There is a report that the Russian Duma is going to vote on 2/15/22 on “two resolutions asking for Putin to recognize the independence of the “self-proclaimed republics of Donbas” This will kill Minsk and open the way for Putin to invade Ukraine.
Other reports:
Ukrainian International Airlines is moving seven of its 25 planes out of the country “at the request of lessors.”
Spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby is being asked about potential refugees from Ukraine.
Anne Applebaum is calling for the British to announce the names and addresses of Russian oligarchs in London who will be sanctioned and whose sources of income and donations to the Tory party are under investigation. Twitter
Richard Engel on MSNBC is reporting that several European media outlets had been claiming that the Russian attack could come on the 16th. Zelensky gave a speech in which he referenced the 16th, but his office is now saying that he was referencing those media reports, not his own evaluation.
Ukraine has requested 12,000 anti-tank missiles from Germany.
Richard Engel notes that Putin wants to get rid of Zelensky and get a more compliant government in Kyiv.
President Zelensky of Ukraine has stated that he has been informed that a Russian attack will occur on Wednesday. He has not said, as reporters have pointed out, that he believes this information.
Commentators on CNN are talking about reports that the Ukrainians have said that they would be willing to talk about agreeing not to join NATO for the time being in exchange for ending the standoff. Michael Bociurkiw maintains that such a move or agreement would be a death knell for Zelensky and perhaps provoke demonstrations on the streets.
It has also been reported that Ukrainian officials have been talking about giving the Russians access to Crimea and Donbas and ceasing to object to Russian control of the two regions. Should Putin gain such a concession, it would mean that without firing a shot, he has gotten through threat what he couldn’t get at negotiations.
Julia Davis, the Daily Beast, is reporting that the head of RT has gone on Russian television, crying and stating that Russia has no choice but to intervene in Ukraine before they (the Ukrainians) start building concentration camps and gassing people.
Various news sources are reporting that Putin has decided and communicated with his military that he is going to invade Ukraine. Others are reporting that Biden told allies last night that they thought Putin was going to invade.
Jake Sullivan, earlier today, warned Americans to get out of Ukraine if they could.
Olga Rudenko, Ukrainian journalist, and the chief editor at the Kyiv Post, explained on Twitter that the “alleged prominence of nationalist and far-right forces” in Ukraine is a “fake narrative permeating the Western press for years.” These forces are, she argued “marginal and have very little influence on the political life.”
Rudenko cited a NYT World post which reported that the “Ukrainian government is encouraging the arming of nationalist paramilitary groups to thwart a Russian invasion. But those same groups could also destabilize the government if it agrees to a peace deal they reject.” (Posted 2/10/22)
The right—wing party featured in the story, DemSokyra, is, according to Rudenko “vehemently anti-Zelensky and, although they often don’t admit it publicly, pro-Poroshenkpo. Would be really, really strange if Zelensky government was arming them.”
The narrative in the NYT article “yields a perfect argument for those in the West who advocate against helping Ukraine.” Basically, the New York Times is telling readers: “Don’t send them weapons, they will arm nationalists.”
The article Rudenko is talking about was written by Andrew E.Kramer, based in the Moscow bureau of the New York Times. As one twitter follower commented, the article was literally written in Moscow, but the byline is Kyiv.
Kramer cites “Democratic Ax – one of dozens of right-wing or nationalist groups that represent a potent political force in Ukraine and are fiercely opposed to any compromise with Moscow…”
The man interviewed, Yuri Hudymenko, is quoted as saying that if there is a settlement “his anger will be directed at Ukraine’s government if it grants too many concessions in exchange for peace.” Then, Hudymenko warns: “If anybody from the Ukrainian government tries to sign such a document, a million people will take to the streets and that government will case being the government.”
At present, NATO has 30 members. In 1949, there were 12 founding members of the Alliance: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other member countries are: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020).
Cohen has been called “Putin’s No 1 American apologist.”
Also, “…a fellow traveller of an authoritarian rogue state and an implacable opponent of western efforts to contain Russian aggression and expansionism.”
Cohen thinks “Putin is a potential partner in a revived Russo-American détente. The greatest threat to American security, argues Cohen, is not Putin’s foreign policy but international terrorism, nuclear proliferation and instability in the Middle East.”
Cohen “was also an ardent supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to democratise Soviet socialism.”
“…after the collapse of the communist system in 1991, Cohen became a dissident of a new type – a severe critic of the US’s crusade to reinvent Russia as a liberal, free-market democracy.”
“Cohen felt the US shared responsibility for the so-called economic shock therapy that impoverished the Russian people, created an elite of super-rich oligarchs and corrupted the country’s politics.”
“As Cohen never tires of reminding us, you can’t understand Putin and contemporary Russia without reference to the country’s historical memory of the 1990s.”
Cohen argues that you cannot understand Russia without understanding their collective memory of the 1990s. “Central to that memory is the disdain with which a triumphalist West treated post-Soviet Russia…”
According to Cohen: “It was not Putin who caused what Cohen calls the new cold war, but Nato’s expansion to Russia’s borders; US and EU meddling in Ukraine; and western regime-change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
Cohen is evidently one of those people who believes against all evidence that the corporate media made up “russiagate” even though every other person in Trump’s world is Russian and mafia connected. He maintains that “Russiagate has been accompanied by a pernicious Russophobia that demonises not just Putin but the Russian people.” I have seen no evidence or mention that comes anywhere near demonizing the Russian people.
