What Happened Today: Feb 28, 2022
Kiev under siege; Europe’s awakening; Ukraine is as real as it gets
The Big Story
On the fifth day of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Russian missiles struck the capital, Kyiv, as well as the northeastern city of Kharkiv. The last time the two residential cities were shelled was in 1941 when they came under sustained attack by the army of Nazi Germany. By Monday afternoon, 352 civilians have been killed since the start of the invasion, including 14 children, Ukrainian officials reported. Vladimir Putin has claimed that his invasion of Ukraine was launched to “denazify” the Ukrainians, but the president and the defense minister of the independent nation of Ukraine are Jews, while the Kyiv’s heroic and imposing mayor, former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, has a Jewish grandmother. Ukraine’s defense forces are vastly outnumbered and outgunned but continue to mount defenses against the three main lines of Russian attack: one coming from the south, one from the east, and one attempting to capture Kyiv. The resilience of the Ukrainian defense seems to have surprised the Russians, whose numerical superiority is large enough for blitz attacks on key cities but nowhere near the scale necessary to hold and occupy large swaths of territory inside Ukraine. It’s clear that Russia has so far kept a significant number of its forces in reserve, including the majority of its air power, and has refrained from attacks aimed at maximizing civilian deaths. But even if Putin commits more combat power to Ukraine, the possibility remains that Russian forces would still not be powerful enough to quickly secure decisive victories—yet would be too powerful for the Ukrainians to expel—which sets up the grim possibility that we could be on the verge of large-scale bloodshed that recalls the gruesome battles of 1941. That kind of scenario becomes difficult to avoid once armored columns try to take large, densely populated cities full of high-rise buildings. At the moment, the only possibilities for a quick resolution to the war are for the two sides to negotiate a truce, for Ukraine to surrender, or for Putin to suddenly give up—none of which seems likely.
Read it here: https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics-2/day-five-situation-on-the-ground-russias-war-on-ukraine.html
In The Back Pages: Ukraine Is as Real as It Gets
The Rest
→ When even Sweden is sending weapons to Ukraine, breaking the country’s long-standing tradition of not arming foreign nations, something has changed in Europe’s strategic calculus. The Northern European nation made the pledge Sunday, agreeing to send 5,000 single-use anti-tank missiles along with body armor and field rations to Ukraine, one day after Germany broke its own decades-old convention against sending weapons to conflict zones by agreeing to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine. For its part, the European Union pledged the equivalent of roughly $500 million on weapons and equipment for Ukraine—the first time the EU has ever financed arming a country under attack. There’s still the question of how to get the weapons into Ukraine now that Russia controls most of its borders and airspace, but the offers themselves are significant. After decades living under an American and NATO security umbrella, the formerly post-historical nations of Europe seem to be waking up to the reality that sometimes conflict is unavoidable, and any nation that leaves its security to others gambles with its own survival.
Read it here: https://www.dw.com/en/us-tells-nationals-to-consider-leaving-russia-immediately-as-it-happened/a-60931396
→ The first day of direct talks held between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border ended Monday without any signs of visible progress. However, the two delegations have agreed to continue meeting. Prior to the talks, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said that his aim was for an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. In a separate talk Monday, Russia’s Vladimir Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that a truce would only be possible if Ukraine “denazified,” “demilitarized”—terms that appear to translate to calls for Zelensky to be deposed in a regime change and replaced by a leader who acts as a Russian vassal.
→ Israel has reversed its position from last week and agreed to vote in support of a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine. As Russian hostilities have escalated, Israel has been muted in its condemnations—a reflection of the importance of Russian-Israeli security arrangements in Syria, a country that sits on Israel’s border but moved deep into the Russian sphere of influence after the Obama administration invited Russian officials to act as mediators in the Syrian Civil War. Yet while Israel’s prime minister and U.N. ambassador adopted more neutral positions, Yair Lapid, the country’s foreign minister, called Russia’s invasion “a grave violation of the international order.” According to The Times of Israel, these divergent public positions were a coordinated effort to balance security interests and the sizable Jewish communities living in Russia and Ukraine.
→ New York City schools will see the end of mask and vaccine mandates by March 7, the city’s mayor said, as will New York State schools by this Wednesday. Mandates will also be ending in the city’s restaurants, theaters, and gyms, though the vaccine requirement for city workers will remain in effect. This news comes as the state reports fewer than 2,000 COVID-19-related hospitalizations for the first time since last fall, when the Omicron surge began. The city will now need to deal with the lingering economic impact of the pandemic. As of December, New York City’s 8.8% unemployment rate was more than double the national average.
Read it here: https://nypost.com/2022/02/27/mayor-adams-to-scrap-nyc-vaccine-passports-school-mask-rules-barring-spike-in-cases/
→ China’s government, which has cultivated a strategic alliance with Russia, refers to the country’s invasion of Ukraine as an “operation” or “situation” or “issue.” With the West imposing a raft of new sanctions on Russia, Beijing holds the key to Moscow’s ability to withstand the penalties being levied. China can’t offset the cost of sanctions entirely, though; Russia-China trade is worth $146 billion, while Russia-EU trade is worth $220 billion. On Friday, China’s President Xi Jinping told Putin that the “situation in eastern Ukraine has undergone rapid change, [and] China supports Russia and Ukraine to resolve the issue through negotiation.”
