The Kremlin, the Crimean Crimean, and the Ukranian Peninsula: Friday, Ukraine is an Integral Part of Russia

Putin annexed Ukrainian territories on Friday, and then declared that they will be part of Russia forever. He is rushing to claim a victory and cement slender gains and sue for peace, running a dangerous political tab, regardless of the fanfare in Moscow.

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

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

President Joe Biden said that Moscow’s actions don’t have any legitimacy and that Washington will honor Ukranian borders. The European Union said it “will never” recognize the Kremlin’s “illegal annexation,” and described the move as a “further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The Kremlin has sought to amplify Putin’s arguments that Russia is at war with the West in a speech on Friday.

He mentioned the British Opium War in China in the 19th century as well as the Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

He claimed that the US was the only one to have used nuclear weapons in war. “By the way, they created a precedent,” Mr. Putin added in an aside.

The large-scale Russian bombardment hit several cities including far reaches of western Ukraine close to NATO, propelling the conflict into a new phase and coming as much of the country was starting to roar back to life.

There are moves being made to provide a veneer of legality for the annexation of parts of eastern and southern Ukranian.

Kyiv and Ukraine are still there a year later. Democracy stands,” he declared, adding, “The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

Friday’s events include a celebration on Red Square. The decree will be officially approved next week, said the spokesman for the Kremlin.

The War in Lysychansk: How Putin and the Russian Army Surrounded by Civilian Protest have Demonstrated

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

Following the capture over the weekend of Lyman, a strategic rail hub and gateway to the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian forces showed no sign of stopping, pushing eastward toward the city of Lysychansk, which Russia seized three months ago after bloody fighting. Mr. Putin had intended for the war he launched in February to take control of the region.

The military conscription Mr. Putin ordered on Sept. 21 to bolster his battered forces has set off nationwide turmoil and protest, bringing the war home to many Russians who had felt untouched by it. Men who have age or disability are supposed to be ineligible for the draft.

That is the worrying thing. It isn’t about ending a terrible war in Russia, it’s about correcting the mistakes that forced a Russian retreat.

Since the partial mobilization was announced, there have been over 220,000 Russians who have fled across their borders. The EU said its numbers – nearly 66,000 – represented a more than 30% increase from the previous week.

CNN is unable to verify the Russian figures, but the 40 kilometers (around 25 miles) traffic tailbacks at the border with Georgia, and the long lines at crossings into Kazakhstan and Finland, speak to the backlash and the strengthening perception that Putin is losing his fabled touch at reading Russia’s mood.

Kofman said he should not be referred to as a Putinologist. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he was an expert on Russia’s military. “The field of Russian military studies was almost dead, it was on life support,” he said. I was trying to help revive the field. Kofman does this with his work at the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-funded research group. He has appeared on the podcasts with Alperovitch. He was born in Ukraine when the Soviet Union became a republic and left at the ripe age of 10. Kofman was back in Ukraine in October for a close-up view of the war. He is wary of making predictions despite his deep knowledge. “Military analysts like myself thought the war was going to come, but got the initial period of war — how the Russian military was going to actually invade and how those early weeks were likely to shake out — wrong ourselves. So I spent time updating my views,” he said. He expects to go back to Ukraine. There are no analysts who plan to visit Russia in the near term. Ioffe said he’d like to go back and see how the city and country are affected by the war and get a temperature check.

He used the same playbook annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and now, like then, threatens potential nuclear strikes should Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, try to take the annexed territories back.

And it is critical that the leaders of the US and other western nations – and of China and India, as well – convey clearly and repeatedly to Putin that the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for Russia would, indeed, be “catastrophic,” to quote US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Putin’s energy war on Ukrainian soil is a signal to Russia, not Ukraine, but to the world and to Russia? A comment by R.E. Hill

Both Danish and Swedish seismologists recorded explosive shockwaves from close to the seabed: the first, at around 2 a.m. local time, hitting 2.3 magnitude, then again, at around 7 p.m., registering 2.1.

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

According to Hill, the sabotage of the Nord Stream could be the last chance for Putin to get rid of the gas issues. Europe will be unable to build up its gas reserves for the winter. Everything is being done by Putin right now.

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

Europe raced to replenish gas reserves before the winter, while trying to dial back demands for Russian supplies and searching for replacements, when Nord Stream 1 was throttled back by Putin.

The early signs, however, suggest that Putin has once again misread how the world would respond to his brutality. Macron, for instance, said the attacks would prompt France to increase military assistance to Kyiv. Traumatic footage of Ukrainian civilians live streaming Russian missiles roaring over their heads and explosions may serve to harden the opinion of Western publics facing their own pressure this winter because of Putin’s energy war. And if anything, the turning of fire on civilians hints at Russian – rather than Ukrainian – weakness, since it suggests Putin is unable to respond in the field to humiliating defeats for his forces.

According to Hill, Putin wants his negotiations to be with Biden and allies, not Ukraine, because he wants to negotiate for peace. And that means recognizing what we have done on the ground in Ukraine.”

Russia is going to pitch France and Germany to end the war first so that they can protect their territories, put pressure on the Ukrainians to come to a settlement, and so on.

It’s still not certain if Putin will use a nuclear weapon. But it can’t be dismissed. He paints this possible scenario: “If he does use it, I think he’s going to do a demonstration strike in a remote area, perhaps over the Black Sea, in the hopes that the West would somehow pressure Kyiv to come to the negotiations.”

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

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

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

“These are no longer toys here. A deputy commander of a Russian battalion told a war correspondent that they were part of a NATO and army offensive. The soldier said his unit had eavesdropped on discussions by other soldiers, not Ukrainians.

It is said that truth is the first casualty in war. In Russia, there is a campaign of false advertising going on to sell its invasion ofUkraine to the public.

The idea that Russia is fighting a broader campaign was repeated in an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right thinker whose daughter, also a prominent nationalist commentator, was killed by a car bomb in August.

Both Mr. Putin and Mr. Dugin accused the West of damaging theNord Stream gas line, which was destroyed after underwater explosions last month.

“The West already accuses us of blowing up the gas pipeline ourselves,” he said. We need to understand the magnitude and extent of the war we are fighting with the West. We must join this battle with the mortal enemy who will not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.

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

Antiwar protests that broke out right before the February 24 invasion were cracked down on by Putin’s powerful and well-funded security apparatus. Russia made some slow, grinding inroads in the area around the city of Bakhmut during the months that followed.

Many people predicted a short war after Russia invaded Ukraine. The conflict has a long way to go after 8 months and each new twist points toward escalation. “All of Ukraine will be taken back by theUkrainians.” This is the most eye opener I have had in a long time, said retiredU.S. Army general David Petraeus. The offensive has the Ukrainians thinking they might be able to drive out the Russians.

The Kremlin reflected the disarray of its forces on the ground, where territory was rapidly changing hands, acknowledging that it did not yet know what new borders Russia would claim in southern Ukraine. “In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Monday.

The Ukrainian government, at least, seems to be taking him at his word. According to a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s intelligence agencies believe there is a “very high” risk that Russia might use so-called tactical nuclear weapons, less powerful cousins of conventional nuclear weapons that are designed to be used on the battlefield.

The cost of chaos: the CNN national security analyst, New America vice president, and a former Russian ambassador to the United States, Iraq, and Russia

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

The growing isolation of Putin has led to him making speeches offering a distorted view of history, as well as his allies expressing concern.

Giles believes that Russia can use the war to try and force governments to remove their support forUkraine in order to make it personal.

