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Singapore imposes sanctions on selected Russian trades!

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Singapore imposes sanctions on selected Russian trades!

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SINGAPORE: Singapore will impose sanctions on Russia "in concert with other like-minded countries", said Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Monday (Feb 28), citing "the unprecedented gravity" of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

The measures will include imposing export controls on items that can be used directly as weapons in Ukraine, and blocking certain Russian bank and financial transactions connected to Russia.

Delivering a ministerial statement on the matter in Parliament, Dr Balakrishnan detailed Singapore's approach to conducting foreign policy: "Instead of choosing sides, we uphold principles. Consequently, when we conduct our foreign policy in a coherent and consistent manner, we also become reliable partners for those who operate the same principles.

"However, there will be occasions when we have to stake a stand, even if it is contrary to one or more powers, on the basis of principles, as we are doing now."

Dr Balakrishnan said Singapore has "rarely acted" to impose sanctions on other countries, in the absence of binding United Nations Security Council decisions or directions.

Dr Balakrishnan also noted that Singapore was one of 82 co-sponsors of a recent United Nations Security Council Resolution to condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Ultimately, it was not passed, as Russia - a permanent member of the council - vetoed it.

Three other members - China, India and the United Arab Emirates - abstained, while the remaining 11 of 15 members supported it.

He noted that the UN General Assembly will debate a similar resolution later on Monday. And while these General Assembly resolutions are neither binding, nor subject to a veto, Singapore "will comply with the spirit and the letter" of the decision "as a responsible member of the international community", he said.

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Singapore to impose sanctions on Russia, including export controls and certain bank transactions: Vivian Balakrishnan

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SINGAPORE: Singapore will impose sanctions on Russia "in concert with other like-minded countries", said Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Monday (Feb 28), citing "the unprecedented gravity" of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. The measures will include imposing export controls on items that can be used directly as weapons in Ukraine, and blocking certain Russian bank and financial transactions connected to Russia.

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How have Ukrainians been responding to Russia's invasion?

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How have Ukrainians been responding to Russia's invasion?

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How is Ukraine responding to the Russian invasion? | DW | 24.02.2022

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It has now come to pass: Russia has invaded Ukraine. What is happening on the ground - how are the government, military and civilians reacting?

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What was his history?

Why the deep fear of the West?

What motivates his actions - and directions - for Russia?

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Table of Contents

Was Vladimir Putin in the KGB?

Why is Vladimir Putin still in power?

How has Vladimir Putin changed Russia?

What's the background to Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine in 2022?

Read a brief summary of this topic

Vladimir Putin, in full Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, (born October 7, 1952, Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia]), Russian intelligence officer and politician who served as president (1999-2008, 2012- ) of Russia and also was the country's prime minister (1999, 2008-12).

Early career

Putin studied law at Leningrad State University, where his tutor was Anatoly Sobchak, later one of the leading reform politicians of the perestroika period. Putin served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), including six years in Dresden, East Germany. In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become prorector of Leningrad State University with responsibility for the institution's external relations. Soon afterward Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg. He quickly won Sobchak's confidence and became known for his ability to get things done; by 1994 he had risen to the post of first deputy mayor.

In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow, where he joined the presidential staff as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin's chief administrator. Putin grew close to fellow Leningrader Anatoly Chubais and moved up in administrative positions. In July 1998 Pres. Boris Yeltsin made Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB's domestic successor), and shortly thereafter he became secretary of the influential Security Council. Yeltsin, who was searching for an heir to assume his mantle, appointed Putin prime minister in 1999.

Although he was virtually unknown, Putin's public-approval ratings soared when he launched a well-organized military operation against secessionist rebels in Chechnya. Wearied by years of Yeltsin's erratic behaviour, the Russian public appreciated Putin's coolness and decisiveness under pressure. Putin's support for a new electoral bloc, Unity, ensured its success in the December parliamentary elections.

First and second terms as president of Russia

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Promising to rebuild a weakened Russia, the austere and reserved Putin easily won the March 2000 elections with about 53 percent of the vote. As president, he sought to end corruption and create a strongly regulated market economy.

Putin quickly reasserted control over Russia's 89 regions and republics, dividing them into seven new federal districts, each headed by a representative appointed by the president. He also removed the right of regional governors to sit in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. Putin moved to reduce the power of Russia's unpopular financiers and media tycoons-the so-called " oligarchs"-by closing several media outlets and launching criminal proceedings against numerous leading figures. He faced a difficult situation in Chechnya, particularly from rebels who staged terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerilla attacks on Russian troops from the region's mountains; in 2002 Putin declared the military campaign over, but casualties remained high.

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Putin strongly objected to U.S. Pres. George W. Bush's decision in 2001 to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In response to the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, he pledged Russia's assistance and cooperation in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorists and their allies, offering the use of Russia's airspace for humanitarian deliveries and help in search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French Pres. Jacques Chirac in 2002-03 to oppose U.S. and British plans to use force to oust Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.

Overseeing an economy that enjoyed growth after a prolonged recession in the 1990s, Putin was easily reelected in March 2004. In parliamentary elections in December 2007, Putin's party, United Russia, won an overwhelming majority of seats. Though the fairness of the elections was questioned by international observers and by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the results nonetheless affirmed Putin's power. With a constitutional provision forcing Putin to step down in 2008, he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

Putin as prime minister

Soon after Medvedev won the March 2008 presidential election by a landslide, Putin announced that he had accepted the position of chairman of the United Russia party. Confirming widespread expectations, Medvedev nominated Putin as the country's prime minister within hours of taking office on May 7, 2008. Russia's parliament confirmed the appointment the following day. Although Medvedev grew more assertive as his term progressed, Putin was still regarded as the main power within the Kremlin.

While some speculated that Medvedev might run for a second term, he announced in September 2011 that he and Putin would-pending a United Russia victory at the polls-trade positions. Widespread irregularities in parliamentary elections in December 2011 triggered a wave of popular protest, and Putin faced a surprisingly strong opposition movement in the presidential race. On March 4, 2012, however, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia's president. In advance of his inauguration, Putin resigned as United Russia chairman, handing control of the party to Medvedev. He was inaugurated as president on May 7, 2012, and one of his first acts upon assuming office was to nominate Medvedev to serve as prime minister.

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Vladimir Putin | Biography, KGB, Political Career, & Facts

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Vladimir Putin, in full Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, (born October 7, 1952, Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia]), Russian intelligence officer and politician who served as president (1999-2008, 2012- ) of Russia and also was the country's prime minister (1999, 2008-12).

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Other Similar Articles:

How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit the global economy? - The Financial Times

The economic consequences of the war in Ukraine - The Economist

Commentary by Nouriel Roubini: War in Ukraine is a massive blow to global economy's fragile recovery - Channel News Asia

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Europe is facing strong economic headwinds. Record inflation, the need to recover from the pandemic, and a divided response to Russian troop deployments along the Ukraine border, all chill the February air.
You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.
Whether this complex situation will thaw in the coming weeks and months depends on many moving parts - including Vladimir Putin's tanks, energy prices and the ongoing effects of COVID - and how the global community responds to them.

None of this is straightforward. For example, allies in the west (including Europe) have promised massive sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, but how effective these are as a deterrent is debatable. Russia can, in the medium term, sell much of its energy through an alliance with China, and avoid much of the sanctions' impact.

Putin has also set up special autonomous regions within Russia as "sanctions proof" economic sanctuaries. Many of the country's wealthiest citizens are on notice and will have had time to adjust their finances in the face of being cut off from access to western banks. Some European banks would themselves be badly hit by sanctions.

The real economic costs of an invasion for Russia then, are far from clear. And nor, for that matter, is Putin's ultimate goal. At the time of writing at least, it's possible this whole tense affair may be a bluff to weaken the Ukrainian economy and sow European discord.

The situation is not helped by the approach of the previous chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, whose policy with Russia was always to play for time. For an energy-dependent European Union, this served to kick the possibility of conflict with Russia down the road. The new and fragile German coalition government has not been well prepared for the arrival of 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukraine border.

Complicating things further is the question mark over the massive, expensive and as yet unused Nordstream 2 pipeline designed to bring Russian gas into Europe. EU law requires the separation of owner and operator in pipelines, but the Russian supplier Gazprom has no wish to cede control.

The delays are a headache for both Olaf Scholz, the new and silent chancellor, and Putin. Denying the go ahead for Nordstream 2 has been a key element of US negotiations while Germany's position seems more equivocal.

That said, Russia could withstand some delay, as pipeline gas makes up only 11% of its exports. But it would affect its longer term goals of locking Germany into a closer codependent relationship, at least until net zero energy targets are more within reach. This is central to both Russia's strategic ambition and to German energy stability, even if American and Qatari gas supplies can come to the rescue in the meantime.

Meanwhile Europe is doing its best to deal with the economic effects of COVID, which saw many countries take on massive amounts of debt, which must now be repaid to comply with EU fiscal rules. Added to this mix is the spectre of rising inflation, which could yet go up even further.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would likely spook global markets, especially European stocks, and raise the price of gas, electricity and oil.

Border control

Back to the Ukraine border, and assurances to obtain no further Nato expansion to Ukraine for the time being may be enough, provided these are viewed as credible and linked to getting Nordstream 2 flowing.

Keeping Europe dependent on Russian gas for as long as possible is the key to influence over Germany (and hence the EU) as well as Ukraine. It assures Russian security far more than mere territory.

In a complex, interdependent world, where both military and energy security are under pressure, Europe has found itself ill prepared for this moment. Its response so far has been mixed. The EU's Baltic states tend to favour a hard line, with Germany seeking balance, and France being softer and favouring a "reset" with Russia on security issues. The UK remains preoccupied with accusations its prime minister broke pandemic lockdown rules, and the country becomes less relevant by the day.

Read more: Ukraine: the problem with copying Finland's strict cold war neutrality

But even if tensions around Ukraine are eased in the coming months, it is likely they will return. Europe's persistent gas problem comes at a cost. The Russian interest is to see how far they can push.

And the timing of Putin's Ukraine gambit is no coincidence. He is flush with oil money, and Europe is weakened by COVID and global economic forces. It is impossible to predict what will happen next, but what seems certain in the short term is continued brinkmanship, bluff and bargaining for concessions involving painful choices. Trying to dance with the Russian bear is always dangerous - and especially so in an economically bleak winter.

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Ukraine: the economic impact of tension with Russia is part of Putin's long-term plan

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Europe is facing strong economic headwinds. Record inflation, the need to recover from the pandemic, and a divided response to Russian troop deployments along the Ukraine border, all chill the February air. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.

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How have Russia's traditional allies reacted?

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How have Russia's traditional allies reacted?

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Where do Russia's allies stand as Western powers slam Moscow?

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Russia's allies walk a tightrope between security concerns and economic interest after Moscow's all-out war on Ukraine.

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Can a victory in Information War turn things around?

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Can a victory in Information War turn things around?

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With an all-out war on Ukraine underway, a key question has emerged: what can the West do to help Ukraine?

Sanctions and limited military aid will help. Another key strategy, however, is crucial: to counter Russian president Vladimir Putin's justifications for the war.

Rebutting Putin's information strategy will weaken his position in what is likely to be a long, drawn-out conflict.

To do that, we first need to understand what his information strategy is.

Read more: Ukraine invasion: what the west needs to do now - expert view

Putin's information strategy

In a nearly hour-long speech to the Russian people released on February 21, Putin put forward his case for invasion. This speech has been described by observers as "angry" and "rambling" but it was highly scripted.

In fact, it included two key arguments, which we can expect to see constantly reappearing in Russian messaging in the coming weeks and months.

One is focused primarily on the Russian population. The other has both a domestic and international audience in mind.

The domestic pitch: Russia as victim of Ukrainian neo-Nazis

The first part of Putin's argument outlined a one-sided narrative of Ukrainian history aimed squarely at appealing to the emotions of a domestic audience by showing Russia's supposed victimisation at the hands of Ukraine.

The narrative begins with a fantastical version of history claiming Ukraine was "entirely created by Russia, or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, communist Russia".

It then turned to the idea that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine "never had stable traditions of real statehood".

Ukraine's "pro-West civilisational choice", Putin argued, then inevitably led to a series of catastrophes: endemic corruption, a "West-supported" neo-Nazi takeover of power in 2014, and systematic discrimination against Russian speakers (including a planned genocide).

He concludes by claiming Ukraine might soon have weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weapons).

How to counter this narrative?

This one-sided, neo-imperial interpretation of history is a fantasy that has great emotional appeal to a former mid-level KGB officer like Putin, who experienced at first hand the humiliating end of an empire in 1991 and now sits in the Kremlin.

Putin gets to feel like an agent of history, rebuilding Russia from the terrible humiliation of the 1990s.

But what about 140 million Russian citizens? How does avenging this historical fantasy help them cope with rising prices, a tanking economy, and growing corruption in their country? What future does Putin's war of vengeance actually offer to coming generations?

Alexey Navalny, the jailed opposition leader, put this well.

He likened Putin's arguments to your drunk grandfather's rant at a family gathering - except, this time, your grandfather "holds power in a country with nuclear weapons".

Russia has all the tools, Navalny argued, for strong economic and cultural development "in the 21st century from oil to educated citizens". But these are being thrown away on the basis of "war, dirt, lies, and the palace with the golden eagles in Gelendzhik" (a reference to Putin's alleged palace that features in a notorious YouTube video).

The broader pitch: Russia as victim of the West

The second part of Putin's speech included geopolitical arguments about the reckless expansion of NATO and the United States into Russia's sphere of influence.

This included evocative language of a "US-built maritime operations centre in Ochakov", and dire warnings that it will only take seven to eight minutes for US ballistic missiles to reach Moscow from Kharkiv in Ukraine.

He concluded by arguing the US will always want to dismember and weaken Russia because "they just do not need a big and independent country like Russia around".

This kind of argument is aimed at both domestic and international audiences. In fact, much of this language could be aimed at Beijing, which sees the US in much the same way.

It also has been a popular discussion in the Western media and academia. Even prominent US academics such as John Mearsheimer have made a version of this argument for years. These academic arguments don't go as far as Putin's, and certainly the US would like to contain Russia's power, but such arguments can be misinterpreted as justifying a war in Ukraine.

Countering these arguments requires making a clear distinction between explanation and justification.

An explanation is an argument about why something causes a particular response; it ignores whether the response is good or bad. By contrast, a justification is a claim about why a particular response is the correct one. The West must counter Putin's justification and show why it was the wrong choice.

In the Ukrainian context, it means being clear that although NATO's eastward expansion might explain why Putin ordered a full-scale war, it does not justify it.

In fact, a war on Ukraine is the wrong response to NATO expansion because it is likely to encourage the expansion of NATO toward Russia's borders.

We are already seeing this with growing support for NATO membership in Finland.

Countering Putin's information strategy

Countering Putin's information strategy therefore involves making two key arguments.

First, it means pointing out this is not a Russian war on Ukraine. It is war of choice entirely attributable to an increasingly detached clique of leaders led by Putin, who have little interest in solving the everyday problems of millions of Russians.

The protests in many cities across Russia - exceedingly brave in the knowing reality of police brutality - suggest many Russians believe this already.

Second, a successful counter to Putin's information strategy shows a full-scale invasion of Ukraine will only worsen Russia's security situation. This war of choice will only isolate Russia from allies and encourage the further expansion of NATO onto its borders.

Read more: Putin is on a personal mission to rewrite Cold War history, making the risks in Ukraine far graver

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What can the West do to help Ukraine? It can start by countering Putin's information strategy

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With an all-out war on Ukraine underway, a key question has emerged: what can the West do to help Ukraine? Sanctions and limited military aid will help. Another key strategy, however, is crucial: to counter Russian president Vladimir Putin's justifications for the war.

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What is an "economic sanction"?
How does it work and is it effective?

Other Similar Articles:

Are sanctions effective?

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However, most Russian diamonds are sent to countries like India to be polished, says Hans Merket of the International Peace Information Service think tank. Once they are re-exported, it is hard to tell that they originated in Russia.

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What are the sanctions on Russia and are they hurting its economy?

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Western nations have imposed severe measures against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

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What Ukrainian and Russian history can tell us about the current conflict

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What Ukrainian and Russian history can tell us about the current conflict

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What was the background to President Putin's view of Ukraine as a country?

How did NATO, and its expansion eastward, threaten Russia?

What is the significance of President Putin's recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk independence?

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The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, "it is what is left out."

Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and intertwined history of those two nations and their peoples. Much of what the public is hearing, though, is jarring to historian Suny's ears.
READ MORE: What to know as Russia attacks Ukraine
That's because some of it is incomplete, some of it is wrong, and some of it is obscured or refracted by the self-interest or the limited perspective of who is telling it. We asked Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, to respond to a number of popular historical assertions he's heard recently.

Putin's view of Russo-Ukrainian history has been widely criticized in the West. What do you think motivates his version of the history?

Putin believes that Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are one people, bound by shared history and culture. But he also is aware that they have become separate states recognized in international law and by Russian governments as well. At the same time, he questions the historical formation of the modern Ukrainian state, which he says was the tragic product of decisions by former Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. He also questions the sovereignty and distinctive nation-ness of Ukraine. While he promotes national identity in Russia, he denigrates the growing sense of nation-ness in Ukraine.

Putin indicates that Ukraine by its very nature ought to be friendly, not hostile, to Russia. But he sees its current government as illegitimate, aggressively nationalist and even fascist. The condition for peaceful relations between states, he repeatedly says, is that they do not threaten the security of other states. Yet, as is clear from the invasion, he presents the greatest threat to Ukraine.

Putin sees Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, believing that if it enters NATO, offensive weaponry will be placed closer to the Russian border, as already is being done in Romania and Poland.

It's possible to interpret Putin's statements about the historical genesis of the Ukrainian state as self-serving history and a way of saying, "We created them, we can take them back." But I believe he may instead have been making a forceful appeal to Ukraine and the West to recognize the security interests of Russia and provide guarantees that there will be no further moves by NATO toward Russia and into Ukraine. Ironically, his recent actions have driven Ukrainians more tightly into the arms of the West.

The Western position is that the breakaway regions Putin recognized, Donetsk and Luhansk, are integral parts of Ukraine. Russia claims that the Donbass region, which includes these two provinces, is historically and rightfully part of Russia. What does history tell us?

During the Soviet period, these two provinces were officially part of Ukraine. When the USSR disintegrated, the former Soviet republic boundaries became, under international law, the legal boundaries of the post-Soviet states. Russia repeatedly recognized those borders, though reluctantly in the case of Crimea.

But when one raises the fraught question of what lands belong to what people, a whole can of worms is opened. The Donbass has historically been inhabited by Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and others. It was in Soviet and post-Soviet times largely Russian ethnically and linguistically. When in 2014 the Maidan revolution in Kyiv moved the country toward the West and Ukrainian nationalists threatened to limit the use of the Russian language in parts of Ukraine, rebels in the Donbas violently resisted the central government of Ukraine.
READ MORE: Putin warns that the West shouldn't 'push' Russia out of the global economy
After months of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebel forces in the Donbas in 2014, regular Russian forces moved in from Russia, and a war began that has lasted for the last eight years, with thousands killed and wounded.

Historical claims to land are always contested - think of Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis - and they are countered by claims that the majority living on the land in the present takes precedence over historical claims from the past. Russia can claim Donbass with its own arguments based on ethnicity, but so can Ukrainians with arguments based on historical possession. Such arguments go nowhere and often lead, as can be seen today, to bloody conflict.

Why was Russia's recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics as independent such a pivotal event in the conflict?

When Putin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, he seriously escalated the conflict, which turned out to be the prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That invasion is a hard, harsh signal to the West that Russia will not back down and accept the further arming of and placing of weaponry in Ukraine, Poland and Romania. The Russian president has now led his country into a dangerous preventive war - a war based on the anxiety that sometime in the future his country will be attacked - the outcome of which is unpredictable.

