Elon Musk: Smart people who doubt AI are ‘way dumber than they think’ – Business Insider – Business Insider

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk reiterated his concerns about the future of artificial intelligence on Wednesday, saying those who don't believe a computer could surpass their cognitive abilities are "way dumber than they think they are."

"I've been banging this AI drum for a decade," Musk said. "We should be concerned about where AI is going. The people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart, because they can't imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them. That's the flaw in their logic. They're just way dumber than they think they are."

Musk has previously said he believes AI poses a much larger threat to humanity than nuclear weapons and called for regulations to monitor the development of AI technology.

"I think the danger of AI is much bigger than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot," Musk said in 2018. "Nobody would suggest we allow the world to just build nuclear warheads if they want, that would be insane. And mark my words: AI is far more dangerous than nukes."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has disagreed with Musk, saying AI has already improved health care and could reduce car accidents, while calling excessive pessimism about AI "pretty irresponsible." In response, Musk calledZuckerberg's understanding of AI "limited."

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter atmmatousek@businessinsider.com. You can also reach out on Signal at 646-768-4712 or email this reporter's encrypted address atmmatousek@protonmail.com.

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Stanford Scientist: AI Is the New Electricity – Wall Street Journal (blog) (subscription)

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Vladimir Putin – Ex-Wife, Age & Facts – Biography

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Vladimir Putin served as president of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and was re-elected to the presidency in 2012. He previously served as Russia's prime minister.

In 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister and promoted former KGB officer Vladimir Putin in his place. In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned, appointing Putin president, and he was re-elected in 2004. In April 2005, he made a historic visit to Israel the first visit there by any Kremlin leader. Putin could not run for the presidency again in 2008, but was appointed prime minister by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin was re-elected to the presidency in March 2012 and later won a fourth term. In 2014, he was reportedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, on October 7, 1952. He grew up with his family in a communal apartment, attending the local grammar and high schools, where he developed an interest in sports. After graduating from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975, Putin began his career in the KGB as an intelligence officer. Stationed mainly in East Germany, he held that position until 1990, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Upon returning to Russia, Putin held an administrative position at the University of Leningrad, and after the fall of communism in 1991 became an adviser to liberal politician Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak was elected mayor of Leningrad later that year, Putin became his head of external relations, and by 1994, Putin had become Sobchak's first deputy mayor.

After Sobchak's defeat in 1996, Putin resigned his post and moved to Moscow. There, in 1998, Putin was appointed deputy head of management under Boris Yeltsin's presidential administration. In that position, he was in charge of the Kremlin's relations with the regional governments.

Shortly afterward, Putin was appointed head of the Federal Security Service, an arm of the former KGB, as well as head of Yeltsin's Security Council. In August 1999, Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister, Sergey Stapashin, along with his cabinet, and promoted Putin in his place.

In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia and appointed Putin acting president until official elections were held, and in March 2000, Putin was elected to his first term with 53 percent of the vote. Promising both political and economic reforms, Putin set about restructuring the government and launching criminal investigations into the business dealings of high-profile Russian citizens. He also continued Russia's military campaign in Chechnya.

In September 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin announced Russia's support for the United States in its anti-terror campaign. However, when the United States' "war on terror" shifted focus to the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder and French President Jacques Chirac in opposition of the plan.

In 2004, Putin was re-elected to the presidency, and in April of the following year made a historic visit to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon marking the first visit to Israel by any Kremlin leader.

Due to constitutional term limits, Putin was prevented from running for the presidency in 2008. (That same year, presidential terms in Russia were extended from four to six years.) However, when his protg Dmitry Medvedev succeeded him as president in March 2008, he immediately appointed Putin as Russia's prime minister, allowing Putin to maintain a primary position of influence for the next four years.

On March 4, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected to his third term as president. After widespread protests and allegations of electoral fraud, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, and shortly after taking office appointed Medvedev as prime minister. Once more at the helm, Putin has continued to make controversial changes to Russia's domestic affairs and foreign policy.

In December 2012, Putin signed into a law a ban on the U.S. adoption of Russian children. According to Putin, the legislationwhich took effect on January 1, 2013 aimed to make it easier for Russians to adopt native orphans. However, the adoption ban spurred international controversy, reportedly leaving nearly 50 Russian children who were in the final phases of adoption with U.S. citizens at the time that Putin signed the law in legal limbo.

Putin further strained relations with the United States the following year when he granted asylum to Edward Snowden, whois wanted by the United States for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. In response to Putin's actions,U.S. President Barack Obamacanceled a planned meeting with Putin that August.

Around this time, Putin also upset many people with his new anti-gay laws. He made it illegal for gay couples to adopt in Russia and placed a ban on propagandizing "nontraditional" sexual relationships to minors. The legislation led to widespread international protest.

In September 2013, tensions rose between the United States and Syria over Syria's possession of chemical weapons, with the U.S. threatening military action if the weapons were not relinquished. The immediate crisis was averted, however, when the Russian and U.S. governments brokered a deal whereby those weapons would be destroyed.

On September 11, 2013, The New York Times publishedan op-ed piece by Putin titled "A Plea for Caution From Russia." In the article, Putin spoke directly to the U.S.'s position in taking action against Syria, stating that such a unilateral move could result in the escalation of violence and unrest in the Middle East.

