Opinion | The U.S. Is the Only Sanctions Superpower. It Must Use That Power Wisely. - T... - 0 views
-
As much as we talk about multipolar politics, when it comes to global networks, there is just one superpower: the United States. Many global networks have centralized economic chokepoints, and the United States is able to seize these, turning them into tools of coercion. No other country can match this ability. America can now redeploy global networks to entangle and suffocate oligarchs, banks and even entire countries, as Russia has painfully discovered.
-
It is now up to the United States to determine how to steward this enormous power. If it overreaches, it might provoke a military response or create the incentive for its adversaries to create and foster their own alternative networks
-
Will we end up with a fragmented world economy where military and economic conflict become two sides of the same coin?
- ...7 more annotations...
Putin's war and the Chaos Climbers - by Noah Smith - 0 views
-
The title of this post is a reference to a line from the TV show Game of Thrones, where the scheming nobleman Littlefinger declares that “Chaos is a ladder.” By disrupting the stability of the current regime, he intends to create space to move up in the world.
-
I see many of the above-mentioned figures on both the Right and the Left as Chaos Climbers — people who believe that the travails of the liberal order built after World War 2 represent an opening for their own fringe ideologies to advance their power.
-
it’s just a description of what has been actually happening over the last decade.
- ...13 more annotations...
Facebook bans death threats on Russia leader Putin despite Ukraine war - 0 views
-
Meta Platforms, the parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram, clarified Monday that users cannot make posts calling for the assassination of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin or other heads of state.
-
Meta also said that a previously reported temporary easing of its hate speech policy only applies to allowing posts by users in Ukraine making threats to the attacking forces and “only in the context of speech regarding the Russian military invasion of Ukraine.”
-
Reuters also reported Thursday that Facebook was allowing calls for violence against Russian soldiers in those three countries and several others in Eastern Europe, the Baltics and western Asia.
- ...4 more annotations...
U.S. sends 100 killer drones called Switchblades to Ukraine - 0 views
-
WASHINGTON – The U.S. included 100 killer drones in a colossal weapons package for Ukraine that President Joe Biden approved earlier this month, U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday.
-
“We’ve heard the Ukrainians and we take that request very seriously,” she said.
-
Deploying Switchblades to the fight in Ukraine could be the most significant use of the weapons in combat, as it is not clear how often the U.S. military has used the killer drones on the battlefield.
- ...2 more annotations...
African Union Head Will Urge Putin to Release Ukraine's Grain - The New York Times - 0 views
-
DAKAR, Senegal — With many of the world’s poorest countries facing alarming levels of hunger and starvation, the leader of the African Union is set to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday and urge him to lift Russia’s blockade on urgently needed cereals and fertilizer from Ukraine.
-
Warnings by the United Nations that Russia’s naval blockade in Ukraine could lead to famines around the world, and accusations by Ukrainian and Western leaders that Mr. Putin is weaponizing a major source of the world’s food supply, have so far produced limited results. Millions of to
-
ns of grain remain stuck in Ukraine; Mr. Putin has suggested that this would change if the West lifted sanctions imposed on Moscow after the invasion.
- ...5 more annotations...
Thousands Swept Up as Kremlin Clamps Down on War Criticism - The New York Times - 0 views
-
Vladimir Efimov, a local politician on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East, was charged with “discrediting the army” and ordered to pay a $500 fine three times in recent months over antiwar images that he displayed on social media.
-
Three months ago, President Vladimir V. Putin signed into law draconian measures designed to silence war critics, putting even use of the word “war” off-limits. They prompted some Russians appalled by the invasion to flee the country, forced independent news outlets to shut down, and created a climate of suspicion in which neighbor turned on neighbor.
-
At least 50 people face prison sentences of up to either 10 years or five years hard labor, or fines of as much as $77,000, for spreading “false information” about the military.
- ...5 more annotations...
Opinion | Putin and the Right's Tough-Guy Problem - The New York Times - 0 views
-
there are significant factions in U.S. politics — a small group on the left, a much more significant bloc on the right — that not only oppose Western support for Ukraine but also clearly want to see Russia win.