A New York Times story on Putin's histories of Ukraine says "The newly created Soviet government under Lenin that drew so much of Mr. Putin's scorn on Monday would eventually crush the nascent independent Ukrainian state. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was banished from schools and its culture was permitted to exist only as a cartoonish caricature of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants." Is this history of Soviet repression accurate?

Lenin's government won the 1918-1921 civil war in Ukraine and drove out foreign interventionists, thus consolidating and recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. But Putin is essentially correct that it was Lenin's policies that promoted Ukrainian statehood within the USSR, within a Soviet empire, officially granting it and other Soviet republics the constitutional right to secede from the Union without conditions. This right, Putin angrily asserts, was a landmine that eventually blew up the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian language was never banned in the USSR and was taught in schools. In the 1920s, Ukrainian culture was actively promoted by the Leninist nationality policy.

But under Stalin, Ukrainian language and culture began to be powerfully undermined. This started in the early 1930s, when Ukrainian nationalists were repressed, the horrific "Death Famine" killed millions of Ukrainian peasants, and Russification, which is the process of promoting Russian language and culture, accelerated in the republic.
READ MORE: Biden imposes new sanctions on Russia, saying Putin 'chose this war'
Within the strict bounds of the Soviet system, Ukraine, like many other nationalities in the USSR, became a modern nation, conscious of its history, literate in its language, and even in puffy pants permitted to celebrate its ethnic culture. But the contradictory policies of the Soviets in Ukraine both promoted a Ukrainian cultural nation while restricting its freedoms, sovereignty and expressions of nationalism.

History is both a contested and a subversive social science. It is used and misused by governments and pundits and propagandists. But for historians it is also a way to find out what happened in the past and why. As a search for truth, it becomes subversive of convenient and comfortable but inaccurate views of where we came from and where we might be going.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What Ukrainian and Russian history can tell us about the current conflict

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The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, "it is what is left out." Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and intertwined history of those two nations and their peoples.

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As Russian forces begin an all-out assault on Ukraine after months of troop buildup and failed diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and its European allies to head off conflict, the situation for Kyiv is the most high-stakes in the country's 30-year history.

Since breaking from the Soviet Union, Ukraine has wavered between the influences of Moscow and the West, surviving scandal and conflict with its democracy intact.

Now it faces its biggest test as Russia threatens its very existence as an independent country.

Since the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, many Ukrainians have turned away from Moscow and toward the West, with popular support on the rise for joining Western alliances such as NATO and the European Union.

But along the country's eastern border with Russia, separatists backed by Moscow took control of two regions in 2014. Violence in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 14,000 people in the years since, according to International Crisis Group research.Russia's recognition of the two regions' independence set the stage for moving its troops into Ukraine.

Read on to understand how Ukraine came to where it is today.

The 1990s: Independence from the Soviet Union
1989 and 1990
Anti-communist protests sweep central and Eastern Europe, starting in Poland and spreading throughout the Soviet bloc. In Ukraine, January 1990 sees more than 400,000 people joining hands in a human chain stretching some 400 miles from the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk to Kyiv, the capital, in the north-central part of Ukraine. Many wave the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag that had been banned under Soviet rule.
July 16, 1990
The Rada, the new Ukrainian parliament formed out of the previous Soviet legislature,votes to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Authorities recall Ukrainian soldiers from other parts of the USSR and vote to shut down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine.
1991
Following a failed coup in Moscow, the Ukrainian parliament declares independence a second time on Aug. 24, a date that is still celebrated as Ukraine's official Independence Day. In December, Ukrainians vote to make their independence official when they approve the declaration by a landslide 92% of votes in favor. The Soviet Union officially dissolves on Dec. 26.
1992
As NATO allies contemplate adding central and EasternEuropean members for the first time, Ukraine formally establishes relations with the alliance, though it does not join. NATO's secretary-general visits Kyiv, and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk visits NATO headquarters in Brussels.
December 1994
After the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukraine is left with the world's third-largest nuclear stockpile. In a treaty called the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agrees to trade away its intercontinental ballistic missiles, warheads and other nuclear infrastructure in exchange for guarantees that the three other treaty signatories - the U.S., the U.K. and Russia - will "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine."
1994 to 2004
In 10 years as president, Leonid Kuchma helps transition Ukraine from a Soviet republic to a capitalist society, privatizing businesses and working to improve international economic opportunities. But in 2000, his presidency is rocked by scandal over audio recordings that reveal he ordered the death of a journalist. He remains in power about four more years.

The 2000s: Wavering between the West and Russia
2004
The presidential election pits Kuchma's incumbent party - led by his hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych, and supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin - against a popular pro-democracy opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko.

In the final months of the campaign, Yushchenko falls mysteriously ill, is disfigured and is confirmed by doctors to have been poisoned.

Yanukovych wins the election amid accusations of rigging. Massive protests follow, and the public outcry becomes known as the Orange Revolution. After a third vote, Yushchenko prevails.
January 2005
Yushchenko takes office as president, with Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister.
2008
Following efforts by Yushchenko and Tymoshenko to bring Ukraine into NATO, the twoformally request in January that Ukraine be granted a "membership action plan," the first step in the process of joining the alliance.

U.S. President George W. Bush supports Ukraine's membership, but France and Germany oppose it after Russia voices displeasure.

In April, NATO responds with a compromise: It promises that Ukraine will one day be a member of the alliance but does not put it on a specific path for how to do so.
January 2009
On Jan. 1, Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas company, suddenly stops pumping natural gas to Ukraine, following months of politically fraught negotiations over gas prices. Because Eastern and central European countries rely on pipelines through Ukraine to receive gas imports from Russia, the gas crisis quickly spreads beyond Ukraine's borders.

Under international pressure to resolve the crisis, Tymoshenko negotiates a new deal with Putin, and gas flows resume on Jan. 20. Much of Europe still relies on Russian gas today.
2010
Yanukovych is elected president in February. He says Ukraine should be a "neutral state," cooperating with both Russia and Western alliances like NATO.
2011
Ukrainian prosecutors open criminal investigations into Tymoshenko, alleging corruption and misuse of government resources. In October, a court finds her guilty of "abuse of power" during the 2009 negotiations with Russia over the gas crisis and sentences her to seven years in prison, prompting concerns in the West that Ukrainian leaders are persecuting political opponents.

2014: The Maidan revolution and Crimea's annexation
November 2013 through February 2014
Just days before it is to be signed, Yanukovych announces that he will refuse to sign an association agreement with the European Union to bring Ukraine into a free trade agreement. He cites pressure from Russia as a reason for his decision.

The announcement sparks huge protests across Ukraine - the largest since the Orange Revolution - calling for Yanukovych to resign. Protesters begin camping out in Kyiv's Maidan, also known as Independence Square, and occupy government buildings, including Kyiv's city hall and the justice ministry.

In late February, violence between police and protesters leaves more than 100 dead in the single bloodiest week in Ukraine's post-Soviet history.

Ahead of a scheduled impeachment vote on Feb. 22, Yanukovych flees, eventually arriving in Russia. Ukraine's parliament votes unanimously to remove Yanukovych and install an interim government, which announces it will sign the EU agreement and votes to free Tymoshenko from prison.

The new government charges Yanukovych with mass murder of the Maidan protesters and issues a warrant for his arrest.

Russia declares that the change in Ukraine's government is an illegal coup. Almost immediately, armed men appear at checkpoints and facilities in the Crimean Peninsula. Putin at first denies they are Russian soldiers but later admits it.
March 2014
With Russian troops in control of the peninsula, the Crimean parliament votes to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. A public referendum follows, with 97% of voters favoring secession, although the results are disputed.

Putin finalizes the Russian annexation of Crimea in a March 18 announcement to Russia's parliament. In response, the U.S. and allies in Europe impose sanctions on Russia. They have never recognized Russia's annexation. It remains the only time that a European nation has used military force to seize the territory of another since World War II.
April 2014
With some 40,000 Russian troops gathered on Ukraine's eastern border, violence breaks out in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas - violence that continues to this day. Russian-supported separatist forces storm government buildings in two eastern regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. They declare independence from Ukraine as the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, though they remain internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Russia denies that its troops are on Ukrainian soil, but Ukrainian officials insist otherwise.
May 2014
The pro-West politician Petro Poroshenko, a former government minister and head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine, is elected Ukraine's president. He promotes reform, including measures to address corruption and lessen Ukraine's dependence on Russia for energy and financial support.
Sept. 5, 2014
Representatives from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany meet in Belarus to attempt to negotiate an end to the violence in the Donbas. They sign the first Minsk agreement, a deal between Ukraine and Russia to quiet the violence under a fragile cease-fire. The cease-fire soon breaks, and fighting continues into the new year.

2015 through 2020: Russia looms
February 2015
The Minsk group meets again in Belarus to find a more successful agreement to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, resulting in the Minsk II agreement. It too has been unsuccessful at ending the violence. From 2014 through today, more than 14,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands wounded and more than a million displaced.

Together, the annexation of Crimea and the Russian-backed violence in the east have pushed Ukrainian public sentiment toward the West, strengthening interest in joining NATO and the EU.
2016 and 2017
As fighting in the Donbas continues, Russia repeatedly strikes at Ukraine in a series of cyberattacks, including a 2016 attack on Kyiv's power grid that causes a major blackout. In 2017, a large-scale assault affects key Ukrainian infrastructure, including the National Bank of Ukraine and the country's electrical grid. (Cyberattacks from Russia have continued through the present; the latest major attack targeted government websites in January 2022.)
2019
In April, comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy is elected president in a landslide rebuke of Poroshenko and the status quo, which includes a stagnating economy and the conflict with Russia.

During his campaign, Zelenskyy vowed to make peace with Russia and end the war in the Donbas.

His early efforts to reach a solution to the violence are slowed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who briefly blocks U.S. military aid to Ukraine and suggests to Zelenskyy that he should instead work with Putin to resolve the crisis.

In a phone call with Trump in July 2019, Zelenskyy requests a visit to the White House to meet with Trump about U.S. backing of Ukraine's efforts to push off Russia. Trump asks Zelenskyy for "a favor": an investigation into energy company Burisma and the Bidens. A White House whistleblower complains, leading to Trump's first impeachment in December 2019.

Several U.S. officials later testify that Zelenskyy was close to announcing such an investigation, though he ultimately demurs, saying Ukrainians are "tired" of Burisma.

2021: The crisis escalates
April
Russia sends about 100,000 troops to Ukraine's borders, ostensibly for military exercises. Although few analysts believe an invasion is imminent, Zelenskyy urges NATO leadership to put Ukraine on a timeline for membership. Later that month, Russia says it will withdraw the troops, but tens of thousands remain.
August
Two years after his entanglement with Trump, Zelenskyy visits the White House to meet with President Biden. Biden emphasizes that the U.S. is committed to "Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression" but repeats that Ukraine has not yet met the conditions necessary to join NATO.
November
Russia renews its troop presence near the Ukraine-Russia border, alarming U.S. intelligence officials, who travel to Brussels to brief NATO allies on the situation. "We're not sure exactly what Mr. Putin is up to, but these movements certainly have our attention," says U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
December
Biden, speaking with Putin on a phone call, urges Russia not to invade Ukraine, warning of "real costs" if Russia does so.

Putin issues a contentious set of security demands. Among them, he asks NATO to permanently bar Ukraine from membership and withdraw forces stationed in countries that joined the alliance after 1997, including Romania and Balkan countries. Putin also demands a written response from the U.S. and NATO.

2022: Russia moves in
January
Leaders and diplomats from the U.S., Russia and European countries meet repeatedly to avert a crisis. In early January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov tells U.S. officials that Russia has no plans to invade Ukraine.

The State Department orders the families of embassy staff to leave Ukraine on Jan. 23. NATO places forces on standby the next day, including the U.S. ordering 8,500 troops in the United States to be ready to deploy.

Representatives from the U.S. and NATO deliver their written responses to Putin's demands on Jan. 26. In the responses, officials say they cannot bar Ukraine from joining NATO, but they signal a willingness to negotiate over smaller issues like arms control.
February
Diplomatic efforts pick up pace across Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travel between Moscow and Kyiv. Biden orders the movement of 1,000 U.S. troops from Germany to Romania and the deployment of 2,000 additional U.S. troops to Poland and Germany.

Russia and Belarus begin joint military exercises on Feb. 10, with some 30,000 Russian troops stationed in the country along Ukraine's northern border.

The U.S. and the U.K. urge their citizens to leave Ukraine on Feb. 11. Biden announces the deployment of another 2,000 troops from the U.S. to Poland.

In mid-February, the fighting escalates between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the two eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Separatist leaders call for evacuations. "In our view, what is happening in Donbas today is, in fact, genocide," says Putin on Feb. 15 - a false claim that Western officials say Putin is using to create a pretext for an invasion.

Russia continues to build its troop presence on its border with Ukraine. Estimates range from 150,000 to 190,000 troops. U.S. officials, including Biden, increase the urgency of their warnings, saying that Russia has decided to invade.

On Feb. 21, Putin formally recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic - including territory claimed by separatists but controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces. He orders Russia's military to deploy troops there under the guise of a "peacekeeping" mission.

In response, Biden declares the move " the beginning of a Russian invasion." Together, the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union enact a broad set of sanctions targeting Russian banks and oligarchs.

On Feb. 24, Russian forces launch a devastating assault on Ukrainian territory - the largest such military operation in Europe since the end of World War II. Missiles rain down on Ukraine's cities and columns of Russian troops from neighboring Belarus and from Russian-held Crimea reportedly begin streaming into the countryside. Ukrainian forces reportedly try to hold back the Russian advance on several fronts.

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Russia's at war with Ukraine. Here's how we got here

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As Russian forces begin an all-out assault on Ukraine after months of troop buildup and failed diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and its European allies to head off conflict, the situation for Kyiv is the most high-stakes in the country's 30-year history.

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Other similar articles:

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Singapore ‘gravely concerned’ by military operations in Ukraine: MFA

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SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said the country is “gravely concerned” by Russia’s announcement of the start of a “special military operation” in the Donbas region of Ukraine, as well as reports of land and air attacks on multiple targets in the Eastern European country on…

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Mixed Reaction From Russians In Rostov To Putin's Invasion Of Ukraine

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Residents of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, located near the Ukrainian border, have expressed mixed reactions to their country's full-scale attack on Ukraine. Current Time asked several people on February 24 about Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to unleash a military invasion on his country's western neighbor.

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Volodymyr Zelensky | Biography, Facts, Presidency, & Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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Volodymyr Zelensky, also spelled Volodymyr Zelenskyy, (born January 25, 1978, Kryvyy Rih, Ukraine, U.S.S.R. [now in Ukraine]), Ukrainian actor and comedian who was elected president of Ukraine in 2019. Although he was a political novice, Zelensky’s anti-corruption platform won him widespread suppor…

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Europe relies on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas. Victoria Viper B/Shutterstock

As frantic diplomatic efforts continue to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe's reliance on Russian gas supplies - and what would happen to them in the case of a war - remains an ever-present threat. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak to two experts on the geopolitics of natural gas about the history of the energy relationship between Russia and Europe, and the role gas supplies play in the current diplomatic efforts to avoid war.

And, the Beijing Winter Olympics are the first games to use 100% artificial snow. We talk to a sports ecologist about what that might mean for the athletes - and for the environment around the Olympic sites.

Russia has been supplying western Europe with natural gas for more than 50 years. "The precise date is 1968," says Michael Bradshaw. "That's when the Soviet Union reached agreement with Austria to deliver natural gas by pipeline." Bradshaw, a professor of global energy at Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick in the UK, says it's a relationship that has "weathered a number of geopolitical crises", including the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, Russia supplies Europe with around 40% of its natural gas, predominantly through pipelines. And according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, in 2021, 22% of the gas Russia delivered to Europe - including Turkey - passed through Ukraine. That makes the question of what would happen to these gas flows in the event of a Russian invasion particularly urgent.

Read more: Ukraine: how an armed conflict could play out

The future of Nord Stream 2, a new pipeline taking gas directly from Russia direct to northern Germany, is at risk. "It's become a symbol of how Russia is using natural gas to play out the European states against each other and to divide the European Union," says Anastasiya Shapochkina, a lecturer in geopolitical at Sciences Po in France.

Construction of Nord Stream 2 finished in late 2021, but regulatory delays mean no gas is yet flowing through the pipeline. In early February, at a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House, US President Joe Biden said if Russia did invade Ukraine "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." Scholz opted instead for strategic ambiguity about the pipeline's future in the case of a war.

Bradshaw says if Russia did invade, the consensus among analysts is that "it's highly unlikely that either side will want to disrupt the flow of natural gas - both sides have got too much to lose from doing that." He says Gazprom, the Russian energy giant which controls the pipeline gas supply to Europe, relies on the income it makes from these gas exports to supply gas at a lower price to domestic consumers in Russia. But with global energy prices rises and the gas market very tight, if the EU imposed economic sanctions that stopped the flow of gas, Bradshaw says "that would make a bad situation even worse" for Europe.

Read more: Ukraine: Russia probably won't turn off the gas, but the problem won't go away any time soon

For Shapochkina, the most optimistic scenario is that the "energy economic interdependence between Russia and Europe can be a containment factor on the conflict in Ukraine." However, she says what will be acceptable to European leaders, and Germany in particular, remains an open question. "We could envision the scenario when Russia could be allowed, because of the energy security of Europe, to invade all it wants and still trade with Europe, and even use the Ukrainian gas system to potentially increase its volumes of exports to Europe," she says.

Longer term, how much Europe will rely on natural gas from Russia depends upon the role gas plays in the energy transition towards renewables - something currently causing controversy within the EU. But in the short term, Europe and its allies are scrambling to secure alternative sources of gas should Russia reduce its gas flows.

In our second story in this episode, what is the environmental impact of a winter Olympics in Beijing with 100% artificial snow? Madeline Orr, a lecturer in sports ecology at Loughborough University London in the UK, recently published research on athletes' views of competing on artificial snow - which is around 70% ice. "We had a lot of athletes who are quite excited to be competing on artificial snow, because it's fast and it's hard," she says, although some of those competing in aerial events are "more concerned about the injury" from falling on a harder surface. She also explains what all this artificial snow will mean for the environment around the Beijing's Olympic venues. (Listen from 30m30)

And finally, Haley Lewis for The Conversation in the Canadian capital Ottawa recommends some recent analysis of protests by truckers against COVID-19 restrictions that continue to block the city's streets. (Listen from 42m50)

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also sign up to The Conversation's free daily email here.
You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here.

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If Russia invades Ukraine, what could happen to natural gas supplies to Europe? Podcast

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As frantic diplomatic efforts continue to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe's reliance on Russian gas supplies - and what would happen to them in the case of a war - remains an ever-present threat.

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Who are Putin's allies in Europe? What are they saying now?

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Who are Putin's allies in Europe? What are they saying now?

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Putin’s European pals have to eat their words

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The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine is a big embarrassment to European politicians who got too close to Putin.

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How should liberal democracies move forward after this episode?

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How should liberal democracies move forward after this episode?

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Were democracies too caught up in ideals and nativist policies that blinded them to global issues?

Were they too weak and timid in the face of more aggressive undemocratic counterparts?

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he haunting wail of air-raid sirens urging people to shelter underground. The howl of warplanes. The crump of artillery. The death rattle of tanks. Civilians who have never held a weapon arming themselves with a gun to defend their homeland. War has returned to Europe.

And it has returned in a form and on a scale that many complacently thought could never again happen on our continent. A large and despotic power is hurling its military might at a smaller, democratic neighbour. At minimum, the Russian invasion of Ukraine aims to eliminate an independent, sovereign nation's right to self-determination. Vladimir Putin's onslaught is designed to prevent Ukrainians from choosing any other destiny than subservience to Moscow. At worst, he will satisfy his appetite to swallow up a country that he has mendaciously argued has no right to exist.

Many voices lament that this opens a new, dark chapter of history. I'm afraid there's an even less palatable truth. The world has been on a trajectory towards an event like this for some time. The Russian attack is shocking, but it ought not to be altogether surprising to anyone who has been paying attention over the past decade. The barbaric battering of Ukraine is the savage expression of a global contest for the soul of our planet. It is a struggle between the democracies and an axis of autocracies led by China and Russia who seek to impose their authoritarian systems not only on their own populations, but on people beyond their borders.