Putin further asserted that the U.S. claim that Bashar al-Assad used the chemical weapons on civilians might be misplaced, with the more likely explanation being the unauthorized use of the weapons by Syrian rebels. He closed the piece by welcoming the continuation of an open dialogue between the involved nations to avoid further conflict in the region.

In 2014, Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, which were held in Sochi beginning on February 6. According to NBS Sports, Russia spent roughly $50 billion in preparation for the international event.

However, in response to what many perceived as Russia's recently passed anti-gay legislation, the threat of international boycotts arose. In October 2013, Putin tried to allay some of these concerns, saying in an interview broadcast on Russian television that "We will do everything to make sure that athletes, fans and guests feel comfortable at the Olympic Games regardless of their ethnicity, race or sexual orientation."

In terms of security for the event, Putin implemented new measures aimed at cracking down on Muslim extremists, and in November 2013 reports surfaced that saliva samples had been collected from some Muslim women in the North Caucasus region. The samples were ostensibly to be used to gather DNA profiles, in an effort to combat female suicide bombers known as "black widows."

Shortly after the conclusion of the 2014 Winter Olympics, amidst widespread political unrest in Ukraine, which resulted in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea, a peninsula in the country's northeast coast of the Black Sea. The peninsula had been part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, former Premier of the Soviet Union, gave it to Ukraine in 1954.

Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, Yuriy Sergeyev, claimed that approximately 16,000 troops invaded the territory, and Russia's actions caught the attention of several European countries and the United States, who refused to accept the legitimacy of a referendum in which the majority of the Crimean population voted to secede from Ukraine and reunite with Russia.

Putin defended his actions, insisting that the troops sent into Ukraine were only meant to enhance Russia's military defenses within the country referring to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which has its headquarters in Crimea. He also vehemently denied accusations by other nations, particularly the United States, that Russia intended to engage Ukraine in war.

He went on to claim that although he was granted permission from Russia's upper house of Parliament to use force in Ukraine, he found it unnecessary. Putin also wrote off any speculation that there would be a further incursion into Ukrainian territory, saying, "Such a measure would certainly be the very last resort."

The following day, it was announced that Putin had been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

In September 2015, Russia surprised the world by announcing it would begin strategic airstrikes in Syria. Despite government officials' assertions that the military actions were intended to target the extremist Islamic State, which made significant advances in the region due to the power vacuum created by Syria's ongoing civil war, Russia's true motives were called into question, with many international analysts and government officials claiming that the airstrikes were in fact aimed at the rebel forces attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's historically repressive regime.

In late October 2017, Putin was personally involved in another alarming form of aerial warfare when he oversaw a late-night military drill that resulted in the launch of four ballistic missiles across the country. The drill came during a period of escalating tensions in the region, with Russian neighbor North Korea also drawing attention for its missile tests and threats to engage the U.S. in destructive conflict.

In December 2017, Putin announced he was ordering Russian forces to begin withdrawing from Syria, saying the country's two-year campaign to destroy ISIS was complete, though he left open the possibility of returning if terrorist violence resumed in the area. Despite the declaration, Pentagon spokesmanRobert Manning was hesitantto endorse that view of events, saying,"Russian comments about removal of their forces do not often correspond with actual troop reductions."

Months prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies unilaterally agreed that Russian intelligence was behind the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta,who had, at the time, been chairman of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.

In December 2016 unnamed senior CIA officials further concluded "with a high level of confidence" that Putin was personally involved in intervening in the U.S. presidential election, according to a report byUSA Today. The officials further went on to assert that the hacked DNC and Podesta emailsthat were given to WikiLeaks just before U.S. Election Day were designed to undermine Clinton's campaignin favor of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. Soon after, the FBI and National Intelligence Agency publicly supported the CIA's assessments.

Putin denied any such attempts to disrupt the U.S. election, and despite the assessments of his intelligence agencies, President Trump generally seemed to favor the word of his Russian counterpart. Underscoring their attempts to thaw public relations, the Kremlin in late 2017 revealed that a terror attack had been thwarted in St. Petersburg, thanks tointelligence provided by the CIA.

Around that time,Putin reported at his annual end-of-year press conference that he would seek a new six-year term as president in early 2018 as an independent candidate, signaling he was ending his longtime association with the United Russia party.

Shortly before the first formal summit between Presidents Putin and Trump in July 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictments of 12 Russian operatives on charges relating to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Regardless, Trump suggested he was satisfied with his counterpart's "strong and powerful" denial in a joint news conference and praised Putin's offer to submit the 12 indicted agents to questioning with American witnesses present.

In a subsequent interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, Putin seemingly defended the hacking of the DNC server by suggesting that no false information was planted in the process. He also rejected the idea that he had compromising information about Trump, saying that the businessman "was of no interest for us" before announcing his presidential campaign, and notably refused to touch a copy of the indictments offered to him by Wallace.

In March 2018, toward the end of his third term, Putin boasted of new weaponry that would render NATO defenses "completely worthless," including a low-flying nuclear-capable cruise missile with "unlimited" range and another one capable of traveling at hypersonic speed. His demonstration included video animation of attacks on the United States.

