“Ukraine – Russia”

Russian soldiers have shot people dead in the street as they took over Ukrainian villages, according to fleeing residents.

Soldiers shot randomly at buildings, threw grenades down roads and went from house to house confiscating phones and laptops, witnesses said.

Online groups created for family members or friends looking for information about people in affected areas are receiving hundreds or even thousands of requests a day.

#Ukraine: Russian Ka-52 helicopters hitting at least one 2S1 Gvozdika SPG of the Ukrainian Army. pic.twitter.com/ZphuIJyq1i

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 14, 2022

#Ukraine: Ukrainian farmers found themselves another two MT-LB, it seems. (We also see a burned out truck) pic.twitter.com/XOaxrdga2a

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 14, 2022

Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine two and a half weeks ago, more than 330 companies have announced that they are suspending or terminating their operations in Russia, according to a list compiled by Yale University professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. While Russia’s aggression was certain to provoke some reduction of trade, the unprecedented scale and speed of the boycott has surprised even the most seasoned analysts. Boycotters include many with significant financial stakes in Russia, and some were pioneers of Western investment in Soviet Russia and corporate emblems of the end of the Cold War.

Putin is building his Russian fantasy atop Ukrainian corpses.

“What’s really happening in Ukraine?” This question has hit my inbox ever since Russia moved troops to the Ukrainian border. Friends look to me because much of my career has centered on Ukraine: I was a U.S. Army Russian linguist, spent four years as an Evangelical missionary in Ukraine, studied Ukrainian history in graduate school, and served in U.S. Embassy Kyiv for two years. I was there for the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, and Russia’s 2014 invasion.

So what’s really happening? Putin is a throwback to a bloodier era in Europe when autocrats settled historical grievances by force. Except for Milosevic trying to build Greater Serbia via ethnic cleansing, such wars have been extinct since 1945.

Nearly three weeks have passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, but it still is not clear why he did so and what he hopes to achieve. Western analysts, commentators and government officials have put forward more than a dozen theories to explain Putin’s actions, motives, and objectives.

Some analysts posit that Putin is motivated by a desire to rebuild the Russian Empire. Others say he is obsessed with bringing Ukraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence. Some believe that Putin wants to control Ukraine’s vast offshore energy resources. Still others speculate that Putin, an aging autocrat, is seeking to maintain his grip on power.

Guy wrote earlier this week about Russian intelligence officials warning that their military faces disaster in Ukraine. The invasion has not really gone according to plan. Russian forces are stalled. Major cities have not been taken; the capital of Kyiv has not been taken. The 40-mile convoy outside of the capital, which is supposedly the force that will deliver the death blow, has not moved in days. The Russian death toll ranges are all over the place. The Ukrainians claim that at least 12,000 Russians have been killed. Other estimates are in the 4-8,000 range. The truth is we don’t know, and we may never know.

Russia deliberately blew up foreign fighters and arms shipments at a Ukrainian base close to the Polish border on Sunday and has vowed to carry out more strikes in a direct warning to the West.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s ministry of defence, said the base at Yavoriv – 12 miles from NATO territory – was struck by ‘long-range, high-precision’ weapons because it was hosting ‘foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons’.

He added: ‘The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.’

Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya and bloodthirsty stalwart of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has surfaced in Ukraine fighting alongside invading Russian forces.

Kadyrov announced his presence in a Telegram video of himself in uniform and reviewing plans with soldiers. He said the video was from Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv captured by Russia early in the invasion, which is now into its third week.

The Russian government on Sunday reportedly threatened foreign companies who plan to withdraw from the nation they could have their staff members arrested and assets seized, as Moscow seeks to mitigate the economic impact of sanctions.

Western pundits may flock to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news; but the one infosphere that really matters in Russia’s war against Ukraine is Telegram.

The messaging and social media platform has played a central role in the conflict since the outset, both as a vehicle for state propaganda and disinformation, as well as an invaluable news source for ordinary Ukrainians and Russians. That means there’s a lot hinging on a company and app that is poorly understood in the West. And, as the company’s founder Pavel Durov demonstrated when he considered blocking Telegram in both countries last week, a lot also rides on one man’s decisions.

The conflict on the ground isn’t the only one — there’s plenty of propaganda afoot too

Deterrence works. Russia’s nukes are the only thing keeping the US from full-out war in Ukraine just six months after retreating from Afghanistan. The unprecedented propaganda effort by Ukraine and its helpers in the American mass media to drag the US and NATO directly into the fight has failed — so far. But the struggle — the one for your mind space — is not over.

To understand what follows, you have to wipe away a lot of bull being slung your way. Insanity is not the only explanation for Putin’s actions of the past few weeks. From a Russian standpoint, he is carrying out a rational political-military strategy in Ukraine, seizing Russian-speaking territory such as Donbas, demilitarizing eastern Ukraine by force, and most of all creating a physical buffer zone between his country’s southern border and NATO. That zone may end at the Dnieper River with a loop around Odessa, or it may end at the Polish border, depending on how smoothly things go on the ground and on what level of “back away” message Putin wishes to send NATO.

This weekend I re-read 1984, a book I tend to reach for when I get Defcon-1 depressed about the state of the world. Deep in the novel, Winston ponders the intricacies of doublethink:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them… To forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again… that was the ultimate subtlety.

In the last weeks, Russia took an already exacting speech environment to new extremes.

Nazis, genocide, Nato, history: Russia has no shortage of apparent justifications for its war in Ukraine.

But are any of them valid? Were Russian speakers endangered in the country’s east? Is Nato’s expansion a material threat to Moscow? Were there cliques of neo-Nazis running amok in Ukraine?

We assess whether Russia’s claims justify the invasion of a sovereign country.

A good Guardian piece that debunks Putin’s claims.