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Russia invoking Art. 51 of the UN Charter and Ukraine, based on Art 4 of the same Charter, questioning Russian moves

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UN Security Council Holds Emergency Meeting on Russia-Ukraine crisis

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25/02/2022 Russia vetoes UNSC Resolution

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25/02/2022 Russia vetoes UNSC Resolution

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The video highlights some of the contents of the failed Resolution and the reactions of some major players to these developments

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Ukraine Invasion: Russia Vetoes UNSC Resolution, India & China Abstain; West Sanctions Putin, Lavrov

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26/02/2022 What's impeding 'The West' to act militarily?

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26/02/2022 What's impeding 'The West' to act militarily?

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A report on latest moves, including how Ukrainians are resisting violence and experts' comments on what's next

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Ukrainians fight back against Russians on Kyiv outskirts | DW News

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Tens of thousands of Ukrainians rushed to the borders as invading Russian troops pressed their advance into Ukraine and toward the country's capital Saturday in Europe's largest ground war since World War II.

Some walked many miles through the night while others fled by train, car or bus, forming lines miles long at border crossings. They were greeted by waiting relatives and friends or headed on their own to reception centers organized by governments.

With the world revolted at Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine, a Western-looking democracy, there was a huge outpouring of support for the fleeing Ukrainians. This included an unconditional welcome from nations like Poland that often did not want to accept those fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa in past years.

Nearly 120,000 people have so far fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighboring countries in the wake of Russian invasion, the U.N. refugee agency said Saturday. The number was going up fast as Ukrainians grabbed their belongings and rushed to escape from a deadly Russian onslaught on their nation, including an attempt to take the capital of Kyiv.

One family from Chernivtsi in western Ukraine waited 20 hours before being able to cross the border into Siret in northern Romania. Natalia Murinik, 14, cried as she described saying goodbye to grandparents who couldn't leave the country.

"It really hurt, I want to go home," she said.

Czarek Sokolowski via Associated Press

The largest numbers were arriving in Poland, where 2 million Ukrainians have already settled to work in recent years, driven away by Russia's first incursion into Ukraine when it annexed Crimea in 2014 and seeking opportunities in the booming economy of the European Union neighbor.

Poland's government said Saturday that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border in the past 48 hours alone. At the Medyka border crossing, the line of vehicles waiting to enter Poland stretched 15 kilometers (9 miles) into Ukraine.

Poland declared its border open to fleeing Ukrainians, even for those without official documents, and dropped its requirement to show a negative COVID-19 test.

"We will help everyone," the Polish Border Agency said. "We will not leave anyone without help."

On Saturday, Poland sent a hospital train to pick up those wounded in the war in Mostyska, in western Ukraine, and bring them to the Polish capital of Warsaw for treatment. The hospital train left the border town of Przemysl and has five carriages to transport the wounded and four others stocked with humanitarian aid for Ukraine's Lviv district.

Those arriving were mostly women, children and the elderly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday banned men of military age from 18 to 60 from leaving the country. Some Ukrainian men were reportedly heading back into Ukraine from Poland to take up arms against the Russian forces.

Beata Zawrzel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

"Almost 116,000 have crossed international borders as of right now. This may go up, it's changing every minute," said Shabia Mantoo, the spokeswoman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, on Saturday morning. "It's very fluid and changing by the hour."

Mantoo said most Ukrainians were heading to neighboring Poland, Moldova, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia but some even fled into Belarus - from which some Russian forces entered Ukraine. Some planned to head further on to other countries in Europe.

The agency expects up to 4 million Ukrainians could flee if the situation deteriorates further.

The border post in Siret was crowded with Ukrainians arriving on Saturday. A few miles in, humanitarian groups had set up tents and offered food and drink to those arriving.

But the fate of teenager Natalia Murinik's family was now uncertain, and they didn't know where they were going next.

"We don't have a clue. We're waiting for our friends, and then we'll think," she said.

Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Stephen McGrath in Siret, Romania, contributed.
Related...

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Some 120,000 Ukrainians Flee Largest European Ground War Since WWII

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Tens of thousands of Ukrainians rushed to the borders as invading Russian troops pressed their advance into Ukraine and toward the country's capital Saturday in Europe's largest ground war since World War II. Some walked many miles through the night while others fled by train, car or bus, forming lines miles long at border crossings.

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25/02/2022 The economic impact of the war

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25/02/2022 The economic impact of the war

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The invasion of Ukraine comes at a delicate time for the world economy, which was just beginning to recover from the ravages of COVID. Russia's war could now have far-reaching economic consequences, as financial markets tumble and the price of oil soars.

A worrying comparison can even be made to the 1973 Yom Kippur war in the Middle East, which led to an oil crisis. This shook the world economy to its foundations and signalled the end of an economic boom which had done so much to reduce unemployment and raise living standards.

Today the world economy is much larger than it was back then, but it has been growing much more slowly in recent decades. And the pandemic struck a mighty blow over the last two years, with governments forced to spend vast sums on bailing out their own economies.

Now, despite some signs of recovery, the risks of higher inflation and lower growth remain, with large debts limiting the ability of many governments to intervene.

Key to the weakening economic outlook are rising energy costs and continuing disruption to supply chains - both of which will be made worse by the Ukraine crisis. Russia is the EU's largest supplier of gas and oil, and higher energy costs mean more expensive transport, affecting the movement of all kinds of goods.

But perhaps the biggest risk to the world economy is that a prolonged crisis could tip the world into stagflation, a combination of high inflation and low economic growth. This was a key problem after the 1973 oil crisis, but one which many economists hoped has been consigned to history, with relatively low and stable prices for the last two decades.

Cost of living could worsen

High and rising inflation will exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis which is already affecting many consumers. It also presents a dilemma for central banks which have been pouring money into the economy for the last two years of the pandemic.

Most are now planning to gradually withdraw this support at the same time as gradually raising interest rates to curb inflation.

But this will further weaken the economy - especially if inflation continues to accelerate and central banks react with dramatic interest rates rises. During the 1970s crisis, the US Federal Reserve had raised interest rates to 10% by 1978, causing a deep recession. The following year in the UK, Bank of England interest rates reached 17%, precipitating a sharp economic decline.

Hopes that inflationary pressures will ease by the middle of 2022 now look optimistic. Russia and Ukraine are among the world's biggest exporters of wheat and many (especially in Europe) depend on Russian oil and gas, so energy and food prices could continue to rise further.

And it's not just the rate of inflation which matters, but also people's expectations that it will rise further. This can spark a "wage-price spiral", where people demand higher wages to compensate for the higher cost of living, forcing companies to increase prices further across the board to pay for the wage rises. Central banks are then forced to raise interest rates even higher.

Inflation also means that government spending could fall in real terms, reducing the level of public services and squeezing public sector pay. And if firms become concerned that they cannot raise prices enough to compensate for higher wages, they may be tempted to cut back on their workforce, leading to higher unemployment.

Falling stocks

While the central banks have been pumping huge amounts of money into financial markets in order to help stabilise a weak economy, one effect of this has been that the stock markets remained remarkably buoyant over the last decade, rising by nearly 10% each year on average.

Stocks had already started to fall this year after central banks announced that they will unwind this support, and markets have fallen further since Ukraine was attacked. If stagflation returns, central banks will have to reduce their support even faster, while a slowing economy would hit corporate profits and further depress stock prices (although energy stocks would rise). This in turn could reduce investment and business confidence, leading to fewer new jobs.

For many people who hold stocks or other assets, rising prices often lead to a "wealth effect" where people are more confident about spending (and borrowing) money, especially on big ticket items. Weaker markets would therefore affect economic growth, as well as the viability of pension plans which many people depend on.

Read more: Ukraine: 'I'm surprised the oil price hasn't hit US$130 a barrel yet' - energy trading expert Q&A

So while there is much uncertainty about the political and human consequences of Russia's attack on Ukraine, the world should also be prepared for serious economic ramifications.

Europe is likely to be first in the path of any economic storm, partly because of its greater dependence on Russian energy supplies, but also because of its geographical proximity to a war on its doorstep.

In the US, any economic difficulties could further weaken the Biden administration and bolster isolationist, America-first views. Meanwhile, a global alliance between Russia and China could further strengthen both economies, overriding any effect of sanctions, and strengthening their military as well as economic clout.

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Ukraine: how the Russian invasion could derail the fragile world economy

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The invasion of Ukraine comes at a delicate time for the world economy, which was just beginning to recover from the ravages of COVID. Russia's war could now have far-reaching economic consequences, as financial markets tumble and the price of oil soars.