Not long afterward, a two-hour documentary, titled Putin, was posted to several social media pages and a pro-Kremlin YouTube account. Designed to showcase the president in a strong yet humane light, the doc featured Putin sharing the story of how he ordered a hijacked plane shot down to head off a bomb scare at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, as well as recollections of his grandfather's days as a cook for Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

On March 18, 2018, the fourth anniversary of the country's seizure of Crimea, Russian citizens overwhelmingly elected Putin to a fourth presidential term, with 67 percent of the electorate turning out to award him more than 76 percent of the vote. The divided opposition stood little chance against the popular leader, his closest competitor notching around 13 percent of the vote.

Little was expected to change regarding Putin's strategies for rebuilding the country as a global power, though the start of his final term set off questions about his successor, and whether he would affect constitutional change in an attempt to remain in office indefinitely.

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, for the first formal talks between the two leaders. According to Russia, topics of the meeting included the ongoing war in Syria and "the removal of the concerns" about accusations of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The following April, Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un for the first time. The two leaders discussed the issue of the North Korean laborers in Russia, while Putin also offered support of his counterpart's denuclearization negotiations with the U.S., saying Kim would need "security guarantees" in exchange for abandoning his nuclear program.

The topic of whether Putin aimed to extend his hold on power resurfaced following hisstate-of-the-nation speech in January 2020, which included proposals for constitutional amendments that included transferring the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the Parliament. The entire cabinet, including Medvedev, promptly resigned, leading to the selection of Mikhail V. Mishustin as the new prime minister.

In 1980, Putin met his future wife, Lyudmila, who was working as a flight attendant at the time. The couple married in 1983 and had two daughters: Maria, born in 1985, and Yekaterina, born in 1986. In early June 2013, after nearly 30 years of marriage, Russia's first couple announced that they were getting a divorce, providing little explanation for the decision, but assuring that they came to it mutually and amicably.

"There are people who just cannot put up with it," Putin stated. "Lyudmila Alexandrovna has stood watch for eight, almost nine years." Providing more context to the decision, Lyudmila added, "Our marriage is over because we hardly ever see each other. Vladimir Vladimirovich is immersed in his work, our children have grown and are living their own lives."

An Orthodox Christian, Putin is said to attend church services on important dates and holidays on a regular basis and has had a long history of encouraging the construction and restoration of thousands of churches in the region. He generally aims to unify all faiths underthe government's authorityand legally requires religious organizations to register with local officials for approval.

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Vladimir Putin - Ex-Wife, Age & Facts - Biography

Putin’s only real vulnerability the Russian street | TheHill

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Landmarks around the world, from Berlins Brandenburg Gate to Romes Colosseum and Londons 10 Downing Street, have been lit with the colors of the Ukrainian flag to show support for Ukraine after Russias invasion. In nearly every major city, thousands of people have amassed in public squares and outside Russian embassies in protest. In Bucharest, the crowds chanted, Putin the assassin. In Geneva, one native Russian told the media, Im ashamed of my country of birth.

But, most importantly, the Russian people inside Russia are protesting. Dozens of Russian celebrities have already spoken out against the invasion. One online petition gathered nearly a million signatures in four days, and anti-war rallies have taken place in at least 51 cities around the country, including at Great Gostiny Dvor, one of St. Petersburgs most famous landmarks.

Right now, Russians are torn over Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinUS set to sanction more Russian oligarchs: report Biden hails UN vote: 'Lays bare Putin's isolation' Substitute teacher suspended for remarks supporting Putin's invasion of Ukraine MOREs invasion of Ukraine. On one hand, Putin is telling them it is a necessary action to prevent hostilities against our country. But as images of the atrocities come out a fatally wounded child in unicorn pajamas; a mother delivering a baby in a bomb shelter Putins grip on the narrative is faltering.

Heres why this matters: Putin requires public support. He can survive in power with economic sanctions targeting his inner circle, his major industries and his country. He can survive an onslaught of foreign weapons and forces sent to Ukraine and his military planes shot down. But he absolutely cannot survive the loss of the Russian streets. He must maintain popular support.

Ive spent my career studying violence, and the pattern is always the same: A political leader gains support by marketing violence as essential to his groups well-being. As Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, Ideology that is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification.

Putin has never shied away from praising Stalin and his ideology. But it begs the question: Could Stalin and his Gulags and his torture chambers and his massacres have happened today, in the internet era?

Warfare politics is really just a game of marketing and branding. Nothing is more important to the success of a violent campaign than the narrative behind it. Osama bin Laden grounded his narrative in religion. In his 2002 letter to the American people (which was really a letter intended to inspire his own followers), he began by quoting the Quran: So fight you against the friends of Satan.

Maos Cultural Revolution seems similar to todays moves by Putin. Mao invoked the narrative of class struggle to justify his violence: If the peasants do not apply great force, the power of the landlords, built up over thousands of years, can never be uprooted.

Putins narrative is an ideology of nationalism. In his Feb. 21 speech, he constructed a narrative, mainly directed toward his own people, that his invasion is intended to protect what is rightfully Russian, to prevent the disintegration of our united country. Modern Ukraine, he wrongly asserted, was entirely created by Russia and is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.

He also used a classic strategy for building support for violence setting up a framework of us versus them. They are torturing people, children, women, elderly people, he said of Ukrainian forces. And the only goal they [Western leaders] have is to contain the development of Russia. It does not matter to the success of his campaign that these accusations are entirely false. All that matters is, as The New York Times says, at least muddying the Russian publics understanding. Every prominent invader in history, from Stalin to Hitler to ISIS leaders, have relied on this same strategy.