According to a recent book about the soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviets intended to install a puppet government in the country, and leave as soon as possible.

As the US fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, they initially hesitantly increased their support for the Afghan resistance fearing a larger conflict with the Soviet Union. After three years, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan because the CIA had provided them with anti-aircraft missiles that ended their air superiority.

The war is approaching its first anniversary later this month and Ukrainians want more advanced weaponry from the Western countries to fight back against Russia. The US, Britain, and Germany agreed in January to send battle tanks but now Ukraine wants fighter jets and missiles.

In fact, the Ukrainians have also shown exceptional abilities to “McGyver” solutions for a variety of problems – whether adapting Western missiles for use on MiG-29 fighter aircraft, repairing battle-damaged armored vehicles left on the battlefield by the Russians (remember the Ukrainians’ “tractor army”), or jamming Russian communications.

The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union was one factor Putin is aware of.

Looking further back into the history books, he must also know that the Russian loss in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. Many of the Romanov family members were killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.

Putin might have thought the US wouldn’t support Ukraine very forcefully. After all, one of the two major political parties in the United States had made Trump its leader. Zelensky had pleaded with Trump to help him, in one of the stark differences between Biden and Trump.

They join an army that’s degraded. Over the course of the war, the composition of the Russian military force has changed dramatically, as many of its past active duty personnel have been wounded or killed. Russian military leadership is not sure how the undisciplined force will respond when faced with cold, tired combat or rumors of Ukrainian assaults. Recent experience suggests these troops might abandon their positions and equipment in panic, as demoralized forces did in the Kharkiv region in September.

Freedman writes that Putin is “a tragic example of how the delusions and illusions of one individual can be allowed to shape events without any critical challenge. It is possible for autocrats to control the media to crowd out differing voices, and also to command their subordinates to follow foolish orders.

Putin’s gamble may lead to a third dissolution of the Russian empire, which happened first in 1917 as the First World War wound down, and again in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

A former Russian military officer told a pro-Kremlin group that they need to stop lying. We had brought this up many times before. It is not getting through to individual senior figures.

The ministry of Defense was evading the truth about Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions, Kartapolov complained.

Located near the border with Ukraine, Valuyki is in the Belgorod region. When it comes to striking Russian targets across the border, Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance.

He believes that he has been put in charge of Ukrainians because of his closeness to the government, his experience as a brigadier in the infantry and air force, and his experience in commanding Russian forces in southern Ukrainian regions. These are areas that Putin is trying to control “at any cost,” said Irisov.

There is not need to put a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, since incompetent commanders were not accountable for the processes and gaps that existed today. “Indeed, many say that the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu], who allowed this situation to happen, could, as an officer, shoot himself. But, you know, the word officer is an unfamiliar word for many.”

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.

“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.

The leader of the Chechen Republic, Kadyrov, claimed recently that he was promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general, and has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the strict methods of the past. He said in another post that he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia if he had his way.

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

The explosions of Monday morning in Kyiv’s subway system reverberated across the border of the Ukrainian counter-offensive

Monday’s explosions reverberated across central and western Ukraine, far away from the battlefields in the northeast, east and south where a powerful Ukrainian counter-offensive has liberated towns and pushed Russian troops back in recent weeks.

Moscow fired at least 84 cruise missiles toward Ukraine on Monday, the Ukrainian military said, 43 of which were neutralized by missile defense systems. Twenty-four Russian attack drones were also used in the salvo, 13 of which were destroyed.

There were never any doubts that there would be reprisals by the Kremlin after a huge bomb went off over the weekend at the vital and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge.

Russia is getting ready to escalate. It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training. We have not excluded any scenario from the next two or three weeks when it comes to offensives from different directions.

For several hours on Monday morning Kyiv’s subway system was suspended, with underground stations serving as bunkers. But the air raid alert in the city was lifted at midday, as rescue workers sought to pull people from the rubble caused by the strikes.

Shmygal said Monday that 11 critical infrastructure facilities in eight regions had been damaged.

As of Monday afternoon, the electricity supply had been cut in Lviv, Poltava, Sumy, and Ternopil, said the Ukrainian State Emergency Services. The rest of the country was partially disrupted by electricity.

The Attacks on the Kyiv Bridge and the Emergency Meeting of the G7 Group, as Declared by Sergey Aksyonov

The Security Council of Putin held an operational meeting on Monday, just a day after he said the blasts on the bridge were a terrorist attack.

Russian appointed head of annexed territory, Sergey Aksyonov, claimed Monday that the Russian approaches to what they call its special military operation in Ukraine have changed.

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

Several European countries, especially those that relied heavily on Russian energy, are staring down a crisis which could endanger public support, even as NATO leaders vow to stand behind Ukraine no matter how long the war takes.

The attacks are unacceptable, and civilians are paying the highest price, according to the Secretary-General.

The office of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told CNN that the G7 group will hold an emergency meeting via video conference on Tuesday, and Zelensky said on his micro-site that he would address that meeting.

An investigation of the attacks in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, on Monday and Tuesday after the First Day of the War by the Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst. He was a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe while working at the Atlantic Council. He contributes regularly to CNN Opinion. The opinions in this commentary are of his own. CNN has more opinion.

There are hits close to the Taras Shevchen National University of Kyiv and close to the Presidential Office Building on a video posted on social media. Ukrainian officials say that five people have been killed in strikes on the capital.

The area around my office in Odesa remained quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five drones were shot down. Normally in this time of day, nearby restaurants would be full of customers and chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.

The attacks happened just a few hours after Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest Nuclear power Plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes. There were at least 17 deaths and a lot of injuries.

Over 30% of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine was damaged by Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday, theEnergy Minister Herman Halushchenko stated to CNN. The minister told CNN that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the war, media outlets in the capital moved their operations to underground bomb shelters. In one metro station serving as a shelter, large numbers of people took cover on platforms as a small group sang patriotic Ukrainian songs.

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

The attacks could cause another blow to business confidence since many asylum seekers return home.

The 2018 Ukrainian Explosion that killed a Russian truck: A warning to the Kremlin and its allies, and a warning to their allies

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In November of 2018, Putin personally opened the bridge by driving a truck across it. One of the first things the Chinese government did was connect the former Portuguese and British territories with a world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The road bridge was opened after two years of delays.

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

Sitting still was never an option for Putin. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

Putin was placed on thin ice due to increased criticism at home, an act of selfishness and desperation.

With the upcoming Ukrainian offensive that is expected to be launched in the spring or summer, there will be a bunch of things happening, but we are waiting for it.

It is important that Washington and other allies try to convince China and India to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons, which has some leverage over Putin.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak reaction will be taken as a sign in the Kremlin that it can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.

The Pentagon is ready to fight back against Russia: The bombing of Kiev’s subway terminals during the December 11 terrorist attack and the urgency of Russian-Israeli attacks

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. It is important that heating systems are protected this winter.

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

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

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

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

The attacks killed at least 14 people and put a new spotlight on what the US and its allies should do to fight back against Russia, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine.

During his visit, US President Joe Biden unveiled a $1.8 billion package of assistance for Ukraine that includes a Patriot missile defense system – a longstanding request of Kyiv’s to counter Russian air attacks.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, was quoted as saying Washington was looking favorably on the requests of the Ukrainian government, and was in contact with them almost every day. He told CNN that they do the best they can in the next packages.

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

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Kirby said that it was not clear if the explosion on the bridge would have sped up their planning.