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The full text describing the sanctions to be imposed on Russian banks (central bank included)

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We, the leaders of the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States condemn Putin's war of choice and attacks on the sovereign nation and people of Ukraine. We stand with the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to resist Russia's invasion. Russia's war represents an assault on fundamental international rules and norms that have prevailed since the Second World War, which we are committed to defending. We will hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin.

This past week, alongside our diplomatic efforts and collective work to defend our own borders and to assist the Ukrainian government and people in their fight, we, as well as our other allies and partners around the world, imposed severe measures on key Russian institutions and banks, and on the architects of this war, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As Russian forces unleash their assault on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, we are resolved to continue imposing costs on Russia that will further isolate Russia from the international financial system and our economies. We will implement these measures within the coming days.

Specifically, we commit to undertake the following measures:

First, we commit to ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system. This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.

Second, we commit to imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.

Third, we commit to acting against the people and entities who facilitate the war in Ukraine and the harmful activities of the Russian government. Specifically, we commit to taking measures to limit the sale of citizenship-so called golden passports-that let wealthy Russians connected to the Russian government become citizens of our countries and gain access to our financial systems.

Fourth, we commit to launching this coming week a transatlantic task force that will ensure the effective implementation of our financial sanctions by identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies that exist within our jurisdictions. As a part of this effort we are committed to employing sanctions and other financial and enforcement measures on additional Russian officials and elites close to the Russian government, as well as their families, and their enablers to identify and freeze the assets they hold in our jurisdictions. We will also engage other governments and work to detect and disrupt the movement of ill-gotten gains, and to deny these individuals the ability to hide their assets in jurisdictions across the world.

Finally, we will step up or coordination against disinformation and other forms of hybrid warfare.

We stand with the Ukrainian people in this dark hour. Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine.

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Joint Statement on Further Restrictive Economic Measures | The White House

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We, the leaders of the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States condemn Putin's war of choice and attacks on the sovereign nation and people of Ukraine. We stand with the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to resist Russia's invasion.

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What does this report tell us about how we think about the world?

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ahmed Twaij (@twaiji)

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This link is a lit put together by Ukrainains. It contains info about the conflict and resources on how to help.
https://ukrainewar.carrd.co/

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Russia-Ukraine War: Info and ways to help

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Russia-Ukraine War: Info and ways to help

Information on the conflict

In the culmination of the ongoing 8-years-long war between Russia and Ukraine, Russia has Prior to the recognition, pro-Kremlin channels have Russia has declared that it recognizes the "people's republics" in Donbas as "independent" on Feb. 22. This move was meant as a set-up to jeopardize years of diplomatic negotiations around the conflict and disrupt peace in the country.

spread false justifications for the ongoing war. In a speech announcing the recognition, Putin blamed Ukrainians themselves for the escalation, calling it "a colony with puppets at its helm."
declared a full-scale invasion early in the morning of Feb. 24.

Additional reading

How can I help?

There are multiple ways to help, from asking your government to provide assistance for Ukraine to donating and even directly participating as a volunteer.

Read this article for more general information

Donation links

Supplies for the military

Update: You can donate to the Armed Forces of Ukraine directly now. All the funds donated directly or to either of these orgs will be used for logistical and medical support.

Medical supplies

Other volunteer orgs

Helping the veterans

Helping children affected by war

Vulnerable groups

Local initiatives

Supplies for journalists

Threads

This is a list of threads by other people with donation links that is kind of hard to fit within the specific section of this card.

Donate to outlets

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jane Lytvynenko (Thanks to Thanks to Oleh Novikov (Thanks to all the people @JaneLytv) for helping with the short summary.
@radiowestin for suggesting the article.
@olehbatkovych) and Taras Chmut (@TarasChmut) for providing a space to voice the idea. Thanks to the people participating in the space for supporting the idea and inspiring me to swiftly move further with it. replying to this thread for providing me an initial list that formed this card.

Page managed by kat (@KATURATION) and Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv).

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Russia-Ukraine War: Info and ways to help

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In the culmination of the ongoing 8-years-long war between Russia and Ukraine, Russia has Prior to the recognition, pro-Kremlin channels have Russia has declared that it recognizes the "people's republics" in Donbas as "independent" on Feb. 22. This move was meant as a set-up to jeopardize years of diplomatic negotiations around the conflict and disrupt peace in the country.

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28/02/2022 General Assembly holds emergency special session on Ukraine

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28/02/2022 General Assembly holds emergency special session on Ukraine

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What's the significance of this meeting?

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General Assembly holds emergency special session on Ukraine

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As fighting escalates in Ukraine, UN Member States met on Monday for a rare emergency special session of the General Assembly to discuss the crisis.

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28/02/2022 Putin Accidentally Revitalized the West’s Liberal Order

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28/02/2022 Putin Accidentally Revitalized the West’s Liberal Order

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A provocative thought. Any comments?

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The Russian president thought he sensed an opportunity to take advantage of a disunited West. He has been proved wrong.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a chorus of despair-beyond the cost in Ukrainian lives, the international order that the U.S. and its allies built after World War II is, we are told, crumbling. The writer Paul Kingsnorth has declared that the liberal order is already dead. The Indian journalist Rahul Shivshankar has argued that "in the ruins across Ukraine you will find the remains of Western arrogance." Even the brilliant historian Margaret MacMillan has written that "the world will never be the same. We have moved already into a new and unstable era."

The reverse is true. Vladimir Putin has attempted to crush Ukraine's independence and "Westernness" while also demonstrating NATO's fecklessness and free countries' unwillingness to shoulder economic burdens in defense of our values. He has achieved the opposite of each. Endeavoring to destroy the liberal international order, he has been the architect of its revitalization.
Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine
Germany has long soft-pedaled policies targeting Russia, but its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, made a moving and extraordinary change, committing an additional $100 billion to defense spending immediately, shipping weapons to Ukraine, and ending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was constructed to bring gas to Germany from Russia. Hungary, thought to be the weakest link in the Western chain, has supported without question moves by the European Union and NATO to punish Moscow. Turkey, arguably the most Russia-friendly NATO country, having bought missile defense systems from Moscow, has invoked its responsibilities in the 1936 Montreux Convention and closed the Bosporus strait to Russian warships. NATO deployed its rapid-reaction force for the first time, and allies are rushing to send troops to reinforce frontline states. A cascade of places have closed their airspace to Russian craft. The United States has orchestrated action and gracefully let others have the stage, strengthening allies and institutions both.

We are a long way from the ultimate outcome of Russia's invasion, but even if Ukrainian military forces cannot prevail or President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government are killed or captured, it's difficult to see how Putin's broader gamble succeeds. If Zelensky falls, another leader will step forward. Even Russian-speaking Ukrainians have become anti-Russian. The scene depicted in Picasso's Guernica, one of wanton and barbaric violence, is the best Putin can hope for: Conquering Ukraine will require unspeakable brutality, and even if Moscow succeeds on this count, foreign legions are flowing to Ukraine to assist an insurgency in bleeding Russia's occupation. If Ukraine fends off Russia's assault, it will be welcomed into NATO and the EU.

The Ukrainian government that so recently seemed mired in corruption and division has been outstanding: President Zelensky has refused to flee and inspired resistance; outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian military forces seem to have held their own. They understand that they're in a battle of ideas, establishing, for example, a hotline for Russian prisoners of war to call their families.

Civil activism is the lifeblood of free societies, and Ukrainians have been excelling, including the sunflower lady, who cursed Russian soldiers; civilians lining up to collect arms and make Molotov cocktails, or change out street signs to confuse the invaders; and breweries retooling to produce weaponry.

Ukraine's tenacity and creativity have ignited civil-society energy, corporate strength, and humanitarian assistance. The hacker group Anonymous has declared war on Russia, disrupting state TV and making public the defense ministry's personnel rosters. Elon Musk's SpaceX has promised to help keep Ukraine online. The chipmakers Intel and AMD have stopped sending supplies to Russia; BP is divesting from its stake in the Russian energy giant Rosneft; FedEx and UPS have suspended service to Russia. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is cutting all its investments in Russia. YouTube and Meta have demonetized Russian state media. (Even Pornhub is denying Russians access.) Belarusian hackers disrupted their country's rail network to prevent their government from sending troops to support the Russian war. Polish citizens collected 100 tons of food for Ukraine in two days. Bars are pouring out Russian vodka. Iconic architecture in cities all over the free world is lit up with the colors of the Ukrainian flag to show solidarity. Sports teams are refusing to play Russia in international tournaments. The London Philharmonic opened its Saturday concert by playing the Ukrainian national anthem, and the Simpsons modeled Ukrainian flags. This is what free societies converging on an idea looks like. And the idea is this: Resist Putin's evil.

