Chaos remains ahead when the Chechens in Ukraine want the whole thing to burn and paranoid Putin acts like the pan-Eurasian savior. Michael McFaul offers some diplomatic advice while the next phase of the Ukraine war becomes more brutal.
It is the job of intelligence officers to assess probabilities about security outcomes, including nuclear war. My guess is that those estimates are still very low. But even if they are at 0.1 percent, the job of policymakers is to shape and decrease these probabilities. The horrific consequences of being wrong about nuclear warfare are too great to not do everything to reduce its likelihood.
First, Biden was right to respond to Putin’s threats by declining to raise the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces. He and European leaders should continue this policy of restraint. It serves no purpose to match Putin’s maniacal threats with others that would only increase international panic.
Second, every nuclear power in the world must reach out privately to Moscow to seek clarification about Russia’s position. In January, the five major nuclear powers signed a new declaration that affirmed “nuclear weapons … should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war” and also avowed “none of our nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other State.” Every leader who signed this declaration, especially Xi, should call Putin to confirm his commitment to this document.
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Third, Biden must signal to Putin — again, privately — that the United States and the West would be prepared to relax sanctions if Putin withdraws his soldiers from Ukraine. If Putin continues his slaughter of innocent civilians or arrests and kills President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government, this offer ought to be withdrawn. But, today, Putin should be offered a way out of the corner in which he has trapped himself.
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Will there actually be safe corridors.
It can be hard for Americans to understand why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has touched such a raw nerve in Europe. Even the Biden administration did not expect the European response to be so fast and so furious. The widespread expectation, after all, was that sanctions, coordinated between the United States and Europe, would be rolled out slowly. A batch here, another batch a week later, steadily ramping up the pressure on Russia and imposing incremental punishment for its war of aggression. Instead, the sanctions came crashing down all at once. (From what I heard, individual delegations went into the European Council meeting fearing that other delegations would water the sanctions down, so they promised themselves that they would stand firm. On arriving, they discovered that the opposite was true: everyone wanted to hit Russia hard.) In addition to the sanctions, we saw other sea changes on the continent. Germany, which has been understandably wary of militarization, shredded its post-Cold War doctrine over the weekend, agreeing to send lethal aid to Ukraine and to boost its military spending to two percent of G.D.P. The E.U., for the first time in its history, declared it was sending weapons. Switzerland—Switzerland!—which stayed neutral even through the horrors of World War II, decided to impose sanctions on Russia and freeze Russian assets.
The White House, which had been laying the groundwork for sanctions and trying to get the E.U. to agree—which is typically like herding cats—was taken aback by the unity and swiftness of the response. Why did Europe react the way it did? “Seeing children using metro platforms as bomb shelters stirs the collective memory of World War II,” a U.S. official told me. “It has made them react with anger and emotion, rather than the logic that usually results in the lowest common denominator.”
https://t.co/18O500xxsX
As if things couldn’t get more baroque:
He announces 7-million-ruble (currently $65k) payments to the families of soldiers killed in Ukraine. 3 million rubles ($27k) to wounded warriors.
And then he does a moment of silence for Russia’s soldiers killed in Ukraine. Remember that, if the camera were to zoom out here, he’d be at least 50 feet away from any other living soul, so terrified of COVID he is.
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🚨NEWS: Biden today will turn the screws on Putin and his inner circle for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a week ago. US targeting oligarchs' families, too, to prevent them from transferring assets to spouses or children, sources tell @nwadhams and me.
BIDEN to press during Cabinet mtg: "We're adding dozens of names to the list including one of Russia's wealthiest billionaires, banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families and their closest friends."
The sanctioned Russians include: Nikolay Tokarev and wife, daughter; Boris Rotenberg and wife, sons; Arkady Rotenberg and sons, daughter; Sergey Chemezov and wife, son and stepdaughter; Igor Shuvalov and his wife, son, daughter; Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.
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To serve Russia is against everything in nokhchalla [the traditional Chechen code of conduct],”
As Russia’s tactics harden, there is plenty to suggest that Kadyrov’s Chechen forces will be at the forefront of the effort to suppress and secure Ukraine’s cities. With indiscriminate bombardment of population centers increasing and the morale of many Russian soldiers apparently flagging, the willingness of the Kadyrovtsy to commit brutal war crimes to break resistance is a key tool in the Kremlin’s arsenal. Kadyrov himself has argued for such an approach. In a message posted to his Telegram channel on Feb. 27, the Chechen leader argued that “the nationalist [in Ukraine] do not understand any language except force.” Admitting that Ukrainian forces were “armed to the teeth with new weapons and ammunition,” Kadyrov argued that it was time to stop “coddling” the enemy and instead “begin a large-scale operation in all directions” in the country. “We need to change our tactics, in order to better convince them,” Kadyrov said. “Putin must give the appropriate order so that we can finish with these Nazis.”
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