The general in charge of the war had been to Chechnya and Syria, and he would be consistent with that resume. In both places, Russia indiscriminately bombarded civilian areas and razed built-up districts and infrastructure and is accused of committing serious human rights violations.

But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.

“He was telegraphing about where he is going to go as we get into the winter. He is going to try to force the Ukrainian population to compromise, to give up territory, by going after this infrastructure,” Vindman said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Zhovkva said that if we had modern equipment, we could raise the number of drones downed and not kill innocent people.

Any prolonged campaign by Putin against civilians would be aimed at breaking Ukrainian morale and possibly unleashing a new flood of refugees into Western Europe that might open divisions among NATO allies that are supporting Ukraine.

Putin doesn’t appear to have learned that revenge isn’t a good way to act on the battlefield or off it and so he is most likely to be weakened in the end.

The fate of Belarus and Russia after the invasion of Kyiv: The case for a joint regional group or a co-aggressor

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

She said this was a terror to cause panic or scare other countries that he is still a bloody tyrant and look what fireworks we can arrange.

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

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

He gave no detail on Monday of the scope or purpose of the new joint force, sparking speculation that Russia may use it to help its military campaign in eastern Europe. Alternatively, he could be preparing his country for the arrival of thousands of freshly drafted Russian soldiers, some of them former convicts and many of them ill trained.

There may be some help for Putin down the road. An announcement by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Belarus and Russia will “deploy a joint regional group of troops” raised fears of deepened military cooperation between the close allies and that Belarusian troops could formally join Russia in its invasion. Belarus has been complaining of alleged Ukrainian threats to its security in recent days, which observers say could be a prelude to some level of involvement.

The establishment of a joint force with Russia will promote the view that Lukashenko is a ‘co-aggressor’ in the eyes of Ukrainians.

The deputy foreign minister fled into exile when Mr. Lukashenko was jailed, but said that he was caught between the Russians’ pressure to help Ukrainian forces and the fear of being jailed for political reasons.

Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine: The First Day of the Third World War, and Implications for the Future of the Ukrainian Economy

The suffering was reported by state television on Monday. It showed smoke and carnage in the city, along with empty store shelves, and a long-range forecast that said there would be months of freezing temperatures there.

The invasion has forced millions of Ukrainians from their homes and wreaked havoc on the Ukrainian economy, killing thousands of civilians.

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

The stakes of the war have been raised as winter approaches. Giles thinks that Russia would like to keep it up. The recent successes of the Ukrainians have sent a strong signal to the Kremlin. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.

Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.

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

Ukrainians have learned they are stronger than they were thought to be. Have those who have underestimated them learned their lessons? To survive, Ukraine needed military aid but not to crush the enemy.

According to the author of ” Russia’s Road to War withUkraine,” the Russians are hoping to avoid a collapse in their frontline before winter sets in.

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

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

The economy of Ukraine has been damaged by the impact of war, missile and drone attacks on power infrastructure. Millions of people are without heat, electricity and water during the winter. If it means defeating Russia, many Ukrainians are willing to endure hardship for another two to five years because of the way they have shown resilience since the start of the war.

The recent days have shown that the sites beyond the theater of ground fighting are not immune to attacks. The fact that the target was so deep in Russian-held territory could be used to hit key Russian assets indicates a serious Ukrainian threat towards important Russian assets, even though no one claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Ukrenergo says it has been able to restore the power supply to the central and eastern parts of the country after Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. Ukrainian Prime Minister says there is a lot of work to be done to fix damaged equipment and asked people to use less energy during peak hours.

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

According to Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, Russian commanders on the ground are aware that their supplies are running out.

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

The success rate of Ukrainian intercepts of Russian missiles has increased since the start of the invasion, according to a military expert with the London-based Royal United Services Institute.

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

The effects of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower would be insignificant, because of the fact that Belarus has around 45,000 active duty troops. But it would threaten another assault on Ukraine’s northern flank below the Belarusian border.

Giles said that reopening of a northern front would be a new challenge for Ukranian. It would provide Russia with a new route into the region that has been reclaimed by Ukraine, he said.

The commander of US forces, Petraeus. That is a huge factor. Ukrainians sees the ongoing conflict as their War of Independence, and they have responded accordingly. President Volodomyr Zelensky has been positively Churchillian in rallying all Ukrainians to the service of their country as it fights for its national survival.

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

The IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany was badly needed by the Ukrainian government. According to Bronk,.

Sergey Surovikin, the commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria, and his role in the armed forces in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Russian Ministry of Defense changed its overall commander for the war after Ukranian soldiers took over more territory than the Russians.

He played an important role in the Russian operations in Syria, as Commander-in-chief of the RussianAerospace Forces, a role that caused widespread destruction in rebel-held areas.

Surovikin is “more familiar with cruise missiles, maybe he used his connections and experience to organize this chain of devastating attacks,” Irisov said​, referencing the reports that cruise missiles have been among the weapons deployed by Russia in this latest surge of attacks.

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

Irisov, Surovikin’s former subordinate, left his five-year career in the armed forces after his time in Syria because his own political views conflicted with what he experienced. “Of course, you understand, who is right and who is wrong,” Irisov said. “I witnessed a lot of stuff, being inside the system.”

Their lives are transformed within a few hours. On the next day, Putin launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Everyone who is against the war saw their lives simply destroyed,” she told CNN. “We can’t complain now, because someone will immediately tell you – and quite reasonably so – that no one is interested in you right now. It’s Ukrainians who suffered the most. Of course, they are in much worse conditions now. But that doesn’t mean we’re okay.”

Vladimir Putin in Syria: The effects of the air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure under the law of war, and the role of the commander

He worked in air traffic control and aviation safety while he was in Syria for two years. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

“He made a lot of people very angry – they hated him,” Irisov said, describing how the “direct” and “straight” general was disliked at headquarters because of the way he tried to implement his infantry experience into the air force.

The Wagner group, which has operated in Syria, has strong connections to the government of the Russian Federation, as well as a private military company.

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

And a book by the think tank the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation says that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

He was named in a 2020 report by Human Rights Watch as someone who may bear responsibility for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war. The displacement of an estimated 1.5 million people was caused by the attacks, which killed at least 1,600 civilians.

Vladimir Putin toasts with other leaders at a ceremony to award medals for military personnel who fought in Syria.

In February this year, Surovikin was sanctioned by the European Union in his capacity as head of the Aerospace Forces “for actively supporting and implementing actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine as well as the stability or security in Ukraine.”

Clark reasons that “from what we’ve seen, it’s highly ​probable that Putin is involved in decision-making down to a very tactical level and in some cases bypassing the senior Russian military officers to interact directly on the battlefield.”

His appointment received widespread praise from various Russian military sites and Yevgeny, the founder of theWagner Group, according to Clark.

He said Dvornikov was the commander who was going to turn things around in Ukranian. Individual commanders can’t change the situation of Russian command and control at this point in the war, or the low level of Russian troops.

“Similarly, he before then was a commander of one of the groupings of Russian forces and had sort of a master reputation in Syria much like Surovikin for brutality, earning this sort of name of the ‘butcher of Aleppo,’” Clark said.

Petraeus. Putin has not received a passing grade yet. Let’s recall that the first and most important task of a strategic leader is to “get the big ideas right” – that is, to get the overall strategy and fundamental decisions right. Putin clearly has failed abysmally in that task, resulting in a war that has made him and his country a pariah, set back the Russian economy by a decade or more (losing many of Russia’s best and brightest, and prompting over 1,200 western companies to leave Russia or reduce operations there), done catastrophic damage to the Russian military and its reputation and put his legacy in serious jeopardy.