As Cohen argues: “The resultant hysteria has been ramped up by US media, by grandstanding politicians, and by blatantly self-serving military and industrial interests.”
According to Cohen (and others) American elites seem to have lost their fear of atomic warfare, while there is little or no mainstream political opposition to current hawkish policies aimed at Russia. As Cohen points out, even at the height of the Soviet-American cold war – an existential struggle between capitalism and communism – there were many mainstream advocates of détente with the USSR. During the old cold war the communist bloc acted as a buffer between the two sides. The new cold war is being fought directly along Russia’s borders, most dangerously in a proxy civil war being battled out in Ukraine.”
“Among Cohen’s many controversial claims is that the greatest scandal in American politics is not Russiagate but Intelgate – the myth propagated by elements of the US intelligence community that Putin is attempting to subvert American democracy. The reverence with which some liberals greet pronouncements made by today’s intelligence chiefs is in sharp contrast to their past critiques of the malevolence and misinformation spread by the CIA, the FBI and other agencies.” Note: This is a frequent argument used by the likes of Glenn Greenwald.
“Another Cohen target is the hallowed institutions of the American media, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, whose reporting on Russia he sees as not merely tendentious but actively mendacious. The narrative of the new cold war is driven by stories published by these newspapers that are based on unverified, anonymous intelligence.”
Cohen maintains that even though Hillary Clinton may have compared Putin to Hitler, the Russian president is actually a moderate.
“Although the book focuses on current affairs, Cohen brings to bear a much-needed historical perspective. The first post-Soviet Russian-Western clash occurred in 1998-1999 when Nato sponsored the secession of Kosovo and bombed Russia’s ally, Serbia – an intervention that Moscow later used to justify its takeover of Crimea. If the past is any guide, western sanctions against Russia will achieve nothing, except to bolster support for Putin at home. Notwithstanding the accusations of treason that greeted Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki, he is not the first US President to favour détente with Russia. That was the policy of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan too.”
“Cohen is by no means an uncritical supporter of the Putin regime. While he sympathises with Moscow’s foreign policy he characterises its domestic polity as a “soft authoritarianism” and sees Russia as a society in transition to a better democracy. What he fears is that western isolation of Russia will blow the country off the democratic path. Waiting in the wings to replace Putin are not pro-western liberal democrats – who have little support in Russia – but truly authoritarian ultra-nationalists.”
“Cohen gives the impression that he is a lone voice opposing the spurious narratives created by the new cold war warriors. He is disappointed by what he calls the “silence of the doves”. In fact, the new cold war has many critics, not least among Russia experts. In Europe, if not in the United States, there is a strong undercurrent of what the Germans call Putinverstehers – those who urge understanding of the Russian point of view. Liberal elites may wax hysterical about the Russian threat, but common sense about Putin prevails among the general public.”
“The title of Cohen’s book is intended not as a prophecy but a warning. In the overexcited debate about Putin and Trump, Cohen chooses to eschew moderation because he believes that in practice that results in conformity with an anti-Russia narrative that is not only wrong but dangerous. This book will delight his supporters and enrage his opponents, while readers of a moderate persuasion will be able to admire the passion and tenacity of his resistance to the trend towards provoking war with Russia.”
Geoffrey Roberts is emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy
Taras Kuzio is a professor in the Department of Political Science at National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy and author of Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (2017) and co-author with Paul D’Anieri of The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order (2018).
Note: This book is free if you have a Kindle Account
The federal hate crimes trial of the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery began in Georgia today. This trial would never have come about had it not been for the courage of Arbery’s mother. She first demanded that the case be taken out of the hands of local officials in Glynn County, Georgia so that a prosecution for murder could take place. Then, she had to go before a judge and demand that Ahmaud Arbery’s killers not be allowed to take a plea deal for hate crimes and spend the first of their sentence in a federal prison. It is outrageous that Arbery’s mother has had to push through legal action against her son’s killers.
Notes:
The judge in the case is US. District Court judge Lisa Godey Wood.
Jurors were questioned outside the courtroom where reporters and the public were allowed to listen.
After this questioning, the judge dismissed nine of the panelists leaving 16 remaining in the jury pool.
I cannot for the life of me understand why the media continues to call the neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, using his nickname.
One of the potential jurors was dismissed after telling the judge that she had known Bryan and that she felt “sorry for him.”
The prosecutors in the state murder trial almost completely left race out of the discussion.
Reading the Western press, one is under the impression that nothing is happening. Westerners do not seem to understand what is at stake. They think that only the fate of Ukraine is being decided — Read on en.desk-russie.eu/2021/12/30/what-does-the-russian-ultimatum.html
Russia’s plans for Ukraine include options including full-scale invasion to redraw the European security map. The West has limited response options.
— Read on cepa.org/time-is-running-out-in-ukraine/