If Stalin could not succeed in the internet era, then Putin will fail. Millions of people assembled in the streets of Egypt in 2011, backed by a world watching online, overpowered Egypts long-serving president Hosni Mubarak. The voices of the people, when amplified, can overpower even the strongest leader.

President BidenJoe BidenBiden hails UN vote: 'Lays bare Putin's isolation' Overnight Defense & National Security US tries to turn down the dial on Russia Johns Hopkins doctor says children need to get vaccinated against COVID-19 MORE, other heads of state, members of Congress and freely elected legislators around the world, celebrities and social media influencers, and all people of the world must engage in the counter-narrative. Praise the people of Ukraine for their courage and share in their pain. But most importantly, to reverse this ill-conceived invasion and end the suffering and madness, support the people protesting in the Russian street, because only they can overpower Putin.

Gary M.Shiffman, Ph.D., is an economist, a Gulf War veteran and a former chief of staff of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He is the founder ofGiant OakandConsilientand author of The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism.

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Putins misadventure unites the West Press Enterprise

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As of this writing, predictions of a Russian day or two romp through Ukraine, all the way to the point of threatening NATO countries, have proven wrong. Profoundly wrong.

War is always unpredictable.

But clearly much of the American news coverage underestimated both the totalitarian appetite of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the grit and determination of the outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian people, a resolve against Putins designs that has inspired the West and caused Europe to rethink its dependence on Russian energy. In response to the United States offer of evacuation to a safe-haven extended to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he responded, I need ammunition, not a ride.

Be careful about the American reporting. After former President Barack Obamas administration successfully pushed the Iran Deal, his Deputy National Security Adviser and point man for the agreement, Ben Rhodes, boasted to The New York Times about how he pulled it off.

He admitted that he peddled a phony narrative, completely swallowed by an accommodating media, about the supposed battle between moderate versus hardline Iranian ayatollahs. To give the moderates more sway and to lessen the potential for war against Israel and the West, Rhodes argued during the negotiations, the moderates need this deal. Rhodes said he invented this moderates-versus-hardliners construct in order to complete the deal.

How did he dupe the media into parroting his fake narrative? Because of legacy medias drastic changes to adapt to the internet, changes resulting in downsizing and the elimination of experienced journalists, Rhodes said: The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. Thats a sea change. They literally know nothing.

Ukrainian news bloggers criticized inexperienced American journalists, many of whom are newly dispatched to Ukraine. They had never been to Ukraine, never covered Ukrainian politics and know little to nothing about its people, culture, history or topography.

The media, of course, fail to credit former President Donald Trumps forewarning about growing European dependence upon a potentially menacing Russia. At a Brussels, Belgium, NATO summit in 2018, Trump gave the Europeans a tongue-lashing for relying on Russian energy, failing to contribute the recommended percentage of their GDP to NATO, while simultaneously depending upon America to defend itself against possible Russian aggression.

To NATOs Secretary General, sitting across a table and flanked by NATO country leaders, Trump said: I have to say, I think its very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where youre supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia. So were protecting Germany. Were protecting France. Were protecting all of these countries. And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where theyre paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.

So were supposed to protect you against Russia, but theyre paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think thats very inappropriate. And the former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company thats supplying the gas. Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas.

So, you tell me, is that appropriate?

After Russias invasion of Ukraine, Germany suddenly announced an increase in its financial commitment to NATO. Calling the stepped-up contribution his countrys historical responsibility so that Putin does not turn the clocks back, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, It is clear that we must invest significantly more in the security of our country, in order to protect our freedom and democracy.

Meanwhile, it appears that even in Russia things are not playing out as Putin anticipated. Reportedly, several thousand Russians have been arrested for engaging in street protests against the war in Ukraine. And the Russian authorities are not exactly soft on crime and believers in cashless bail. Protesting against the Russian government is serious business.

More could have and should have been done by President Joe Biden and our European allies to prevent this invasion. Bidens disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan caused China, Iran and North Korea to perceive Biden as weak. During 2021, America, according to the Energy Information Administration, imported a monthly average of 670,000 barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia, smashing the previous record set in 2011.

But the world is awakening. Will Putin get the message?

Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

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Putins misadventure unites the West Press Enterprise

Russians Have Suddenly Stopped Buying Putins Anti …

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Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

MOSCOWIts easy to see why President Vladimir Putin might have thought ratcheting up tensions on Ukraines border and blaming it all on NATO and the U.S. would rally his faltering support back home, but this time something different is happening.

Most Russians arent buying it.

Domestic propaganda levels have reached near-hysteria this year after anti-Putin protests swept the country following the attempted murder and imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The drumbeat of war against Ukraine is becoming louder by the week and Putin has made ever wilder demands of NATO, which was the primary focus of his talking points in the video conference summit with President Biden earlier this month. He must surely know those demands can never be met.

Ukraine: America Dropped the Ball on Russias Invasion Threat

If you follow the localstate-ownedTV stations in Russia, you are constantly warned that a new war is on the horizon; that Russia will bravely stand up to the West; and that America is the real enemy.

That message is increasingly falling on deaf ears.

A study published this week by the Levada Analytical Center showed that for the first time in years more Russians think positively than negatively about the U.S.by 45 percent to 42 percent.

When Levada asked the same question in May, only 31 percent said the U.S. was good vs. 54 percent bad.