→ So far the People’s Convoy, an American trucker movement modeled on Canada’s Freedom Convoy protests against government vaccine mandates, is far smaller than its northern counterpart, with an estimated 200 to 250 trucks spotted moving east through Oklahoma over the weekend. The convoy has raised $1.5 million as part of its push to demand that President Biden end the state of emergency declared at the start of the pandemic and repeal all COVID-19-related public mandates. The convoy was slowed on Sunday, when four of its vehicles got into an accident in Oklahoma, but is back on the road and heading toward Washington, D.C., where participants plan to convene ahead of President Biden’s inaugural State of the Union Address.
→ Happy birthday to the great Dexter Gordon, who was so cool his heart beat on the lower frequencies.
→ Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) detailed his plans on Monday to introduce a new bill to “shut down Russian energy production” by repealing new regulations on the U.S. energy sector and boosting domestic output. The legislation, dubbed the American Energy Independence Act of 2022, calls for defunding contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement, easing the regulatory requirements for fracking, and reinstating the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline that was canceled by the Biden administration last year.
→ We are human; we contain multitudes. Viva Zelensky!
Ukraine: The real history of a fake country where real people are defending their homeland
Let’s get a couple of cards out on the table.
Half of my family, heritage, and roots are in western Ukraine. I grew up hearing my grandparents speak the language, with the smell of the food and the flowery red-orange-white decor (colors often present in Ukraine on Easter eggs, traditional dress, tablecloths and other decorations) all around their house. I’ve been to mass at Ukrainian Catholic churches, attended cultural festivals, spent time with an American chapter of Plast (imagine Ukrainian Scouts who really like boats), and have always enjoyed learning about the country’s history. Additionally, I still have extended family in western Ukraine (they’re safe).
I will always be an American first and am suspicious of the potential political mobilization inherent in hyphenated American sectarianism. And none of the above gives me special purchase or expertise on the situation. But I cannot help maintaining sympathy for Ukraine as a country and its struggle to emerge from its complicated history as a stable and functioning polity.
Thus, I want the current Russian military mission to fail.
It’s wrong, counterproductive, and has already led to untold numbers of innocent deaths, even with the Russian military exercising caution. Funny that people are noting the mission’s slow and careful pace. But isn’t this precisely what will bog it down? If victory requires a level of brutality you’re unwilling to use, doesn’t this call the mission into question? It deserves to be repudiated and I’m glad the U.S. and Europe are providing humanitarian and material assistance.
However—Stay With Me, I Have Another Card up My Sleeve.
I’m married to someone from the Russian diaspora of another former Soviet republic. Therefore, I also have friends and family in Russia and of Russian descent elsewhere in the former USSR. I’ve been to Moscow and St. Petersburg and have only had positive personal experiences with the Russians. The current war is not their fault, and holding them or any other normal, everyday Russian responsible is morally obnoxious in the extreme. There must be no reprisals against ethnic Russians in the United States or elsewhere purely on the basis of them being Russian. You don’t choose your heritage.
The anti-Russian bile being conjured up on social media was long since planted in the American professional class through the insane delusion of Russiagate and was primed over the last couple years of hysteria around COVID and other issues. I’m not impressed by your flag emojis, your hashtags, or your sudden spurts of solidarity with people you’d forgotten after Trump’s first impeachment. Ukraine is not about you, or your sick desire to feed your own narcissism.
I especially hate this oiling of the machine because of what it’s making people say. “We need a no-fly zone!” Are you out of your mind? Do you understand what that would mean? I know you’re #stillwith your girl Hillary, but it was ludicrous when she proposed it for Syria and it’s equally crazy now. I don’t appreciate this sudden reflexive targeting of social mania that’s just finished with COVID and is ready to steamroll us toward a nuclear catastrophe.
On the other hand, I deeply resent the reflexive attitude of the “based” right-wing dissidents who are leveraging the conflict to burnish their personal brands. “But Putin is the only one standing in the way of anti-white, anti-Christian, globohomo neoliberal hegemony!” You do realize that multiple semi-autonomous nonwhite ethnic republics exist within the Russian Federation, don’t you?
And since so many of you love to claim Ukraine is a “fake country, LOL” and is really just an extension of Russia, how can you be happy with the killing of the same people you claim to admire so much? Additionally, Hungary has been able to maintain membership in the EU while bucking some of the recent social shifts elsewhere in the West. What makes you think Ukraine couldn’t do the same?
I want to address the “fake country” assertion head-on for a moment. You people sound like leftist idiots who bleat on about everything being “just a social construct.” Every country is “fake” until enough people on Earth agree that it’s real, that its borders exist, and that its sovereignty is legitimate. That has been the case in Ukraine since 1991. “But that’s so recent!” So what? If you were alive in 1952, would you similarly scoff at the idea of Irish independence? Unless you want the world in a permanent state of war, we must be able to draw lines somewhere.
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A version of this essay was originally published at the Substack “The Cynical Optimist” under the title “Thinking About Ukraine,” by Mark Alastor, the pen name of a freelance writer whose writing has also appeared at Splice Today.