-
what lies behind right-wing support for Vladimir Putin?
-
Putin, by contrast, very much is the subject of a personality cult not just in Russia but also on the American right and has been for years
- ...7 more annotations...
Olympian flashes 'No War in Ukraine' sign after competing | AP News - 0 views
-
A Ukrainian skeleton athlete flashed a small sign that read “ No War in Ukraine ” to the cameras as he finished a run at the Beijing Olympics on Friday night.
-
he gesture came as Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops near Ukraine, stoking fears in the West that Moscow is planning an invasion. Russia insists it has no such designs but doesn’t want Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to be allowed to join the western NATO alliance.
-
Shortly after the race, the International Olympic Committee said there would be no repercussions for the athlete. There had been a question of whether the body might consider Heraskevych’s act a violation of Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter. That rule, in part, states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
- ...2 more annotations...
Alexander Gabuev writes from Moscow on why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war | ... - 0 views
-
What actually drives the Kremlin are the tough ideas and interests of a small group of longtime lieutenants to President Vladimir Putin, as well as those of the Russian leader himself. Emboldened by perceptions of the West’s terminal decline, no one in this group loses much sleep about the prospect of an open-ended confrontation with America and Europe
-
In fact, the core members of this group would all be among the main beneficiaries of a deeper schism.
-
Consider Mr Putin’s war cabinet, which is the locus of most decision-making
- ...16 more annotations...
I'm in Kyiv and awake at the darkest hour - as Putin's bombs rain down | Nataliya Gumen... - 0 views
-
I was one of those who until the very last moment could not accept the notion of a full-scale invasion with airstrikes on our major towns. Putin’s speech was sickening, but still there was a logical, if fictional, justification for a limited Russian operation. The full-scale attack on Ukraine destroys even that.
-
I told my Russian journalist friend about our mood. For years I have been reluctant to compare any dictator to Hitler, or any war to the second world war. The comparison, to me, seemed exaggerated, even vulgar.
-
But what other analogy is there? With no reason, in an act of pure madness, an old-fashioned air assault has been inflicted on a neighbouring country.
- ...3 more annotations...
Putin apologists are in a tricky bind now | Comment | The Times - 0 views
-
Meanwhile on another Russian TV station, this time in Russia, Donald Trump’s former secretary of state and putative Republican candidate Mike Pompeo was shown saying of Putin that he is “very shrewd, very capable. I have enormous respect for him.”
-
Kaboom! On Monday at 10pm Moscow time Putin himself, following up a bizarre nod-along ceremony, torpedoed their arguments. The problem wasn’t Nato and it wasn’t the EU. It wasn’t Russia’s “security concerns”. It was, as he told it, the terrible errors of Lenin and Stalin in creating an autonomous Ukrainian entity when historically it was all really Russian
-
For over a decade now left and right populists alike have opposed western policy towards Russia.
- ...5 more annotations...
Vladimir Putin's war | The Economist - 0 views
-
In his battle speech, recorded on February 21st and released as he unleashed the first volleys of cruise missiles against his fellow Slavs, Russia’s president railed against “the empire of lies” that is the West. Crowing over his nuclear arsenal, he pointedly threatened to “crush” any country that stood in his way.
-
It was unclear in what strength they were moving. But Mr Putin seemingly covets all of Ukraine, just as American and British intelligence reports had claimed all along. In acting, he has set aside the everyday calculus of political risks and benefits. Instead he is driven by the dangerous, delusional idea that he has an appointment with history.
-
He may not invade the NATO countries that were once in the Soviet empire, at least not at first. But, bloated by victory, he will subject them to the cyber attacks and information warfare that fall short of the threshold of conflict.
- ...12 more annotations...
Why Americans Are Uniting in Support of Ukraine - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
what is happening right now in Ukraine—a nation being mauled by a brutal regime yet still willing to stand and to fight—is proof that honor and courage matter. They can stir hearts in powerful ways, shaking them out of complacency and even cynicism.