Although we in the West sometimes lose faith that our values are universal, Putin certainly believes they are. Otherwise, why attempt to conquer a country to prevent it from succeeding? And why threaten prison sentences for Russians giving aid to Ukraine? Plenty of Russians seem to share our perspective: Protests took place in scores of Russian cities over the weekend, and thousands of people were arrested. The Russian tennis star Andrey Rublev wrote no war please on the lens of a TV camera during an interview. Russian soldiers are allowing civilian protesters to halt their tanks. Rumors abound that Putin has fired the chief of his military's general staff. Reports have emerged that oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska are calling for an end to the war.

Nor is the liberal international order just a project of the transatlantic alliance. The UN may not have been able to prevent Russian aggression, but it served its purpose of forcing accountability onto governments for their positions. Kenya's ambassador to the UN reminded us all that smaller powers, countries that suffered imperial conquest, are some of the biggest beneficiaries of a system that affirms "the sovereign equality of states, and states' inviolable rights to territorial integrity and political independence." Japan has joined many of the Western sanctions against Russia, while Southeast Asian nations such as Singapore and Indonesia have condemned the invasion.

China has squirmed at having its longtime support for an individual state's sovereignty conflict with its just-christened friendship treaty with Russia, and is balancing its political position of not enforcing sanctions by having to limit financing by Chinese banks for Russian goods because of the risk of exclusion from the global financial order. Russia's argument that Ukraine isn't really a state may seem consonant with China's position toward Taiwan, but worldwide reaction to Russian aggression ought certainly to give Beijing pause before it considers an attempt to subjugate Taiwan.

Those of us already living in free societies owe Ukrainians a great debt of gratitude. Their courage has reminded us of the nobility of sacrifice for just causes. As Ronald Reagan memorably said, "There is a profound difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest." What Ukrainians have done is inspire Americans and others to shake ourselves out of our torpor and create policies of assistance to them, in the hopes that we might one day prove worthy of becoming their ally.

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ongoing coverage of the russian invasion

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Putin Accidentally Revitalized the West's Liberal Order

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The Russian president thought he sensed an opportunity to take advantage of a disunited West. He has been proved wrong. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a chorus of despair-beyond the cost in Ukrainian lives, the international order that the U.S. and its allies built after World War II is, we are told, crumbling.

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27/02/2022 Ukraine Creates Foreign Legion as Volunteers From Abroad Join the Fight

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27/02/2022 Ukraine Creates Foreign Legion as Volunteers From Abroad Join the Fight

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How does this move relate to ideas of sovereignty and force in international politics?

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Ukraine has created a foreign legion of volunteers for foreigners who want to join the battle against Russia.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Sunday the country is establishing an "international" legion for foreign volunteers who want to fight for the nation, according to Reuters.

Zelenskyy said in a statement: "This will be the key evidence of your support for our country."

Dmytro Kuleba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine confirmed President Zelenskyy's comments in a separate statement.

Kuleba said in a tweet shared on Sunday: "Foreigners willing to defend Ukraine and world order as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, I invite you to contact foreign diplomatic missions of Ukraine in your respective countries. Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin too."

Foreigners willing to defend Ukraine and world order as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, I invite you to contact foreign diplomatic missions of Ukraine in your respective countries. Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too.
- Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) February 27, 2022

Newsweek has contacted Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, following weeks of talks and negotiations with the White House and European leaders.

The Russian military has penetrated the Ukrainian border at several locations with forces closing in on the capital Kyiv.

Putin's invasion has forced many Ukrainians to flee their homes, with many leaving the country.

Newsweek previously reported the UN Refugee Agency confirmed on Friday that at least 100,000 people within Ukraine had been displaced and another 50,000 had left the country since the invasion began.

The majority of those who have fled Ukraine arrived in the neighboring countries of Moldova, Poland, Romania and Hungary.

But the invasion has come at a steep cost to Putin with the White House, European leaders and their allies issuing a number of economic sanctions against Russia.

On Friday, European Union ( EU) member states agreed to freeze any assets held by Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that are held in Europe.

According to Reuters, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said: "We are now listing President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov as well.

"They are responsible for the deaths of innocent people in Ukraine, and for trampling on the international system. We, as Europeans, do not accept them."

The EU has also agreed to remove a number of Russian banks from SWIFT, an international payment system. Russia is reliant on the payment system for its oil and gas exports, according to the BBC.

President Joe Biden had considered the possibility of removing Russia from SWIFT in a bid to cut off ways that Putin can fund his war.

In a Friday briefing, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in response to a question about the transaction system: "As it relates to SWIFT, we've never taken that off the table, of course, and I'm certainly not taking it off the table today. So, certainly, there'll be ongoing discussions about that.

As you know, SWIFT is a messaging service that connects 11,000 banks. And many would argue that there are ways that - that Russia - the Russian leadership could get around that over the course of time, but it certainly remains an option on the table.

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Ukraine creates foreign legion as volunteers from abroad join the fight

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Ukraine has created a foreign legion of volunteers for foreigners who want to join the battle against Russia. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Sunday the country is establishing an "international" legion for foreign volunteers who want to fight for the nation, according to Reuters.

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What is your assessment of anonymous' role in the ongoing situation?

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Global hacking group Anonymous launches ‘cyber war’ against Russia

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The online group known as Anonymous appears to be entering the Ukraine-Russia conflict by declaring cyber war against Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

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02/03/2022 The negotiation behind the sanctions' package

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02/03/2022 The negotiation behind the sanctions' package

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Different viewpoints have emerged amidst the recently announced package of sanctions against Russia. Does this mean a new chance for European integration? Is the global sanctions regime finally working?

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Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens and Rowan Niemisto.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello.

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Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J.

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02/03/2022 ICC to open an investigation on the situation in Ukraine

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02/03/2022 ICC to open an investigation on the situation in Ukraine

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Last Friday, I expressed my increasing concern, echoing those of world leaders and citizens of the world alike, over the events unfolding in Ukraine.

Today, I wish to announce that I have decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.

Ukraine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ("ICC" or the "Court"), so cannot itself refer the situation to my Office. But it has twice exercised its prerogatives to legally accept the Court's jurisdiction over alleged crimes under the Rome Statute occurring on its territory, should the Court choose to exercise it. The first declaration lodged by the Government of Ukraine accepted ICC jurisdiction with respect to alleged crimes committed on Ukrainian territory from 21 November 2013 to 22 February 2014. The second declaration extended this time period on an open-ended basis to encompass ongoing alleged crimes committed throughout the territory of Ukraine from 20 February 2014 onwards.

I have reviewed the Office's conclusions arising from the preliminary examination of the Situation in Ukraine, and have confirmed that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with opening an investigation. In particular, I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine in relation to the events already assessed during the preliminary examination by the Office. Given the expansion of the conflict in recent days, it is my intention that this investigation will also encompass any new alleged crimes falling within the jurisdiction of my Office that are committed by any party to the conflict on any part of the territory of Ukraine.

I have already tasked my team to explore all evidence preservation opportunities. The next step is to proceed with the process of seeking and obtaining authorisation from the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court to open an investigation. An alternative route set out in the Statute that could further expedite matters would be for an ICC State Party to refer the situation to my Office, which would allow us to actively and immediately proceed with the Office's independent and objective investigations.

I will also be asking for the support of all States Parties and the international community as a whole as my Office sets about its investigations. I will be calling for additional budgetary support, for voluntary contributions to support all our situations, and for the loan of gratis personnel. The importance and urgency of our mission is too serious to be held hostage to lack of means.

I will continue to closely follow developments on the ground in Ukraine, and again call for restraint and strict adherence to the applicable rules of international humanitarian law.

If anyone has information relevant to the Situation, this can be submitted to my Office via: [email protected] .

For further details on "preliminary examinations" and "situations and cases" before the Court, click, and .

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Statement of ICC Prosecutor, Karim A.A. Khan QC, on the Situation in Ukraine: "I have decided to proceed with opening an investigation."