In those intervening months, Moscow has accused Washington of fueling tension over Ukraine, gas pipelines, Navalny, and hacking. Tit-for-tat diplomatic spats have led to the U.S. embassy cutting 75 percent of staff in Moscow and no longer processing visas, meaning Russians wanting U.S. travel visas and green cards now have to apply in Warsaw. An agreement is in the works to fix that particular stand-off, but it shows the real world impact of diplomatic wrangling on ordinary people.

Politicians and ordinary people often have different agendas, said Susanna Emirali, a young advertising producer. Most of my friends understand that ordinary Americans are cool.

Story continues

Emirali is typical of the Russians who are now rejecting state propaganda. She says she avoids watching political talk shows on television and prefers to read her news on independent outlets online. She believes the United States has nothing to do with Russias biggest problems and hopes the conflict between Moscow and Washington will soon end.

While Moscow and Washington are at loggerheads over red lines and security guarantees, ordinary Russians are growing tired of the aggressive anti-Western propaganda thrown at them from their TV sets every night. This flies in the face of years of assumptions that Putin can turn up the dial on anti-Americanism feeling among Russians at will.

The Russian Public Is Being Primed for Another of Putins Wars

During the pandemic last year Emirali said she saw her mother and fathers eyes begin to open. Both engineers in their late forties, they stopped watching television and began to read news on independent sites, learning first about the poisoning attack on Navalny, then about his arrest and about the mass opposition protests in both Russia and Belarus.

They began to sympathize with arrested peaceful protesters, so their political views have changed, they openly blame Putin for domestic problems, Emirali said.

The author of Levadas report, Lev Gudkov, said there had been a fundamental shift in Russia. We see increasingly deep public disillusionment in Putins leadership: incomes have decreased by 13 percent since 2010 and during the pandemic many more people lost jobs and grew poorer; there are nearly twice as many cases of political persecutions, he said. It is important to understand that Russians now have much less tolerance for anti-American propaganda, it makes people angry during the pandemic to see that the state spends more money on buying arms and preparing for wars than on new hospitals, district clinicsour medical service is in poor condition.

Gudkov says a majority of Russians believe that it is Putin who is responsible for their woes. Russians realize that it is not the United States that is responsible for domestic problems. As for the international issues, people are worried about the waran absolute majority of our respondents, 75 percent, say that the military tensions on the border with Ukraine might blow up into a war between Russia and Ukraine, he told The Daily Beast.

The winner of this years Nobel Peace Prize, Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, used the ceremony this week to invoke the words of another former Peace Prize winner, ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev. He once told ministers that were agitating for further military adventure to stop your hawk squawk.

Muratov repeated that demand, and called for journalists and politicians to stop the hawk squawk now.

Ordinary Russians dream of an end to the Cold War rhetoric and for the authorities to stop painting Washington as public enemy No. 1.

And yet, when The Daily Beast approached a pro-Kremlin analyst with questions about Russias tensions with the West and Ukraine, we were told it was all the fault of the U.S.

Americans should understand the word undo and restore the situation we had in Ukraine back in 2013 when it was in Russias sphere of influence, Dmitry Drobniysky said.

On television, the propagandists continue to spin. After the Putin-Biden talks, one of the Kremlins key supporters Dmitry Kisilyov told viewers that Americans were beginning to realize that Russia is now the dominant force: Ever since the 1990s America behaved as though it was the winner in the Cold War but their feeling of superiority has been melting as the decades passed and after the two-hour long Putin-Biden conversation there was nothing left of it.

In reality, many people are now questioning the propaganda. Olga Alekseyeva, a retired doctor from Saint Petersburg, said she has been following the viral reports of inhumane practices, including torture, in Russian prisons where political dissidents like Navalny are confined.

She is one of nine million people who viewed an explosive recent Yuriy Dud documentary on YouTube. People analyze the outrageously unfair court system, lawlessness in security services here, so I am not surprised more Russians like the West, Alekseyeva told The Daily Beast. My friends in San Francisco tell me how hard and expensive life is in the U.S. but I am personally thankful that the U.S. tries to help Russia. Maybe they have no genuine sympathy for our political prisoners, its just a political agenda, but at least they talk with Putin and he listens to themthat is wonderful. As sometimes, I think, maybe Putin is totally isolated.

Bidens First International Test: Can He Save Ukraine From Putin?

Many young Russians pay little attention to political news. Karen Shainyan films young Russians for his journalistic Queerography project on YouTube.

So far, he has filmed life stories of LGBTQ people in eight Russian regions, including Yakutia in the far north, Vladivostok in the east, Sochi on the Black Sea and Tatarstan on the Volga river. We interviewed 10 people in Kazan, three of them were IT experts planning to move to the United States. There is a lot of respect for the West in our community, to countries like United States where queer people have rights.

Putin is facing a slow moving generational issue, with young people striving for independence, but the coronavirus has also accelerated his problems.

There have been over 800,000 excess deaths in Russia since the pandemic began. Crowds of voters appealed to Russian politicians, complaining about poor medical service, tiny salaries, miserable pensions, and unemployment during recent parliamentary and local elections. I have spoken with dozens of Russians unhappy about their lives who blame the government but I have not met anybody in Saint Petersburg who would blame the U.S. for their domestic troubles, opposition deputy Boris Vishnevsky told The Daily Beast. It does not surprise me that the propaganda does not work.