Putin has been brutally honest about his ambition to redraw Europe's borders through violence

Putin repeatedly lied in the buildup to an invasion that he denied was going to happen, making dupes of Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and the other leaders who shuttled to the Kremlin for a jaw-jaw while Russian generals made their final preparations for war-war. Yet we can also say that Putin has been brutally honest about his ambition to redraw Europe's borders through violence. He has written about his loathing for the west and his desire to reforge a Russian imperium; he has made speeches about it and he has acted on it. The annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 2008 war that tore a chunk out of Georgia, the ferocious intervention in support of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, the cyber-attacks and information warfare: all were warnings of what he was capable of and how little he was bothered by western condemnation. Then there were the assassinations, including the Salisbury nerve agent attack, which was an act of war on British soil.

The response to earlier aggressions was some heavy denouncing and some light sanctioning, counter-measures that were much too puny to deter the Russian leader. Putin's greatest strength has been the weakness of the west. Nato and the EU passed heated motions. The Kremlin coldly planned its next war. The democracies repeatedly gave him reason to believe that they only pretended to care about naked violations of the rule of international law. Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in the same year that he grabbed Crimea and then the Fifa World Cup four years later.

All the blood of this conflict is on his hands, but some of the guilt is borne by a variety of actors in the west who have enabled or emboldened Putin. Figures on the populist right fawned over him as a nationalist strongman worthy of admiration - and still do. Donald Trump described the "genius" Putin as "very savvy" for launching this invasion under the ludicrously fictitious disguise of being on a peacekeeping mission.

Moscow has also received succour from hard leftists in the west. Even as 190,000 Russian troops massed around Ukraine, Jeremy Corbyn and 11 Labour MPs signed a Stop the War petition blaming Nato and British "sabre-rattling". The 11 later removed their signatures under pressure from Sir Keir Starmer, who has been unequivocal in his denunciations of Putin's "jackboot of tyranny". Labour now has a leader who can be trusted to take the right stand, but that can't obscure the fact that Mr Corbyn was its candidate for prime minister at two elections.

Take the cash first - and don't ask too many questions afterwards. That has been the Tory party's attitude to plutocrats bearing gifts

That was one of many signals sent from this country and others that encouraged the Kremlin to think there would be no meaningful push back from the liberal democracies. How likely was Putin going to take ritual warnings of pariah status and threats of sanctions when so many members of the European business and political elite have been willing to put themselves on the Kremlin's payroll? The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder is still sitting on Russian company boards, including Rosneft, the state-owned oil corporation. François Fillon, a former prime minister of France, sits on the boards of a Russian petrochemicals business and a state-owned oil group. Only after the tanks were rolling into Ukraine did former leaders of Austria, Finland and Italy quit their seats on the boards of Russian companies. Lenin had a phrase to describe these people. Useful idiots.

Instead of legitimising Russian interests, European politicians should have been concentrating on how to contain the threat posed by Russia's leader. There has been an awful absence of strategic thinking. That is nowhere more obvious than in allowing so much of Europe - and notably Germany - to become so dependent on hydrocarbons supplied by a regime that is so starkly hostile to democratic values. The talk now is of "crippling" sanctions. The toughest measure available is to boycott the oil and gas exports that finance Putin's war machine. That isn't happening because of Moscow's grip around the windpipe of Europe's energy supplies.

This has attracted self-satisfied criticism from Boris Johnson, but that is the British pot trying to establish bragging rights over the German kettle. While they became hooked on Russian gas, too many of Britain's elite have been addicted to Russian cash. Successive governments have indulged, facilitated and encouraged Russian oligarchs to purchase influence in our political, commercial and cultural life. Our capital acquired the nickname Londongrad because of its global reputation as a laundromat for dirty money. Take the cash first - and don't ask too many questions afterwards. That has been the Tory party's attitude to plutocrats bearing gifts.

Outlining Britain's "severe" response to the invasion, Mr Johnson has talked about establishing a "new kleptocracy cell" in the National Crime Agency. Why did he wait until Russian troops were motoring on Kyiv? There will now be a ban on any further exports to Russia of technology that can be used for military purposes. Why did our government wait until after cruise missiles had taken out critical defence facilities in Ukraine? If the latest tranche of measures is to have a greater impact than previous efforts to penalise aggression, the sanctions will have to be sweeping, strictly applied and sustained. Putin is betting they won't be. He calculates that Russians can endure hardship for longer than soft western governments will tolerate economic pain.

We already have a squeeze on living standards and it will be made more acute by higher oil and gas prices accompanied by increased costs for cereals and minerals essential for the production of many goods. There will be a cost to confronting despotism and the leaders of the democracies will have to convince their electorates that the cause is worth the sacrifice.

This must be the end of the lazy assumption that security and freedom can be taken for granted in the west. The democracies will have to relearn the arts of deterrence and become much more serious about ensuring they have the means to protect themselves and their allies against despots who respect only hard power.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disarmament that followed, the UK and its neighbours have mainly spent the "peace dividend" on giving ageing populations better healthcare and pensions than they would otherwise have enjoyed. A reluctance to spend more on defence has continued even as China and Russia have become increasingly belligerent. Only a third of Nato's 30 members are currently meeting the commitment to spend 2% of GDP on their armed forces. Germany, Italy and Spain fall very short of the target.

Liberal democracies urgently need to rediscover the resolve to defend their values against tyranny that they displayed during the cold war. The autocrats in Moscow and Beijing believe that the west is divided, decadent and in decline. They have to be proved wrong. Otherwise, all the rhetoric about freedom is merely noise before defeat.

Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer

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Liberal democracies must defend their values and show Putin that the west isn't weak | Andrew Rawnsley

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he haunting wail of air-raid sirens urging people to shelter underground. The howl of warplanes. The crump of artillery. The death rattle of tanks. Civilians who have never held a weapon arming themselves with a gun to defend their homeland. War has returned to Europe.

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine has amplified pressure for tougher economic sanctions on Moscow. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, was among many to call for Moscow to be shut out of Swift - the world's main international payments network - with the aim of hitting Russian trade and making it harder for its companies to do business.

What is Swift?

Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is the main secure messaging system that banks use to make rapid and secure cross-border payments, allowing international trade to flow smoothly. It has become the principal mechanism for financing international trade. In 2020, about 38 million transactions were sent each day over the Swift platform, facilitating trillions of dollars' worth of deals.

Who owns Swift?

Swift, founded in the 1970s, is a cooperative of thousands of member institutions that use the service. Based in Belgium, it remains neutral in trade disputes, being run principally as a service to its members.

Why would a Swift ban be so serious?

Boris Johnson told MPs it would harm the Russian economy if it were locked out of Swift. Run-of-the-mill transactions would need to be conducted directly between banks, or routed through fledgling rival systems, adding to costs and creating delays.

Why is the US reluctant to implement a ban?

One reason is that the impact on Russian businesses might not be so serious. The head of a large Russian bank, VTB, said recently he could use other channels for payments, such as phones, messaging apps or email. Russian banks could also route payments via countries that have not imposed sanctions, such as China, which has set up its own payments system to rival Swift. A ban on Russia using Swift could accelerate a the use of China's rival Cips system. There is also a fear that it could damage to the US dollar's status as the global reserve currency, and accelerate the use of alternatives such as cryptocurrencies.

Would a Swift ban affect other countries?

The Biden administration is also concerned that a ban could harm its allies as much as it does Russian firms. Russia is a big buyer of foreign manufactured goods, especially from the Netherlands and Germany. Russia is the main EU supplier of crude oil, natural gas and solid fossil fuels, and European countries could find it harder to find replacement suppliers.

Is Swift bound by economic sanctions?

In the past, Swift has resisted calls to impose bans on certain countries, describing itself as neutral. But in 2012, the European Union barred Swift from serving Iranian firms and individuals sanctioned in relation to Tehran's nuclear programme, setting a precedent for action against Russia. A Swift spokesperson declined to say how the organisation would respond to any US sanctions, Reuters said.

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What is Swift and what would shutting Russia out of it achieve?

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine has amplified pressure for tougher economic sanctions on Moscow. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, was among many to call for Moscow to be shut out of Swift - the world's main international payments network - with the aim of hitting Russian trade and making it harder for its companies to do business.

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Why is Russia invading Ukraine and what does Putin want?

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Why is Russia invading Ukraine and what does Putin want?

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Has Putin’s war failed and what does Russia want from Ukraine?

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A year into Russia’s war, he has little to show for it but there is no sign of an end.

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What is NATO and why is Russia concerned?

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What is NATO and why is Russia concerned?

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Nato, the West's defensive alliance, has confirmed Ukraine can join, but has not said when.

Speaking during the Nato summit in Lithuania, the Ukrainian President Zelensky said the lack of clarity was "unprecedented and absurd".

Which countries are in Nato?

Nato - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - was formed in 1949 by 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and France.

The organisation has two official languages, English and French. In French, the alliance is known as Otan, Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.

It currently has 31 members across Europe and North America.

They agree to help one another if they are attacked.

Nato's original goal was to block Soviet expansion in Europe after World War Two.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, many Eastern European countries joined the alliance: Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Will Ukraine join Nato?

Nato said in 2008 that Ukraine could join at a future date, but declined its September 2022 request for "fast-track" membership.

Under article 5 of Nato's charter, if one member is attacked, the others must come to its defence.

Were Ukraine to join during the current conflict with Russia, all Nato member countries would also have to declare war on Russia.

At the Vilnius summit in July, Nato said that it will invite Ukraine to become a member "when allies agree and conditions are met".

However, Nato has not set out a timeframe for Ukraine's entry.

Ukrainian President Zelensky accepts his country cannot join Nato while it is at war with Russia, but wants it to happen as soon as possible after fighting ends: "Nato will give Ukraine security. Ukraine will make the alliance stronger."

Russia has consistently and strongly opposed the idea of Ukraine joining Nato, fearing it would bring the alliance's forces too close to its own territory.

Sweden applied to join Nato in April 2022, along with Finland.

Finland has a 1,340km (832 mile) land border with Russia. Both countries were concerned about growing Russian aggression following the Ukrainian invasion.

Finland joined Nato in April 2023, but for many months Turkey and Hungary refused to approve Sweden's application.

Turkey accused it of hosting its enemies, including pro-Kurdish groups.

He said Hungary would do the same.

However, it is not known when the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments will vote, or when Sweden might officially be admitted.

The bombs are controversial, because of the harm they might do to civilians.

The US is also supplying Ukraine with 31 Abrams tanks. The UK has sent 14 Challenger 2 tanks, while Germany and other Nato countries have donated dozens of Leopard 2 tanks.

Nato countries are also supplying air defence systems to shoot down Russian cruise missiles and drones over Ukraine.

However, the US is not providing its longer-range missiles, called Advanced Tactical Missile Systems. It thinks these could be used to attack targets inside Russia - which could provoke a direct conflict between Russia and the West.

For the same reason, Nato countries are not sending troops to Ukraine, nor using their air forces to impose a no-fly zone.

Nato commanders have agreed a new plan for countering Russian aggression.

It spells out how forces should be deployed if Russia attacks in any of three zones: the Arctic and north Atlantic; central Europe; or the Mediterranean region.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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What is Nato and when will Ukraine join?

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The West's defence alliance Nato says it will let Ukraine join, but will not confirm when.

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Singapore, 25 February 2022 - In response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, the Singapore Red Cross (SRC) will contribute US$100,000 to support affected communities, working through the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), in their ongoing response. The support will go towards the provision of relief supplies such as hygiene kits, family kits and household kits for the vulnerable who are displaced by the conflict.

In addition, SRC will launch a public fundraising appeal from 25 February to 31 May 2022 to raise more funds to aid the expected massive humanitarian operations.

Tensions in Ukraine have been high for the last eight years and escalated to an outright conflict on 24 February 2022. An estimated 3 million people in the country rely on humanitarian aid and 850,000 are displaced. Around 30 percent of the people in need are elderly. The number of internally displaced persons and humanitarian needs is expected to increase massively as the conflict continues to intensify. SRC is in close contact with URCS and the IFRC to ascertain the evolving needs on the ground and respond in an appropriate manner.

Mr Benjamin William, Secretary General and CEO of Singapore Red Cross, said, "We are deeply concerned about the outbreak of open conflict and its dire consequences. The humanitarian needs on the ground will continue to rise as the conflict intensifies. Working with our Red Cross Movement partners, we will continue to assist the affected communities, many of whom could potentially lose their homes and all their belongings."

In line with universally accepted International Humanitarian Law, the Red Cross has called for the protection of non-combatants and critical infrastructure such as water and power systems in Ukraine, so that all humanitarian actors, including the Red Cross, will be able to have access to civilians needing help.

The Singapore Red Cross has also activated its "Restoring Family Links" (RFL) service to assist Singapore residents to locate their immediate family members who may have been affected by the disasters with whom they have difficulty in contacting. For assistance, please contact SRC.

Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Response

1) Make an online donation - Giving.sg, DonorBox, Donation Portal, iRaiser, Benevity
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Please make cheque payable to 'Singapore Red Cross Society', to be posted to Red Cross House, 15 Penang Lane, Singapore 238486. Please leave your name, postal address and indicate " Ukraine Crisis " at the back of your cheque.
Notes:

Donations to overseas efforts are not tax-deductible.

In the event that donations exceed the expenses incurred by Singapore Red Cross in this specific disaster response, any surplus or unspent money, after three years from the date of inception of the fund, can be used to prepare for and serve communities affected by other disasters or may be used to complement or to sustain projects undertaken by SRC in helping the vulnerable in areas affected by disasters.

Appeal period: 25 February to 31 May 2022

Photo by Anastasia Alyokhina/ICRC

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Singapore, 25 February 2022 - In response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, the Singapore Red Cross (SRC) will contribute US$100,000 to support affected communities, working through the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societ

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Prominent Russians shocked by the invasion of Ukraine have gone public with their opposition to the war, despite the professional and personal risks that come with dissent on such a sensitive issue in Russia.

More than 1,800 people were arrested at rallies across the country on Thursday night as prominent Russians from the worlds of entertainment, business and journalism have risked their livelihoods in order to speak out.

When Elena Chernenko, the veteran diplomatic correspondent for Kommersant newspaper, found out that Russia was invading Ukraine, she said she was stunned.

"Of course, I was shocked ... Until yesterday morning, I refused to believe that Russia could launch a massive military operation against Ukraine," said Chernenko, who believed Russia may at most recognise the territories in south-east Ukraine.

"I thought that all the talk about invasions was awful hysteria. I argued with people on Twitter and in person that nothing would happen, it's all thought up," she said. "Maybe I don't understand anything about Russian foreign policy anymore."

After Putin announced the military operation, she penned an open letter condemning the attack on Ukraine. "War has never been and will never be a method of conflict resolution and there are no excuses for it," she wrote. Nearly 300 journalists have signed, including representatives of state-run media.

In retaliation, she revealed she has been expelled from the diplomatic pool, which she has covered for more than 11 years, for "unprofessionalism".

Chernenko remains a strong critic of Ukraine's policy toward the Donbas region, but said she could not justify the kind of military operation now unfolding.

"There was nothing complicated about it for me," Chernenko said of her letter. "It was a spontaneous reaction. My country has started a military operation against another ... but we're for diplomacy, we're for the UN charter, moral values, brotherly nations, and all that. And I had the feeling that this is the wrong path."

Popular actors and musicians, some of whom are employed by the government, have also spoken out and appear to have been punished for their dissent.

On Thursday, Ivan Urgant, the host of a popular talk show on state-run Channel One, posted a black square on Instagram with the caption "Fear and pain. No to war." His show has not gone on air since. Channel One has claimed it is just a scheduling issue, although several reports in Russian media say that they have been blacklisted.

Elena Kovalskaya, the director of the Meyerhold Center in Moscow, quit her job at the state-financed theatre in an act of protest over the war. "It's impossible to work for a murderer and receive your salary from him," she wrote of her decision.

"Our future is being taken from us," said Yuri Shevchuk, the frontman of classic Soviet rock band DDT and a veteran anti-war campaigner, who went to Chechnya in 1995 as part of a peace tour. "We're being pulled like through an ice hole into the past, into the 19th, 18th, 17th centuries. And people refuse to accept it."

He pointed to those in show business who would usually avoid politics now coming out against the war. "Even those pop stars who never talked about politics, who were afraid to lose their shows, honorariums, and so on."

They include mainstream stars like Valery Meladze, as well as more politically minded artists like the rapper Oxxxymiron. He voluntarily cancelled six sold-out shows in Moscow and St Petersburg, writing: "I cannot entertain you when Russian missiles are falling on Ukraine."

Even the family members of some of Russia's richest businessmen have gone public in their opposition to war. The daughter of Roman Abramovich posted an Instagram picture that read "Putin wants a war with Ukraine," crossing out the word Russia. "The biggest and most successful lie of Kremlin's propaganda is that most Russian stand with Putin."

And on Friday afternoon, Lisa Peskova, the daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, took to Instagram to post a simple message on a black background: #Нетвойне, or "No to war." So did Tatyana Yumasheva, the daughter of Boris Yeltsin.

While the acts of dissent may not change Kremlin policy, they could point to significantly less public or elite support for the current military operation in Ukraine than the annexation of Crimea eight years ago.

Hours after Putin announced the military operation, protests broke out on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg and more than 50 other Russian cities on Thursday evening.

They were not the largest protests that Moscow has ever seen. But they were remarkable as a show of defiance despite threats that the government would crack down harder than usual.

"Not only did they go to war without us, they won't even let you protest against a war," said Zhanna, a young woman with her hair dyed green, pointing to police in riot helmets. "But war is never right. I need to be here because I feel ashamed."

One young man held up a sign that said "Fuck the war!" Within seconds, four police officers had fallen on top of him, dragging him roughly to a police van as media and photographers crowded around.

That scene repeated itself dozens of times, as protesters mostly waited their turn for police to arrest them. As the protesters were pushed off the square, they began to march down the broad pavement of Tverskaya Street, chanting "No to war."

A number of protesters said that they wished more people had come out in opposition to the war, a remark echoed by political analysts.

"The government can put down nearly any protest at this point," said Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of R.Politik. "And in order for the situation to become serious, many more people would have to come out than did so yesterday."

Despite the odds stacked against them, many Russians have said they feel it is their duty to speak out whatever the consequences.

"They are all doing this without worrying about their own future and threats," said Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel prize-winning editor of Novaya Gazeta. "These people have all spoken very clearly to say that they are against this bloodshed. And that is very inspiring for me."

Muratov released dual editions of his newspaper in both Russian and Ukrainian this week and has said that his newspaper would defy the Russian media watchdog's rules that they only report official government information about the war, trusting reporting only from their own newsroom.

He believes the war is an unpopular one for most Russians.

"The memory of the [second world] war, and that people have relatives in Ukraine, and that Ukraine is a dear country to us, it holds back even the most rabid supporters of the current leadership," said Muratov. "There is no enthusiasm for this."

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Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests

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Prominent Russians shocked by the invasion of Ukraine have gone public with their opposition to the war, despite the professional and personal risks that come with dissent on such a sensitive issue in Russia.

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How the Russian media's portrayal of the conflict could influence the nation's view and support for military action in Ukraine.

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Turn on Russian state television on Friday afternoon and you will see little sign that the country's missiles are pounding the Ukrainian capital.

Instead, the full force of the state propaganda machine has been mobilised to portray Moscow's invasion as a defensive campaign to "liberate" Ukraine, focusing much of its coverage on the alleged protection of the Donbas, supposedly under attack by Kyiv.

"Our situation is very concerning. The enemy is attacking our positions, entering civilian houses," said Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the self-proclaimed republic in Luhansk, to the Rossiya-24 channel.

A breaking news banner on Channel One said that "Ukraine launched three missiles at the Donetsk People's Republic in the last seven minutes".