In the absence of that, we will likely see more of what we have seen in the past – Russian commanders throwing recently mobilized, inadequately trained, and poorly equipped soldiers into tough fights. And supported by massive artillery and rocket fires (assuming they can maintain the supply of artillery rounds and rockets), to achieve grinding, costly, incremental gains – with, perhaps, an occasional limited breakthrough.

Zelensky’s annexation, Kolbe’s tricks, and the vulnerability of the Ukrainian civilian population in the face of Russian air strikes

The conference in Sea Island, Ga. is run by The Cipher Brief and brings together members of the national security community to look at the large picture of global security.

Zelensky, who refused to leave the United States even though it was offered to evacuate him in 2022, would have put up a strong resistance, and the West would have supported them. And that instead of Putin having a military parade in Kyiv, it would be Biden walking in the Ukrainian capital’s streets, arriving at the ornate Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of the Ukrainian President?

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

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

This annexation is a huge deal. Putin is effectively betting his presidency on staying in Ukraine, says Dmitri Alperovitch, who runs the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator.

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

The war isn’t expected to be stopped by the fast approaching winter. The Ukrainians seem to be favored on the battlefield by the harsh weather. “The Ukrainians can knock on the door and be taken in and get warmed up and get a bowl of soup from their fellow citizens. And of course, they’re welcomed as liberators, whereas the Russian occupiers, the Ukrainians are trying to kill them,” he said.

In the face of Russian air strikes, Ukraine’s civilians are extremely vulnerable. There is a threat of blackmail from cutting off energy supplies by shutting off electricity and bombing electric grids in the country, according to Dmitri Alperovitch. He said that Putin’s strategy would cause pain. He added that you are going to keep fighting even if your economy is not doing well and you don’t have heat. I think he’s been deceived on this front.

From Russia to the EU: The War of Warfare to the Europy Crisis, as Seen by Petraeus and Kolbe

At the Georgia conference in a ballroom filled with national security types there was no suggestion of an end to the war. “After a war ends with a negotiated solution, I don’t think there is any chance for talks to happen in the near term,” said Paul Kolbe, the former CIA official.

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

Petraeus has spent decades studying warfare and practicing its application. He was the commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the director of the CIA. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton with a dissertation on the Vietnam War and the lessons the American military took from it. The forthcoming book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,” is co-authored by Petraeus and Andrew Roberts.

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

There’s a lot of variables that impact the ability to keep going, from the availability of affordable energy for the winter to the popular will in a broad range of nations.

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

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

There is a clear mandate for the European Commission to begin work on a gas cap mechanism, but that is not what the French President described as havingmaintained European unity.

Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is skeptical of price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.

These divisions are all part of Putin’s fondest dream. The outcome from the Kremlin’s viewpoint could be achieved by Manifold forces in Europe, which equates to the continent failing to agree on essentials.

France and Germany fight over a lot of these issues. Though in an effort to reach some accommodation, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have scheduled a conference call for Wednesday.

Italy’s new prime minister and the ill-equipped Russian army: How far will the United States go against a socialist dominated Europe?

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

Silvio Berlusconi, himself a four-time prime minister of Italy, was recorded at a gathering of his party loyalists, describing with glee the 20 bottles of vodka Putin sent to him together with “a very sweet letter” on his 86th birthday.

Matteo Silvani said during the campaign that he didn’t want the Russian sanctions to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them.

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

Similar forces seem to be at work in Washington where House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after next month’s elections, told an interviewer, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

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

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. The Secretary of State phoned his counterpart in Ukranian to ask him to keep up the support.

Biden promised continuing support from the US, which is what most Americans want though backing has weakened somewhat. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN that bipartisan support for Ukraine is “still very strong.”

The support they got in the form of arms, materiel, and now training for Ukrainian forces has been the root cause of their remarkable battlefield successes against a weakened and ill-prepared Russian military.

The pressure on Russia is being brought up by the West. Last Thursday, the State Department released a detailed report on the impact of sanctions and export controls strangling the Russian military-industrial complex.

Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Plants that make anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and the need for Russian defense stocks has to be reverted to Soviet-era levels. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

The US took property of a top Russian procurement agent and his agencies because they were procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end- users.

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

Vladimir Putin’s putin’s war against Ukraine as claimed by the NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and his Russian ally Mikhail Zygar

The first missile to have landed in Poland – a NATO member – on Tuesday may well have been a Ukrainian anti-aircraft rocket intercepting an incoming Russian missile a short distance from one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Lviv, as suspected by Polish and NATO leaders. The missile was not Ukrainian, as claimed by President Zelensky.

One thing is clear, whatever the circumstances of the missile. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday.

A growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled against what they’ve been told to do and refuse to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

Indeed a hotline and Telegram channel, launched as a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live,” designed to assist Russian soldiers eager to defect, has taken off, reportedly booking some 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.

Putin is increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was the only head of state to stay away from a session of the G20, which Zelensky dubbed the “G19.” Though Putin once lusted after a return to the G7 (known as the G8 before he was ousted after his seizure of Crimea), inclusion now seems but a distant dream. The ban on Canada by Russia made the comparison with North Korea more striking.

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

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/opinions/putin-poland-missile-ukraine-nato-andelman/index.html

The Russian War in the Cold War: Implications for the Future of the Combat Air System and for the Security and Security of the Near-Infrared World

Rumbling in the background is the West’s attempt to diversify away from Russian oil and natural gas in an effort to deprive the country of material resources to pursue this war. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.

Moreover, Putin’s dream that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has proven to be on Western countries, would only drive further wedges into the Western alliance are proving unfulfilled. On Monday, word began circulating in aerospace circles that the long-stalled joint French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System – Europe’s largest weapons program – was beginning to move forward.

Russian propaganda videos are being posted on social networks to appeal to Russian men through narratives of patriotism, morality, and upward social mobility in an effort to get more volunteers to the front.

One of the videos, posted on December 14, features a young man who is choosing to fight instead of partying with his male friends and then surprises everyone by buying himself a car with the money he made from fighting on a military contract.

The former girlfriend of a soldier begged him to get back together in the video that was posted on December 15. A middle-aged man leaves his job in a factory and does not sign a military contract since he can’t afford to go to the front.

Another of the videos shows a group of 30-something, well-off Russian men loading a car as they are asked by elderly women where are they going. One of the men replies: “To Georgia. Forever.” When one woman spills a bag of groceries, the men just get into the car and leave, instead of helping, while younger Russian men rush to pick up the groceries. The boys have left while the men stayed, says an elderly woman.

The war is portrayed in many of the videos as a way for men to escape from their daily reality of drinking alcohol and living in poverty. Meanwhile, reports and complaints of shortages of provisions and equipment in the Russian military continue to emerge.

Russian President Putin stated at a meeting with mothers of mobilized that it was better to die fighting for the motherland than to drink and die.

Earlier this month, addressing a news conference after a summit of Eurasian countries in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Putin attempted to reassure the public that there were no plans for additional mobilization.

Putin said he was working closely with the Russian defense ministry and that the issue of military equipment shortages on the front lines had been resolved.

In Paris at the time, I witnessed how Zelensky pulled up to the Élysée Palace in a modest Renault, while Putin motored in with an ostentatious armored limousine. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

Zelensky’s popularity ratings were at their all-time high in the first days of his administration but soon fell due to Russia’s invasion.

