“Ukraine – Russia”

Has Putin’s invasion of Ukraine punctured populism in western democracies? Last week I looked for evidence in recent polling, but there was no clear pattern. While support for some populists is down, support for others is up.

However, my focus was on Right-wing populism alone. I didn’t consider the populists at the other extreme of the political spectrum — or, if you prefer, the other side of the horseshoe. In some European countries, the parties of the anti-establishment Left are a significant presence. Many of them are characterised by a foreign policy platform that, if not explicitly pro-Putin, is anti-NATO.

Why won’t we talk about the heroism of the Ukrainian people?

There is something strange and unsettling about the media coverage of the war in Ukraine. We talk about the war constantly but we never see it. Sure, we see parts of it. We see shaky mobile-phone footage of Russian missiles hitting buildings. We see burnt-out tanks. And of course we see columns of refugees. We see mothers puffy-faced from crying and children clasping battered dolls. We see that kind of thing – the terrible residue of war – all the time. But the actual war? It seems oddly absent. It’s almost as if the war is just the mise-en-scene, the backdrop to the stories the media really want to tell about the suffering of women and children, and the goodness of us in the West who are taking them in.

The top U.S. general in Europe believes one of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine is because he thought he might have been able to exploit potential divisions in NATO caused by the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan.

Gen. Tod Wolters, the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, made the comments in front of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, after Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, asked why Putin decided to invade on Feb. 24 rather than some other time since 2014.

A female Russian sniper with 40 kills to her name was captured after being abandoned on the battlefield, it was reported.

Irina Starikova — whose call sign is Bagira — is said to have told her captors she was left to die after being wounded in a battle with Ukrainian troops.

According to the Peacemaker center, which researches crimes committed by Russian separatists in the Ukraine war, she is 41-years-old.

While the usual foreign-policy wizards and oracles in Washington, London and Brussels were busy reading the tea leaves of the Kremlin’s promised measures to “increase mutual trust” at this week’s so-called peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials at the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was cutting to the chase.

There are several historical referents we should keep in mind about the Ukraine war.

First, no-fly zones. Lots of Westerners are calling for NATO aircraft to establish a no-fly zone above Ukraine to stop Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.

That is a terrible idea. Russian planes can still launch missiles from the nearby airspace of Russia and Belarus. No nation in history has declared a no-fly zone against an adversarial nuclear power.

The Biden Administration is considering ending Trump-era COVID Title 42 policies that make it easier to deport migrants who show up at the southern border. In the meantime, exemptions are open to Ukrainians which led MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart and Allen Orr of the American Immigration Lawyers Association to cry racism on the former’s Thursday show.

LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree ordering 134,500 new conscripts into the army as part of Russia’s annual spring draft, but the defence ministry said the call-up had nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.

The order came five weeks into Russia’s invasion, which has run into fierce Ukrainian resistance. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that none of those called up would be sent to any “hot spots”.

​Demoralized Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own equipment — including ​accidentally ​downing ​their own planes — and top generals are lying to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the success of his military campaign in Ukraine, the United Kingdom’s spy chief said Thursday.

Jeremy Fleming, the head of Government Communication Headquarters, said during a speech in Australia that Putin had “massively misjudged” both the capabilities of Russian forces and the will of the Ukrainian people to fight for their homeland.

The Guardian disputes such claims…

Why is GCHQ saying Putin has been misinformed about Ukraine war?

For a spy chief, it was an eye-catching claim. “We believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth,” the GCHQ boss, Sir Jeremy Fleming, confidently declared overnight to an audience in Australia.

The head of the British eavesdropping agency offered no details to back up his assertion – leaving the impression it was a piece of psychological warfare, of the “we know all is not well in the Kremlin” type.

#Ukraine: An LNR-operated (Separatist) T-64BV was struck by Ukrainian fire in #Luhansk Oblast, destroying the vehicle.

Please ignore the “T-72” label; this is incorrect. pic.twitter.com/ygyauYJmav

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 31, 2022

#Ukraine: Accurate mortar fire from the Ukrainian 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade landing on Russian Tanks, destroying/damaging at least 3 vehicles; they appear to be T-72 variants.

Ukrainian indirect fire is often corrected with drones, as is the case here. pic.twitter.com/duDKNtOvID

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 30, 2022

Aman reclines in a chair in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn in Rzeszow, Poland, a beer in one hand and his phone in the other.

He has just gotten off a flight from New York, initially intending to head straight for the Ukrainian border, about 65 kilometres to the east. But his body armour was lost on the flight. While he contemplated going in without it, he’s decided to wait and see if it arrives tomorrow.

Germany’s industrial sector has sounded the alarm over a new emergency warning system to manage the country’s energy security in case Russia cuts supplies of natural gas.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck on Wednesday announced a three-stage alert system that would ultimately give households and hospitals priority over industrial firms if gas usage had to be rationed.

The Kremlin upped the stakes in its standoff with Europe last week, by saying that “unfriendly” states would have to pay for their gas in rubles instead of euros or dollars.

G7 nations rejected the demand but the uncertainty has sparked fears that Moscow may turn off the taps in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the West over the invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. President Biden taps oil reserve for 6 months to control gas prices

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Joe Biden is ordering the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for six months, the White House said Thursday, in a bid to control energy prices that have spiked as the U.S. and allies imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden was making the formal announcement later Thursday in remarks on his administration’s plans to combat rising gas prices.

The federal carbon tax is set to rise April 1. How will that affect gas prices?

Russia is building up its forces in eastern Ukraine in readiness for a new wave of attacks in the breakaway Donbas region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as another attempt was being made to rescue trapped civilians and deliver aid to besieged Mariupol.

In an early morning video address, the Ukrainian president said Russia’s drawdown announcement had been forced upon the Kremlin by the fierce resistance of Ukraine’s armed forces.

He added that his government was instead seeing “a build-up of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas” and preparing for that. The region encompasses two self-proclaimed “people’s republics” that Russia says it is helping to free from Ukrainian control. The leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said on Wednesday that offensive operations were intensifying.

America’s leadership is now uncontested

War is the domain of paradox, contradiction, and boundless surprise. It is not merely because of ignorance or stupidity that military history is a record of crimes, follies, defeats, and very few victories worth their cost. Even so, the Ukraine war is exceptional in the amplitude of its paradoxes, the extremity of its contradictions, and the magnitude of its surprises.

Ukraine is paying the price for its defiance of Moscow. Encouraged by the West since the 2008 Orange Revolution, Kyiv pursued engagement with the European Union and NATO. For more than a decade, it refused to negotiate neutrality or a closer relationship with Moscow. Despite repeated Russian threats and “redlines,” Kyiv stood up to Vladimir Putin. That resistance ultimately resulted in the loss of Crimea; a civil war fomented by Moscow in Donbass; and now, finally, open war with Russia. Western democracies encouraged Ukraine to take this Quixotic approach, even as they made clear that Ukraine had no near-term chance of joining NATO. The bottom line is that the Ukrainians were left to fend for themselves. Despite that, it is possible that Ukraine, with NATO-supplied equipment, will now pull off the impossible: slowing Russia’s invasion into a military stalemate.