The Russian state news mostly follows Vladimir Putin's narrative on the war, which he laid out in his address to the nation early on Thursday morning when he announced a limited "special military operation" to "demilitarise" Ukraine and protect citizens in the Donbas from what he claimed was a Ukrainian "genocide".

Throughout Friday morning, a Russian assault on the Ukrainian capital was often simply denied.

"Kyiv, as a city where civilians live, hasn't been bombed by anyone. There hasn't been any terror there or instructions to cause such terror," said the Channel One pundit Artyom Sheinin on Friday, contradicting the myriad of reports that have shown the opposite.

As it becomes harder for state media to ignore the full-scale invasion into Ukrainian territory, some channels have started to frame Russian soldiers as eagerly anticipated liberators.

"The people in the city Kharkiv only have one issue with the Russian army: 'What took you so long?'" said Olga Skabeyeva, one of the country's most prominent state television hosts.

Coverage of the invasion contrasts steeply with that of other Russian military campaigns. During Russia's 2015 military intervention in Syria, viewers were often treated to flashy videos of fighter jets destroying their targets. The avoidance of such videos this time serves as a sign that Russian authorities are aware of the country's deep unease with the conflict.

Television remains the biggest news source for Russians despite becoming less trusted over the past decade, past polling has found, and 62% of the population say they get their news from television. But polls also show that most people under 40 prefer to get their news online and from social media.

Despite a state crackdown on Russian media, readers can still choose from several independent outlets that have been reporting critically on the country's involvement in the war, including the popular online platform Meduza and the television channel Dozhd - both recently branded as "foreign agents".

Those who can read English are still able to access foreign press, and there are also many popular independent Telegram channels run by journalists turned bloggers.

In contrast to WhatsApp, the widely used encrypted messaging app Telegram allows readers to "follow" users in a similar way to Twitter, which is accessed by only 3% of the population. Alexei Pivovarov, a veteran Russian journalist, runs a channel with almost 500,000 followers, aggregating independent news on the war coming from Russia, Ukraine and the west.

Other channels are more opinionated. Commenting on a recent statement by the Kremlin official Valentina Matviyenko, who defended the invasion by saying it "was is the only option to stop a brotherly war", the Telegram user Stalingulag wrote to his 300,000 followers: "This is pure Orwell, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery."

Signs are emerging that the Kremlin will try to gain a monopoly on the way Russians perceive events in Ukraine by censoring independent outlets reporting on the war.

On Thursday Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, demanded that Russian media cite only "official information and data" when covering the conflict. The watchdog vowed to immediately block outlets that did not comply with the order.

In a similar move, Russia previously threatened to block at least 10 news outlets unless they deleted their coverage of video investigations by the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny into high-level corruption. Most outlets gave in to the demands.

Over at the state broadcaster RT - which has parroted many of the themes on the war that were aired on Russian state television - the first signs have emerged that its staff are uncomfortable with the network's war coverage.

At least one English-language RT staff member and one frequent RT contributor in Moscow have quit the network in recent days over the editorial position on the war, the Guardian has learned.

"In light of recent events, earlier today I resigned from RT with immediate effect," the former RT staff news writer in Moscow Jonny Tickle tweeted on Thursday.

The frequent RT contributor who resigned said, on condition of anonymity, that there had "been an exodus of staff already" at the channel.

"Several people already quit - and lots more said to be contemplating."

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'Pure Orwell': how Russian state media spins invasion as liberation

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Turn on Russian state television on Friday afternoon and you will see little sign that the country's missiles are pounding the Ukrainian capital. Instead, the full force of the state propaganda machine has been mobilised to portray Moscow's invasion as a defensive campaign to "liberate" Ukraine, focusing much of its coverage on the alleged protection of the Donbas, supposedly under attack by Kyiv.

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How Southeast Asia Is Responding to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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Most governments have so far been reluctant to call out Russia’s aggression against another sovereign nation.

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Should the other former-USSR states in the Baltics be worried?

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Should the other former-USSR states in the Baltics be worried?

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VILNIUS, Lithuania -- Viewed from Paris, London and Washington, the events unfolding in Ukraine may seem like a new Cold War taking shape in Europe.

From the Baltic countries, it looks much worse.

To Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians - particularly those old enough to have lived under Soviet control - Russia's belligerence toward Ukraine has some worried that they could be the next target. The escalating tensions which preceded an attack Thursday brought back memories of mass deportations and oppression.

"My grandparents were sent away to Siberia. My father was persecuted by the KGB. Now I live in a free democratic country, but it seems that nothing can be taken for granted," said Jaunius Kazlauskas, a 50-year-old teacher in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital.

Russia's attack on Ukraine sent shockwaves through the Baltic countries. Lithuania's president declared a state of emergency, and Latvia suspended the broadcast licenses of several Russian TV stations accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda.

All three Baltic countries were seized and annexed by Josef Stalin during World War II before gaining independence again with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. They joined NATO in 2004, putting themselves under the military protection of the U.S. and its Western allies. Ukraine is not part of NATO.

Along with Poland, also a NATO member, the small Baltic countries have been among the loudest advocates for powerful sanctions against Moscow and NATO reinforcements on the alliance's eastern flank.

Baltic government leaders in recent weeks have shuttled to European capitals, warning that the West must make Russian President Vladimir Putin pay for attacking Ukraine, or else his tanks will keep rolling toward other parts of the former Soviet empire.

"The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe. If Putin is not stopped there, he will go further," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis warned last week in a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Two days before the attack, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that some American forces deployed in Europe, including 800 infantry soldiers, F-35 fighters and Apache helicopters, would be moved to the three Baltic states, describing the step as purely defensive.

The news was met with enthusiasm in the Baltic capitals. While the NATO treaty commits all allies to defend any member that comes under attack, the Baltic countries say it is imperative that NATO show resolve not just in words but with boots on the ground.

"Russia always measures the military might but also the will of countries to fight," said Janis Garisons, state secretary at Latvia's Defense Ministry. "Once they see a weakness, they will exploit that weakness."

While Putin hasn't publicly expressed any ambition to reassert Russian control over the Baltic countries, many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians worry he wants to regain influence across all former republics of the Soviet Union, the collapse of which he once described as a tragedy for the Russian people.

In his speech earlier this week setting the stage for Russia's military intervention, Putin said Ukraine is "not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space."

Culturally and linguistically different, the Baltic countries don't have the same connection to Russian history and identity. However, they were ruled by Moscow for most of the past 200 years, first by the Russian Empire, then for almost 50 years following World War II by the Soviet Union. All three countries have ethnic Russian minorities; in Latvia and Estonia, they make up about one-quarter of the population.

Though many of them are well integrated, tensions flared in 2007 when hundreds of ethnic Russians rioted against government plans to relocate a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia's capital. Estonia suspected Russia of stoking the unrest and orchestrating cyberattacks that paralyzed government computer networks.

"When we hear Putin humiliating Ukraine, calling it an artificial state with no history, it reminds us of the same things that they have been repeating about all former Soviet republics for many years," said Nerijus Maliukevicius, a political analyst at Vilnius University. The Russian "state propaganda machine is now working on unprecedented levels of intensity, and the message is not just about Ukraine," he added.

Lithuania borders both Kaliningrad, a Russian region where the country's Baltic Sea fleet is based, and Belarus, the former Soviet republic where tens of thousands of Russian troops have been deployed for joint exercises. Belarus recently announced that the drills would continue because of the tensions in eastern Ukraine.

"It seems they are not going to leave," Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. "But we must understand that numbers do not mean everything. There are technically very advanced troops on our side of the border. Their main task is deterrence - and defense, if necessary."

The Baltic countries have expressed strong support for Ukraine. Baltic leaders have traveled to Kyiv recently to show their solidarity and have sent both weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Estonia, which celebrates its independence day on Thursday, is taking a strong stance in the conflict, but not because it fears for its security, said former President Kersti Kaljulaid, the first woman to hold that office.

"We are doing it because we find it is our moral obligation," she said. "We very strongly feel that ... every nation should have the right to decide their future."

While the Baltics are direct neighbors of Russia, she said other European countries should be equally worried about the crisis in Ukraine.

"Frankly speaking, I don't think it concerns the Baltics more," she said. "If you look from Kyiv, it's the same distance to Berlin as Tallinn."

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Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press writer Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.

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Follow AP's coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Ukraine attack leaves Baltics wondering: Are we next?

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VILNIUS, Lithuania -- Viewed from Paris, London and Washington, the events unfolding in Ukraine may seem like a new Cold War taking shape in Europe. From the Baltic countries, it looks much worse. To Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians - particularly those old enough to have lived under Soviet control - Russia's belligerence toward Ukraine has some worried that they could be the next target.

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Aside from the headline highlighting Germany's aid, do read the article closely and take notes of the aid provided by other countries as well.

You may also want to take note of why it is so significant that Germany is providing military aid.

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Germany to send Ukraine weapons in historic shift on military aid

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Until Saturday, Germany had a longstanding practice of blocking lethal weapons from being sent to conflict zones.

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What are the political, economic, geographical, and historical factors that could have influenced Russia's current actions?

What do we need to know about geopolitical relations and strategies in order to begin making sense about what is going on today?

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From 2014 - Everything you need to know about the Crimea Crisis

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From 2014 - Everything you need to know about the Crimea Crisis

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Editor's note, February 24, 2022, 10:15 am: In a February 23 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a "special military operation" would begin in Ukraine, following the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Explosions and outbreaks of fighting have since been reported across the country. .
What is the Ukraine crisis?

Ukraine is a Texas-size country wedged between Russia and Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, and since then has been a less-than-perfect democracy with a very weak economy and foreign policy that wavers between pro-Russian and pro-European.

This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union (here's why this was such a big deal), sparking mass protests, which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters.

Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country. Russia, trying to salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have been killed.

A lot of this comes down to Ukraine's centuries-long history of Russian domination. The country has been divided more or less evenly between Ukrainians who see Ukraine as part of Europe and those who see it as intrinsically linked to Russia. An internal political crisis over that disagreement may have been inevitable. Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin is pushing an imperial-revival, nationalist worldview that sees Ukraine as part of greater Russia - and as the victim of ever-encroaching Western hostility.

It appears unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back. It remains unclear whether Russian forces will try to annex parts of eastern Ukraine as well, how the fighting there will end, and what this means for the future of Ukraine - and for Putin's increasingly hostile but isolated Russia.

Is it "Ukraine" or "the Ukraine"?

It used to be "the Ukraine," but after breaking away from the Soviet Union in 1991 the name changed to just "Ukraine." That distinction actually turns out to be pretty important for understanding the current crisis.

Ukraine has a very long history of being subjugated by outside powers, and a very short history of national independence. That may actually be why the country became known as "the Ukraine," which many historians think meant "the borderland" in the language of ancient Slavs (it may also mean "the homeland," a theory that Ukrainian nationalists understandably prefer). In other words, it may have been called "the" because it was considered more of a geographic region than an independent country, and one defined by its in-between-ness.

You've got to reach pretty far back in history to find the last time Ukraine was independent, before 1991. There were a few years right after World War I, and before that a short time in the 1600s.

The country has been under partial or total Russian rule for most of those intervening centuries, which is a big part of why one in six Ukrainians is actually an ethnic Russian, one in three speaks Russian as their native language (the other two-thirds speak Ukrainian natively), and much of the country's media is in Russian. It's also why the subject of Russia is such a divisive one in Ukraine: a lot of the country sees Moscow as the source of Ukraine's historical subjugation and something to be resisted, while others tend to look on Russia more fondly, with a sense of shared heritage and history.

What is Crimea?

Crimea is considered by most of the world to be a region of Ukraine that's under hostile Russian occupation. Russia considers it a rightful and historical region of Russia that it helped to liberate in March. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea with a location so strategically important that it has been fought over for centuries.

From Ukraine's 1991 independence up through February 2014, it was a Ukrainian region that had special autonomy and large Russian military bases (kind of like how the US has bases in Japan and Germany). Crucially, Crimea spent a very long time before 1991 as part of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, and most of its citizens are Russians themselves.

In late February, a few days after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted from power, strange bands of armed gunmen began seizing government buildings in Crimea. Some Crimeans held rallies to show support for the ousted president and, in some cases, to call to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia. The bands of gunmen grew until it became obvious they were Russian military forces, who forcefully but bloodlessly brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. On March 16, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their region to become a part of Russia.

Most of the world sees Crimea's secession vote as illegitimate for a few reasons: it was held under hostile Russian military occupation with no international monitoring and many reports of intimidation, it was pushed through with only a couple of weeks' warning, and it was illegal under Ukrainian law. Still, legitimate or not, Crimea has effectively become part of Russia. The US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for this, but there is no sign that Crimea will return to Ukraine.

What is eastern Ukraine conflict? What does Russia have to do with it?

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in April 2014 with low-level fighting between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels who seized some towns in predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. It has since escalated to outright-if-undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine.

Separatist rebels began popping up in eastern Ukraine shortly after Russia had invaded and annexed Crimea, where supposed Crimean separatists actually turned out to be unmarked Russian special forces. They seized towns like Sloviansk and Donetsk, in the eastern region known as Donbas, ostensibly in outrage against the protests that had toppled Ukraine's pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, himself from that same eastern region.

That feeling of disenfranchisement among eastern Ukrainians is real, and the rebels likely do have some organic, local support. Still, the rebels were armed and supported by Russia's government. One of the most important rebel leaders, Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, is a Russian citizen and military veteran who retired from Russia's internal security services just weeks before he began leading the rebels, who are widely thought to include unmarked Russian special forces.

Thousands of Russian troops massed on the border just across from the rebellion. For months, Ukraine did not move very aggressively against the rebels: Putin had not-so-subtly hinted that, if they did, he would blame the Ukrainian government for any deaths and invade to protect the Russian-speaking citizens of eastern Ukraine, whom he implicitly considers to be more Russian than Ukrainian. Everyone wanted to negotiate a peace deal.

Things got bad in early July, when the Ukrainian government launched an offensive to push out the rebels once and for all. Russia started arming the rebels with high-tech surface-to-air missiles; on July 17 a civilian airliner with 298 people on board was shot down over eastern Ukraine, most likely accidentally by the rebels , and the world had finally had enough. Ukraine redoubled its offensive, the rebels looked on the verge of getting overrun, and in mid-August Russia escalated from covertly supporting the rebels to overtly invading with Russian military troops.

Russia denies it is invading, but the evidence is overwhelming: on August 15, Ukraine said its military engaged Russian tanks crossing the border; on August 16, the leader of the Russian-backed rebels announced he had received 1,200 troops from Russia; on August 21, satellite imagery spotted Russian artillery crossing the border to fire at Ukrainian forces; on August 26, someone in Ukraine took a video of Russian tanks crashing through town, and so on.

The Russian military is one of the largest in the world and is pushing back the Ukrainian forces fairly quickly. It is not clear whether they plan to occupy and annex eastern Ukraine as they did in Crimea, or simply to defend the rebels against getting overrun - if Putin even has a strategy at all. The US and Europe, while clearly outraged and punishing Russia with economic sanctions, have no plan to intervene, as putting Western troops into direct combat with Russian troops could make the risk of World War Three too great. So there is nothing stopping the Russian tanks.
Theory 1: Putin is trying to overturn to the rebels' losses because he wants something from Ukraine
Why is Russia invading eastern Ukraine?

Though President Vladimir Putin insists that Russia is not invading eastern Ukraine, Russian soldiers, tanks, and self-propelled artillery have been crossing the border since mid-August in what can only be described as a hostile invasion. There are two ways to think about why Putin is doing this: as a rational, strategic effort to take something from Ukraine, or as a less-rational action driven by domestic Russian politics.
Theory 2: Putin was sucked into an irrational invasion he didn't want by his own rhetoric and propaganda
On the surface, the Russian invasion looks like it is meant to bolster the pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine, who began losing ground in early August when the Ukrainian military began a renewed offensive against them. In this thinking, Russian troops are there to keep the rebels from being entirely overrun.

Putin has been backing the rebels for months and fomenting violence in eastern Ukraine. He's doing this either because he wants to maintain a perpetual separatist crisis (he did this in Georgia and Moldova as well) so that he has leverage over the Ukrainian government to keep it from crossing him, or because he wanted to give himself an excuse to invade on the premise of saving eastern Ukrainians, then annex that territory as he did in Crimea. Another possibility is that he wants to force some concession from the Ukrainian government and/or from the West. In any case, the thinking here is that Putin is after some immediate strategic goal, and will stop once he feels he's achieved it.

Since taking power in 2000, Putin governed through an implicit deal with the Russian people: he delivered high economic growth, and Russians accepted curbs to political and individual rights. But after the economy slowed and some Russians protested his sham reelection in 2012, Putin shifted strategies, focusing on stirring up old-school anti-Western paranoia and imperial-style Russian nationalism.

So when the Ukraine crisis started, Putin's state media spun up a narrative that the Ukrainian protests were an American conspiracy to isolate Russia and that the new Ukrainian government is run by secret Nazis bent on expansion. Sponsoring the rebels and saving Ukraine - which in the Russian nationalist view is really part of Russia - became a matter of national pride, of asserting Russia's defiance of the West.

Sure enough, when Putin invaded and annexed Crimea in March, his slouching approval rating skyrocketed. Putin, addicted, has played up the nationalist cause in eastern Ukraine, the heroism of the rebels, his own heroism in backing them, and the threat of Ukraine's "fascist" government. Were he to sit idly by while the rebels were defeated, it would show that his rhetoric was a lie and leave him without the nationalist cause on which he now bases his political legitimacy. So, with no other way out, he invaded.

Putin is not crazy, but he may have created a crisis with an internal momentum so great that it has broken beyond his control. That is a truly scary possibility.
Legally, is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine? Probably Ukraine
So should Crimea be part of Russia or Ukraine?
Historically, is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine? Probably Russia
This is actually a legitimately difficult question. Yes, the way that Russia seized Crimea by force from Ukraine this March was hostile and extremely illegal - there is no doubt about this. But the more abstract question of whether Crimea is deep down Russian or Ukrainian is much less clear. There are three ways to think about this question, and they all contradict.
Do Crimeans want to be part of Russia or Ukraine? It's not clear
Crimea has technically been part of Ukraine since 1954, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred it from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The reasons for this are esoteric and it didn't actually do much since both "republics" were part of the Soviet Union. In 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, everyone expected Moscow to demand Crimea back. But it didn't. A slight majority of Crimeans voted for independence from Russia, and when Crimea formally joined the newly independent Ukraine (but with special autonomy privileges), Russia promised to honor and respect this.

Most Crimeans are ethnically Russian, not Ukrainian. While Crimea has been changing hands between regional powers for centuries, for most of the last 200-plus years it has been part of Russia. The fact that everyone expected Russia to take it back when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 tells you a lot: the world often sees it as historically Russian as well. It was not shocking when, in February, some Crimeans held pro-Russia rallies.

Since the crisis began, some Crimeans have been holding pro-Moscow rallies calling to rejoin Russia. In mid-February, a poll found that 41 percent of Crimeans wanted the region to become part of Russia. That's an awful lot - but it's still not a majority. Crimea's March referendum on leaving Ukraine for Russia ostensibly garnered 97 percent support, but it occurred in a rush, without international monitors, and under Russian military occupation. A draft UN investigative report found that critics of secession within Crimea were detained and tortured in the days before the vote; it also found "many reports of vote-rigging." Had the referendum been held in a transparent and legal manner, it's not clear which way the vote would have gone.

This all started with the Euromaidan protests, right? What's that?

"Euromaidan" is the name of the anti-government protests, beginning on November 21, 2013, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev that kicked off the entire crisis. They're called the "Euromaidan" protests because they were about Europe and they happened in Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).

The first, surface reason for the protests was that President Yanukovych had rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union, taking a $15 billion bailout from Russia instead. Lots of Ukrainians had wanted the EU deal, partly because they thought it would help Ukraine's deeply troubled economy, and partly because they saw closer ties with Europe as culturally and politically desirable.