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Last Friday, I expressed my increasing concern, echoing those of world leaders and citizens of the world alike, over the events unfolding in Ukraine.Today, I wish to announce that I have decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.

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"He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people," Biden said, a line that drew a standing ovation.

Biden touted efforts to provide Ukraine with military and economic assistance, which has topped $1 billion so far.

"He has no idea what's coming," Biden said of Putin, a line that was not included in his prepared remarks.

The United States and allies have ratcheted up sanctions against Putin, top Russian leaders and the country's financial sector in recent days. Biden also noted the Justice Department will organize a task force to target Russian oligarchs.

"Tonight I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime no more," Biden said. "We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains."

But Biden also conceded that the move would have an impact on Americans, particularly in spikes in gas prices. He pledged his administration would take steps to mitigate the harm to Americans, including working with 30 countries to free up 60 million barrels of oil from global reserves.

"To all Americans, I will be honest with you, as I've always promised. A Russian dictator, invading a foreign country, has costs around the world," Biden said.

"I know the news about what's happening can seem alarming. But I want you to know that we are going to be OK," Biden said. "When the history of this era is written, Putin's war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger."

Biden also touted the increased flow of weapons and economic assistance to Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion, the U.S. has pledged an additional $350 million in military aid, including anti-tank Javelin missiles. On top of other European nations, Germany reversed longstanding policy to ship 1,000 anti-tank missiles and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine.

The White House has also outlined another $6.4 billion in funding to posture U.S. troops in Europe and to provide security and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and allies on NATO's eastern flank. Biden didn't mention the request in his speech.

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Biden promises punishment for Putin, pledges to lessen impact on U.S.

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"He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people," Biden said, a line that drew a standing ovation. Biden touted efforts to provide Ukraine with military and economic assistance, which has topped $1 billion so far.

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03/03/2022 U.N. General Assembly vote denounces Russia over Ukraine invasion

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03/03/2022 U.N. General Assembly vote denounces Russia over Ukraine invasion

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UNITED NATIONS, March 2 (Reuters) - The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to reprimand Russia for invading Ukraine and demanded that Moscow stop fighting and withdraw its military forces, an action that aims to diplomatically isolate Russia at the world body.

The resolution, supported by 141 of the assembly's 193 members, passed in a rare emergency session called by the U.N. Security Council while Ukrainian forces battled to defend the port of Kherson in the face of air strikes and a devastating bombardment that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

The text of the resolution deplores Russia's "aggression against Ukraine." The last time the Security Council convened an emergency session of the General Assembly was in 1982, according to the U.N. website. read more

Russia was joined by Belarus, which has served as a launch pad for Russian invasion forces, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria in voting against the resolution. Thirty-five members, including China, abstained.

While General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, they carry political weight, with Wednesday's vote representing a symbolic victory for Ukraine and increasing Moscow's international isolation. Even Russia's traditional ally Serbia voted against it.

"As 141 member states of the United Nations know, more is at stake even than the conflict in Ukraine itself. This is a threat to the security of Europe and the entire rules-based order," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters after the vote.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the assembly that Russia was poised to intensify the brutality of its offensive and urged members to hold Moscow accountable for its violations of international law.

She cited videos of Russian troops moving heavy weapons into Ukraine, including cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, banned under international law.

"This is an extraordinary moment," she said. "Now, at more than any other point in recent history, the United Nations is being challenged."

"Vote yes if you believe UN member states - including your own - have a right to sovereignty and territorial integrity. Vote yes if you believe Russia should be held to account for its actions," she added.

Russia's U.N. envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, denied Moscow was targeting civilians and accused Western governments of pressuring assembly members to pass the resolution, whose adoption he said could fuel further violence.

He repeated Russia's assertion its action was a special military operation aimed at ending purported attacks on civilians in the self-declared Moscow-backed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Nebenzia charged that Ukrainian forces were using civilians as human shields and deploying heavy weapons in civilian areas.

Elaborating on China's abstention, Beijing's envoy, Zhang Jun, said the resolution did not undergo "full consultations with the whole membership" of the assembly.

"Nor does it take full consideration of the history and complexity of the current crisis. It does not highlight the importance of the principle of indivisible security, or the urgency of promoting political settlement and stepping up diplomatic efforts," he said. "These are not in line with China's consistent positions."

China, which has grown increasingly close to Russia in recent years, says it will not participate in Western sanctions against Moscow.

"The evil will never stop. It requires more and more space," Ukraine's U.N. envoy, Sergiy Kyslytsa, said in urging passage of the resolution, calling it "one of the building blocks to build a wall to stop" the Russian offensive.

After nearly a week, Russia has yet to achieve its aim of overthrowing Ukraine's government. It has faced an unprecedented international backlash, especially from the West, whose sanctions have crippled Russia's financial system while giant multinational countries have pulled investments out.

Washington has imposed several rounds of sanctions, including against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the central bank, since Russia's forces invaded Ukraine in the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two. Moscow calls the assault a "special operation."

Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Mary Milliken and Howard Goller

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.N. General Assembly in historic vote denounces Russia over Ukraine invasion

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UNITED NATIONS, March 2 (Reuters) - The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to reprimand Russia for invading Ukraine and demanded that Moscow stop fighting and withdraw its military forces, an action that aims to diplomatically isolate Russia at the world body.

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Putin resorting to using Chechen divisions as ordinary Russian ones are demoralised and unwilling to fight. On paper Ukraine should have fallen now and only an insurgency active. Failure to capture/kill Zelensky with special forces is embarrassing for a "world power".

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08/03/2022 Communications in Ukraine - Strategic issues

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08/03/2022 Communications in Ukraine - Strategic issues

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Interestingly, some ideas on why telecom are still working in Ukraine. For how long?

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Russian intelligence services can eavesdrop on phone calls and emails and also gather geolocation and other metadata.

The Russian army is using Ukrainian commercial networks to communicate.

Russian forces don't want to destroy infrastructure that they will need if they succeed in conquering Ukraine.

Listening in

"If [Russian forces] can do localized shutdowns of telecommunications, they'll do it," said James Lewis, senior vice president and director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But in general, they'll want to keep the phones working in Kyiv because they can listen in."

Ariel Parnes, a former top Israeli cyberintelligence official, agrees: "Imagine if you know the phone numbers of certain people or certain leadership or soldiers, troops. You can see the movement. You can see where the forces are concentrated."

Russian attempts to penetrate Ukrainian networks have been made easier because the countries use similar technologies in their networks. Wired reported in 2012 both nations have required providers install a piece of surveillance technology that allows governments to tap phone lines and record calls.

Furthermore, prior to the 2014 Crimea annexation, most of Ukraine's telecommunications providers were either owned by Russians or Russian-Ukrainian businesspeople, giving Moscow the opportunity to lean on the private sector for help infiltrating networks, said Chris Kubecka, a cyberwarfare specialist who traveled to Ukraine before the invasion to help a nuclear power facility prepare for Russian cyber threats.

"It's easy to put surveillance on telecoms if you have a foothold," Kubecka said. "Now [the Russians] have blueprints, probably backdoors."

Having that access could affect Russia's decision-making, Lewis said. "They're not asking, 'Can we get in?' They're asking, 'Is it better for us to let it keep working and use it, or to shut it off?'"

Even before the invasion, Russian surveillance of Ukrainian telephone networks was pervasive. On numerous occasions, U.S. officials have linked Russia to leaks of phone conversations between Ukrainian political elites and Western officials. The old KGB building still stands tall in the center of Kyiv, serving as a permanent reminder of Moscow's reach within Ukraine. Zelenskyy himself uses a secure satellite phone to communicate with U.S. officials, according to a CNN report.

Hiding in plain sight

Meanwhile, rather than sticking to more secure, military communications lines, "the Russians themselves are using the local telecoms networks - and more widely, the local communications infrastructure as well - as they do their operations," said Shane Huntley, who leads Google's Threat Analysis Group, which tracks and fights government-backed cyberattacks. "I can't speak to their intent, but one possibility is that they believe that if they take out telecoms networks that it would actually hinder their operations as well."

Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, which coordinates the country's cyber operations, said last week that Russian military personnel had stolen mobile phones from Ukrainians after phone companies cut off network access for phones with Russian numbers.

"Having deprived them of the opportunity to call their own numbers, the occupying forces are increasingly taking away phones from citizens. We call on Ukrainians whose mobile phones were taken away by representatives of enemy troops to inform the operator as soon as possible and ask [to] block the stolen phone," the Ukrainian agency said on Telegram.