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Putin’s dwindling options and isolation fuel fears about his next moves – CBS News

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Washington Western officials are warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin could resort to increasingly brutal and extreme tactics in Ukraine as Russian forces struggle to achieve their military objectives and questions arise about Putin's grip on power.

A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Wednesday that Russian forces advancing toward Kyiv "appear to be stalled" and were suffering overall from "logistical and sustainment problems as well as integration problems."

"The Russians will learn from these missteps and try to overcome them," the official said.

President Biden said Wednesday that the Russian leader was "isolated from the world more than ever," as a raft of sanctions destabilizes the Russian economy and Moscow's invasion is met with near-global condemnation.

Observers of the Kremlin have noted that Putin, a former intelligence officer previously known for his restraint, has appeared uncharacteristically agitated, delivering meandering screeds and publicly lashing out at his aides.

"He was always cold, calculating and ruthless. You know, a KGB man through and through," said Mike Vickers, a former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, special operations officer and CIA officer who played an instrumental part in arming the Afghan insurgency during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. "But he's now more emotional, more erratic, more rambling, I think more reckless, perhaps from increasing self-isolation and confidence in himself."

"This looks like a major strategic blunder that the potential losses way outweigh the gains," Vickers added during a recent episode of CBS News' "Intelligence Matters"podcast. "And so I think in that sense, he really is a different man now, and therefore potentially more dangerous."

Current and former officials and people briefed on U.S. intelligence say agencies have assessed that Putin is an experienced, calculating and rational actor with a distinct worldview, but who has in recent years and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic become more isolated and unpredictable, relying on a dwindling circle of advisers and aides.

Sources who spoke with CBS News were not aware of credible information that Putin, apart from being nearly 70 years old, is physically ailing or suffering from neurological issues that would leave him detached from reality.

U.S. policymakers are asking for fresh insights into his thinking from the CIA and other agencies, where leadership analysts are tasked full-time with profiling world leaders like Putin and other decision-makers in foreign governments. Their roles involve combining and analyzing different types of collected intelligence information obtained from human sources, intercepted communications, and via other means to determine leaders' motivations and their potential vulnerabilities.

Some Western officials have argued that Putin, while less restrained, has for decades made no secret of his agenda, motivations or frustrations.

"I think there's been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when he put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO," Fiona Hill, a longtime Russia expert and former National Security Council official, recently told Politico Magazine.

Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who now serves as a member of the European Parliament, compared the current situation to the years leading up to World War II.

"Identical to the 1930s ... the leader of a major nation-state was telling us publicly that he has a plan of conquest. And our mistake was to think, 'This is too nuts; he can't possibly mean it.' Both of them did mean it," Sikorski told CBS News in a recent interview.

"[Putin] wants to undo the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he's been clear about that," he added.

The French news agency AFP quoted an anonymous official in French President Emmanuel Macron's office as saying that Putin is now "more rigid and isolated" than he has been in the past.

"The Putin that [Macron] met at the Kremlin was not the same that he had seen in December 2019," the official said, referring to Macron's February meeting with Putin at the Kremlin.

Concerns that Russia may soon employ prohibited weapons such as cluster munitions or thermobaric "vacuum" bombs have risen as unverified videos circulate on social media of their positioning on Ukrainian soil.

The International Criminal Court said Wednesday it would open an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine, after 38 nations signed onto a referral for an expedited inquiry.

Speaking in Vienna, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said in a speech on Thursday that the U.S. had credible information the Russians were keeping lists of Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.

"Given what we have seen in past Russian operations, we expect that the Russian Federation will try to force the population to cooperate through intimidation, abuse, and repressionincluding through targeted killings, kidnappings, detentions, and physical abuse," he said.

Margaret Brennan and Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.

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Putin's dwindling options and isolation fuel fears about his next moves - CBS News

After Putin-Macron Call, France Sees Russia Wanting ‘All Ukraine’ – The New York Times

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A phone conversation between President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday offered little hope that the fighting in Ukraine would abate any time soon, with the Kremlin saying it had no intention of backing down from a war that is going according to plan and the French presidency warning that Mr. Putin appeared determined to invade the entire country.

Our analysis of the military operations is that the Russian ambitions are to take control of all of Ukraine, said a senior official in the French presidency, who briefed reporters on the 90-minute conversation between the two leaders and said Mr. Macron expressed pessimism after the call.

Nothing is certain about the success of Russias operations, but we have to expect that the worst is to come, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with French government practice. There is nothing in what President Putin said that should reassure us, the official added.

The call, which the French presidency said came at the Kremlins request, was the third discussion between the two leaders since the start of the war. Mr. Macron, who was expected to announce his candidacy for re-election in April later on Thursday, has positioned himself at the center of the diplomacy in Europe, burnishing his stature in France and abroad by becoming an interlocutor with Mr. Putin.

But even as the French presidency stressed that France would keep diplomatic lines open with Russia as long as necessary including to organize the passage of humanitarian aid the successive phone calls have shown the limits of Mr. Macrons outreach to Mr. Putin.

The French official offered a grim assessment of Mr. Putins determination to pursue the conflict, saying that the Russian leader repeated a lengthy list of grievances and perceived slights from Western countries that he said had forced him to act. Mr. Putin also repeated demands that the Ukrainian government and other European countries have already deemed unacceptable, the official said.

