What Happened Today: Feb 25, 2022
Ukraine under siege; migrants flood Poland; sanctions against Russia
The Big Story
“Europe said ‘never again,’ but here we are,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said today in a televised address from an undisclosed location in Kyiv, his nation’s capital, currently under siege from Russian air and ground forces. “How are you going to defend yourself if you’re so slow in supporting us in Ukraine?”
The Ukrainian military has destroyed bridges to the north and west of Kyiv in an effort to slow the advance of the Russian offensive as it seeks to topple the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian officials said 137 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and several news outlets are reporting civilian casualties in the hundreds. Kyiv residents spent the night in bomb shelters and underground metro stations while missiles demolished residential buildings, schools, and businesses throughout the city. Officials urged residents who had not yet fled the city to shelter in place and prepare Molotov cocktails against the Russian encroachment. The government has barred men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country as they are needed in the fight; government agents have been handing out arms to civilians at weapons storage facilities throughout the country.
The United Nations anticipates that upwards of 4 million Ukrainians could flee the country as the battle with Russia wages on, though in the fog of war, all numbers are estimates. Approximately 29,000 people crossed into Poland yesterday, the majority of which were women and children, according to Polish border officials, with most passing through the border post in Medyka. In stark contrast to Poland’s previously harsh reception of migrants attempting to cross into the country from the Middle East in recent months, those fleeing Ukraine have been greeted by Polish officials and civilians with warm food and transportation to nearby railroad stations.
After Russian forces captured the Chernobyl nuclear site yesterday, nearby radiation levels were found to have increased, according to Ukrainian officials today, though the rise could be attributed to displaced radioactive dust after large military weapons entered the 1,000-square-mile site during the fight for control of the area. President Zelensky said he was willing to discuss a “neutral status” for Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Putin, for his part, communicated through a Kremlin representative that he was open to talks with the Ukraine, though he cast doubt on the seriousness of his intent to negotiate when he called the Ukrainian government “drug addicts and neo-Nazis.” At a virtual meeting today, NATO leaders agreed to deploy 5,000 soldiers from the NATO joint-task force to the eastern edge of the alliance, near the Ukrainian border.
In The Back Pages: Your Weekend Reads
The Rest
→ As Poland continues to see a major influx of migrants crossing over its border with Ukraine, Polish residents have run to the nation’s banks and ATM machines to withdraw cash, leading to some temporary shortages of cash on hand while financial institutions attend to the heightened demand. Polish bank officials urged calm today, saying in a statement today that “all bank orders are carried out without value limits, in the full nominal value, throughout the country,” though the central bank saw indications of tightening liquidity as a key metric of surplus deposits from Polish banks today fell 22% below this year’s average. The nation’s largest oil company also saw a daily record for sales today at Polish gas stations.
→ Taiwan officials increased their alert level after nine Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense zone, the latest act of aggression in a recurring show of force by the Chinese Air Force over the past two years as China continues to claim Taiwan to be a Chinese territory. Taiwan’s presidential office announced it would join the effort of economic sanctions against Russia, a close Chinese ally, for “violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and damaging regional and global peace and stability,” though Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen downplayed speculation that the Russian invasion of a sovereign European nation would serve as the impetus for a similar attack by China on Taiwan. “I want to stress that the situation in Ukraine and in Taiwan Strait are fundamentally different, not only because of the natural barrier of the Taiwan Strait but also Taiwan’s geopolitical and strategic status,” President Ing-wen said today. Under both President Trump and President Biden’s administrations, the United States has increased its support of Taiwan as it faces increased pressure from China, including by providing a $100 million sale of military material earlier this month. President Biden has said previously that he would deploy military defense to help Taiwan against a Chinese incursion. A spokesman for the Chinese Defense Ministry said yesterday that it would not accept any international interference in its handling of the “core issue” of Taiwan, adding that “we urge the U.S. side to recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop playing with fire on the Taiwan issue.”
→ The UJA-Federation of New York said today that it will disperse $3 million in emergency funds with a focus on providing medical and humanitarian care to the some 200,000 members of the Ukrainian Jewish community. In Israel, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned the Russian attack, amplifying the official Israeli rhetoric on the conflict that some initially criticized for being too passive. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett promised humanitarian assistance to President Zelensky in a phone call today, further solidifying Israel’s position to back up Ukraine. The Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai announced as well that his office would disperse a $3.1 million aid package to the Jews of Ukraine.
→ Some nuclear analysts say the Chernobyl nuclear site taken over by Russian forces poses a smaller threat of a potential radioactive incident in comparison to Ukraine’s 15 other nuclear reactors, all of which are currently active across four sites around Ukraine. As military skirmishes continue to break out between Russian and Ukrainian forces, nuclear observers have raised concerns that one or more of the reactor sites could either suffer a direct attack from stray rocket fire or become vulnerable if electrical and water supplies required to keep the reactors running are compromised during battle. In a report yesterday, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nuclear analyst James Acton wrote that the sites could also become compromised if staff are unable to access the nuclear sites: “For Ukrainian nuclear power plant staff, merely traveling to work may be a dangerous act—making it potentially challenging to ensure the reactor can be operated safely.”
