‘It’s not rational’: Putin’s bizarre speech wrecks his once pragmatic image
Looking dead-eyed into the camera on Friday, Vladimir Putin gave one of the most bizarre speeches of his 22 years as Russia’s leader, a directive that managed to sound alarming even in a week when he has ordered tanks into Ukraine and missile strikes on Kyiv.
“Once again I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said, addressing his enemy. “Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, your wives and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
The speech seemed to be ripped from an alternate reality – or from the second world war, where Putin appears to be spending more of his time as he launches the kind of broad military offensive not seen in Europe for nearly 70 years.
All this week, Putin’s megalomaniacal tendencies have been on display like never before. He has summoned his aides for a surreal national security council that resembled a television reality show and launched tirades about Lenin and decisions made nearly 100 years ago.
He has also, for the first time, spoken about his maximalist goals in this war: regime change in Kyiv, toppling the government of Volodymyr Zelenskiy and replacing it with a more pliant leadership. Putin’s call for a coup in Kyiv indicates that if Russia wins this war, Zelenskiy will almost certainly not remain in power. How he achieves that is anyone’s guess.
A number of analysts predicted this as Russia deployed more than 60% of its ground forces to Ukraine’s borders and demanded concessions that could never be granted.
But Putin’s unhinged appearances and apparent drive to war have raised questions of whether he remains a rational leader.
“Despite Crimea and everything else, Putin had always seemed an extremely pragmatic leader to me,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of R.Politik. “But now when he’s gone in this war against Ukraine, the logic in the decision is all about emotions, it’s not rational.”
Those emotions are deeply rooted in history and the historical injustices suffered by Russia. Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, said he saw Putin as a man with “a historical map in his mind and a plan to use his military to achieve it”.
Central to that map is Ukraine, which he has described as an artificial state. “Modern Ukraine was wholly and fully created by Russia,” Putin said in a historical sleight-of-hand, “namely Bolshevik, communist Russia.”
To help picture it, state TV ran a map earlier this week showing Ukraine cut up to represent which parts were “presents” from various leaders, including Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev. Some commentators said it represents the partition that Putin himself might be imagining if he gets his way.
While once the map may have been viewed as fantasies or media trolling, a western diplomat based in Ukraine on Friday pointed to his speeches and to that map as a serious sign that Putin was weighing up a dismantling of the country.
“He is not pretending any more. For the first time I think he’s revealing who he really is,” the diplomat wrote.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ragmatic-image
Half of Russian troops amassed around Ukraine now invading, U.S. says
Russia has now pushed more than half of the 150,000-plus troops it had arrayed around Ukraine into the country, three days after an initial invasion that has met stiff, determined resistance and run into logistics and coordination problems.
The capital city of Kyiv has been breached by small groups of Russian troops, but the main thrust still appears to be on the horizon, as armored columns push from the north, west and south in a bloody dash for the seat of government. A spokesperson for Russia’s Defense Ministry said that as of Saturday morning “all units were given orders today to develop the offensive along all axes in line with the operation plan.”
No major cities have yet fallen to the invading forces, as Ukrainian troops armed with Javelin anti-armor missiles have managed to temporarily blunt the Russian move for Kharkiv in the East, and several lunges toward Kyiv. The fierce resistance and quick-strike guerrilla tactics have spoiled hopes Moscow may have harbored for a quick, relatively bloodless fight.
A U.S. official said Saturday that Russian leaders appear “increasingly frustrated” with how their long-planned invasion has gone so far.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov claimed in a Saturday Facebook post that his forces have killed around 3,000 Russian troops, destroyed 100 Russian tanks and shot down seven helicopters. He added that Russians have killed nearly 200 Ukrainian civilians, including three children. POLITICO could not independently verify those numbers, but the Ukrainian side has had little hesitation about posting videos to social media sites of damaged Russian convoys and dead and captured Russian soldiers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has refused to leave the capital city, assuming the role of a wartime leader and posting a series of videos criticizing the West for not doing enough to help. His regular videos and statements urge his troops, and country, to fight on.
Russia has launched more than 250 ballistic and cruise missiles at targets across the country over the past three days, and more tanks, armored vehicles, and electronic warfare capabilities have been seen flowing into the country over the past 24 hours. Ukrainian officials have posted images of a high-rise apartment struck by a missile, underscoring the continued danger to civilians.
In response, NATO allies have scrambled to resupply Ukrainian forces. U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace held a donor conference Friday aimed at shoring up support, and 27 nations pledged to send more weapons. Germany, long resistant to permitting European nations from sending weapons it made to conflict zones, reversed its fence-sitting position on Saturday, permitting the Netherlands to transfer 400 rocket-propelled grenade launchers to Ukraine.