The second, deeper reason for the protests was that many Ukrainians saw Yanukovych as corrupt and autocratic and as a stooge of Russia. So his decision to reject the EU deal felt, to many Ukrainians, like he had sold out their country to Moscow. This is why the protesters so quickly expanded their demands from "sign the EU deal" to "Yanukovych must step down."

Over the months that followed, Yanukovych tried to break up the protests, first by sending in the dreaded "berkut" internal security forces to crack down, and next by passing a series of laws that severely restricted Ukrainians' basic rights of speech and assembly. Both of these just made protests worse. By late January, they'd expanded to lots of other Ukrainian cities. In February, the parliament turned against Yanukovych, first voting to remove lots of his powers and end the crackdown, and then voting to remove him outright.

Not all Ukrainians supported the protests or their agenda; many had wanted the Russia bailout and wanted Yanukovych to stay. Euromaidan also included a number of far-right ultra-nationalist groups, some of whom have been violent. This is why the Russian government and some Ukrainians, particularly in the more Russian-speaking east, see the protests as effectively disenfranchising Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Who is Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?

Viktor Yanukovych was elected Ukraine's president in 2010. But he was ousted by popular protests and his own parliament in February 2014. He fled to Russia, where he is living in exile.

The key facts about Yanukovych are this: he is pro-Russian (and, like lots of Ukrainians, actually a native speaker of Russian rather than Ukrainian), he has a well-earned reputation for corruption and heavy-handedness, and he had a base of support in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking east but was never very popular in its predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west.

You may have heard the phrase "Orange Revolution": this refers to the mass protests in 2004, after Yanukovych won a presidential election under widespread suspicion of fraud. The protests succeeded in blocking him from taking office, but he ran again in 2010 and appeared to win legitimately.

Yanukovych alienated many Ukrainians, including his supporters, with his mishandling of the economy and especially his crackdowns on the Euromaidan protests. While lots of Ukrainians were happy to see him go, others saw his ouster as illegitimate and undemocratic. This is particularly true in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east and in the heavily Russian region of Crimea.

I hear that Ukraine is divided between east and west. Can you explain that?

Since declaring independence in 1991, Ukraine has been divided, and this crisis is an extension of that. When people talk about this divide, they typically refer to language. About two-thirds of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian as their native language, mostly in the country's west; about a third are native Russian-speakers, mostly in the east. But the language divide is fuzzier than that. And language is really just a shorthand for describing a much more complicated political and ideological division.

This all becomes clearer if we look at how Ukrainians have voted in national elections. Here's a series of maps: language in the top left and ethno-linguistic groups in the top right; the bottom two show how Ukrainians voted in the 2004 and 2010 elections. You will notice that, in all four, there is a very clear line dividing the country's west from its east:

People in the west of Ukraine tend to regard Russia with suspicion, see themselves as European, and want to break away from Russia's orbit to join Europe. The protests were much, much stronger here. In every election, this half of the country has voted overwhelmingly for pro-European political candidates.

The eastern half of Ukraine, on the other hand, has voted overwhelmingly in favor of political candidates who are more sympathetic to Russia, including Yanukovych, who is from the east. They tend to look more fondly on Russia and see their two countries as more historically linked. There are still lots of statues of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in the east.

What does Ukraine's east-west divide have to do with the current crisis?

Ukrainians never really resolved the national identity crisis between its Russia-facing east and pro-European west that was sparked by its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. The current crisis is, in many ways, an extension and perhaps culmination of that internal - and external - dispute about their country's identity. It is also the culmination of some Russians' belief that eastern Ukraine - or even all of Ukraine - is not actually a separate country, but rightfully part of Russia.

The east and west of Ukraine disagree so fundamentally about what sort of country they want to have, about what it means to be Ukrainian, that a big, internal political battle may have been quite likely. For example, the EU trade deal that sparked all this only had about 43 percent popular support, mostly in the west; another 31 percent of Ukrainians said they wanted a trade deal with the Russia-led Customs Union instead. When Yanukovych rejected the EU deal, many western Ukrainians saw it as a betrayal, but eastern Ukrainians may have regarded a different decision the same way.

Ukraine, according to political scientist Leonid Peisakhin, "has never been and is not yet a coherent national unit with a common narrative or a set of more or less commonly shared political aspirations."

Some Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the country's east and south, particularly in Crimea, have not quite reconciled themselves to being citizens of Ukraine over Russia. Ideas that their region should be absorbed into Russia are very much alive.

Even though Yanukovych was removed from power by protesters, mostly in the west, this has not resolved the nation's deeper identity crisis. All it did was shift power from a pro-Russian, eastern-based political party to a pro-European, western-based political party. That's upset pro-Russian Ukrainians in the country's east and south, including in Crimea, where pro-Russian demonstrators marched against the new government. The Kremlin quietly backed those protests, including by sending in unmarked Russian troops, which took over government buildings in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine. In Crimea, that ended with a Russian military occupation and annexation. In eastern Ukraine, it's led to ongoing fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian security forces, and in August with the Russian military overtly invading.

How did Ukraine get so divided?

You have to remember that Ukraine's present-day borders are very new and that its historical ties to Russia are very old. So the distinction between Ukraine and Russia is a bit blurrier than the distinction between, say, France and Germany.

That line started blurring in the 1700s, when Russian leader Catherine the Great began a process of "Russifying" Ukraine - making it Russian - that continued right up through the 1950s. This meant shipping in ethnic Russians, imposing laws that required schools to teach the Russian rather than Ukrainian language, and stationing lots of Russian troops in the area. At some points in the 1800s, the Ukrainian language was banned outright.

In the 1930s, Soviet leader Josef Stalin caused a famine in Ukraine that killed several million Ukrainians, mostly in the east. He then repopulated the area with ethnic Russians. In the 1940s, Stalin forcibly relocated the ethnic Tatars who dominated Crimea's population, replacing them with Russians as well. (Some of those Tatars, who are Muslim and ethnically Turkic, have since moved back; they are a minority in Crimea and have expressed fear about returning to Russian rule.)

For most of this process, Russia focused overwhelmingly on the east, which has vast coal, iron, and some of the most fertile farmland on earth. Ukraine's linguistic dividing line matches up almost perfectly with the line between its farmland in the east and forestland in the west.

The effect of all this history is that lots of Ukrainians, very understandably, despise Russia and want nothing to do with it. But there's also a significant proportion of Ukrainians whose families have substantial connections to Russia, who may remember the Soviet era fondly, and do not want to break away quite so fully as does the west. This national identity crisis has been centuries in the making, and it is a big issue today.

Why is Russia so obsessed with Ukraine?

On the surface, it's because Ukraine has a lot of native Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians, many of whom voted for Yanukovych in 2010 and did not support the Euromaidan protests that led to his removal. So when Russian leaders talk about intervening to protect the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, they might be myopically ignoring the very valid reasons that Yanukovych was ousted, but they do mean it.

But there is much, much more going on here. Russians have long felt a special historical connection to Ukraine, which plays a central role in Russian national mythology. Tsarist leaders cultivated the idea that Russia's cultural roots go back to ancient Greeks who settled on the Crimean peninsula, in modern-day Ukraine. While this is mostly made-up, it is true that Russia's first iteration as a great empire had its capital in present-day Ukraine.

The idea of a special, ancient connection to Ukraine is especially important for Russian nationalists, who see it as a vital and eternal component of the greater Russian empire. Russian nationalism has seen a dramatic rise in the last few years, cultivated by Russian nationalist numero uno President Vladimir Putin, who has used this to distract Russians from their sinking economy and his tightening authoritarianism.

A special bond with Ukraine, and perhaps even the reacquisition of Ukraine, is in the Russian nationalist view not just about historic links but about reacquiring Russia's rightful place as a great power. It is also about righting the injustices of the Soviet Union's collapse, which they see as having left Russian territory and many Russians under the control of an unworthy Ukrainian government.

There is a more pragmatic aim here as well. From the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's meddling has been about preventing Ukraine from breaking away from Russian influence and falling under what Moscow sees as an ever-encroaching Western conspiracy to encircle Russia with hostile governments. Russia may well have seen this crisis as a make-or-break moment for its special connection to Ukraine and wanted to intervene lest it lose Ukraine permanently. Since then, though, Putin's overheated nationalist rhetoric, and his state media's insistence that the Ukrainian government is a US-backed Nazi regime that threatens the world, has forced Putin to escalate far beyond what he probably wanted.
1) He wants to stir up nationalism at home for political purposes
What is Putin trying to accomplish?
2) He saw an opportunity to grab territory and influence for strategic purposes
There are three different ways to think about President Vladimir Putin's decision to annex the Ukrainian region of Crimea, to support separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, and ultimate to invade. There's probably some truth to all three.
3) He earnestly believes he is saving fellow Russian-speakers from a Western conspiracy
Putin's popularity had been sinking since the economy cratered in 2009, and, in 2012, Russians protested against his fraud-ridden reelection, sending him into a paranoid obsession with what he sees as hostile efforts to topple him from power. He responded by stirring up Russian nationalism and anti-Western fear. In March 2014, he used these ideas as justification for annexing Crimea - which sent his popularity skyrocketing. Since the crisis began, Putin has also been cracking down severely on dissent within Russia, something it's easier to get away with while the world is distracted by Ukraine. But this nationalism may have grown beyond his control: Russia's far-right is more powerful than ever, and, with the economy on the verge of sanctions-imposed recession, Putin is so reliant on maintaining the nationalist fervor that he invaded eastern Ukraine even though this will clearly make things worse for him.

Russia does have a big naval base on Crimea, which it sees as strategically essential to projecting Russian power into the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and lots of economic and industrial interests in eastern Ukraine. Putin likely saw a chance to quietly seize Crimea on the pretense of protecting it from Ukraine's chaos and serving the wishes of Crimeans to rejoin Russia. This same opportunism could apply for the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine: maybe he wants to invade to annex the territory and maybe he's just trying to force Ukraine to adopt a federal system, but either outcome could be about maintaining Russian influence.

It's entirely possible that Putin believes his own rhetoric, which says that Crimeans and eastern Ukrainians were calling to be saved by Russian military intervention, that the Ukrainian government has been seized by actual Nazis backed by the West, and that Moscow's political authority extends beyond Russia's borders to all Russian-speakers everywhere, including in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine.

After speaking with Putin in early March, Chancellor Angela Merkel described him as out of touch with reality and "in another world."

What are the US and Europe doing to try to stop Putin?

The US and Europe are doing a lot to punish Putin for annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine. But they are not doing anything that will physically force Putin to turn back his tanks, or return Crimea to Ukraine, which means that if he wants to keep invading Ukraine, despite those punishments, he can and will.

The US and Europe are primarily punishing Russia by imposing several rounds of very tough economic sanctions, which are meant as punishment and to deter Russia from invading further. While the sanctions initially targeted Putin and his inner political circle, they have since broadened to include the larger Russian economy, which was already at the edge of a recession. The sanctions are working in that they're hurting the Kremlin and the larger Russian economy, and it's possible that they have kept Putin from escalating even further than they would have otherwise, but they have definitely so far not gotten him to back down or withdraw from Crimea.

The burden of imposing these sanctions falls on the European Union, which is heavily reliant on Russian natural gas exports and will hurt its own economy by sanctioning Russia. Still, even normally cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been supporting broad economic sanctions since Russian-backed rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in July and Russian troops overtly invaded in August.

The US and Europe are also isolating Russia diplomatically, for example by booting Russia from the Group of Eight (G8), an annual conference of the world's leading industrialized, democratic nations. And NATO has suspended all practical cooperation with the Russian military.

Still, this has not been enough to turn back Russian troops, and it probably won't succeed in getting Crimea back for Ukraine. The US and Europe have made clear that they do not see any sort of military response as an option; directly fighting against Russian troops would present a very serious risk of escalation, given that Russia has one of the world's largest armies and thousands of nuclear warheads. The US and Europe have no mutual defense treaty with Ukraine, so the Ukrainian military is largely on its own.

What the US and Europe can do is make a big show of committing to the defense of other eastern European countries along Russia's borders, so as to deter Putin from invading those countries as well. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are understandably concerned that they could be next; they are members of NATO, and so Western European countries are publicly committed by treaty to defending them. President Obama spoke in the capital of Estonia on September 3 and reaffirmed that the US would defend against Russia, saying, "You've lost your independence once before, with Nato you'll never lose it again."

Is the Ukraine crisis a new Cold War?

Not really. The Cold War was a global struggle for hegemony between two, roughly co-equal powers. It divided Europe between west and east and then divided much of the world. It included bloody proxy wars on just about every continent, and raised a very serious risk of global thermonuclear war.

None of that is true today. The US is many times more powerful and influential than Russia; neither America nor the Western world nor democracy itself are at any real risk. More to the point, almost the entire world opposes Russia's annexation of Crimea. President Obama has described Russia's actions as the behavior of a weak country. He is broadly correct, although Russia is clearly still strong enough to annex neighboring territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is certainly acting as if his country is in geopolitical competition with the West. He's become much more aggressive about asserting Russia's influence: he fought a brief war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008, set up a Eurasian trade union he wants to become a competitor to the European Union, and is arming and protecting the Syrian government as if that country's war were a Cold War-style proxy conflict. Putin clearly wants to reclaim some of Russia's past greatness, which in practice has meant asserting Russian power and positioning himself as a legitimate competitor to the Western world.

Still, this competition is limited to former Soviet republics and Syria. It is nowhere near the global conflict of the Cold War.

What is the US-Russia 'reset'?

The US-Russia reset is - was - an American effort first championed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 to "reset" relations with Russia, which had deteriorated during the Bush administration.

The idea of the reset was that the US and Russia might not like one another very much, but the two countries have enough shared interests that they're both better off if they cooperate. It worked for a while: Russia supported US-led efforts to sanction Iran over its nuclear program, the two countries signed a big treaty on nuclear disarmament, and they cooperated on the Afghanistan War.

The reset began collapsing in 2012 with disagreements over the Syria conflict, as the two countries are backing very different sides. Both American and Russian domestic politics are becoming less predisposed to good relations, partly because of rising nationalism in Russia and partly because of growing American concern about Russian human rights abuses, particularly against LGBT people. And the simple truth is that the US and Russia just don't have as many shared interests anymore.

The reset became unofficially dead in March 2014, when the US imposed some pretty tough economic sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea.

Is there a series of irreverent political cartoons summing up the crisis?

What you want is Polandball. It's a user-generated, meme-based series of political cartoons that focus on international relations. They began in 2009 on a German Web forum and have became popular across Europe, but have no defined authors or home; anyone can make one. They're unified by their deliberately hokey MS Paint design and a common structure: countries are represented by flag-colored blobs, which interact in broken English.

Polandball's jokey simplicity, its nerdy love of history, and its focus on current affairs have made the form well suited for the Ukraine crisis. Here are a few, culled from the Polandball forum at Reddit:

"Ukraine's choice": On the Ukrainian president's decision to reject a European Union deal (the EU flag is in blue with stars) for a bail-out from Russia:

"Ukraine's great sacrifice." When it looked like Ukraine might split between east and west, with the industry-poor western half likely to want to join the European Union:

"Ukraine is of hurting self." Romania is a bystander to Ukraine's long, troubled identity crisis between pro-Russia and pro-Europe factions (that's the Soviet Ukrainian flag):

"Russia and Ukraine, a love story." Comparing Soviet-era abuses with Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea:

"Perspectives." The Western and Kremlin views of the crisis:

Did Putin annex Crimea because he thought Obama was weak?

The issue has become a political debate in the US, with Democrats saying "no" and Republicans saying "yes." There is some validity to both arguments.

It is true that President Obama has been rolling back American commitments abroad and has emphasized foreign policy restraint over assertiveness (for example, in Syria) and compromise over confrontation (for example, with Iran). What is disputed is whether Putin looked at this and calculated that he could get away with annexing Crimea. (It is also true that Putin has consistently communicated disrespect to Obama, but Putin has shown disrespect to basically every other head of state on earth, so it's tough to pin that on Obama.)

The strongest data point in favor of this case is Obama's threat to launch air strikes against Syria in September 2013, which was ultimately held back by domestic political opposition and a Russia-brokered deal to disarm Syria's chemical weapons instead. The strongest data point against this case is that the US is objectively much stronger than Russia and Putin would not be so paranoid about ever-encroaching American influence if he thought the US were weak.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, an Obama supporter, has suggested some truth to both of these arguments. "They most certainly saw that as a constraint on the president's powers," McFaul has said of the Syria episode. "[Obama's] weakness was about democratic constraints on what he could do - that Putin does not face."

But McFaul also thinks that Putin "believes that President Obama - the United States -is seeking to foment revolution around the world against regimes that are unfriendly to the United States. He thinks that he was defeated by President Obama in Ukraine. That's not an assessment that Obama is weak. That's an assessment that we are actually a threat to his interests."

Why does Putin keep talking about Yugoslavia?

Putin has repeatedly justified Russia's annexation of Crimea by comparing it to Kosovo's Western-backed 2008 independence from Serbia. (Kosovo and Serbia are in southeast Europe, part of the former Yugoslavia.) His point is two-fold: 1) That Crimea's annexation was a humanitarian mission justified by international norms, so everyone stop complaining, and 2) that Western opposition to the annexation exposes the West's hypocrisy and dishonesty.

In 1999, the now-gone southeastern European nation of Yugoslavia fought a civil war. It was between the Serbian government and ethnic-minority rebels in the autonomous region of Kosovo. The Serbian forces committed major abuses, including violence against civilians, and the Western countries of NATO launched air strikes against the Serbs to make them withdraw. Kosovo and Serbia tried for nine years to reconcile, but in 2008 Kosovo declared independence, which the West supported and Russia opposed as illegitimate.

Putin's comparison is not really valid for several reasons that you can read here. But the point is that he sees Russia as in conflict with a hostile and untrustworthy West, that he believes Western countries hold Russia to an unfair double standard, and that there is a conspiracy to remove any government that is friendly to Moscow rather than the West. This helps explain why he has been acting with such hostility. It may also help explain why he refused to allow a more legitimate referendum in Crimea: he may have believed the West would never honor the results.

Why does Russia want Ukraine to adopt a federal system?

After pro-Russia separatists seized government buildings in eastern Ukraine with Kremlin support, Moscow centered on a big demand to end the crisis that it is also partly responsible for creating: Ukraine should adopt a federal system.

The reason Moscow wants this is that, in the current system, Ukraine's pro-Western government might not be very inclined to cooperate with Moscow. In a federal Ukrainian system, regional governments will have much more autonomy and power, meaning that Moscow can get what it wants by simply calling up pro-Russian regional governors in Ukraine's typically pro-Russian east.

These eastern regions have lots of important natural resources, such as coal. They also have factories that produce essential military equipment for Russia. So if Russia can count on keeping them solidly pro-Russian by forcing Ukraine to adopt a federal system, that may well be enough to appease Moscow. This could ultimately worsen Ukraine's already-severe political divide between west and east, by allowing the country's pro-Russia and pro-Europe socio-political factions to move even further apart rather than finally coming together.

What does the MH17 plane crash have to do with the crisis?

On Thursday, July 17, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down while flying over an area of eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed separatist rebels are active, killing all 298 people on board.

Russia had recently supplied the rebels with a sophisticated, long-range surface-to-air missile system known as Buk or SA-11. The rebels had shot down two other high-flying airplanes - both Ukrainian military planes - in the previous week. It appears most likely that the rebels misidentified flight 17 as a military craft and shot it down.

The rebels further infuriated the world by blocking inspector access to the crash site (often, the militants appeared to be drunk), initially preventing the bodies from being removed, allowing looters to steal from the luggage and bodies that had fallen out of the sky, and hanging on to the black box for several days days before finally surrendering it in a bizarre and self-aggrandizing ceremony.

The conflict had already been worsening, as Ukraine had recently retaken several rebel-held towns and Russia had been supplying weapons to Ukrainian rebels. The shoot-down led the US and Europe to impose even tougher sanctions on Russia and led the Ukrainian military to accelerate its campaign to finally defeat the rebels. When it looked like the rebels would be overrun, Russia responded in mid-August by overtly invading in support of the rebels.