→ The European Union announced a package of sanctions against Russia designed to have a “maximum impact on the Russian economy and on the political elite,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a press conference today alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. Those sanctions will limit large bank deposits by Russians in European nations and halt financial transactions with several Russian banks, and they also seek to contain a range of exports, including telecommunications and other electronic equipment that might be of use to the Russian military. However, sanctions stopped short of going after President Putin directly. “You have to keep something up your sleeve,” one EU official told the Financial Times. With Russia providing nearly 40% of Europe’s gas supply, prices spiked 70% yesterday in Europe due to concerns over how Western nations would retaliate against Russia. But after the EU announcement today and President Joe Biden’s announcement of his sanction package yesterday, which both shared that sanctions will largely spare Russia’s capacity to sell energy and several other commodities, the price of gas in Europe and the United Kingdom fell 30% today. In his remarks yesterday from the White House, President Biden said, “My administration is using every tool at its disposal to protect American businesses and families from the rising costs at the gas pump.” In addition to sparing the energy market, sanctions don’t impact SWIFT, the banking payment system that European countries use to purchase their energy from Russia.
→ President Biden has nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring at the end of this term. Currently serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Jackson clerked for Breyer early in her career and worked for the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a federal agency tasked with developing sentencing policies for federal courts. Her notable work as an assistant federal public defender would make her the first Justice with such experience since Justice Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991. If confirmed, the 51-year-old will be the second-youngest Justice (Amy Coney Barrett recently celebrated her 50th birthday) and the first African American woman to serve on the highest court in the land.
→ BlackRock, the investment firm that oversees some $10 trillion worth of assets, is teaming up with Warner Music Group to spend $750 million on the catalog of young musicians like Tainy, a Puerto Rican producer and songwriter who has won multiple Grammys. While younger artists may have fewer lifetime listens than Dylan or Springsteen, both of whom recently sold their catalogs for massive deals, investors hope the catalogs of young artists will rack up bigger paydays over the long haul as exercise apps and video games continue to acquire the music from younger performers.
→ Responding to the “grave escalation of the security situation in Europe,” the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has moved the Champions League final from Russia to Paris. Aside from being a publicity coup for French President Macron—the UEFA thanked him for “his personal support and commitment ... at a time of unparalleled crisis”—the league is now navigating a European war that threatens to disrupt the sacrosanct football season. The UEFA also announced that Russia and Ukraine will not play in their home stadiums but in neutral venues. On Friday, at Olimpiyskiy Stadium, where Ukraine’s team would have been playing, hundreds of protestors unfurled a 650-foot Ukrainian flag in support of their besieged country.
Your Weekend Reads
→ Tablet contributing writer Vladislav Davidzon files this dispatch from Kyiv on the surreal moment leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a brief period that included a “combination of surrealism and tedium,” sharing drinks with Sean Penn, and realizing that life in Ukraine, such as it was, has now been utterly and remarkably changed:
Sadly, grotesquely, the pleasures of civilized life in Kyiv have now been sundered by the paranoid fantasies and hatreds of a single man. It seems obviously clear that spending time in the banya, making weirdo Yiddish art, and reminiscing on past love affairs belong to a quality of life that Kyiv will not enjoy again for a very long time.
Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/my-last-24-hours-in-kyiv
→ In 2014, William Langewiesche penned this investigation on the private defense market and the arms contractor G4S, which boasts more than 600,000 employees across 120 nations, many of whom are former military, available for deployment by wealthy individuals who might need protection in areas where military or law enforcement cannot, or will not, otherwise go.
Into the void left by governments’ retreat, private-security companies have naturally arrived. The size of the industry is impossible to know, given difficulties with definitions and the thousands of small companies entering the business, but in the United States alone security guards may now number two million, a force larger than all the police forces combined. … Globally the private-security market is believed to exceed $200 billion annually, with higher numbers expected in the coming years. A conservative guess is that the industry currently employs about 15 million people. Critics worry about the divisive effects of an industry that isolates the rich from the consequences of greed and at the extreme allows certain multinational companies, particularly in oil and mining, to run roughshod over the poor. People also object in principle to the industry’s for-profit intent, which does lead to abuses and seems to be an unworthy motivation when compared with the lofty goals ascribed to government. Nonetheless history has amply shown that national governments and aspirants to national power routinely commit abuses far greater than private security could. Furthermore, for the purpose of understanding the industry, the important point is this: the growth of private security is determinedly apolitical. These companies provide a service that people of whatever bent can buy.
Read more: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/04/g4s-global-security-company
→ In this candid assessment of her dissolution with the institutions and media outfits that perpetuated a set of myths and aggressive acts to silence critics of an ascendant class of “gender activists,” Hadley Freeman writes how, “for the first time in my 20-plus years of being a liberal journalist, I felt completely isolated. I knew I could make my life easier if I just reverted to being the good girl and shut up.”
Many of the people demanding these institutional shifts were and are not transgender themselves. They are bullies who set themselves up as moral arbiters, using self-righteous hysteria and factually questionable claims to demand censorship, instilling fear that anyone caught engaging in wrongspeak or even wrongthink will be publicly shamed and professionally destroyed. Bullies who insist they need to reshape women’s rights entirely, and then accuse any woman who even wants to discuss this of being hateful, stupid and dangerous. I have seen some people refer to gender-critical feminists as bullies, but I have never seen a gender-critical feminist call for writers to be no-platformed, words to be banned, books to be pulped, or articles to be deleted from the web. Gender activists do all of that as a matter of routine.
Read more: https://unherd.com/2022/02/why-i-stopped-being-a-good-girl/
Where are the hypocrites who continue to refer to the evils of the McCarthy period, but who not only neglect, but actively support the much greater evils of the woke crowd?
I think our biggest problem is what it has been from the start of our nation: The repression of minority opinion, tyranny of the majority. How address this problem? Just expect tremendouly virulent fights and know, as long as the dissident parties aren't literally killing each other, that this is all part of our evolution?