“Paradoxically, Zelensky achieved the thing that Putin most wanted to achieve but failed … to rally support domestically with a patriotic war in order to deflect and distract from his abject failures at home. Michael Popow, a New York-based geopolitics and business analyst told me that it would be painful for Putin to see a comedian.

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

Who can forget the infamous phone call after which Trump was impeached, when Zelensky implored the US President for help to deter an aggressive Russia? Trump’s response, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” trying to push Ukraine into launching an investigation against Biden, the candidate Trump claimed was weak, even though he feared him as his most effective opponent.

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. He looked in disbelief at having defeated Petro Poroshenko, standing on stage with the confetti.

The war appears to have turned his ratings around. Zelensky had his ratings increase to 90% just days after the invasion. Zelensky was rated very high for his handling of international affairs by Americans early on in the war.

His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. The press conference that was held on the platform of the metro station in April had good lighting and good camera angles to emphasize the wartime setting.

I remember well how comforting his nightly addresses were when there were air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv.

Volodymyr Zelensky: He’s the best, he’s not the worst, but the U.S. will take care of it

Zelensky is showing his confidence and competence by wearing t-shirts and hoodies instead of suits to a younger, global audience that recognizes it as such.

“He is probably more comfortable than Putin on camera, too, both as an actor and as a digital native,” she added. Both of them want to be seen as more than just a certain person, although Zelensky is doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility.

Zelenska has shown she is an effective communicator in international fora when she travels to where her husband can’t. Most recently, she met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. (Curiously, TIME magazine did not include Zelenska on the cover montage and gave only a passing reference in the supporting text).

There are signs that Zelensky might be losing his international influence. Zelensky wanted the price cap on Russian crude to be set at $30 in order to cause more pain for the Kremlin, but the G7 imposed a $60 a barrel price cap.

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

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress “extraordinary,” saying the country’s fight against Russian aggression has “proven that they are a really good investment for the United States.”

The speech made it seem like the struggle of the people of Ukraine was connected to our own revolution and that we want to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to know that they are on the front lines.

“I hope that they will send more than one,” she added. She noted there’s “been some reluctance in the past” by the US and NATO to provide advanced equipment, but added “We’ve seen with our own eyes how effective Ukrainian military is.”

Clinton, who previously met Russian President Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state, said the leader was “probably impossible to actually predict,” as the war turns in Ukraine’s favor and his popularity fades at home.

“I think around now, what [Putin] is considering is how to throw more bodies, and that’s what they will be – bodies of Russian conscripts – into the fight in Ukraine,” Clinton said.

Putin’s critics say that using the word “war” to describe the Ukraine conflict has effectively been illegal in Russia since March, when the Russian leader signed a censorship law that makes it a crime to disseminate “fake” information about the invasion, with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted.

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

Nikita Yuferev, a municipal lawmaker from St. Petersburg who fled Russia due to his antiwar stance, on Thursday said he had asked Russian authorities to prosecute Putin for “spreading fake information about the army.”

There was a decree to end the military operation, according to Yuferev. Several thousand people have been condemned for their words about the war.

According to a US official the initial assessment was that Putin probably made a slip of the tongue. The officials will be watching closely to see what the figures inside the Kremlin say about it.

Zelensky discussed a 10-point peace formula and summit he told Biden during a meeting at the White House in his address to Congress. The Ukrainian leader said Biden supported the peace initiatives.

“We never refused, it was the Ukrainian leadership that refused itself to conduct negotiations … sooner or later any party to the conflict will sit down and negotiate and the sooner those opposing us realize it, the better,” he said.

War Crime In Russia and Its Implications For The Laws And Military Operations, As Putin and Shoigu State Secretary Declared Wednesday

Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday declared the Kremlin would make a substantial investment in many areas of the military. The initiatives include increasing the size of the armed forces, putting a new generation of hypersonic missiles in place, as well as speeding up weapons programs.

He said that living under Putin was worse than democracy because he didn’t believe in democracy at all and the established institutions were almost destroyed by the near complete eradication.

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

CNN is not publishing the woman’s name, and she requested that they use a pseudonym to protect her safety. Speaking to foreign journalists about her involvement in the demonstrations – and even the use of the word “war” as opposed to the Kremlin-approved term “special military operation” – puts her at risk of arrest and potentially a lengthy prison sentence.

Since February, there have been so-called “dandarian laws” that banned criticism of military or leadership. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

Like other people, he has been accused of spreading false information about the Russian military and law enforcement, now on Russia’s wanted list. He says he was reporting the truth about the actions of the Russian government in the lead-up to and during the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian citizens can still get independent sources of information through technology, such as VPNs and Telegram. State media propaganda is blanketing the air favored by older Russians.

The US Border Patrol recorded 36,271 encounters with Russian citizens between October 2021 and September 2022. The number includes people who were caught by the border force and were deported, which is a higher number than in the previous two fiscal years.

OK Russians, a non-profit helping Russian citizens fleeing persecution, said its surveys suggest those who are leaving are on average younger and more educated than the general Russian public.

70% left is the number I would say about people that I know and know of. It’s journalists, it’s people from universities, sometimes schools, artists, people who have clubs and [foundations] in Moscow that got closed down,” Soldatov said.

When it comes to political reconstitution of the country, losing the educated middle-class portion of the population is important, said a Russia expert. She pointed to the exodus of liberal, educated Iranians following the country’s 1979 revolution as an example of what can happen when large numbers from such demographics leave the country.

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

She still believes her work is important, but said she is struggling to see any hope for the future. She described her life as a continuous cycle of panic, horror, shame, and self-doubt.

“You’re constantly torn apart: Are you to blame? Did you do enough? How should you act now if you can’t do something else? she said. “There are no prospects. I had a hard time figuring it out, but all in all I knew what would happen next. Nobody knows anything. People do not understand what will happen to them tomorrow.

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

It feels wrong that the Russians helped to win the war against Hitler in the first place because the message thatPutin used was a part of the Russian national identity. He said that he researched pre-war rhetoric in Germany because of the favorable reaction to the invasion by some parts of the Russian society.

Speaking about Russians as “us” had begun to feel wrong because he deeply disagreed with Russia’s actions, he said. But saying “Russians” didn’t seem right either. I do not want to hide from what is happening because I have some responsibility as well as Russian citizenship.

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

Berzina said that the expectations of those in the West are not realistic because they don’t consider the reality of life in Russia.

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

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

War against Ukraine has left Russia isolated and struggling with more turbulent-ahedriahehedral-timers-and-trade-markers

At the time, Putin said his military was embarking on a “limited military operation that would wrap up in a few weeks”.

Yet the war has also fundamentally upended Russian life — rupturing a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued, if not always democratic reforms, then at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

Russia’s most revered human rights group, the Nobel Prize co-recipience Memorial was forced to stop its activities because of alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

The state has also vastly expanded Russia’s already restrictive anti-LGBT laws, arguing the war in Ukraine reflects a wider attack on “traditional values.”

There are still attacks on repressions for now. Some of the new laws are still unenforced. The measures are being used to crush wider dissent.

New “fake news” laws made it difficult for leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant online investigative companies to operate in other countries.

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

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

The Russian Exodus From Kiev after the First Russian Revolution: The Case for a Prime Minister’s Threat to Russia and to the United States

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

Meanwhile, some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus predict their economies will grow, even as the swelling presence of Russians remains a sensitive issue to former Soviet republics in particular.

