoon

The Trudeau Dictatorship:

San Francisco's Asian-American Political Power

At the New York Post, "Why Asian Americans like me are the rising new parental power."

Britney Spears Scores $15 Million Book Deal with Simon & Schuster.

A tell-all memoir. *Hmm.*

At the New York Post, "Britney Spears set to pen tell-all book in bombshell $15M deal."