Separately, the Netherlands also said they would send 200 Stinger ground-to-air missiles to Ukraine, and a U.S. defense official confirmed that American arms have continued to flow throughout the fight.
President Joe Biden unlocked another $350 million in military aid for Ukraine on Friday night, a package that will include more Javelins, the defense official said. Belgium on Saturday also pledged 2,000 machine guns and 3,800 tons of fuel to Ukraine.
Poland, Latvia and Estonia are also pushing more weapons into Ukraine via a bold new land bridge option using Polish border crossings, as the skies above the country are full of missiles and Russian warplanes.
The rapid reequipping effort marks a remarkable new moment in post-Cold War European history, with a majority of the continent openly working to defeat Russian forces in the field and showing no inclination to hide their intent to punish the Kremlin.
“It is remarkable that so many western governments — the US, the UK, the Dutch — are *overtly* shipping anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine right now in the middle of its war with Russia. Not even hiding it. Publicizing it. Loudly,” tweeted Andrew Exum, previously a top Pentagon official in the Obama administration.
Zelenskyy claimed, after a call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that Ankara would block Russian warships from entering the Black Sea — an assertion the Turkish government denied. A 1936 convention requires Ankara to permit foreign navies through its waters into the sea. “In time of war, Turkey not being belligerent, warships shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation through the Straits,” the Montreux Convention reads.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, addressed the West in a video posted to his official Telegram page: “Civilians are getting shot with rockets. With special operations, civilians getting killed. And it’s happening in the heart of Europe,” he said in English to maximize the reach of his message. “Get into action now,” he added — tomorrow it could be too late. Klitschko also ordered a curfew in the capital lasting from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. each day until Feb. 28.
Meanwhile, the Russian advance continues, though seemingly not without problems. Videos posted on social media sites show armored columns held up due to the lack of fuel or confusion over where they are. Ukrainian citizens also stepped in front of advancing tanks to halt their drive toward urban centers.
The Pentagon’s latest assessment is that Russian commanders have had to “commit a bit more logistics and sustainment capability, like fuel specifically, than what we believe they had originally planned to do this early in the operation,” the defense official told reporters Saturday.
On Friday, NATO activated the NATO Response Force, a 40,000 strong formation with air and artillery assets attached, for the first time since its inception in 2014 following Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine is more than an attack on Ukraine,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Friday. “It’s a devastating horrendous attack on innocent people in Ukraine, but it’s also an attack on the whole European security order.”
On Friday, the U.S. and its allies placed sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. There’s a growing appetite on both sides of the Atlantic to kick Russia out of the SWIFT global banking system, and U.S. officials continue to debate whether to impose full blocking sanctions on Russia’s Central Bank — which would all but cut off Russia from the global financial system.
President Biden and European leaders have said their troops won’t enter Ukraine to fight Russians, but it’s clear that the alliance is quickly building a potent defensive wall along its eastern front, and the war that Putin entered by choice is taking a toll on his forces, and the Russian economy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...raine-00012089
How Ukrainian defiance has derailed Putin’s plans
Three days after the invasion there are signs that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is not quite going to plan. In the Sumy region, close to the border with Russia, a local resident came across an extraordinary sight. On a country road lined with birch trees, a Russian armoured vehicle had broken down.He pulled up in his car and stopped. There was then a surreal conversation.
“Looks like you guys broke down,” he said to three Russian soldiers, standing by the road. “We ran out of fuel,” one replied. “Can I tow you back to Russia,” he joked. They laughed and asked him for news. “Do you know where you are going?” he inquired. “No,” they answered.
Further along the road other Russian vehicles had conked out. The driver told the hapless soldiers that “everything is on our side” and that Russians were busy surrendering. No one from Putin’s invading army seemed to know where they were going, or why they were even in Ukraine, he concluded.
It is too early to describe the Kremlin’s operation to seize and subjugate Ukraine as a failure. The war has only just started. Putin may yet prevail. The Russian military enjoys overwhelming superiority over Ukraine’s armed forces. It has numerous combat aircraft, a vast navy and 150,000 deployed troops.
And yet by Saturday, it was clear Putin’s blitzkrieg operation to remove Ukraine’s pro-western government had run into unexpected difficulties. Evidently, there were logistical issues. Re-supplying troops in a vast enemy country was proving a challenge.
So was seizing Kyiv, Ukraine’s defiant capital, home in normal times to three million people. The Kremlin’s original plan, according to Ukrainian intelligence, was to encircle the city with land forces and, during a night operation, to fly in 5,000 elite paratroopers.