You didn't answer my question!

This is very much a work in progress. It will continue to be updated as events unfold, new research gets published, and fresh questions emerge.

So if you have additional questions or comments or quibbles or complaints, send a note to Max Fisher: max@vox.com.

What else should I read about the Ukraine crisis?

For understanding Ukraine's history and how it explains the crisis today, one of the best sources has been Adam Taylor, who blogs on foreign affairs for the Washington Post. He's had great introductory explainers on Crimea's past and present, as well as on why it matters that we call the country "Ukraine" instead of "the Ukraine."

The other journalist whose work you should read in its entirety is the New Republic's Julia Ioffe, for example this piece on how the world willfully misinterpreted Kiev's protestsand this on how Putin is playing Russia's long-running identity crisis to his advantage.

The New York Times ran, in late March, " 3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin," an enjoyable and insightful history of American presidents and their (ultimately failed) struggles to understand and work with Putin.

" Putin Goes to War," by the New Yorker's David Remnick, is an eloquent look at Russia's decision to invade Crimea and its likely consequences.

The prominent historian Timothy Snyder wrote a widely praised, three- part series in the New York Review of Books on Russian ideology and its role in the crisis.

How have these cards changed?

This is a running list of substantive updates, corrections, and additions to this card stack. These cards were last updated on April 24, 2014. Here is a summary of edits:

The card on the September 1: eastern Ukraine conflict was updated. A card on Russia's invasion of Ukraine was added. A card on the risks of an organic Ukrainian civil war was removed because that threat is gone due to Russia's invasion. A card on Russian media coverage was removed to reduce length. Every other card was updated to reflect events.

A card was added on July 17: the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17. Related cards were updated.

A card was added April 24: aggregating political cartoons.

A card was added to address April 23: fears of a civil war. Cards 19 and 21 were updated to reflect this.

Card April 22: 12 was added to cover Russian state media treatment of the crisis.

Cards April 17: 1, 9, 11, 12, and 19. were updated to reflect rising violence between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces as well as related developments.

April 17: A card was added on Russia's demands that Ukraine adopt a federal system.

Card April 10: 4 was updated to reflect a UN draft report on election abuses in Crimea's referendum vote.

Cards April 6: 1 and 19 were updated to reflect pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine and the increased risk of Russian invasion.

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Everything you need to know about the 2014 Ukraine crisis

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Editor's note, February 24, 2022, 10:15 am: In a February 23 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a "special military operation" would begin in Ukraine, following the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Explosions and outbreaks of fighting have since been reported across the country. . Ukraine is a Texas-size country wedged between Russia and Europe.

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Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia could start "a major war in Europe" any day now, and called on Russians to oppose it.

In a late-night address, he said he had unsuccessfully sought talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I initiated a telephone call with the president of the Russian federation. Result: silence," Mr Zelensky said.

He said Russia had almost 200,000 troops and thousands of combat vehicles on Ukraine's borders.

And switching from Ukrainian into Russian, Mr Zelensky made an emotional appeal to Russians to reject an attack, saying they were being lied to about Ukraine.

"Who can stop (the war)? People. These people are among you, I am sure," he said.

Ukraine's leader said his country was ready for a Russian attack, vowing: "If they [Russia] attack, if they try to take our county - our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children - we will be defending ourselves."

"As you attack, it will be our faces you see, not our backs," the Ukrainian president said.

It came as Russian troops, ordered into Ukraine's two rebel-held regions, were reportedly edging closer to the border.

Moscow said the breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine had asked for military support.

Airspace restricted over Ukraine

Early on Thursday, Ukraine said it had restricted civilian flights in its airspace due to "potential hazard". The move followed warnings from the conflict zone monitor Safe Airspace, which said planes risked being shot down unintentionally or affected by cyber attacks.

It was not initially clear if the notice amounted to an outright ban on civilian flights. It is due to expire at 2359 GMT on Thursday, unless extended further.

Russia has also issued a civil aviation notice warning that it is closing virtually all of eastern Ukrainian airspace on the border with Russia, according to a monitoring group.

The Open Source Intelligence Monitor says no "limit or ending time" has been provided so far by Moscow.

The United Nations Security Council is holding an emergency session from 02:30 GMT to discuss the deteriorating situation.

Ukraine has declared a state of emergency and told millions of its citizens living in Russia to return home. The 30-day emergency status allows authorities to adopt heightened security measures, including curfews.

Western countries have announced a series of sanctions against Russia since it tore up a 2014-15 peace deal for eastern Ukraine and recognised the so-called people's republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states. Moscow's claims that troops would be sent in for "peacekeeping" operations have been rejected by the UN secretary-general and decried as nonsense by the West.

Russia has been backing a bloody armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine for the past eight years. Some 14,000 people - including many civilians - have died in fighting since then.

The US has described Moscow's actions as marking the beginning of an invasion. A senior US defence official on Wednesday said Russian troops were "uncoiled and ready to go", with a large-scale invasion possible at any moment.

Fears of a Russian attack have been rising for months, with more than 150,000 troops massed along Ukraine's borders, according to US estimates.

Ukraine's state of emergency was overwhelmingly approved by lawmakers on Wednesday, and is now in force nationwide.

It introduces personal document checks, blocks military reservists from leaving the country, bans mass gatherings and places restrictions on radio communication systems. Kyiv's mayor said checkpoints would be set up in roads into the city, and access to government buildings would be restricted.

Ukraine earlier said it was ordering its citizens to leave Russia because "escalating Russian aggression" could limit consular assistance. As many as two million Ukrainians are believed to be living permanently in Russia and another one to two million more are thought to be staying there as migrant workers.

The military in Kyiv is also calling up all reservists aged 18 to 60 for a maximum of one year.

Ukraine's latest measures came as it was targeted by a large-scale cyber-attack on Wednesday, affecting government websites and banks.

A minister told Interfax-Ukraine news agency that services for several Ukrainian institutions, including the health, security and foreign ministries, were taken offline in a denial of service (DDOS) attack. Such attacks aim to overwhelm websites by flooding a network with fake traffic and preventing it from communicating normally.

It is not clear if any Russian troops have yet crossed the border into Ukraine. However, US satellite imagery has highlighted several new troop and equipment deployments in western Russia, and more than 100 vehicles at an airfield in Belarus near Ukraine's border.

On Wednesday night, the Kremlin said Donetsk and Luhansk had asked Russian forces for protection, citing what it described as Ukrainian aggression.

Analysts have suggested the request could be a pretext for a full-scale invasion

Separatist leader Denis Pushilin last week accused Ukraine of planning an imminent offensive and ordered an evacuation of civilians.

Ukraine said no offensive had been planned and it later emerged Mr Pushilin's order had been recorded two days earlier.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his country's interests and security are non-negotiable while insisting that Moscow is "open for direct and honest dialogue".

No further talks are planned, with France's foreign minister and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken both cancelling planned meetings with Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

EU leaders have been invited for an extraordinary summit in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the crisis, while UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world was facing a "moment of peril" as he called for de-escalation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will consider cutting off diplomatic ties with Russia altogether over the crisis.

Are you in Ukraine? Are you or your family affected? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

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Ukraine conflict: President Zelensky warns Russia: We will defend ourselves

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Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia could start "a major war in Europe" any day now, and called on Russians to oppose it. In a late-night address, he said he had unsuccessfully sought talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I initiated a telephone call with the president of the Russian federation.

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India has had to walk a diplomatic tightrope over Ukraine in the past few days as it tried to balance its ties with Moscow and the West.

Delhi's first statement in the UN Security Council (UNSC) did not name any country directly but it said it regretted that calls from the international community to give diplomacy and dialogue a chance had not been heeded.

It, however, stopped short of criticising Russia. And before the UNSC voted on a draft UN resolution to condemn the invasion, Delhi faced calls from Russia, the US and Ukraine "to do the right thing".

Ukraine and Russia even issued public appeals for Delhi to take a clear stand. India chose to abstain from the vote but a careful reading of its statement suggests that it did go a step further and indirectly asked Moscow to respect international law.

India talked about the importance of "the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states", adding that "all member states need to honour these principles in finding a constructive way forward".

Delhi continued with its strategy as it chose to abstain when the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand an immediate end to the invasion of Ukraine.

The third abstention was followed by calls from senior officials in Washington to India to "take a clear position".

India's strategy has raised questions, particularly in the West, over whether the world's largest democracy should have taken a clearer stand.

No good options

Former Indian diplomat JN Misra says India "has bad and worse options to pick from".

"One can't tilt both ways at the same time. India has not named any country, which shows it won't go against Moscow. India had to be subtle in picking a side and it has done that," he adds.

There are several reasons for India's quest to find a diplomatic balance over Ukraine.

The most important are India's time-tested defence and diplomatic ties with Moscow.

Russia continues to be India's largest arms supplier even though its share has dropped to 49% from 70% due to India's decision to diversify its portfolio and boost domestic defence manufacturing.

Also, Russia is supplying equipment like the S-400 missile defence system which gives India crucial strategic deterrence against China and Pakistan, and that is the reason why it went ahead with the order despite threats of looming US sanctions.

Defence supplies matter

Moreover, it's hard for Delhi to overlook decades of history of diplomatic co-operation with Russia on several issues. Moscow has vetoed UNSC resolutions over disputed Kashmir in the past to help India keep it a bilateral issue.

In this context, India appears to be following its famed strategy of non-alignment and promoting dialogue to resolve issues.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director at think tank the Wilson Center, says India's stand is not surprising as it's consistent with its past strategy.

He adds that Delhi doesn't "seem comfortable with what is happening in Ukraine but it's not likely to change its stand".

"It simply can't afford to do so at the moment because of its defence and geopolitical needs," he says. Though he adds that Delhi has chosen some strong words in the UNSC to show it's not comfortable with the situation in Ukraine.

India also has the tough task of trying to evacuate 20,000 citizens, mostly students, from Ukraine.

Former Indian diplomat Anil Triguniyat, who served in Moscow and also in Libya where he oversaw the evacuation of Indian citizens when conflict broke out in 2011, says safety assurances are needed from all parties in a conflict to run a successful evacuation operation.

"India can't take a side at the risk of endangering the safety of its citizens. Moreover, it's seeing the holistic picture which involves keeping channels open with everyone," he adds.

India has been able to get help both from Ukraine and Russia to evacuate its citizens, specially from the heavily hit Kharkiv city. It still has hundreds of citizens, mostly students, stuck in Ukraine and it will continue to seek cooperation from all sides.

In that sense, India is in a unique position as it's one of the few countries which has good relations both with Washington and Moscow.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has held talks with officials in Washington.

Mr Modi has also held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr Triguniyat says India has done well in keeping diplomatic channels open with both sides.

"India hasn't criticised Russia directly but it's not that India has turned a blind eye to the suffering of Ukrainians. It has adopted a balanced approach. It talked strongly about territorial integrity at the UNSC and it was clearly meant to highlight Ukraine's plight," he added.

But if Washington and its European allies continue to impose severe sanctions on Russia, India may find it tough to continue doing business with Moscow.

The US seems to understand India's position at the moment but there are no guarantees it will continue to do so.

When US President Joe Biden was recently asked about India's stand, he didn't give a definitive answer. "We are going to have consultations with India [over Ukraine]. We haven't resolved that fully," he said.

The issue of sanctions over the purchase of the S-400s still loom. The Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (Caatsa) was introduced in 2017 to target Russia, Iran and North Korea with economic and political sanctions. It also prohibits any country from signing defence deals with these nations.

Washington had not promised any waiver even before Russia invaded Ukraine, and experts believe that the issue could become a bargaining chip between India and the US.

Meanwhile, Moscow could use its own pressure points which include strengthening ties with India's arch-rival Pakistan if it sees a change in Delhi's strategy.

Russia has accepted India's growing ties with the US in the past two decades but Ukraine is a red line that it wouldn't want Delhi to cross.

Mr Kugelman says such tipping points will only come if the conflict in Ukraine becomes prolonged and ends up creating a bipolar world.

"Let's just hope it doesn't happen. But if it does, India's foreign policy will be severely tested," he says.

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Ukraine: Why India is not criticising Russia over invasion

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India has been under pressure to condemn Russia's invasion but has so far been reluctant to do so.

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Are we headed into a new world order, dominated by two blocs?

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Are we headed into a new world order, dominated by two blocs?

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We've so far been - more or less - living in a world run by a single set of international principles. Sure, there have been some incursions here and there, but by and large, because the major powers stuck by the rules, we've all followed suit.

Could the conflict in Ukraine herald another episode in our history where the world is split? What ramifications might there be?

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Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

Ukrainian tanks move into Mariupol after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised a military operation in eastern Ukraine on February 24, 2022 [Carlos Barria/Reuters]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has started in a blitzkrieg with incalculable ramifications for the two countries and the world. As Russia bombs its neighbour, it is actually targeting its strategic nemesis, the United States.

This is only the latest and most serious in a series of Russian force projections over the past two decades that are not dissimilar to some of America's own military adventures across the world.

But the scale and scope of the Ukrainian invasion seems more like Moscow's menacing power projections during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union intervened in Hungry in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979.

And judging by President Vladimir Putin's rhetoric, Russia is only getting started.

In his recent speeches, Putin has challenged Ukraine's right to sovereignty and independence, paving the way for greater Russian intervention in the country's affairs.

After recognising the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk earlier this week, the Russian president ordered the military to deploy into eastern Ukraine as "peacekeepers". He then launched a "special military operation" that has extended military action across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv.

In response, Western powers have condemned the Russian transgression as a gross violation of international law, and imposed swift, crippling sanctions against Russia. That may only be the beginning, as the West moves to totally break with and isolate Russia.

But the Kremlin seems prepared and rather unfazed. If history is any guide, major powers like Russia are not dissuaded by sanctions, no matter how severe, when it comes to pursuing their core national security interests.

By way of comparison, Iran, a far less significant power than Russia, has shown that punitive measures by the West may hurt a lot, but can change very little, except when used as leverage in negotiations.

If or when sanctions start to bite and Russia begins to suffer, expect Moscow to react radically, even erratically in Ukraine and beyond.

Much will depend on China and its readiness to help Russia circumvent Western sanctions, as it did for Iran. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, the Russian president and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, issued a joint statement against NATO expansion. After Russia launched the invasion, a Chinese government spokesperson refused to name it as such and called for "restraint" on both sides.

The ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will inform China's own future moves to annex Taiwan. Putin's reference to Ukraine as an artificial state echoes China's own denunciation of Taiwan's statehood.

Intentionally, and perhaps as a form of geopolitical trolling, Putin has been echoing Washington's own past arguments to justify his ongoing violations of Ukrainian sovereignty.

In recognising the breakaway regions, the Kremlin claimed that it was supporting their right to self-determination, just as the West did for Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and Bosnians during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

And just as the US and its European allies used the UN-mandated "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) principle to justify their "humanitarian" interventions in other states, such as Libya, Russia is referring to it to justify its intervention in Ukraine, which supposedly aims to stop a "genocide".

Russia supporters used to claim that R2P was invented by the Americans to launch wars, but it is used by Russia for preventing one.

Well, not any more. Russia's incursions in Ukraine in 2014 were only the beginning of what seems to be a wider invasion and a more devastating war.

But even Putin's most outrageous claim about Ukraine's capacity to develop nuclear weapons and threaten Russia is no more farcical than Washington's claim about Saddam Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction, as a pretext to invade faraway Iraq, which Biden, then a senator, supported.

His recognition of the two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine is also reminiscent of US President Donald Trump's illegal recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, which Biden continues to uphold.

And last but not least, Russia's possible attempt at regime change in Ukraine follows in the footsteps of US attempts in more than a few countries, including more recently Venezuela.

Clearly, Russia has mastered Washington's methodical fakery and trickery. But it does not seem to have learned the lessons from its follies and failures.

Indeed, neither power has learned from their miserable mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Old habits die hard.

As long as these powerful veto-holding members of the UN Security Council can block any action by this "world government" against them, there is no incentive for soul searching.

Indeed, both Russia and the United States are like soulless casinos, willing to gamble and take the risk and the loss, as long as they control the game or are able to game the international system to their advantage.

Some claim that equating American democracy and Russian autocracy makes for a false equivalence. As a liberal democrat, I concur: there is more accountability in a democracy than in an autocracy.

But historically, when it comes to foreign affairs, the behaviour of major powers on the world stage is driven mainly by the nature of geopolitical, strategic ambitions and necessities, not by the nature of their system of governance.

In fact, one could argue that Western democracies have behaved especially badly as colonial and imperial powers over the past one or two centuries.

But then again, the Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation, have also been violent towards their neighbours.

When asked what it means for Russia to be perceived as an "aggressor", a government spokesperson recently said that was an invention by the West whose reputation is "covered in blood".

Sadly, since the end of the Cold War, both Russia and the US have led mostly by the example of their power and rarely by the power of their example, undermining in the process international peace and security.

They have deployed the wrong means to the right ends, and the right means to the wrong ends, launching devastating wars to establish peace and stability, and providing poor nations with economic and security assistance only to prop up dictators.

They have wasted three decades, focusing primarily on advancing their own narrow interests just as they did during the Cold War, and in the process only paved the way for, well, another Cold War.

This will be a dark period for Europe and, indeed, the world.

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Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has started in a blitzkrieg with incalculable ramifications for the two countries and the world. As Russia bombs its neighbour, it is actually targeting its strategic nemesis, the United States.

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Russian planes banned from West Europe's airspace

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Russian planes banned from West Europe's airspace

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Russian-owned planes, including private jets, can no longer enter the skies above the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia. Russian planes have also been banned from UK airspace.

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Ukraine invasion: Russian planes face near-total airspace ban to west

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Russian-owned planes, including private jets, can no longer enter the skies above the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia. Russian planes have also been banned from UK airspace.

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The Biden administration hopes its threat of " severe economic consequences" deters Russia from invading Ukraine - an event Americans officials say could be imminent.

In response, the U.S. said it may ban the export of microchips and other technologies to critical sectors like artificial intelligence and aerospace and freeze the personal assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin, among other sanctions. Meanwhile, the Senate is preparing its own "mother of all sanctions" - such as against Russian banks and government debt - that could take effect even if Putin ultimately stands down from a military confrontation.

The U.S. and its allies have been stressing - as seen in President Joe Biden's Feb. 7, 2022, meeting with the German chancellor - that they are united on the consequences for Russia should it invade.

But Russia has something that may undercut that solidarity: a network of European countries, Germany in particular, dependent on it for energy exports, especially natural gas. That may make them reluctant to go along with severe U.S. sanctions.

This dependence didn't happen overnight. And as I've learned while working on a book on U.S. economic warfare against the USSR during the Cold War, this issue has tended to divide America and its allies - in part because of how Russia has exploited the ambiguity of its intentions.

A Cold War concern

The U.S. has long speculated about Russian willingness to use trade to tie the hands of other countries - a concern dating back to the early days of the Cold War.

For example, in the late 1950s and 1960s, as the USSR and the U.S. were competing for postwar hegemony, each side tried to influence countries not formally aligned with either superpower. Some American analysts warned of a "Soviet economic offensive." This included Soviet efforts to use favorable trade deals and other economic assistance to Warsaw Pact countries and neutral targets like Finland, the United Arab Republic and India in a manner that created sustained dependence on Moscow, possibly enabling future Kremlin coercion.

Other analysts disagreed and thought Soviet trade was largely motivated by economics. So did American allies - especially Britain - which resisted American calls to restrict strategic trade with the Soviet Bloc and other efforts to curb their Soviet trade prospects.

These different perspectives demonstrate the ambiguity of Soviet intentions. Given the Cold War rivalry and the USSR's status as a centralized, state-run economy, Moscow's motives were not clear.

JFK fights an oil pipeline

As the Soviet Union began developing oil and gas pipelines to Europe, European energy dependence on Russia became a particular concern in Washington.