Russia’s ruble currency fell and its banking and trading markets looked shaky during the first few days of the invasion. Some of the largest brands in the world, including McDonald’s and ExxonMobil, stopped or suspended their operations in Russia.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. He announced a ban on the exports of oil to countries that do not abide by the price cap, a move that will make pain worse in Europe.

There is no change in the government’s tone when it comes to Russia’s military campaign. Russia’s Defense Ministry provides daily briefings recounting endless successes on the ground. Putin assures that everything is going according to plan.

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

The Russian troops were not able to conquer both of the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Kherson, the sole major city seized by Russia, was abandoned amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive in November. Russian forces have shelled the city repeatedly since retreating.

The true number of Russian losses remains a very taboo topic at home. Western estimates are higher than those in the US.

Cold War in Ukraine and the War Between Russia and the US: An Analysis of Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation Address and the “Big Press Conference”

Meanwhile, as Petraeus notes, though Russian President Vladimir Putin set out to Make Russia Great Again with his invasion of Ukraine, he has, instead, achieved exactly that with the NATO alliance.

It would have been unthinkable in the Soviet times for longtime allies in Central Asia to criticize Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty. China and India have been purchasing discounted Russian oil, but they haven’t done much for the Russian military campaign.

The states of the nation address was meant to be in April but has been delayed several times. The annual “direct line” in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians was canceled.

An annual December “big press conference” – a semi-staged affair that allows the Russian leader to handle fawning questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media – was similarly tabled until 2023.

The US military thought that it would take until May for the Russian military to replenish their power for a sustained assault, but Russian leaders preferred to take action sooner. The senior US military official told CNN that it was likely that Russian forces are moving due to political pressure from the Kremlin.

Following Danilov’s comments, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said Wednesday that there a signs Russia is preparing for a renewed offensive in southern Ukraine.

“These will be defining months in the war,” Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

“We are on the edge of a very active phase of hostilities, February andMarch will be very active,” said a representative of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence on national television.

“During the week, military representatives from the two countries will practice joint planning of the use of troops based on the prior experience of armed conflicts in recent years,” the ministry said in a statement.

“It’s unlikely Russian forces will be particularly better organized and so unlikely they’ll be particularly more successful, though they do seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder,” a senior British official told CNN.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. Compared to the panic they were trying to build in Ukranian, it was overwhelming.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday in Brussels that the US is not seeing Russia “massing its aircraft” ahead of an aerial operation against Ukraine.

The impact of fire-and-forget anti-tank and anti- aircraft missiles can be seen. The impact of medium-range anti-ship missiles has been seen. The use of offensive cyber capabilities by the Russians have not been very successful.

Biden has made it possible for the Ukrainian people to fight against a Russian President so obsessed with conquering his neighboring country that he has destroyed Russia’s standing in the world, and he seems prepared to send hundreds of thousands of Russians to die to prevent a democracy from flourishing.

Petraeus is an American general. It’s not Russia. Moscow lost the Battles of Kyiv,Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv but didn’t conquer the rest of the southern coast of Ukraine.

The side that generates the most capable, well-trained and well-equipped forces by then will make the most significant gains. And my bet is on Ukraine in that regard.

We are seeing some resemblances to the future of warfare. We believe the Ukrainian use of drones as aerial observers is related to the US giving the Ukrainians precision munitions which will double their range from 70 to 150 kilometers.

We have seen a war in the past but this is the first time it is happening because of the widespread presence of internet sites and phones.

How Russian War Ends? How NATO Can We Trust? Why Putin and Putin can’t afford it: How Russia can survive war crime and corruption should not be tolerated by NATO

There would be vastly more capable systems not only in the air, but also in the sea, sub-sea, on the ground, and in cyberspace.

I recall an adage back in the Cold War days that stated, “If it can be seen, it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed.” In those days, we didn’t have the equipment to “operationalize” that adage. In the foreseeable future, each platform, base and headquarters will be seen and thus vulnerable to being hit and destroyed unless there are substantial defenses and hardening of those assets.

Imagining all this underscores, of course, that we must take innumerable actions to transform our forces and systems. We must make sure that there are no questions about our capabilities or willingness to employ them, and that competition among great powers isn’t going to end in conflict.

Thanks to Putin, the description of NATO as suffering from “brain death” by French President Macron in late 2019 has turned out to be more than a bit premature.

Petraeus: All of the above and more. The list is long, including poor campaign design; wholly inadequate training (what were they doing for all those months they were deployed on the northern, eastern, and southern borders of Ukraine?); poor command, control, and communications; inadequate discipline (and a culture that condones war crimes and abuse of local populations); poor equipment (exemplified by turrets blowing off of tanks when fires ignite in them); insufficient logistic capabilities; inability to achieve combined arms effects (to employ all ground and air capabilities effectively together); inadequate organizational architecture; lack of a professional noncommissioned officer corps; a top-down command system that does not promote initiative at lower levels and pervasive corruption that undermines every aspect of their military – and the supporting military-industrial complex.

Petraeus: Not at all. Russia still has enormous military capacity and is certainly still a nuclear superpower, as well as a country with enormous energy, mineral and agricultural blessings. It also has a population that is nearly double that of the next largest European country, Germany.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

The War with Ukraine: How Russian Soldiers Can Help? Comment on the Insamples of Stalin, Stalin, and his Critics

And it is still led by a kleptocratic dictator who embraces innumerable grievances and extreme revanchist views that severely undermine his decision-making.

The observation of Stalin was, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Will Russia’s bigger population make a difference in the long run in the war with Ukraine?

Nonetheless, it is estimated that as many as 300,000 new recruits and mobilized reservists are being sent to the frontlines, with up to 100,000-150,000 more on the way. That is not trivial, because quantity matters.

Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, even if they don’t know that many Russian soldiers are from ethnic and sectarian minorities.

Petraeus: All of those technologies have proven very important, and the Ukrainians have demonstrated enormous skill in adapting various technologies and commercial applications to enable intelligence gathering, targeting and other military tasks.

Sometimes I feel like we should have decided to provide other capabilities, such as HIMARS, longer-range precision munitions, tanks, etc. sooner than we have.

Ukraine will eventually have to transition from eastern bloc aircraft to western ones. They have more pilots than aircraft at this time, and there aren’t any more MiGs to give them.

So, we might as well begin the process of transition, noting that it will take a number of months, regardless, to train pilots and maintenance personnel. All that said, again, I think the Administration has done a very impressive job and proven to be the indispensable nation in this particular situation – with important ramifications for other situations around the world.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

Petraeus: How Ukraine War Ends in the Black Sea: What Are the Lessons for the Chinese if China were to Stage Taiwan Invasion?

Bergen: The quasi-private Wagner Group is the force that Putin sends into the meat grinder of the toughest battles. I am wondering if anyone has thought of using mercenaries as a tactic.

Russia has done what it can with mercenaries, in a way that’s innovative but also inhumane, as it involves throwing them into battle as cannon fodder, and with little, if any, concern for their survival.

The tactics or practices that foster development of proficient, disciplined, capable, and cohesive units that trust their leaders and soldiers on the right and left is not one of them.

Bergen: What are the lessons of Ukraine for the Chinese if they were to stage an invasion of Taiwan, which would not be over a neighboring land border but over a 100-mile body of water? Does the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea navy, reshape how the Chinese might think about this question?

