Author: Blazingcatfur

On the evening before Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine, Igor Volzhanin met up with a friend at a coffee shop at the centre of Kyiv.

“We stayed there until about midnight just talking,” the Canadian recalled in an interview from Ukraine. “Just talking about how, you know, jokingly, what would we do if the war had started. There was deep anxiety, but I don’t think either one of us really expected for it to happen the next morning.”

On Feb. 25, Volzhanin’s holiday in Ukraine was supposed to continue with a Louis C.K. comedy show, and the following day he was to board a plane to France for a skiing trip. But his plans quickly changed.

Zelenskyy asks Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a direct appeal to US President Joe Biden for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the US arsenal, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Zelenskyy’s request, which has not previously been reported, came during a recent phone call with Biden that centered on the West’s multifaceted response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, people familiar with the conversation told the newspaper.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces resumed scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Russia’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.

Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over what it alleged were Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, Russia’s military command had warned a day earlier of renewed attacks on Ukraine’s capital and said it was targeting military sites.

Up to 3,000 Ukraine troops killed since Russia invaded, says Zelenskiy, as battle rages in Mariupol

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said up to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, with no total yet available for civilian casualties, as fighting intensified in the battle for the southern city of Mariupol.

Ukraine’s president said the military situation in the south and east was “still very difficult”, while praising the work of his armed forces. “The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers,” he said in a late-night video address, calling again for allies to send heavier weapons and for an international embargo on Russian oil.

#Ukraine: Another Russian T-72B3 Obr. 2016 with a little damage was captured by Ukrainian troops, precise date unknown but 4 days ago or more. pic.twitter.com/B8MTThYgeh

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 15, 2022

IN 1994, George F. Kennan spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. His remarks, which were excerpted in the New York Times, continue to make for fascinating reading. They focused on the abiding preoccupation of his career—American relations with Russia. He recalled that he had originally argued for a containment policy of the Soviet Union after World War II, which the Truman administration largely implemented. But Kennan also observed that after the West had made it clear that it would not permit Stalin to make any further inroads into Europe, he was disappointed to discover that neither Washington nor the Western allies had any real interest in entering into discussions with Moscow. “What they and the others wanted,” Kennan said, “from Moscow, with respect to the future of Europe, was essentially ‘unconditional surrender.’ They were prepared to wait for it. And this was the beginning of the forty years of cold war.”

“… On the left, identity-politics-inflected self-criticism breeds a suspicion of the West’s side of any conflict. An article published by the Washington Post this week is an especially egregious example of this mode of thinking. Under the headline “NATO was founded to protect ‘civilized’ people. That means White,” Amoz Hor exemplifies an all too familiar myopia according to which America’s racial politics are the prism through which geopolitical events are best understood. We are told that warnings about the Soviet threat to “Western civilization” were nothing more than a “dog whistle for whiteness”; that “communism was seen to pose a threat not just to “freedom” — but specifically to White freedom”; and that “NATO was born out of fear of White slavery.” There’s an alarmingly large audience for such ahistorical nonsense.”