In the 1960s, Western Europe only imported 6% of its oil from the Soviet bloc. But a new planned oil pipeline - running all the way from the Russian far east, through several European countries including Ukraine and Poland, and terminating in Germany - suggested the Soviets hoped to change that. The prospect of greater dependence, as well as other strategic concerns, raised alarm bells in Washington.

In 1963, the Kennedy administration attempted to stall construction of the Druzhba, or "Friendship," Oil Pipeline by pushing an embargo on wide-diameter pipe to Soviet-aligned countries. Knowing it could not stop the project alone, it pressured allies - especially West Germany, a major pipe exporter - to join.

While Britain refused, West Germany reluctantly agreed, permitting a partial NATO embargo.

Nonetheless, the pipeline was completed a year later with only minor delays.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast on the geopolitics of natural gas in Europe.
Reagan's gas gambit sparks crisis

About two decades later, the Reagan administration faced a similar dilemma.

In 1981, the Soviet Union was building a natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Western Europe. Seeing it as another threat, the Reagan administration tried to persuade European allies such as France and Germany to join its embargo of not only pipeline equipment for the project but financing too. They refused, and the U.S. responded with sanctions intended to prevent European companies from providing money or equipment to the project.

The gambit sparked an intra-Western crisis, sowing division between the U.S. and Europe, and resulting in a sanctions retreat just a few months later.

The pipeline was completed in 1984.

Wielding energy dependence as a weapon

The consequences of energy dependence on Russia began to manifest itself after the Soviet collapse in 1991 and the rise of Vladimir Putin a decade later. Unlike his Soviet predecessors, who refrained from shutting off energy exports, Putin has shown a willingness to conflate economic and geopolitical objectives in Russian energy policy, applying timely pressure on neighbors that he justifies in market terms.

In the mid-2000s, for example, Ukraine was still receiving the same heavily subsidized gas shipments from Russia as it did when it was part of the Soviet Union a few years earlier. The "Orange Revolution" near the end of 2004 led to the ouster of a pro-Kremlin leader, replacing him with one who sought closer ties with the West. A year later, Gazprom demanded Ukraine pay full market rates for its gas.

When Ukraine refused, Russia restricted the flow of gas through the pipelines - leaving only enough to fulfill its contracts to countries in Western Europe. To many observers, the move seemed aimed at destabilizing the pro-Western government in Kyiv. It was also later used as the basis for claims that Ukraine was an unreliable gas transit country, which helped build support for a new pipeline named Nord Stream that directly channeled gas from Russia to Germany.

That pipeline opened up in 2011 and resulted in the annual loss to Ukraine of US$720 million in transit fees. Nord Stream also significantly increased German energy dependence on Russia, which by 2020 was supplying an estimated 50% to 75% of its natural gas, up from 35% in 2015. Natural gas is used not only to power industry but also for heating and to generate electricity in Germany.

That pipeline is now responsible for a third of all Russian gas exports to Europe. As a result, Russian gas exports to Europe reached a record level in 2021 - despite U.S. efforts to ramp up exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe.

Europe got a glimpse of the potential consequences of this dependence in December 2021, when Russia reduced its gas exports to Europe as the crisis involving Ukraine was heating up. Although Russia was still technically meeting its contracts, it stopped selling additional gas as it had in the past. The next month, the International Energy Agency accused Russia of destabilizing European energy security.

Will Putin do it again?

Russia has reportedly amassed about 130,000 troops on its border with Ukraine - surrounding the country on three sides.

While Putin's intentions remain unclear, the U.S. is leading efforts to deter a potential invasion by showing that its Western allies are on board with devastating sanctions - including Biden's promise to thwart a new $11 billion pipeline running from Russia to Germany known as Nord Stream 2.

But Europe's - and specifically Germany's - already-significant dependence on Russia for energy make them vulnerable given Russia's history of threatening to cut off gas supplies to its neighbors - and sometimes following through. This could potentially undermine the West's ability to execute a coordinated sanctions campaign.

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For example, an energy crisis in winter could be a disaster for Germany, and fear of it may weaken German willingness to act against Russia. A recent example of potential German softness toward Russia can be seen in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's failure to endorse stopping the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a potential sanction for an invasion.

Russia's use of trade and energy to create dependencies has given it a strong hand - one that the U.S. and its European allies have limited options to counter.

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How Russia hooked Europe on its oil and gas - and overcame US efforts to prevent energy dependence on Moscow

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The Biden administration hopes its threat of " severe economic consequences" deters Russia from invading Ukraine - an event Americans officials say could be imminent. In response, the U.S. said it may ban the export of microchips and other technologies to critical sectors like artificial intelligence and aerospace and freeze the personal assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin, among other sanctions.

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ON THE MORNING of February 26th Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video of himself on Twitter. After a night of the worst fighting Kyiv had seen since the second world war, and of propaganda from Moscow claiming that he had fled the capital in fear, Ukraine's president emerged from his office red-eyed and unshaven. He was holding a smartphone in his right hand as he filmed himself walking past the House with Chimaeras, a famous Kyiv landmark that serves as the presidential residence. He smiled at the camera and declared: "Good morning to all Ukrainians! There are a lot of fakes out there...[but] I am here."

Mr Zelensky looked exhausted, but happy: happy to be alive, happy that Kyiv had not fallen and happy to play the role of a national leader, holding his nerve and his country together in the darkest hour of its 30-year history as an independent state. That was not the role he had chosen, but the one that was thrust upon him when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. He has carried it off with dignity, strength and a dash of humour. When America offered to airlift him to safety, he retorted: "The fight is here; I need anti-tank ammo, not a ride."

The night before, speaking in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, had pledged to rub out Mr Zelensky. Ukraine's president is a native Russian-speaker of Jewish heritage. Nonetheless, seething with hatred, Mr Putin called him and his government "drug-taking Nazis".

The contrast between those two pronouncements could hardly be more striking. If, as Mr Putin once wrote, Ukraine is the anti-Russia, then Mr Zelensky is everything Mr Putin is not. He is young and charismatic. He has been embraced by his own people and by the world. And he is fighting for his country not in the name of a dark imperial fantasy, but out of the conviction that Ukraine is sovereign and independent.

Mr Zelensky was born in 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, a Soviet-looking, industrial city in the south-east of Ukraine, a centre of iron mining and metallurgy. His favourite film was "Once Upon a Time in America". To survive among the town's knife-wielding gangs, you had to have a sense of humour, chutzpah and a posse that had your back. Mr Zelensky had all of these things, in abundance.

He burst onto the political scene in 2019. He was not a candidate of Ukrainian-speaking western Ukraine nor of the Russian-speaking east. Instead, he rejected the linguistic, historical and ethnic split that has long been exploited both by Ukrainian politicians and by the Kremlin. Partly as a result, he has brought the country closer together than it has been for years. Mr Zelensky was driven neither by nationalism nor ideology. Nor was he a revolutionary. He was Everyman.

In a country where politics was an extension of business and where parliament was a forum in which different elites traded with each other, Mr Zelensky had one asset that trumped money, parties and television channels. He had popularity and a stage persona that appealed to people who were tired of war, scheming and the cynicism of their elites. They fell in love not so much with him, but with his fairy-tale television character, Holoborodko, a plain-talking schoolteacher who had miraculously been transformed into the president.

Whereas his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch, donned military uniform and campaigned on the slogan of "Language, army, faith", Mr Zelensky, recorded videos, with a clown's red nose. "I challenged...our elites' [politics]. They called me a clown. I am a clown, and I am very proud of it." But his message was serious: they were fooling people. He was being honest.

Mr Zelensky entered the real presidency with few clear plans other than to make things better. He had only a vague idea of how to do so. Some of his former aides have said that he had not expected to win.

In the third year of his presidency and in the third day of the invasion, this actor-turned politician is fast becoming a hero. "Zelensky is fighting like a lion and the whole of Ukraine with him," says Sevgil Musaeva, a Ukrainian journalist and the editor of Ukrainska Pravda, the country's main online news site.

Yet only a few weeks earlier many Ukrainians and foreigners had been treating Mr Zelensky with condescension and pity. As Russian pressure mounted and Mr Putin threatened Ukraine with war, he had seemed out of his depth. His popularity was falling, investors and oligarchs were fleeing Ukraine and foreign leaders were nudging him to compromise with the Kremlin over the humiliating Minsk accords signed by his predecessor at the barrel of a gun in 2015. Many doubted that a former comedian was the right man for a country about to be invaded.

However, in the cauldron of the battle, Mr Zelensky has been saved by his gift as an actor. His ability to respond to the audience is precisely what has enabled him to embody the role of a real national leader in a time of war. He can mirror and project people's fears, desires and dreams. Ukraine has come together after the invasion. He is as much inspired by the spirit of his people as he inspires them.

Likewise, the reason he could not accede to Russia's demands over the Minsk accords was not because he was made of steel. It was because he was flexible and astute enough to know that his country would have swept him aside if he had.

Mr Zelensky is a representation of Ukraine, not as idealised myth but as reality. Like the country he leads, Mr Zelensky is far from perfect and he is often frustrating. Over the past few decades Ukraine has slowly been discovering what it is to be a democracy. Unlike Russia, it is a place where people elect their presidents and kick them out if they fail.

In his presidential victory speech in 2019, Mr Zelensky nodded to this reality, and the example it set: "To all the countries of the former Soviet Union: look at us, everything is possible." Perhaps it was that line that made him Mr Putin's most dangerous enemy.

In the same way, during the crisis today he has appealed to the Russian people who have protested against the fratricidal war that is being waged in their name: "Stop those who lie to you, who lie to us, who lie to the whole world."

His response to Mr Putin's rambling, hour-long national address on February 21st, which amounted to a declaration of war, was short and punchy: "We don't have time for lengthy history lectures, I am not going to talk about the past. Let me tell you about the present and the future. The internationally recognised borders of Ukraine will stay as they are. We will remain calm and confident." The outpouring of support from the world, people as well as politicians, and their disgust at Russia's war are keeping spirits high.

Standing outside the House with Chimaeras on that bright morning, with the blue sky behind him, Mr Zelensky again sounded a defiant note: "We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this." If fortune favours Mr Zelensky, it is because he carries the virtue that Mr Putin lacks: he speaks the truth for his people.
Our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis can be found here

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ON THE MORNING of February 26th Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video of himself on Twitter. After a night of the worst fighting Kyiv had seen since the second world war, and of propaganda from Moscow claiming that he had fled the capital in fear, Ukraine's president emerged from his office red-eyed and unshaven.

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ocial media influencers are often maligned for their vapidity, but as the Russian army moves across Ukraine some of Russia's biggest digital influencers have become beacons of resistance. Many are speaking out about their unease at the speed and brutality with which the Russian president is leading his country to war. Ukrainian influencers, meanwhile, are also braving the risks of attack from the advancing army to make sure to document the horror of war in mainland Europe.

Some of Russia's biggest names in the digital sphere have spoken out against war. The daughter of Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's press secretary, posted a message reading "No to war" on her Instagram story, before quickly deleting it. Max Galkin, the husband of Alla Pugacheva, and one of Russia's biggest stars, posted a black square on Instagram and the message "Нет войне!" ("no to war!") to his 9.4m followers. Fashion designer Svetlana Taccori took time out of Milan fashion week to post a photo holding a Ukrainian flag and the same message. Influencer Lova Olala painted the Russian and Ukrainian flag on each cheek and the caption "I have nothing to say". The independent Russian journalist Ilya Varlamov has posted regular photos and videos highlighting Russian brutality, calling for a cessation of violence in Ukraine.

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Niki Proshin, a 27-year-old Russian TikToker with 750,000 followers, started posting about the invasion of Ukraine as soon as Russian troops crossed the border. He posted a single video to TikTok addressing the many questions he received from his followers asking for his thoughts on Ukraine. He spoke out about the war, and about his anger that Vladimir Putin launched the attack at night. "Showing my opinion publicly helps foreigners understand Russian people more and helps to keep the bridge between normal people outside of Russia, and normal people in Russia," says Proshin. He followed it up with another video, taken live at street protests in his home city of St Petersburg.

Yet many of his friends spoke out, choosing to post images of black squares on Instagram or videos speaking out against the invasion. "The current situation touched us much more than the events of the last year," he said.

Xenia Tchoumitcheva, born in the Russian mountain city of Magnitogorsk, chose a black and white picture of an espresso as the backdrop for her pronouncement on the invasion. "In my veins run both Russian and Ukrainian blood," she wrote. "I don't have any political knowledge nor opinion, but all I can say is: I am always against war and for the people," she wrote to her 2 million followers.

The risk for Russian influencers, celebrities and journalists in speaking out against the Russian dictator is obvious - those who don't toe the government line can find themselves arrested or worse, as those being arrested for protesting on the streets in Russia know well. But considering their reach, a well-timed statement to millions on Instagram or TikTok can inflict considerable reputational damage to Putin's claims of unity behind his cause.

"This is something pretty common that comes from both Ukrainian and Russian influencers," says Roman Kolodko, chief operating officer of eastern European influencer marketing agency Mediacube, which represents a number of Russian and Ukrainian creators. Kolodko spoke as he fled Ukraine for Poland. "Many big influencers are in Ukrainian cities that have been and are being attacked right now, and they need to spread their word," he added - and those who aren't have family there.

Ukrainian influencers who remain in the country have adapted their content to match the changed circumstances of their new lives under the shadow of invasion. Until yesterday, Anna Prytula's Instagram feed looked like any other relatively large influencer's: impossibly perfect cakes, overflowing bouquets of flowers and oodles of boxes and bags from Louis Vuitton lined the frame of her feed. Her lifestyle was lapped up by her million followers, 71% of whom are Ukrainian, and 16% of whom are Russian.

Then Russian boots trampled over Ukraine, and alarmingly close to Prytula's home city of Lviv. Suddenly Prytula's posts changed. Gone were the impossibly glam photos outside luxury hotels; in their place, a stark red square with white text: "at 5am Russia is attacking the territory of Ukraine". Her Instagram stories changed soon afterwards from glimpses into her glamorous life to footage of missiles raining down over her homeland, pleas to Nato to intervene, and advice on how to find help and where to hide.

As reality intrudes into the western order's way of thinking about Russia's attitude to risk, so too has the hyperreal, polished world of social media has been hit with a reality check. Ukrainian travel blogger Elena Mandziuk showed her million followers how to make molotov cocktails on her Instagram stories. Mary Furtas, a Ukrainian entrepreneur with nearly 55,000 followers, pivoted her profile to post overtly political pleas on 19 February. On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, like Prytula, she posted a similar red square. The text, however, was different: "Every Russian is responsible for this," she wrote.

It hasn't escaped TikTok users' notice that the app's For You feed has been filled with videos about events in Ukraine. Most people who study it believe the TikTok algorithm rewards people who are speaking about current events. Some of those are legitimate, informative videos - Ukrainian-British TikToker Marta Vasyuta has shared with the world the destructive aftermath of Russian attacks from around the country, acting as a one-woman content curation desk fuelled by righteous anger - but others are chasing likes. The app has struggled with misrepresentative or outright faked live streams and videos that are designed either to confuse or to capitalise on interest in Ukraine.

But those who are authentic will continue posting content - and for good reason. Proshin, the Russian TikToker who felt he had to speak out, says his posts aren't political, but instead connect at a human level with the rest of the world. "I hope we'll make people understand that 'Russian people' is not equal to the Russian government," he says. "Some Russian people support the political decisions of our government, but from my personal perspective, they're a minority. In this situation, 'Russia' equals 'people who can make decisions'. The majority of my friends have no power to make decisions."

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The first TikTok war: how are influencers in Russia and Ukraine responding?

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ocial media influencers are often maligned for their vapidity, but as the Russian army moves across Ukraine some of Russia's biggest digital influencers have become beacons of resistance. Many are speaking out about their unease at the speed and brutality with which the Russian president is leading his country to war.

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A No-Fly Zone in Ukraine - is it possible?

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A No-Fly Zone in Ukraine - is it possible?

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What is a no-fly zone and why are NATO and the US so hesitant to implement one over Ukraine?

Read here for the White House's reaction to President Zelensky's request.

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KYIV/MOSCOW, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Russian invasion forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere as Moscow's diplomatic and economic isolation deepened.

Having launched the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two, President Vladimir Putin put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a barrage of Western-led reprisals for his war on Ukraine.

Blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian authorities said. But, Russian ground forces' attempts to capture major urban centres had been repelled, they added.

Russia's defence ministry, however, said its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported. The plant's operations continued normally, it said.

Ukraine denied that the nuclear plant had fallen into Russian hands, according to the news agency.

As Western governments mustered more support for sanctions against Moscow, diplomatic manoeuvring continued with the Vatican joining efforts to end the conflict by offering to "facilitate dialogue" between Russia and Ukraine. read more

Ukraine said negotiations with Moscow without preconditions would be held at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. Russian news agency Tass cited an unidentified source as saying the talks would start on Monday morning.

U.S. President Joe Biden will host a call with allies and partners on Monday to coordinate a united response, the White House said.

The United States said Putin was escalating the war with "dangerous rhetoric" about Russia's nuclear posture, amid signs Russian forces were preparing to besiege major cities in the democratic country of about 44 million people.

British defence minister Ben Wallace said that he does not expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons. read more

As missiles rained down, nearly 400,000 civilians, mainly women and children, have fled into neighbouring countries, a U.N. relief agency said.

A senior U.S. defence official said Russia had fired more than 350 missiles at Ukrainian targets since it launched the invasion last week, some hitting civilian infrastructure.

"It appears that they are adopting a siege mentality, which any student of military tactics and strategy will tell you, when you adopt siege tactics, it increases the likelihood of collateral damage," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson by telephone on Sunday that the next 24 hours would be crucial for Ukraine, a Downing Street spokesperson said.

So far, the Russian offensive cannot claim any major victories. Russia has not taken any Ukrainian city, does not control Ukraine's airspace, and its troops remained roughly 30 km (19 miles) from Kyiv's city centre for a second day, the official said.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

UNPRECEDENTED SANCTIONS

Western-led political, strategic, economic and corporate sanctions were unprecedented in their extent and coordination, and there were further pledges of military support for Ukraine's badly outgunned armed forces.

The rouble plunged nearly 30% to an all-time low versus the dollar, after Western nations on Saturday unveiled harsh sanctions including blocking some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

China's foreign ministry voiced disapproval of the use of sanctions, saying it opposed unilateral, illegal action. Regarding Putin's order to put its nuclear deterrent on high alert, it said that all sides should remain calm and avoid escalation.

Japan and South Korea said they would join in the action to block some banks from SWIFT. South Korea, a major exporter of semiconductors, said it would also ban exports of strategic items to Russia. read more

Singapore, a financial and shipping hub, said it intended to impose sanctions and restrictions on Russia, the Straits Times newspaper reported. read more

Japan said it was also considering imposing sanctions against some individuals in Belarus, a key staging area for the Russian invasion.

A referendum in Belarus on Sunday approved a new constitution ditching the country's non-nuclear status.

In the Baltic state of Latvia, the parliament gave its blessing to any citizen who wanted to fight in Ukraine against the Russian invaders. nO9N2UF00P

Several European subsidiaries of Sberbank Russia, majority owned by the Russian government, were failing or were likely to fail due to the reputational cost of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank said. read more

Britain said on Monday it was taking further measures against Russia in concert with the United States and European Union, effectively cutting off Moscow's major financial institutions from Western markets. read more

Russia's central bank scrambled to manage the broadening fallout of the sanctions saying it would resume buying gold on the domestic market, launch a repurchase auction with no limits and ease restrictions on banks' open foreign currency positions.

It also ordered brokers to block attempt by foreigners to sell Russian securities. read more

That could complicate plans by the sovereign wealth funds of Norway and Australia, which said they planned to wind down their exposure to Russian-listed companies. read more

Corporate giants also took action, with British oil major BP BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, saying it would abandon its stake in state oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM) at a cost of up to $25 billion. read more

The European Union on Sunday decided for the first time in its history to supply weapons to a country at war, pledging arms including fighter jets to Ukraine.