And especially if the target of such an operation has a population willing to fight fiercely for its survival and be supported by major powers – not just militarily but with substantial economic, financial, and personal sanctions and export controls.

Petraeus: I think it is. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and an extraordinary amount of information available, all through open sources.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

How Does the War in Ukraine End? An Odd Answer to a Theoretical Questions by Martin Petraeus and Aharonov Bergen

Beyond that, it appears that Russia is massing replacement soldiers and additional units to launch an offensive to take the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the southeast, that they do not control – while also establishing defensive positions in depth in other areas that they control in the south.

The Russian forces cannot generate a combined arms effect due to their limitations of professional capabilities, and so there is not an innovative new plan for integration of the actions of tanks with infantry.

I believe Ukrainian forces will be able to achieve the kind of combined arms effects that I described before, which will enable more effective offensive operations, and thus will unhinge some of the Russian defenses. We may not see all this, however, until the spring or even summer, given the amount of time required for Ukrainian forces to receive and train on the new western tanks and other systems.

Bergen: In 2003, at the beginning of the Iraq War, you famously asked a rhetorical question: “Tell me how this ends?” How does the war in Ukraine end?

Petraeus: I think it ends in a negotiated resolution, when Putin recognizes that the war is unsustainable on both the battlefield (where Russia has in the first year likely taken many times the losses that the USSR took in nearly a decade in Afghanistan) and on the home front (which has been heavily impacted by economic, financial, economic, and personal sanctions and export controls).

The US and its G7 allies will develop a Marshall-like plan for rebuilding Ukraine if it reaches the limits of its ability to survive missile and drone strikes.

It’s the evening of February 23, 2022. The boss of a news site relaxes with a bath and candles. A woman plans to celebrate her husband’s birthday in the morning when she goes to bed. In Moscow, a journalist happens to postpone his travel plans to Kyiv.

One-year anniversary putin warukraine russia wrap opinions ctpr (Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022)

In a year, tens of thousands of people have died and millions more have been displaced. It unleashed atrocities, decimated cities and tested the resolve of western alliances.

Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022. I was going to celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was getting better. My husband had his own business. Our daughter made friends at school. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. I finally had some time to work. I felt happy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/opinions/one-year-anniversary-putin-war-ukraine-russia-wrap-opinions-ctpr/index.html

From Moscow to Ukraine: The Last Days of the Russian War and the Memory of My Father, My Father and My Grandparent. I will always be with you

Completely exhausted, crushed and scared, we had to brace ourselves and come to terms with our forced displacement. I will be forever grateful to all those who helped us come to Prague and adjust to a new life in a foreign land.

Thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic, my husband got a job. I found special needs classes for my son. He now attends an adaptation group with his learning support assistant. My daughter studies remotely in a Ukrainian school, while she goes to a Czech school.

The invasion started in the morning, and we woke up to that. Twelve Russians – including writers, directors, and cultural figures – signed an open letter I wrote condemning the war. Soon it was published, and tens of thousands of Russian citizens added their signatures.

On the third day we, my husband and I, left Russia. I felt that it was some kind of moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to Berlin. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started writing a new book. It begins like this.

As I write, Russia has just fired dozens of Kalibr missiles towards several cities in Ukraine, including my adopted city of Odesa. Air raid sirens blare as we bolt for shelter into enclosed hallways. I am getting a pot of borscht from my landlady to help make me feel at home.

And besides the obvious battles, there was another one to fight – trying to claim my life back. The life Russia stole from me and millions of Ukrainians.

The Russian invasion left my father haunted by the darkness in his eyes when he retells harrowing stories of relatives who never came back. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

My passport is a novel, it was issued a year ago. My life is split between London, where I teach Ukrainian literature, and Ukraine, where I get my lessons in courage.

My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser, whom I expected to remain a sweet summer child, turned out to have fled on foot from the Russia-occupied town of Bucha through the forest with her mother, grandmother and five dogs.

My capital, which the Kremlin and the West expected to fall in three days, has withstood 12 months of Russia’s terrorist bombings and energy blackouts. These dark winter nights, one sees so many stars over Kyiv which the Russians have only managed to bring closer to eternity.

Recent speculation has centered on whether rivals within Russia’s power elite have been trying to clip Prigozhin’s wings. Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya recently offered a skeptical take on Prigozhin’s rise that factors in some of those considerations. In a recent article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, she noted that Prigozhin has rivalries with Russia’s power ministries and doesn’t have much showing in polls.

It seems that since February 2022 we have experienced several eras. Putin received 80% approval from the population when he suddenly received a significant time of stagnant ratings.

He canceled the future by postponing the past. It is a lot easier to support Putin when your superiors make the decisions: you take for granted what you are told by propaganda.

It is impossible to adapt to a catastrophe of this magnitude, for me and my family in particular. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On the evening of February 23 I washed my dog, cleaned the house, took a bath and lit candles. I have a one-bedroom apartment in the north of the city. I enjoyed taking care of it. I was happy with the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. My life did not matter that night.

The next day my phone was busy from missed calls and messages. A red headline in all caps on the Kyiv Independent website read: “PUTIN DECLARES WAR ON UKRAINE.”

The War Between Russia and the First Ukrainians – The Battle of Frozen February 24, 1944. – A Memorandum from a Soldier’s Viewpoint

I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. My parents have to organize buying supplies.

The life I knew was falling apart after that. I don’t care what cup I used to drink, how I wore, or whether I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

The pre- war era was a difficult time to remember just a few weeks into the full-scale invasion. I would remember being upset about my boyfriend, but I could no longer relate. My life was taken from me on February 24.

My fear of the war turned into my desire to act through sports. Athletes could challenge Russian propaganda in a constructive way. We just had to tell the truth about the war and Ukrainians – how strong, kind and brave we are. How we have united to defend our country.

I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. Only the common goal was crucial – to raise our flag and show that we are fighting even under these circumstances.

I couldn’t enjoy my victories on the track. They could only be done due to the amount of defenders who had died. I received messages from soldiers on the frontline. They were so happy to follow our achievements, and it was my primary motivation to continue my career.

What Has Putin Learned from the Battle of Stalingrad? The Case for a Patriotic War, as Revised by Navalny

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is fond of a phrase, “the wonderful Russia of the future,” his shorthand for a country without President Vladimir Putin.

Since last February’s invasion, Putin has shrugged off protests and international sanctions. Human rights groups and independent media are now being labeled as foreign agents.

The Battle of Stalingrad took place a few days after Putin arrived in Volgograd, according to Rogov. “The anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, which is perceived as a turning point in the Patriotic War, is, of course, used as a great allusion and patriotic warm-up before the decisive second offensive against Ukraine that is being prepared.”

Those who draw the Europeans into a new war with Russia, and all the more irresponsible of them, are not aware that a fight against Russia on the battlefield is likely to be a lost cause.

A return to rapid warfare with tanks ruins a new strategy that Russia has just set its sights on, Baunov wrote. This is risky because new people may be needed to hold the front.

The first mobilize caused huge tremors in Russian society, so it’s risky. Hundreds of thousands of Russians voted with their feet. Police faced off against anti-fascist demonstrators in multiple cities in the ethnic minority region of Dagestan, which erupted in protests. There was a surge in videos and complaints about the poor conditions for newly mobilized recruits in Russia.

The methods are reminiscent of a dark part of Soviet history. Prigozhin has recruited thousands of prisoners with the promise of amnesty or a pardon, a practice that mirrors Stalin’s use of penal battalions and convicts to take on desperate or suicidal missions in the toughest sectors of the front, using human-wave attacks to overwhelm enemy defenses, regardless of the human cost.