Tweets also purportedly show that some of Russia's invading troops used cheap, off-the-shelf walkie talkies to communicate. Hacktivist groups including Anonymous claim to have interrupted Russian military communications. If those claims are true, it would help explain why Russian soldiers would turn to commercial networks to communicate.

Keeping the house intact

Another explanation is simply that Russia expected to win so quickly that it felt it could keep important telecommunications infrastructure intact that it would soon need to run the country.

"If you want to own the house, you're not going to burn it down," Lewis said.

Even if Russia does succeed in claiming Ukraine, taking over a region's existing telecommunications infrastructure is already difficult without having to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars building entirely new cell towers. When Russia illegally annexed the Crimea peninsula in 2014, it took Moscow about three years to take full control of the region's mobile infrastructure. That's even though that cell network had been left intact during the invasion, according to a 2020 paper from Citizen Lab, internet registry RIPE NCC and Japan-based IIJ Innovation Institute.

And it wasn't a simple process. Ukrainian mobile operator Ukrtelecom kept running the network for almost a year after the annexation in parts of Crimea, until armed guards surrounded the company's offices and blocked employees from entering, according to TeleGeography, a consulting firm. Crimean providers relied on Ukrainian infrastructure while Russian state-owned provider Rostelecom laid a new submarine cable across the Kerch Strait to connect Crimea directly with Russia without having to pass through Ukraine.

Of course Crimea's population is about 20 times smaller than that of Ukraine. So the difficulty Russia had in taking over Crimean phone networks only hints at the challenges that assuming control of the Ukrainian phone system would entail, even if it were to remain intact.

Changing winds

But as Chris Krebs, a former director of CISA, noted in a virtual panel event on Twitter Wednesday as the invasion drags out, Russia's strategic calculus could change at any moment and the country could decide to start bombing telecommunications infrastructure or send state-sponsored hackers in to shut it down altogether.

And if that happens, it could be a clear sign of how Russia views its odds of winning: "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin of all people knows the intelligence benefits of keeping the networks up and running, and he expects to inherit them soon," said Lewis, of CSIS. "It will be a sign that the Russians are giving up if they start blowing up critical infrastructure."

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3 reasons Moscow isn't taking down Ukraine's cell networks

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Russian intelligence services can eavesdrop on phone calls and emails and also gather geolocation and other metadata. The Russian army is using Ukrainian commercial networks to communicate. Russian forces don't want to destroy infrastructure that they will need if they succeed in conquering Ukraine.

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28/03/2022 Fighting for Ukraine: the role foreign volunteers can play in wartime

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28/03/2022 Fighting for Ukraine: the role foreign volunteers can play in wartime

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Foreign volunteers? What are the political implications attached to these developments?

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Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces is a newly established volunteer branch of the armed forces. Roman Pilipey / EPA-EFE

Shortly after the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited volunteers from around the world to come and help defend Ukraine. Some 3,000 US citizens have reportedly volunteered. And in early March, Ukrainian authorities announced they are setting up an international brigade. Zelensky has said that 16,000 foreign volunteers are coming to fight for the Ukrainian cause.

UK foreign secretary Liz Truss openly supported the idea of Britons going to Ukraine to fight. Top defence officials have contradicted this, saying it is "unlawful as well as unhelpful".

Historically, states have recruited foreign war volunteers for one of three reasons. Either they have manpower shortages, they want recruits with specific military training to improve the quality of their armed forces, or they want the influence foreign volunteers could have on international politics. Ukraine is not short of domestic recruits, and it does not need foreign volunteers to build its air force from scratch as Poland did in 1920 or Israel in 1948.

Zelensky clearly wants to internationalise the conflict. As Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a militarily superior foe, he has every reason to do so. But since Nato is not poised to join the war at this stage, Zelensky is hoping to goad friendly governments into increasing their commitment. It is possible that he sees involving foreign citizens as one way of further tethering the international community to Ukraine's struggle.

From the host's perspective, foreign volunteers can be an excellent propaganda tool for both domestic and international needs. In Finland's winter war against the Soviet Union (1939-40), the knowledge that outsiders were willing to fight alongside Finnish troops boosted local morale.

The Finnish high command valued the foreign volunteers to such an extent that even during the desperate days of March 1940, when the situation on the front line was critical, foreign volunteers were not used as cannon fodder. In fact, most volunteers did not have time to see combat and the Swedes, who did, were placed on the quietest sector of the front.

After the war ended, the Finnish government was keen to keep the British volunteers in country and in uniform. The hope was that their presence would maintain Britain's interest in that corner of the Baltic.

Foreign volunteers also attract media attention, especially in the countries they come from. Volunteers view themselves as somehow representing their own country, and often hope to see their government follow their example by intervening in the conflict. In Ukraine, representing the west seems to be a recurring motive among would-be volunteers. "Nato can't get involved," a former policeman said, "but we can."

Is it legal?

Regardless of motivation, the question of the legality of fighting alongside another country's armed forces remains. Truss' comments confounded legal experts, with former attorney general Dominic Grieve pointing out that any British citizen travelling to fight in Ukraine would be in breach of the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act. However, the foreign secretary has historical precedent on her side.

The British government has a long history of applying the Foreign Enlistment Act very selectively. In conflicts where a foreign cause was deemed worthy, the British government either turned a blind eye to the departure of volunteers or even tacitly assisted such endeavours.

Most strikingly, senior government officials in London supported the Finnish cause in the winter war to such an extent that they facilitated the departure of 228 British volunteers who, equipped by the British army, sailed first to Norway in February 1940. The volunteers' wages came from donations the British public had sent to the Finnish Aid Bureau. This bureau included very senior British politicians such as Lord Balfour and Leo Amery. It routinely communicated with the war cabinet and received the cooperation of the British military machine.

The British government was not alone in its willingness to bend its foreign enlistment legislation for the right kind of cause. In January 1940, with the Finnish cause in mind, US President Roosevelt announced that as long as Americans did not take an oath of allegiance, they would not lose their citizenship even if they volunteered to join a foreign army.

In most cases, states don't want to see their citizens volunteer to participate in foreign conflicts. British volunteers seeking to fight in the Spanish civil war were warned in 1937 that they would be breaching the Foreign Enlistment Act. More recently, during the Syrian civil war, the British government took an even more hardline approach.

When the government is sympathetic towards one side in a conflict, and that conflict enjoys very broad public support as Finland did in 1940 and Ukraine does today, the government can derive some benefits from enabling the departure of volunteers wishing to fight. Chief among these is the ability to deny any responsibility should the opposing power in the conflict protest -- this is what Sweden did when the Soviet Union complained about recruiting for Finland during the winter war.

As in the winter war, the willingness of international volunteers to enlist and fight for Ukraine, and of several states to tolerate their departure, are an indication of the popularity of Kyiv's cause.

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Fighting for Ukraine: the role foreign volunteers can play in wartime

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Shortly after the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited volunteers from around the world to come and help defend Ukraine. Some 3,000 US citizens have reportedly volunteered. And in early March, Ukrainian authorities announced they are setting up an international brigade. Zelensky has said that 16,000 foreign volunteers are coming to fight for the Ukrainian cause.

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03/03/2022 Is there a linkage between the war in Ukraine and the global food supply?

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03/03/2022 Is there a linkage between the war in Ukraine and the global food supply?

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What are the implications in terms of human security beyond the theatre of war?

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From higher prices in nations already struggling with hunger crises - such as Yemen and Lebanon - to reduced harvests in disaster-prone Bangladesh, the food impacts of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will likely be long-lasting and felt across continents, economists and aid officials warn.

Particularly concerning, they say, is that they're coming on top of fast-rising global food prices - now at their highest levels in a decade - and with supply chains already stressed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and years of growing climate impacts.

Ukraine, often called the breadbasket of Europe, is home to a third of the world's most fertile soil. It is also a world leader in the production of sunflower oil, barley, and maize, and - together with Russia - provides a third of global wheat supplies.

The invasion has come "just as the growth and planting season starts" in Ukraine and Russia, said Thomas Ølholm, a regional food security adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). "Many fields [in Ukraine] will not be maintained or planted. Many agricultural smallholders will be affected and lose their livelihoods for a period of time, or permanently."

Beyond the unfolding humanitarian crisis for Ukrainians, the wider fallout - from regional port closures, large-scale displacement within and out of Ukraine, and crippling economic sanctions on Russia - could be far-reaching and devastating, especially for poor consumers in countries dependent on food imports, according to experts.

