Blazingcatfur

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.