-
what drove support for Ukraine were the human virtues being displayed in a terrible human drama.
-
It was seeing ordinary people—including the young and the elderly—act in extraordinary ways to defend the country they love, against overwhelming odds. It was seeing people do the right thing at the risk of death when nearly every instinct within them must have been screaming: Do what you have to do to survive, even if survival, though not dishonorable, is less honorable.
- ...4 more annotations...
A War the Kremlin Tried to Disguise Becomes a Hard Reality for Russians - The New York ... - 0 views
-
On Monday, Ukraine published a video of a captured soldier in his unit, apologizing for taking part in the invasion.
-
Everyone is in a state of shock.
-
While casualty figures in wartime are notoriously unreliable — and Ukraine has put the total of Russian dead in the thousands — the 498 Moscow acknowledged in the seven days of fighting is the largest in any of its military operations since the war in Chechnya, which marked the beginning of President Vladimir V. Putin’s tenure in 1999.
- ...9 more annotations...
4 things to remember about Trump, Ukraine and Putin - CNNPolitics - 0 views
-
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up tensions with the West for the better part of the last decade -- he annexed Crimea, meddled in US elections, poisoned an ex-spy on British soil, and more. Nearly every step of the way, former President Donald Trump parroted Kremlin talking points, excused Russian aggression and sometimes even embraced it outright.
-
One of his 2016 campaign aides falsely claimed that "Russia did not seize Crimea." "Trump said that Crimea is Russian, because people speak Russian," said Elena Petukhova of Molfar, a Kyiv-based business intelligence firm, who called it an "absolutely pro-Kremlin" view. "According to this logic, the entire territory of the United States should belong to Great Britain."
-
Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort -- who had spent a decade advising Yanukovych in Ukraine -- collaborated in 2016 with a Russian spy on a secret plan for Trump to help Russia control eastern Ukraine, according to special counsel Robert Mueller's report. The proposal envisioned that Yanukovych would return to lead a Russian puppet state in eastern Ukraine. This pro-Russian rhetoric didn't always translate into policy for the Trump White House. For instance, his administration said sanctions would continue until Russia returned Crimea. But the rhetoric gave Putin an unexpected cheerleader in DC and created tensions within NATO.
- ...5 more annotations...
Opinion | Meet Alexander Dugin, author of Putin's deadly playbook - The Washington Post - 0 views
-
a broader understanding is needed of Dugin’s deadly ideas. Russia has been running his playbook for the past 20 years, and it has brought us here, to the brink of another world war.
-
A product of late-period Soviet decline, Dugin belongs to the long, dismal line of political theorists who invent a strong and glorious past — infused with mysticism and obedient to authority — to explain a failed present.
-
The future lies in reclaiming this past from the liberal, commercial, cosmopolitan present (often represented by the Jewish people).
- ...9 more annotations...
Ukraine-Russia War Live News: Latest Updates - The New York Times - 0 views
-
President Biden met with European leaders in Brussels to reinforce solidarity against Russia’s invasion and proposed excluding Russia from the G20. Ukraine said it had destroyed a Russian naval ship.
-
BRUSSELS — President Biden and leaders of more than 30 nations convened Thursday to demonstrate united opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, announcing new economic sanctions, aid for refugees, deployment of additional forces to Eastern Europe and grim preparations in case Russia uses chemical
-
As heavy fighting continued in the suburban town of Irpin, a steady stream of tired civilians, mainly older people, were evacuated to relative safety in the capital of Kyiv on Thursday. A day earlier, Ukrainian firefighters battled a fire at a home struck during a Russian rocket attack in western Kyiv.
- ...1 more annotation...
Why the West Misunderstood Putin - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
Anagnorisis is that moment of recognition when a character in a play finally understands their predicament and who they really are.
-
It is Shakespeare’s Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII realizing that he has “ventured … this many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth,” or Richard II saying, “I have wasted time and now doth time waste me.”
-
Three explanations loom. One has to do with personalities and characters.
- ...8 more annotations...
« First
‹ Previous
241 - 260 of 266
Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page