"Governments need to do everything in their power to ensure food security for Ukrainian citizens, and step up social protections to insulate vulnerable people from rising food prices."

Encompassing Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, and parts of Russia and Turkey, the broader Black Sea region "is critical for the food security in the Mediterranean area but also in the Middle East and North Africa, western Asia, and up to Pakistan," David Laborde, senior research fellow at the Washington DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and co-author of a recent paper outlining the threats to global food security, told The New Humanitarian.

Preventing the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine from setting off a full-blown global food crisis will require channelling more funds into food assistance in the countries likely to be hardest hit, as well as ensuring that the sanctions imposed on Russia do not affect the countries relying on the Russian economy to feed their citizens, experts said.

"Governments need to do everything in their power to ensure food security for Ukrainian citizens, and step up social protections to insulate vulnerable people from rising food prices," said Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the UN's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

De Schutter said the crisis calls for a re-think of current food production and consumption models. "To build resilience to these shocks, countries ultimately need to reduce their dependence on imports of just a few key agricultural commodities, by diversifying their own local food production and food supply chains," he told The New Humanitarian.

Impacts on many levels

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, emeritus professor of rural sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said the impacts of the invasion will be felt across a spectrum of settings, with effects ranging from the problematic to the disastrous.

Firstly, poor people who generally spend a considerable percentage of their income on food will now find themselves even more stretched. Secondly, although it's difficult to draw a straight line, Van der Ploeg suggested that rising food prices - layered on top of other economic, social, and political frustrations - could help fuel social unrest, as happened across the Arab world in 2011.

"Thirdly, there are war-stricken areas and countries, like Yemen, eastern Africa, the north of Mozambique, Mali, and Myanmar," he said. "Here, the combination of violence, hunger, and little or no possibilities to intervene with humanitarian help will be disastrous."

There could also be longer-term impacts on agricultural productivity due to a lack of fertilisers, warned IFPRI's Laborde.

Russia is one of the world's largest suppliers of fertilisers and related raw materials, including natural gas, potash, and ammonia. Belarus, a key Russian ally, accounts for an additional 16 percent of global market share of potash exports, he added. Fertiliser was already in short supply, and costs were soaring, even before the latest crisis.

If fertiliser shortages continue in 2022, it spells trouble for 2023, especially in countries such as Bangladesh, which buys large amounts from the Black Sea for its smallholder farmers, according to Laborde. Higher costs will lead to less fertiliser use, resulting in lower yields for staple crops such as rice, impoverishing farmers and turning them from net sellers of rice to net buyers, he said, adding: "All these shocks can bring people closer to the cliff."

'Food poverty' in the Middle East

Parts of the Middle East and North Africa are expected to be hit particularly hard by the knock-on effects of the Russian invasion. Drought-affected countries in the region were expected to import record amounts of wheat this year, according to crop forecaster Gro Intelligence. But these plans are likely to unravel as a result of the Ukraine situation.

"For some countries in the Middle East region, this conflict could drive millions of people into food poverty."

Hunger levels in the Middle East and North Africa have already more than doubled since two decades ago, according to the UN's latest regional overview. In 2020, there were 69 million hungry people in the region, up more than 90 percent since 2000. The latest figure is "close to the peak of 2011 when the region suffered from a major shock due to uprisings", the report added.

"For some countries in the Middle East region, this conflict could drive millions of people into food poverty," warned Abeer Etefa, senior spokesperson for Middle East & North Africa for the World Food Programme (WFP).

In particular, countries such as Iraq, which has one of the world's largest government-run food programmes, and Yemen - which imports 90 percent of its food needs (and half of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia) - face higher costs and worsening food insecurity, she said.

Lebanon, meanwhile, relies on Ukraine for up to 60 percent of its wheat and has only about a month's worth of reserves, the country's economy minister has said.

"We don't have enough food now [in the Middle East]. This is going to compound the situation," David Beasley, WFP's executive director, said in a video posted Monday. "It is going to be, and it is, catastrophic."

Meanwhile, climate change is affecting food production around the world, too.

In Latin America, where hunger has been rising faster than anywhere, the La Niña weather phenomenon has significantly reduced soybean returns, while droughts have slashed wheat harvests in Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East, according to IFPRI's Laborde.

Food production in Europe is also heavily dependent on imported fertiliser, natural gas, and animal feed from Ukraine and Russia, according to EU officials and parliamentarians. For example, 22 percent of corn imported to Spain comes from Ukraine.

"European countries, too, will not be spared - especially by rapidly escalating energy prices that will drive up the cost of basic food commodities," said Gabriel Ferrero, chair of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a top-level UN forum. "This is not just a problem between Russia and Ukraine; it is a problem for all of us."

Time to change the system?

Yet the current crisis is not a surprise, and governments and donors could have been better prepared, said Ølholm from the NRC. "All signs were indicating an armed conflict. [It] was predictable," he said. "Prepositioning of critical and lifesaving inputs/assets could have been put in place if there was a will to do it and not least fund it."

IFPRI's Laborde also said there could have been better coordination with big commodity traders and companies around logistics and food supply. "It kind of reminds me of the first months of COVID, where governments were taking decisions without any coordination with the business sector," he said. "Everyone was trying to deal with the crisis on his own instead of having a coordinated plan."

For Van der Ploeg, "the fact that most countries in the world depend on food imports for feeding their population" has created "a web of dependencies".

"This web is basically controlled by a small set of large and powerful food empires," he said, adding that "food sovereignty comes to the fore as the most important beacon for agricultural and rural development policies" in the future.

Read more → Billions pledged and awareness raised, but UN food summit fails to heal divisions

Edward Davey, international engagement director of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), said the Russia-Ukraine crisis - as well as the latest findings of the world's top climate scientists - both point to the need for a global structure "where nations could come together at the highest level to predict and forestall, and improve the resilience of the food system".

"I'd like to call for global efforts to try and get ahead of the next 10 crises, conflict, COVID, inequality, climate, vis-a-vis the food system," he said.
Edited by Eric Reidy and Andrew Gully.

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How Russia's invasion of Ukraine will worsen global hunger

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From higher prices in nations already struggling with hunger crises - such as Yemen and Lebanon - to reduced harvests in disaster-prone Bangladesh, the food impacts of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will likely be long-lasting and felt across continents, economists and aid officials warn.

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07/03/2022 Refugees, reporting and the far right: how the Ukraine crisis reveals brutal ‘everyday racism’ in Europe and beyond

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07/03/2022 Refugees, reporting and the far right: how the Ukraine crisis reveals brutal ‘everyday racism’ in Europe and beyond

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An interesting piece talking about double standards, refugees, and global mobility control. Any thoughts?

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The intensifying conflict in Ukraine has raised the issue of racism not only in Ukraine, but Europe. Three specific and related dimensions of racism are evident in this complex conflict.

Discrimination against African and Asian nationals fleeing Ukraine

Shocking reports emerged in the past week of discrimination faced by African and Asian nationals (mainly international students in Ukraine) who were among the over 1 million people seeking refuge in neighbouring Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova.

African and Asian people were forcibly prevented from boarding trains and buses leaving Ukrainian cities, as priority was given to white Ukrainians. Those who finally reached the Polish border (some even on foot) found that again white Ukrainians were prioritised entry. Some African, Asian, and Middle-Eastern nationals were met by verbal and physical abuse on arrival.

Many African, Asian, and Middle Eastern nationals spent two to three days at border check-points, and reported lack of food, water, accommodation or basic support in freezing winter conditions, while they waited to get through.

A statement issued by the African Union condemned reports about the treatment of Africans as "shockingly racist and in breach of international law" and observed:

all people have the right to cross international borders during conflict, and as such, should enjoy the same rights to cross to safety from the conflict in Ukraine, notwithstanding their nationality or racial identity.

Read more: How we mourn the victims of tragedies depends on their citizenship status

Racist mainstream media portrayals

Equally disturbing is the unthinkingly racist mainstream media framing of Ukrainian refugees, in comparison to the framing of refugees from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan or Africa.

Below, a selection of such racist commentary from major news outlets:

"This isn't Iraq or Afghanistan [...] This is a relatively civilised, relatively European city" - Charlie D'Agata, CBS

"War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations" - Daniel Hannan, The Telegraph

"What's compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East [...] or North Africa. They look like any European family that you'd live next door to" - Peter Dobbie, Al Jazeera

These descriptions of Ukrainian refugees invidiously position them as more "civilised" and "superior" to refugees from the Middle East, African or Asian nations. This seems to imply that Ukrainian lives are worth saving, while the lives of millions of others who seek refuge are more disposable because they are people who are not "well-dressed", "middle-class", don't "look like us", or live in more remote, supposedly less "civilised" locations.