They would storm the Mariinsky presidential palace, detain or kill Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and take control over key government buildings, including the foreign and defence ministries. Having mopped up resistance, and arrested key figures, Moscow would install a pro-Russian puppet administration.
This has not happened. Instead, Kyiv remained under government control this weekend after Ukrainian forces repulsed a series of attacks. Zelenskiy has encouraged his citizens with homemade videos. Meanwhile, Russian parachutists who tried to seize an airfield in the city of Vasylkiv, as a bridgehead to grab Kyiv, were beaten back.
“Our 40th Brigade was powerful. It repulsed the attack,” Nataliia Balasynovych, Vasylkiv’s mayor, told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. “They [Russian troops] landed with parachutes in the fields, forests and villages.” She added: “The worst fighting was on Decembrists’ street. The whole street was on fire.”
Air defence units said they had shot down an Ilyushin-76 transport plane near Bila Tserkva, 80km south of Kyiv – one of several downed enemy aircraft. Ukraine’s military command said it had wiped out an entire enemy column around the city of Kharkiv, something video appeared to confirm.
Since the invasion began on Thursday, Russia has lost 14 aircraft, eight helicopters, 102 tanks, 15 heavy machine guns and one BUK missile, the Ukrainian military said. It had also lost 3,500 soldiers, with 200 taken hostage, it added.
These figures are hard to verify. But they illustrate the almost universal hostility which has greeted invading Russian forces. The Kremlin has had most success in the south of the country, where it has captured large swathes of territory, including much of Kherson province and the city of Melitopol.
Videos have shown some extraordinary acts of civic resistance. In Bakhmach, in the Chernihiv region, a resident tried to stop a tank with his bare hands. He knelt in front of it before his friends dragged him away. In another viral clip, shared by Ukrainian media outlets, a man jumped in front of a military convoy, with vehicles forced to swerve.
There are also numerous interviews with Russian soldiers who have surrendered. On Thursday, Kremlin forces captured Sumy, 60km from the Russian border. By Saturday, however, locals appeared to have taken some of the city back, and to have captured a young Russian conscript, who appeared dazed and confused
The invasion has caused a vast human exodus, with tens of thousands seeking refuge in the west of the country and beyond. It has also prompted a wave of patriotic feeling. From Lviv to Dnipro in the centre and Kharkiv in the east, volunteers have been picking up weapons, making molotov cocktails or removing road signs to confuse the invaders.
“I’ve had calls from 10 people asking how to help,” Lviv resident Olga Bileychuk said. “Some of the girls wanted to make molotovs but were told only boys could do it. It’s quite sexist.” Others were joining defensive units, she said. One friend gave his Land Cruiser to a Ukrainian soldier seeking to rejoin his brigade in distant Mariupol, which has been holding out against Russian attack.
The creative classes have also been doing their bit. Many have taken up arms, having originally fought in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea and kickstarted an armed uprising in the Donbas region. Two standup comedians were busy preparing food in a closed restaurant in Kyiv on Saturday, as a curfew was introduced. Others shared anti-Putin memes.
So how did we get here? One explanation is the increasingly erratic behaviour of Putin himself. Speaking before the invasion, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said Russia’s president lived in a strange parallel reality. He had succumbed – like dictators before him – to believing his own version of the world.
“Putin thinks that Ukraine’s government is corrupt, western and irredeemably Russophobic,” the official said. “He understood the Ukrainian people, by contrast, would welcome Russia and intervention. He considers us to be rural Russians.” Putin’s spy agencies had told him what he wanted to hear, he added.
The official continued: “We have always understood Russians better than they understand us.” Other commentators noted that Putin, an amateur historian, had forgotten one of the great lessons of the second world war – that the best Soviet soldiers were Ukrainian.
It is impossible to know if there is growing unhappiness within Putin’s national security council over the decision to go to war. On the eve of the invasion last week all of its members signed off on Putin’s plan to recognise the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent, an act that pushed the button on military action.
Western defence attaches have claimed that Valery Gerasimov, Putin’s most senior commander and the chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, had warned the president that invading Ukraine might not be straightforward. And so it has proved. For now, though, Russia’s military and political leadership are firmly behind the operation.
As losses mount, difficult questions pile up for the Kremlin. In the face of Ukrainian intransigence and resistance, how does it intend to govern the country? Any Donetsk-style puppet government would lack legitimacy. Even if Moscow succeeds in seizing Kyiv, months and years of problems lie ahead. Nobody expects Ukrainians to capitulate. More likely is partisan war.
The driver who came across the broken-down military carrier best summarised Putin’s predicament. “I asked the whole column,” he said of the Russian soldiers. “No one knows where they are and where they are going.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...d-putins-plans