Germany, which had already frozen a planned undersea gas pipeline from Russia, said it would increase defence spending massively, casting off decades of reluctance to match its economic power with military clout. read more

EU Chief Executive Ursula von der Leyen expressed support for Ukraine's membership in an interview with Euronews, saying "they are one of us." read more

The EU shut all Russian planes out of its airspace, as did Canada, forcing Russian airline Aeroflot to cancel all flights to European destinations until further notice. The United States and France urged their citizens to consider leaving Russia immediately. read more

The EU also banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council convened a rare emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, or all the United Nations' 193 member states, for Monday.

Rolling protests have been held around the world against the invasion, including in Russia, where almost 6,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests since Thursday, the OVD-Info protest monitor said. read more

Tens of thousands of people across Europe marched in protest, including more than 100,000 in Berlin. read more

Nearly, 71,000 Ukrainians had crossed into Romania since the invasion began, a Romanian government spokesman said. read more

Meta Platforms (FB.O) said it had removed a network of about 40 fake accounts, groups and pages across Facebook and Instagram that operated from Russia and Ukraine targeting public figures in Ukraine, for violating its rules against coordinated inauthentic behaviour. read more

Twitter said it had also suspended more than a dozen accounts and blocked the sharing of several links for violating its rules against platform manipulation and spam. read more

Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Kyiv; Natalia Zinets and Matthias Williams in Lviv; Alan Charlish in Medyka, Poland; Fedja Grulovic in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania; and other Reuters bureaux including Moscow; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk, Stephen Coates & Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Raju Gopalakrishnan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Russian forces seize two small cities in Ukraine-Interfax

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KYIV/MOSCOW, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Russian invasion forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere as Moscow's diplomatic and economic isolation deepened.

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Why is the crisis a challenge for China?

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Why is the crisis a challenge for China?

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China has long been a staunch ally and supporter of Russia. However, the recent invasion of Ukraine has the potential to pose a major political and social challenge to the Communist Party.

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By Stephen McDonell
BBC News, Beijing

Hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in eastern Ukraine, the US accused Moscow and Beijing of combining to create a "profoundly illiberal" world order.

Yet State Department spokesman Ned Price also said that this was an opportunity for China to use its leverage with Russia to pull back Vladimir Putin, given the new "no limits" pact he signed with China's leader Xi Jinping on the same day as the Winter Olympic opening ceremony.

"You will have to ask the PRC whether they have used their own considerable influence with the Russian Federation to that end," Mr Price said at a press briefing.

The Ukraine-Russia crisis is posing a major challenge for China on many fronts.

The ever-closer diplomatic relationship between Russia and China could be seen at the Winter Games with Mr Putin coming to Beijing as one of only a handful of known world leaders to attend.

Significantly, Mr Putin waited until just after the Games were over to recognise the two breakaway regions of Ukraine and send in troops to back them.

In its public pronouncements, the Chinese government has urged all sides to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine.

But now that Russia has dispensed with all such restraint, where does that leave China's official position as clashes escalate?

The Chinese government thinks it cannot be seen to support war in Europe but also wants to strengthen military and strategic ties with Moscow.

Ukraine's number one trading partner is China and Beijing would ideally like to maintain good relations with Kyiv but this could be difficult to sustain when it is clearly so closely aligned with the government which is sending its troops into Ukrainian territory.

There is also the potential for trade blowback on China from Western Europe if it is judged to be backing Russia's aggression.

Furthermore, a constant refrain from China's leaders is that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of others and that other countries should not interfere in its internal affairs.

In a recent tweet, high-profile diplomat Liu Xiaoming reiterated that China had never "invaded other countries [or] engaged in proxy wars", adding that it was committed to the path of peace.

But as former US intelligence officer John Culver has posted on Twitter: "Russian annexation of portions of Ukraine, or invasion and seizure of Kiev, violate China's position that sovereignty is sacrosanct."

However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has refused to condemn an invasion of Ukraine, or to even refer to what is happening there as an "invasion".

Mr Wang said China still recognised Ukraine as a legitimate state, but did not comment on whether Beijing would recognise breakaway republics in the east of Ukraine.

Joining the dots

For the Communist Party, what will worry it most is where that may leave its own people and their world view.

For this reason, it is manipulating and controlling talk about the Ukraine situation in the press and social media.

It wasn't going to be long before Taiwan was dragged into the mix.

The self-governing island is seen by the Party as essentially a rogue province that must be unified with the mainland.

On Weibo, China's version of Twitter, Chinese nationalists have used Russia's invasion of Ukraine to call on their own nation to follow suit with comments like: "It's the best chance to take Taiwan back now!"

When the Chinese government rejected the imposition of sanctions on Russia in recent days it knew it could face similar treatment if it moves to seize Taiwan by force, in what would be a bloody, costly exercise.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing in Beijing that China has never thought that sanctions were the best way to solve problems.

But if Chinese citizens start joining the dots with Russia's justification for invading Ukraine and applying it to their own country, this could upend the Chinese government's entire explanation for its current borders.

Vladimir Putin says he's liberating Russian speakers inside Ukraine. What of the ethnic Mongolians, Koreans, Kyrgyz and the like who are now part of China? More potentially explosive for Beijing, what if Tibetans or Uyghurs renew calls for greater autonomy or even independence?

That this does not happen is more important to Xi Jinping's administration than anything.

Given that, you only have to look at the remarks on Chinese social media to see the direction the Party's media is driving the population in terms of the way it should view Mr Putin's moves in Eastern Europe.

The state press has its own accounts on Weibo and controls the responses to its posts about Russia and Ukraine.

Here is a flavour of the comments:

"I support Russia, oppose US. That's all I wanna say."

"America always wants to create mess in the world!"

While there are also a lot of people calling for peace, posts attacking the US are being heavily promoted.

In terms of Chinese people actually questioning Russia's ambitions in Ukraine, you have to seek out individual Weibo accounts not connected to the Party media threads.

One writes: "I don't understand why so many people support Russia and Putin. Is invasion to be seen as justice? We should oppose any form of war!"

According to another: "Putin recognises the independence of Ukraine separatist regions, which is obviously interfering in the domestic affairs of another country."

And there you have it. That last post is expressing precisely the conclusion which Beijing does not want its people coming to.

It is the essence of the minefield the Chinese government is walking through.

Inside Ukraine, China's embassy has sent out a message to Chinese citizens living in the country now locked in a major war.

It has recommended that people post a Chinese flag on their car and "help one another out" while showing "China's strength".

Asked if what is occurring right now in Ukraine amounts to an invasion, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press conference that the "historical context is complicated" and that the current situation is "caused by all kinds of factors".

There is a major upheaval unfolding in Europe. Xi Jinping has some big choices to make in terms of how his country will deal with it.

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The Ukraine crisis is a major challenge for China

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By Stephen McDonell BBC News, Beijing Hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in eastern Ukraine, the US accused Moscow and Beijing of combining to create a "profoundly illiberal" world order.

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What does the rest of the world think about the situation?

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What does the rest of the world think about the situation?

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Major Western nations have reacted with outrage at Russia's invasion of Ukraine, accusing it of bringing war back to Europe.

France's Emmanuel Macron said this was a "turning point in the history of Europe", with the G7 group of nations vowing to impose severe sanctions.

In eastern Europe, the fears extended to coping with a wave of refugees.

But China bridled at the word invasion and joined those nations focusing more on their citizens' safety.

Ukraine says Russia is carrying out a full-scale attack from many directions, but the details of the assault and the number of casualties are not yet clear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken of a "special military operation" aimed at the demilitarisation and "denazification" of Ukraine, but his overall goals also remain unclear.

The uncertainty has not stopped an angry and defiant response from Western allies.

A largely united voice spoke out with condemnation and promises of sanctions.

US President Joe Biden said: "President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering."

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Mr Putin was "responsible for bringing war back to Europe".

UK PM Boris Johnson said Mr Putin had "chosen a path of bloodshed and destruction" with an "unprovoked attack".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also reacted angrily, calling this "Putin's war" and saying the Russian leader would pay a "bitter price" for his "serious error".

The G7 - the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - vowed in a joint statement to bring forward "severe and co-ordinated" sanctions.

The EU bloc will have more of them, which Ms Von der Leyen said would "weaken Russia's economic base and its capacity to modernise".

But there remains huge concern at what could happen next.

One German minister spoke of a "land war in Europe that we thought was only to find in history books", while another, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, said Germany would help neighbours if there was a "large-scale influx" of refugees.

'Dire consequences' - Eastern Europe

That concern is also shared by Ukraine's neighbours, but many were also scrambling to shore up their own security.

The president of Lithuania, a Nato member, said he was going to impose a state of emergency.

A similar decree has been issued by Moldova further south. Dozens of cars were reportedly queuing on the border with Ukraine, with Moldova saying it would accept tens of thousands of refugees.

Romania said it could take half a million.

Poland is setting up reception points for refugees. It told Russia to end its attacks and leave Ukraine alone.

Georgia - which fought Russia in 2008 over disputed regions - backed Ukraine, saying the Russian attack would have "dire consequences" for the international community.

Russia's ally, Belarus, said it was not taking part in the military action, but would consider it if asked. Belarus has hosted Russian troops during the crisis, and they crossed from the country into Ukraine as part of the attack.

Ukraine has asked Nato member Turkey to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Russian ships.

Turkey will consider the request but shares friendly ties with both nations, and said it was "sincerely saddened" that they had come "face-to-face".

'Typical Western question' - China

There has been a lot of interest in how China would respond. Its initial response was to call the word invasion a "typical Western media question method", with the foreign ministry saying "we won't go rushing to a conclusion".

Senior diplomat Wang Yi said China understood Russia's security concerns.

China and Russia now have a strategic partnership aimed at countering US influence, sealed when Mr Putin and President Xi Jinping met just before the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

China told its citizens in Ukraine to fly a Chinese flag to try to protect themselves.

'Egregious behaviour' - Other nations

United Nations chief, António Guterres, urged Vladimir Putin to halt the attack "in the name of humanity".

A US-led draft resolution will demand Russia leaves Ukraine "immediately, completely, unconditionally", although Moscow has the power to veto it.

South Korea condemned the attack, saying it would join international economic sanctions.

And Australia will expand those it has already enforced. There must be "a cost for this violent, unacceptable and egregious behaviour", Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

India has focused on trying to keep its citizens inside Ukraine safe, although media reported that PM Narendra Modi could talk later to Mr Putin in a possible role as mediator.

Iran called for a political solution, with its foreign minister blaming Nato provocations for the Ukraine crisis.

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Ukraine conflict world reaction: Sanctions, refugees and fears of war

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Outrage in the West, and China balks at the word invasion. How Ukraine is shaking the globe.

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People across Europe took to the streets on Saturday to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From Brussels to London, protesters called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the offensive against Ukraine.

Outside the buildings of Russia's permanent mission to the EU in Brussels, a large crowd gathered on Saturday afternoon holding banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Russian warship go f**k yourself;" "I'm Russian I stand with Ukraine" and "Adolf Putin." The air was filled with the sounds of passing cars hooting their support and protesters shouting "Stop Putin."

Similar scenes took place across Europe, with people gathering in London, Munich, Geneva, Edinburgh, Dublin and Paris. In London, eggs were thrown at the Russian embassy, according to the Independent, as people attending the protest in the British capital shouted "Putin go home."

The outcry from across the world comes as Russia continues its attack on Ukraine with Russian forces aiming to take the capital Kyiv.

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Protesters take to the streets across Europe to oppose invasion of Ukraine

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People across Europe took to the streets on Saturday to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From Brussels to London, protesters called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the offensive against Ukraine.

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The impact of the war on sports.

Read on as the article covers much more than the impact on soccer!

Other similar articles:

Poland, Sweden and Czech Republic will refuse to play World Cup play-offs with Russia in opposition to invasion of Ukraine

Ukraine conflict: Champions League final moved from Russia & F1 GP cancelled

Ukraine conflict: European clubs, players and fans show support

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Russian football clubs and national teams have been suspended from all competitions by Fifa and Uefa after the country's invasion of Ukraine.

The world and European football governing bodies said they would be banned "until further notice".

It means the Russian men's team will not play their World Cup play-off matches next month and the women's team have been banned from this summer's Euro 2022 competition.

Spartak Moscow have also been kicked out of the Europa League and their last-16 opponents RB Leipzig will advance to the quarter-finals.

Uefa has also ended its sponsorship with Russian energy giant Gazprom.

"Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine," Fifa and Uefa said in a joint statement.

"Both presidents hope that the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people."

Fifa and Uefa decided to take action after Russia, supported by Belarus, launched a military invasion of neighbouring Ukraine last Thursday.

The Russian men's team had been scheduled to face Poland in a World Cup play-off semi-final on 24 March.

Russian football's governing body, the RFU, said it "categorically disagreed" with the decision and would challenge it "in accordance with international sports law".

Fifa had previously ruled that Russia must complete their upcoming games in neutral territory, under the title Football Union of Russia, and without their flag and anthem.

However, the announcement drew criticism - and Scotland and the Republic of Ireland joined several other nations, including England, Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden, in refusing to play against Russia.

Russia are in Northern Ireland's European Under-21 Championship qualifying group and their meeting in March will be cancelled.

On Monday, Scottish FA president Rod Petrie wrote to his Ukrainian counterpart "to send a message of support, friendship and unity", with those two nations due to meet in their World Cup play-off semi-final on 24 March.

The 2022 Champions League final, originally due to be played in St Petersburg on 28 May, has been moved to Paris while numerous clubs have taken their own steps to disassociate themselves from Russia.

Manchester United has terminated its sponsorship deal with Russia's national airline Aeroflot while Bundesliga club Schalke has cancelled its partnership with main sponsor Gazprom, having last week removed the Russian energy company's logo from its shirts.

"I can't understand why it took them 24 hours to make this decision," said Jim Boyce, former Fifa vice-president and honorary life president of the Irish FA, speaking to BBC Radio Ulster.

"What is happening is absolutely deplorable. Quite honestly, every possible sanction that can be imposed on Russia at the minute has to be done. I applaud Fifa and I applaud Uefa for the decision that they have made today."

Speaking on Monday, Tottenham manager Antonio Conte said: "The whole world has to be compact and show [it is] solid against the stupidity of the people."

He added: "I think it's right to express our disappointment about the stupidity about some decisions. Football and Uefa has to be compact and to show to be strong."

'Other sports will follow football's lead' - analysis
Dan Roan, BBC Sport editor
This is the strongest move yet taken by the international football community.

Russia is rapidly being reduced to the status of international sporting pariah. Of course this comes after Fifa was accused of not going far enough on Sunday instead allowing Russia to continue playing as 'RFU' with a ban on its flag and anthem.

The IOC heaped pressure on football by recommending that all sports enforce a total ban on Russia and Belarus.

This will undeniably prompt other sports to follow football's lead.

There will also be those who say that the IOC could have gone further and say that 'this is a decision, we are commanding all sports to ban Russian athletes'.

Whether they thought they had grounds to do so, legally, is another matter.

Some will also point to the Sochi 2014 Games and World Cup 2018 that Putin's Russia was able to host and ask if this is all too late.

Bans needed to protect integrity of global sport - IOC

The IOC says it is urging sport governing bodies to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes "in order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants", adding that "the current war in Ukraine puts the Olympic Movement in a dilemma".

It said there had been a "breach of the Olympic Truce" by those countries' governments.

"While athletes from Russia and Belarus would be able to continue to participate in sports events, many athletes from Ukraine are prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country," an IOC statement read.

The International Paralympic Committee is to meet on Wednesday to discuss Russia, with the Winter Paralympics set to start two days later.

The British Paralympic committee has called on Russians and Belarussians to be kicked out of the Games.

The British Olympic Association, along with the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Germany, has demanded the immediate exclusion of Russia and Belarus from international sport.

The IOC said in their recommendations that wherever it was not possible to ban them from competing for organisational or legal reasons, such athletes should not compete under the name Russia or Belarus and should be classed as neutrals.

The Russian Olympic Committee has disagreed with the IOC, saying the decision "contradicts both the regulatory documents of the IOC and the [Olympic] Charter".

What else is happening in sport?

The Russian Formula 1 Grand Prix, due to take place on 25 September in Sochi, was cancelled last week.

The sport's governing body, the FIA, will meet on Tuesday to "discuss matters relating to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine".

World Rugby has suspended Russia and Belarus from international and cross-border competition "until further notice".

"We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine," said chairman Bill Beaumont.

On Friday, it was announced by Rugby Europe that all fixtures on Russian soil would be suspended, a move endorsed by the world governing body.

However the Russian women's team played away in Spain on Saturday in the Rugby Europe Championship (REC), without their flag or national anthem

Russia men's home fixture with the Netherlands next month in the REC had already been postponed and they were also due to play away fixture in Portugal on 19 March.

Badminton's world governing body (BWF) responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine by announcing the cancellation of all tournaments in Russia and Belarus in addition to banning the national flags and anthems of the two nations.

"BWF will continue to monitor the situation closely and will proactively consult our international sport movement partners to discuss other options to potentially strengthen measures against the governments of Russia and Belarus," it said.

The Ukrainian Tennis Federation has called on the sport's governing body, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), to expel Russia and Belarus from the organisation and ban Russia from individual and team tournaments.

Ukrainian Elina Svitolina has said she will refuse to play Russian or Belarusian players until they are classed as 'neutral athletes'.

The world number 15 is due to play Anastasia Potopova of Russia at this week's Monterrey Open but has threatened to withdraw unless the Women's Tennis Association takes action.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, who became the ATP's world number one on Monday, said he wanted to promote "peace all over the world" in a news conference on Friday during the Mexican Open.

The ITF said: "This is a fast-evolving situation; we are in active discussion with the ITF tennis family and the ITF board to decide and align around our next course of action."

The International Equestrian Federation has announced it will remove international events from Russia and Belarus and stop athletes and officials from both countries from participating in all competitions.

Ice hockey's governing body, the IIHF, has suspended all Russian and Belarusian national teams and clubs from all of its competitions and events.

It has also taken the 2023 World Junior Championship away from Russia.

At the Fencing World Cup in Cairo on Sunday, Ukraine's men's foil team refused to fence against Russia.

Ukraine's Klod Younes told BBC Radio 5 Live that he and his team-mates now intend to return home and defend their country.

"I knew before the competition [that I would not fence against them]. I told my team-mates and they supported me and said they would do the same," Younes said.

"Today we are going to try to re-book our ticket and we will try to go to Poland, to Hungary, and then we will figure out what to do."

On whether he and his team-mates will fight if necessary, he added: "Of course. This is our country. This is my country. I have to fight for it. I am defending my territory."

On Monday, the UK government's Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries and Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston met with several British sport governing bodies - including the Premier League, Football Association, UK Sport and British Olympic Association - to discuss the Ukraine situation.

The government has urged sports to continue with "visible signs of solidarity" with Ukraine and says it plans to talk with international counterparts later this week to mobilise further support to ostracise Russia from international sport.

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Russian football clubs and national teams have been suspended from all competitions by Fifa and Uefa after the country's invasion of Ukraine. The world and European football governing bodies said they would be banned "until further notice".

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Elon Musk's Starlink ensures Internet Connectivity in Ukraine

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Elon Musk's Starlink ensures Internet Connectivity in Ukraine

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Elon Musk says Starlink internet service ‘active’ in Ukraine

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Billionaire says satellite broadband service is available in Ukraine, as Russian attacks disrupt the internet.

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See Netflix's response here!

Netflix refuses to comply with new Russian rules

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US’s Netflix to be forced to broadcast Putin propaganda

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Netflix comes under new rules in Russia on March 1.

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As you read, consider why these companies are taking such drastic measures.

Does it matter if you get to watch a movie or not?

What is the message and signal that they are sending? What might be their intentions?

And, how might this action have any impact on the war?

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Ukraine conflict: Disney, Warner, Sony halt release of films in Russia

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The moves come as major corporations cut business links with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

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yongyi faiths and shaine and hannah