Read more: 7 ways to spot polarizing language - how to choose responsibly what to amplify online or in-person

White-supremacist Ukrainian mobilisation

The third and more dangerous dimension of racism is the mobilisation of the neo-Facist, white supremacist Azov movement in Ukraine since 2014. Azov started as a volunteer battalion that was then officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine in November 2014. The current Ukrainian government has not made comment on this movement.

In the current crisis, Azov battalion is training Ukrainian civilians for guerrilla-style combat with the Russian military.

However, it is important to also note that similar white nationalist groups exist across Europe and North America. Therefore Putin's claim of "de-Nazification" of Ukraine is a flimsy reason for invasion of Ukraine.

While the Azov battalion officially denies adhering to white supremacist ideologies, Azov's street patrol called National Militia were responsible for attacks on Roma in Ukraine in 2018.

Azov also plays a pivotal role in the global network of far-right, white-nationalist extremism; it "participated in training and radicalising United States-based white supremacy organizations" (according to a 2018 FBI affidavit).

Closer to home, alongside other European far-right movements, Azov's propaganda appears to have inspired Brenton Tarrant of Australia in his deadly terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch in 2019. This was evidenced by the sonnerad or black sun on his jacket, a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion and far-right brands in France.

Read more: The US is boosting aid to Ukraine: 4 questions answered

What accounts for these three dimensions of racism in the Ukraine crisis, and how are they connected?

Research suggests racism and xenophobia varies with the relationship between hostile government policies and anti-migrant sentiments of the population. In short, the problem of racism is not just Ukrainian or eastern European, it is European.

More nuanced analysis argues there is insufficient evidence to show eastern Europeans are more xenophobic than western Europeans. Any analysis should consider the complex histories of migration from, and through eastern European countries.

Indeed, as the global news coverage of Ukrainan refugees demonstrates, everyday racism - or what Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko refers to as "white normal savagery" is not restricted to eastern Europe. All three dimensions of racism discussed here are the manifestation of global, systemic institutionalised racism and imperialism.

Acknowledgement of this institutionalised racism and imperialism would begin by first recognising the Ukraine crisis as a power struggle between the US/NATO and Russia, underwritten by interests of weapons manufacturers and oil companies. This crisis was long predicted by strategic observers of global politics.

Recognising the wider context of institutionalised racism would allow us to connect the current racist treatment of African and Asian migrants in the Ukraine crisis to deadly European border policies over the past decades. These policies have led to increasing numbers of migrants mostly from Africa and the Middle East, reported as missing in the Mediterranean since 2014.

Azov needs to be recognised as the belligerently violent face of a racialised political order that is potentially dangerous. However, this would require holding the US accountable for its suspected support of Azov, and its refusal (along with Ukraine) to condemn the glorification of Nazism in a UN Resolution in 2017.

Finally, we should recognise that any moves to dismantle institutionalised racism are unlikely to be undertaken voluntarily. As Professor of Sociology József Böröcz argues, the defining element of "whiteness" is a "claim, indeed demand, for unconditional global privilege" that is always being reconstituted.

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Refugees, reporting and the far right: how the Ukraine crisis reveals brutal 'everyday racism' in Europe and beyond

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The intensifying conflict in Ukraine has raised the issue of racism not only in Ukraine, but Europe. Three specific and related dimensions of racism are evident in this complex conflict. Shocking reports emerged in the past week of discrimination faced by African and Asian nationals (mainly international students in Ukraine) who were among the over 1 million people seeking refuge in neighbouring Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova.

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01/03/2022 Mearsheimer's controversial interview in "The New Yorker" 

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01/03/2022 Mearsheimer's controversial interview in "The New Yorker" 

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This interview has started a great controversy among the global security academia. Any impressions?

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For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin's aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events changed his mind?

The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, " The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics-a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin 's aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that "the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis."

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The current invasion of Ukraine has renewed several long-standing debates about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although many critics of Putin have argued that he would pursue an aggressive foreign policy in former Soviet Republics regardless of Western involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him. I recently spoke with Mearsheimer by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the current war could have been prevented, whether it makes sense to think of Russia as an imperial power, and Putin's ultimate plans for Ukraine.
Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?
I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.
You said that it's about "turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy." I don't put much trust or much faith in America "turning" places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
You keep saying "turning Ukraine into a liberal democracy," and it seems like that's an issue for the Ukrainians to decide. NATO can decide whom it admits, but we saw in 2014 that it appeared as if many Ukrainians wanted to be considered part of Europe. It would seem like almost some sort of imperialism to tell them that they can't be a liberal democracy.
It's not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you're a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they're going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.
The Monroe Doctrine, essentially.
Of course. There's no country in the Western hemisphere that we will allow to invite a distant, great power to bring military forces into that country.
Right, but saying that America will not allow countries in the Western hemisphere, most of them democracies, to decide what kind of foreign policy they have-you can say that's good or bad, but that is imperialism, right? We're essentially saying that we have some sort of say over how democratic countries run their business.
We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.
Of course we did, but I'm wondering if we should be behaving that way. When we're thinking about foreign policies, should we be thinking about trying to create a world where neither the U.S. nor Russia is behaving that way?
That's not the way the world works. When you try to create a world that looks like that, you end up with the disastrous policies that the United States pursued during the unipolar moment. We went around the world trying to create liberal democracies. Our main focus, of course, was in the greater Middle East, and you know how well that worked out. Not very well.
I think it would be difficult to say that America's policy in the Middle East in the past seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War, or in the past thirty years since the end of the Cold War, has been to create liberal democracies in the Middle East.
I think that's what the Bush Doctrine was about during the unipolar moment.
In Iraq. But not in the Palestinian territories, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or anywhere else, right?
No-well, not in Saudi Arabia and not in Egypt. To start with, the Bush Doctrine basically said that if we could create a liberal democracy in Iraq, it would have a domino effect, and countries such as Syria, Iran, and eventually Saudi Arabia and Egypt would turn into democracies. That was the basic philosophy behind the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was not just designed to turn Iraq into a democracy. We had a much grander scheme in mind.
We can debate how much the people who were in charge in the Bush Administration really wanted to turn the Middle East into a bunch of democracies, and really thought that was going to happen. My sense was that there was not a lot of actual enthusiasm about turning Saudi Arabia into a democracy.
Well, I think focussing on Saudi Arabia is taking the easy case from your perspective. That was the most difficult case from America's perspective, because Saudi Arabia has so much leverage over us because of oil, and it's certainly not a democracy. But the Bush Doctrine, if you go look at what we said at the time, was predicated on the belief that we could democratize the greater Middle East. It might not happen overnight, but it would eventually happen.
I guess my point would be actions speak louder than words, and, whatever Bush's flowery speeches said, I don't feel like the policy of the United States at any point in its recent history has been to try and insure liberal democracies around the world.
There's a big difference between how the United States behaved during the unipolar moment and how it's behaved in the course of its history. I agree with you when you talk about American foreign policy in the course of its broader history, but the unipolar moment was a very special time. I believe that during the unipolar moment, we were deeply committed to spreading democracy.

With Ukraine, it's very important to understand that, up until 2014, we did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014. NATO expansion, E.U. expansion, and turning Ukraine and Georgia and other countries into liberal democracies were all about creating a giant zone of peace that spread all over Europe and included Eastern Europe and Western Europe. It was not aimed at containing Russia. What happened is that this major crisis broke out, and we had to assign blame, and of course we were never going to blame ourselves. We were going to blame the Russians. So we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the Soviet Union.