Mr. Macron told Mr. Putin that he was making a serious mistake and was deluding himself and looking for pretexts with his assertions that the Kyiv government was run by Nazis, the official said. Mr. Macron warned that Russia would pay dearly, leaving the country weakened, isolated and under sanctions for a very long time.

In its own readout of the call, the Kremlin said that Mr. Putin had told his French counterpart that his main goal was the demilitarization and neutral status of Ukraine. Those goals, the Kremlin said, will be achieved no matter what.

Mr. Putin also denied that Russian forces were attacking civilians, dismissing them as elements of an anti-Russian disinformation campaign.

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After Putin-Macron Call, France Sees Russia Wanting 'All Ukraine' - The New York Times

Vladmir Putin, 66, admits he will ‘soon’ marry his 35-year …

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During an annual televised press conference that ran for almost four hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday was asked by journalist Alexander Yunashev from the tabloid LifeNews when he is getting married and with whom. In response, the Russian strongman subtly smiled and admitted that he intends to wed again in the future. "As a respectable person, I will have to do it sooner or later," Putin said.

LifeNews is allegedly controlled by Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 35, who is rumored to be the Russian president's "longtime girlfriend". It is also being alleged that Kabaeva is growing desperate to know when they will tie the knot.

Kabaeva has been linked with the Russian leader for more than a decade, and is now the head of a major Moscow media company. Furthermore, speculation is rife that the elite pair already has a secret family although such claims have been denied by the Kremlin outright, Daily Mail reports.

While Putin did not give away much at the press conference, many considered the question as either pressure from Kabaeva or the commencement of a PR campaign in Kremlin to reveal the identity of Russia's first lady.

In 2014, Putin announced during a joint appearance with former wife Lyudmila that they had split. However, ever since Kabaeva has been linked with the Russian president, there has been a flurry of social media memes showing their marriage especially after she appeared several times wearing what appears to be a wedding ring.

Historically, the president is known to become tetchy when asked about his love life, and the subject is almost seen as taboo in Russia. That said, Yunashev boldly took the liberty of prefacing his question saying the state media were banned from raising the subject.

Dmitry Kolezev, another journalist, noted Kabaeva's link to the outlet. "So quite literally this was a question from Alina. Beautifully done," he said. While a Telegram news channel stated: "This question was asked by Life, and this is not a coincidence. We are looking forward to seeing the First Lady in 2019!"

Nonetheless, Yunashev later said that he was able to get Putin to go further than he has ever before. "I think he hinted that soon we will learn something," he said. He further noted that Vladimir Putin blatantly struck down such questions with an abrupt "don't get into my personal life" at all "previous press conferences."

For years, Kabaeva has not been linked to any other suitor despite being seen as one of Russia's most eligible women. It was a tabloid called Moscow Korrespondent owned by Putin's former KGB spy colleague Alexander Lebedev that first revealed their alleged relationship.

After resigning as a pro-Putin MP in the Russian parliament, Kabaeva became the head of the staunchly pro-Kremlin National Media Group in September 2014. According to reports, the group is known to control or hold key stakes in several newspapers and TV channels.

Irina Viner, Kabaeva's former rhythmic gymnastics coach who is also the wife of billionaire former Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov, commented on her student's love life. "When Alina finds the right time, she will say it herself. I'm just happy for her," she said.

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Vladmir Putin, 66, admits he will 'soon' marry his 35-year ...

Satellite image shows super yacht linked to Putin out of reach of sanctions – CBS News

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As Europe and the U.S. bear down with a raft of aggressive sanctions targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, the super yacht he is believed to own has found safe harbor in a highly militarized port in Russian territorial waters. In new satellite imagery obtained by CBS News, the yacht can be seen docked in a port in Kaliningrad, near Russia's nuclear weapons operations.

Experts say Putin's luxury vessel has become a symbol not only of his vast hidden wealth, but also of how challenging that money has been to find.

"He's a KGB agent, so he's crafty. He knows how to hide when he needs to," said John Smith, former director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers and enforces all foreign sanctions.

Data from MarineTraffic, a global intelligence group, shows Putin's alleged yacht, the Graceful, left Germany two weeks before the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin's government salary is said to be about $140,000, but that doesn't begin to explain the mansions, million-dollar watch collection and over-the-top yacht.

"It would be fair to say he's among the richest men in the world," Smith said.

Though he sells himself as a man of the people, his wealth is estimated to be more than $100 billion.

Putin's critics allege he also has a cliffside palace that includes an amphitheater and a personal tunnel to the beach that doubles as a security bunker.

"Of course, he doesn't acknowledge it as being his own," Smith said. "It doesn't fit with the public persona that he's trying to create to actually acknowledge it."

Putin relies on his oligarch friends to shield his fortune from sanctions, Smith said.

"So if he asked them to do something, they do it in terms of hiding assets, squirreling them in different parts of the globe, they will do what he needs," he said.

Those who have tried to expose Putin's fortune have done so at great personal risk.

Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was assassinated on a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin in 2015. Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 under questionable circumstances in prison after he exposed $230 million in fraud by Putin's friends. Putin publicly condemned Nemtsov's murder and claimed Magnitsky died of a heart attack.

His most recent No. 1 critic, Alexei Navalny, who helped expose Putin's lavish palace, emerged as a political rival and found himself repeatedly jailed. He nearly died after being poisoned two years ago, though Putin has denied responsibility for the poisoning.

"Putin's wealth is one of the most dangerous topics," said Russian journalist Roman Badanin, who spent two decades investigating Putin's financial web.

