Donbas
With Vladimir Putin indulging his Soviet-nostalgic fantasies, regardless of the cost to the citizens of his own country, much less those of Ukraine, readers may want to have a look at Serhiy Zhadan's recently translated The Orphanage -- the best novel available in English describing the sad situation and conflict Russia has been responsible for in Donbas for nearly a decade now. Alas, it looks like things are going to get worse -- apparently much worse, given Putin's delusions.
Putin believed he could invade Ukraine because everything we failed to do over the last 22 years taught him that we are weak
Ukraine War Took Vladimir Putin From Steely-Eyed KGB Man to Military Bumbler. “Putin had hoped for a quick and decisive win, as the US military did to Iraq in 1991. What he’s getting is more like the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1979: A brutal mess that might go on for a long time.”
How Biden defeated Putin’s Ukraine disinformation campaign
Quartz: “…As Putin and his allies have claimed, falsely, that Ukraine is committing genocide, controlled by Nazis, developing nuclear weapons, or launching attacks on pro-Russian civilians, the US has worked to “prebunk” these narratives, Harding says, arguing that “the final accounting is going to show that the strategy made Russia’s life much harder.”
Our theory has been that putting true information into the public domain, which was bearing out in real time because everybody can see what they’re actually doing, was the best way to prevent the Russians and what they always do, which is to try to control the narrative with disinformation,” an anonymous US official told the New York Times…”
IT’S COME TO THIS: China shared U.S. intelligence on Ukraine crisis with Russia.
China’s government took U.S. intelligence provided to convince Beijing to join American-led efforts to head off a military attack on Ukraine and shared it with Russia, according to a person familiar with the activity.
Intelligence-sharing with a major U.S. adversary is unusual but was part of repeated diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration to gain support from China in dissuading Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
However, the Chinese government repeatedly rebuffed the efforts and instead turned over the intelligence data to Moscow, an indication of the growing ties between Beijing and Moscow.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: Ukraine in the Colosseum.
It’s not as if the U.S. and its NATO allies have failed to react to Vladimir Putin’s amplifying threats and current onslaught against Ukraine. We’ve seen months of frantic U.S.-led diplomacy, European visits to the Kremlin, speeches in Munich, additional U.S. troops dispatched to reinforce NATO, UN Security Council meetings and new sanctions on top of old sanctions.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to escape the sense that the mighty democracies of the West are not so much standing with Ukraine as sitting like spectators at the Colosseum — watching Ukraine do single combat against Russia
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Dogs with rare eating disorder may benefit from Viagra.