Let's turn to that time and the annexation of Crimea. I was reading an old article where you wrote, "According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine Crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian president Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a longstanding desire to resuscitate the Soviet Empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine as well as other countries in Eastern Europe." And then you say, "But this account is wrong." Does anything that's happened in the last couple weeks make you think that account was closer to the truth than you might have thought?
Oh, I think I was right. I think the evidence is clear that we did not think he was an aggressor before February 22, 2014. This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him. My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible.
You mean because the Russians did the annexation and the invasion?
Yes.
I was interested in that article because you say the idea that Putin may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in Eastern Europe, is wrong. Given that he seems to be going after the rest of Ukraine now, do you think in hindsight that that argument is perhaps more true, even if we didn't know it at the time?
It's hard to say whether he's going to go after the rest of Ukraine because-I don't mean to nitpick here but-that implies that he wants to conquer all of Ukraine, and then he will turn to the Baltic states, and his aim is to create a greater Russia or the reincarnation of the Soviet Union. I don't see evidence at this point that that is true. It's difficult to tell, looking at the maps of the ongoing conflict, exactly what he's up to. It seems quite clear to me that he is going to take the Donbass and that the Donbass is going to be either two independent states or one big independent state, but beyond that it's not clear what he's going to do. I mean, it does seem apparent that he's not touching western Ukraine.
His bombs are touching it, right?
But that's not the key issue. The key issue is: What territory do you conquer, and what territory do you hold onto? I was talking to somebody the other day about what's going to happen with these forces that are coming out of Crimea, and the person told me that he thought they would turn west and take Odessa. I was talking to somebody else more recently who said that that's not going to happen. Do I know what's going to happen? No, none of us know what's going to happen.
You don't think he has designs on Kyiv?
No, I don't think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he's interested in taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow's interests.
I thought you said that he was not interested in taking Kyiv.
No, he's interested in taking Kyiv for the purpose of regime change. O.K.?
As opposed to what?
As opposed to permanently conquering Kyiv.
It would be a Russian-friendly government that he would presumably have some say over, right?
Yes, exactly. But it's important to understand that it is fundamentally different from conquering and holding onto Kyiv. Do you understand what I'm saying?
We could all think of imperial possessions whereby a sort of figurehead was put on the throne, even if the homeland was actually controlling what was going on there, right? We'd still say that those places had been conquered, right?
I have problems with your use of the word "imperial." I don't know anybody who talks about this whole problem in terms of imperialism. This is great-power politics, and what the Russians want is a regime in Kyiv that is attuned to Russian interests. It may be ultimately that the Russians would be willing to live with a neutral Ukraine, and that it won't be necessary for Moscow to have any meaningful control over the government in Kyiv. It may be that they just want a regime that is neutral and not pro-American.
When you said that no one's talking about this as imperialism, in Putin's speeches he specifically refers to the "territory of the former Russian Empire," which he laments losing. So it seems like he's talking about it.
I think that's wrong, because I think you're quoting the first half of the sentence, as most people in the West do. He said, "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart." And then he said, "Whoever wants it back has no brain."
He's also saying that Ukraine is essentially a made-up nation, while he seems to be invading it, no?
O.K., but put those two things together and tell me what that means. I'm just not too sure. He does believe it's a made-up nation. I would note to him, all nations are made up. Any student of nationalism can tell you that. We invent these concepts of national identity. They're filled with all sorts of myths. So he's correct about Ukraine, just like he's correct about the United States or Germany. The much more important point is: he understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. He can't do that. What he's doing in Ukraine is fundamentally different. He is obviously lopping off some territory. He's going to take some territory away from Ukraine, in addition to what happened with Crimea, in 2014. Furthermore, he is definitely interested in regime change. Beyond that, it's hard to say exactly what this will all lead to, except for the fact that he is not going to conquer all of Ukraine. It would be a blunder of colossal proportions to try to do that.

I assume that you think if he were to try to do that, that would change your analysis of what we've witnessed.
Absolutely. My argument is that he's not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he's not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It's very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he's principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine. The argument that the foreign-policy establishment in the United States, and in the West more generally, has invented revolves around the claim that he is interested in creating a greater Russia or a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. There are people who believe that when he is finished conquering Ukraine, he will turn to the Baltic states. He's not going to turn to the Baltic states. First of all, the Baltic states are members of NATO and-
Is that a good thing?
No.
You're saying that he's not going to invade them in part because they're part of NATO, but they shouldn't be part of NATO.
Yes, but those are two very different issues. I'm not sure why you're connecting them. Whether I think they should be part of NATO is independent of whether they are part of NATO. They are part of NATO. They have an Article 5 guarantee-that's all that matters. Furthermore, he's never shown any evidence that he's interested in conquering the Baltic states. Indeed, he's never shown any evidence that he's interested in conquering Ukraine.
It seems to me that if he wants to bring back anything, it's the Russian Empire that predates the Soviet Union. He seems very critical of the Soviet Union, correct?
Well, I don't know if he's critical.
He said it in his big essay that he wrote last year, and he said in a recent speech that he essentially blames Soviet policies for allowing a degree of autonomy for Soviet Republics, such as Ukraine.
But he also said, as I read to you before, "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart." That's somewhat at odds with what you just said. I mean, he's in effect saying that he misses the Soviet Union, right? That's what he's saying. What we're talking about here is his foreign policy. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you think that this is a country that has the capability to do that. You realize that this is a country that has a G.N.P. that's smaller than Texas.
Countries try to do things that they don't have the capabilities for all the time. You could have said to me, "Who thinks that America could get the Iraqi power system working quickly? We have all these problems in America." And you would've been correct. But we still thought we could do it, and we still tried to do it, and we failed, right? America couldn't do what it wanted during Vietnam, which I'm sure you would say is a reason not to fight these various wars-and I would agree-but that doesn't mean that we were correct or rational about our capabilities.
I'm talking about the raw-power potential of Russia-the amount of economic might it has. Military might is built on economic might. You need an economic foundation to build a really powerful military. To go out and conquer countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states and to re-create the former Soviet Union or re-create the former Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe would require a massive army, and that would require an economic foundation that contemporary Russia does not come close to having. There is no reason to fear that Russia is going to be a regional hegemony in Europe. Russia is not a serious threat to the United States. We do face a serious threat in the international system. We face a peer competitor. And that's China. Our policy in Eastern Europe is undermining our ability to deal with the most dangerous threat that we face today.
What do you think our policy should be in Ukraine right now, and what do you worry that we're doing that's going to undermine our China policy?
We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians. The Russians are part of our balancing coalition against China. If you live in a world where there are three great powers-China, Russia, and the United States-and one of those great powers, China, is a peer competitor, what you want to do if you're the United States is have Russia on your side of the ledger. Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.
I went back and I reread your article about the Israel lobby in the London Review of Books, from 2006. You were talking about the Palestinian issue, and you said something that I very much agree with, which is: "There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the lobby of the United States it has become the de facto enabler of Israeli occupation in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians." I was cheered to read that because I know you think of yourself as a tough, crusty old guy who doesn't talk about morality, but it seemed to me you were suggesting that there was a moral dimension here. I'm curious what you think, if any, of the moral dimension to what's going on in Ukraine right now.

I think there is a strategic and a moral dimension involved with almost every issue in international politics. I think that sometimes those moral and strategic dimensions line up with each other. In other words, if you're fighting against Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945, you know the rest of the story. There are other occasions where those arrows point in opposite directions, where doing what is strategically right is morally wrong. I think if you join an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight against Nazi Germany, it is a strategically wise policy, but it is a morally wrong policy. But you do it because you have no choice for strategic reasons. In other words, what I'm saying to you, Isaac, is that when push comes to shove, strategic considerations overwhelm moral considerations. In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if the Ukrainians were free to choose their own political system and to choose their own foreign policy.

But in the real world, that is not feasible. The Ukrainians have a vested interest in paying serious attention to what the Russians want from them. They run a grave risk if they alienate the Russians in a fundamental way. If Russia thinks that Ukraine presents an existential threat to Russia because it is aligning with the United States and its West European allies, this is going to cause an enormous amount of damage to Ukraine. That of course is exactly what's happening now. So my argument is: the strategically wise strategy for Ukraine is to break off its close relations with the West, especially with the United States, and try to accommodate the Russians. If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine.
That advice seems a bit implausible now. Is there still time, despite what we're seeing from the ground, for Ukraine to appease Russia somehow?
I think there's a serious possibility that the Ukrainians can work out some sort of modus vivendi with the Russians. And the reason is that the Russians are now discovering that occupying Ukraine and trying to run Ukraine's politics is asking for big trouble.
So you are saying occupying Ukraine is going to be a tough slog?
Absolutely, and that's why I said to you that I did not think the Russians would occupy Ukraine in the long term. But, just to be very clear, I did say they're going to take at least the Donbass, and hopefully not more of the easternmost part of Ukraine. I think the Russians are too smart to get involved in an occupation of Ukraine.

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Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

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For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin's aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events changed his mind? The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.