Is Prigozhin prepared to challenge Putin? She wrote a recent piece. The answer is not positive, but there is one important but. After being through a bloody meat grinder and losing some of your staff, it is difficult to remain sane. As long as Putin is relatively strong and able to maintain a balance between groups of influence, Prigozhin is safe. Even if not directly to Putin, the easing could lead Prigozhin to challenge power. War breeds monsters, whose recklessness and desperation can become a challenge to the state.”

He is the first folk hero in a long time. He is a hero for the fascist part of Russian society because most of the leaders of that part have left.

Some Russians have taken refuge in the form of political apathy. CNN recently spoke to several Russian citizens who said their lives have changed since last year, on condition that their names are not used in a public way about the government.

Ira, a 47-year-old who works for a business publication, said that there have been a lot of changes in Russia but he can’t make a difference. I try to keep an internal balance. Maybe I’m too apolitical, but I don’t feel it (further mobilization) is going to happen.”

Ira said she felt acute anxiety in February and March of last year, immediately after the invasion. She was worried that work would dry up and that she would not be able to afford her mortgage, after buying an apartment.

“It got a lot worse in the spring,” she said. It looks like we have adapted to a new reality. I met a bunch of girlfriends and went out. I started to buy a lot more wine.”

The restaurants are now full, she said, but added: “The faces look completely different. The hipsters – you know what hipsters are? – there are less of them.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/19/europe/russia-ukraine-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

Russian Ukraine War-Anniversary: How the Western Imports Changed Relations and Its Implications for the Economy and Russian Economy

Olya said that her family had decided to take more domestic holidays. Europe is largely closed to direct flights from Russia, and opportunities to travel abroad are more limited.

Life carries on, Olya said, even though there is a war on. “I can’t influence the situation,” she said. My friends tell me that we must do what we can. It doesn’t help to be depressed.

Helping matters for the Russian government is the unexpected durability of parts of the Russian economy, despite heavy Western sanctions. The Finance Ministry admitted that it ran a higher than expected deficit in 2022, due in large part to increased defense expenditures, but the International Monetary Fund is projecting a small return to GDP growth for Russia.

“Those who adapted quickly reorganized, they are seeing growth,” he said. In January, we ended an Unusual number of deals, and the activity usually picks up in February.

He talked about how the cutoff of Western imports had nothing to do with everyday life. “If we’re talking parts for a (Mercedes Benz) G-Class, it might be trickier.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/19/europe/russia-ukraine-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

How Putin greeted Biden in Kyiv, and why he wouldn’t invite anybody to join the military exercise – a comment on the Kremlin

Georgy said he was skeptical of state media, saying he looked for other sources of information. And he acknowledged that he could theoretically be called up in another wave of mobilization.

The debate over Biden’s visit will be unwelcome to Putin, who will on Tuesday make a major speech to the Federal Assembly in which he will discuss the ongoing invasion.

“Biden, having received security guarantees in advance, finally went to Kyiv,” Medvedev said in a statement on Telegram. “And of course, there were mutual incantations about the victory that would come with new weapons and a courageous people. It is important to note that the West gives weapons and money to Kyiv on a regular basis. In huge quantities, allowing the military-industrial complex of NATO countries to earn money and steal weapons to sell to terrorists around the world.”

A Russian army veteran suggested that Biden could have escaped unharmed if he visited the frontlines in eastern Ukraine.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if the grandfather (he is not good for anything but simple provocations anyway) is brought to Bakhmut as well… AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO HIM,” Girkin said.

Girkin is among a number of hardline military bloggers – some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers and provide analysis of the conflict for large swaths of the Russian population – who have repeatedly criticized what they consider a “soft” approach on the battlefield by Putin’s generals.

The deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Medvedev, is known for making statements in an apparent attempt to shore up his nationalist credentials.

The Kremlin told reporters on Monday that foreign guests will not be invited to a military exercise Russia refers to as a “special military operation”.

U.S. Rep. Scott Biden’s Visit to Ukraine, during the First World War: How he Learned to Survive

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

The risky trip to an active war zone on Monday was more than a symbol of American support, it was a shot in the hand to a population that has been under attack from Russia for years.

“It’s just something unbelievable that at a time like this the President of the United States is coming to Kyiv,” Andrei Ketov, a 48-year-old Ukrainian service member, told CNN.

Recall that in the early days of the invasion, Ukraine said it found Russian forces had brought along their dress uniforms apparently expecting a victory parade.

Biden is 80 years young and has a stiff neck. But he has no shortage of courage (air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv while Biden was there) or, crucially, competence.

A joyous Zelensky said Biden’s visit “brings us closer to victory,” adding it will “have repercussions on the battlefield in liberating our territories.”

Of course, some GOP members criticized Biden for going to Ukraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the trip “incredibly insulting,” a sign of an “America Last” policy. And Rep. Scott Perry — at the center of a legal dispute with the Justice Department over his cell phone in the special counsel’s January 6 probe — described as “breathtaking” that Biden would help Ukraine defend its borders and not do the same for America.

The day after his visit to Kyiv, Biden will give a major speech, rallying the world to Ukraine’s side, and vowing to continue helping Ukraine defend its independence and its democracy, because Ukraine today is the front line in the global contest between democracy and autocracy.

“He was seeing Ukraine slip away from his orbit. When he saw that he could not control it, it was clear that he would attempt a regime change.

Kremlinolgists tried to understand the Soviet Union from what they could find out about the Communist leadership’s inner workings. Some analysts argue against Putinology, saying it’s too simplistic to interpret a sprawling country like Russia through the study of one man. Some say the notion of an all-powerful leader also plays into the hands of Putin, who would like Russian citizens and the wider world to believe he has control over all aspects of Russia.

At the age of 13, Alperovitch came to the U.S. He hasn’t returned to Russia because Putin has shaped his life there. He was a founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which often investigated Russian computer hacks, like the 2016 breach of the Democratic National Committee. He said that he has always viewed the Russian leader as a gambler. Most of the time he’s gotten lucky. Ukraine is his biggest gamble and it hasn’t worked out well so far.

Yet Putin has consolidated his hold on Russia throughout his more than two decades in power, and critical decisions — like invading Ukraine — are widely seen as the work of Putin alone.

Julia Ioffe is one Putinologists who accepts the label with some reluctance. “It’s something I fought for a long time,” said Ioffe, who writes for Puck News and is often interviewed by other news organizations. People in the West have a hard time understanding him. Somebody needs to translate him for the West. I’ll do it. She left Moscow for the U.S. with her family at age 7 in 1990. In college at Princeton, she initially planned to be a doctor. “But I couldn’t resist Soviet history and switched tracks,” she noted. I tried doing something else but kept getting sucked in. I’ve been doing this for the entire professional life. There was a three-year stint in Moscow a decade ago. Her editor at the time suggested she write a column called “Kremlinology 2012.” She said that it was supposed to be a tongue-in- cheek joke because it was like who does Kremlinology now? “But the system was becoming more and more and more Soviet, and there were fewer and fewer ways to get into it, to understand it. So, it’s back.” Ioffe traveled to Russia a couple of years ago. She writes about how Putin shaped Russian society to prepare it for his military adventures.

“He created this cult around World War II. That glorifies war. That calms war. “It’s easy to convince Russians that this is a war they need to go into and that it’s a war like that,” she said.