Badanin said Russian authorities sought to intimidate and silence his reporting team. Six months ago, he reached his breaking point.

"I fled the country. My apartment was searched twice. I have like three criminal charges against me back in Russia," he said.

In his State of the Union address, President Biden said the U.S. and its allies are waging economic war on Putin and Russian oligarchs.

"We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments and your private jets," Biden said.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the formation of a new task force that would target Russian oligarchs.

"Russia is not a transparent economy," Smith said. "The U.S. and our allies have decent information on some of [Putin's] assets, I think a lot will remain a mystery for a long time in the future."

The biggest financial hit for Putin would be sanctions on the energy sector, which Smith says the Russian president has used to build up his wealth for years. So far, Washington and the Europeans have been hesitant to do that.

Catherine Herridge is a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News covering national security and intelligence based in Washington, D.C.

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Satellite image shows super yacht linked to Putin out of reach of sanctions - CBS News

Arts organizations decide whether to work with Putin-supporting artists : Deceptive Cadence – NPR

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Semyon Bychkov, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna, Austria in 2017. Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Semyon Bychkov, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna, Austria in 2017.

Russia reveres its high arts heritage of classical music and ballet. But Western European and American arts organizations are canceling appearances by performers who have financial or personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including some of Russia's biggest stars. At the same time, some Russian and Russian-born artists have been speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine.

Each individual and institution is trying to figure out what to do at this juncture essentially, creating their own foreign policies more or less on the fly.

One American cultural institution that has cut ties with musicians aligned with Putin is New York's famed Metropolitan Opera. In a video message Sunday, the opera company's general manager, Peter Gelb, made the Met's stance clear.

"We can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him not until the invasion and killing has been stopped, order has been restored, and restitutions have been made," he said.

Before a performance Monday night, the Met's orchestra and chorus played and sang the Ukrainian national anthem.

On Thurssday, Gelb announced that Russian soprano Anna Netrebko --who is one of the Met's biggest stars by far will not perform at the New York opera house through at least this November, due to her failure to repudiate Putin. One of her replacements is a Ukrainian singer, Liudmyla Monastyrska.

The same afternoon, the prestigious Cliburn Competition founded by pianist Van Cliburn, whose 1958 win at the first international Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow became a highlight of Cold War diplomacy said that it would allow 15 Russian and Russian-born pianists to participate in early-round auditions next week. (The final round of competition will be held in Fort Worth, Tex. in June.)

"The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is reprehensible and heartbreaking. The Cliburn stands firmly against and condemns this tyranny," the competition said in a statement Thursday. It continued: "The Russian-born pianists who have applied for the Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition are not officials of their government, nor is their participation in the Cliburn state-sponsored. Therefore, in the vision of our namesake and inspiration, Van Cliburn, and our mandate to support young artistswhich is the very core of our missionthe Russian-born pianists will be allowed to audition for the Cliburn Competition."

Kira Thurman is a professor of history and German studies at the University of Michigan. She's also a musicologist. She says that these debates and decisions about the intersection of art and politics are nothing new and that there is no way to unbind them.

"We have totally seen this before, at least throughout the entire 20th century," she notes. "This is the dilemma artists always find themselves under is the artist's social and political responsibility during times of war."

Thurman points to World War II as one example. "Right after the war," she says, "the allied forces, including the US, had a very strong response to artists who had supported Adolf Hitler. The U.S. military, working with the British and other forces, literally tried and gave out sentences to artists who had supported the Nazis or had performed and worked under the Nazi regime."

Thurman points out that the Met itself also has institutional experience in making these decisions. "For example," she says, "by the late 1930s, they decided that it was no longer acceptable to perform Richard Wagner's The Meistersinger of Nuremberg." (Meistersinger is one of Wagner's most plainly anti-Semitic operas, and it was held in particularly high esteem by the Nazis.)

Because of that, Thurman continues, "It had become too much of a political liability for the Metto keep performing that opera. At the same time, though, what's so interesting is after the war, we see a wide range of artists who had been associated with the Nazis come and perform on different American opera stages, as well as keep on performing throughout Europe as well."

Conductor Semyon Bychkov was born in St. Petersburg and emigrated in 1975. He is currently music director and chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and has spoken out against the invasion, as well as canceling a June appearance in Moscow. He says that he believes the current situation isn't just a matter of art versus politics.

"It is about life and death," Bychkov says firmly. "To remain silent in moments like that, for me, is not possible. I am an artist and that is what I do. But art is not separated from life. In fact, art reflects life. It expresses it, and music does it in the in the most extraordinary, eloquent way possible."

He continues: "What we are having right now is a situation of unspeakable suffering. Whether I'm a musician or if I were a doctor, an engineer, a driver, it doesn't really matter. I am a human being above all, and we live in the community of human beings. And when one sees this kind of suffering inflicted on people who have done nothing except just wanted to pursue their path of national independence, making their own choices, they've been hurting absolutely no one.

Bychkov, who is Jewish, adds: "We have seen this kind of things in history. This is not the first time and every time we say it should never happen again, and it does. This is why I couldn't remain silent."

Bychkov says he understands why some Russian artists are in a very difficult position right now, however.

"One has to be aware that Russia today isn't a free country. It is no more free than it was at the time, the very dark times, of Stalin," he says. "It is a true dictatorship and people who live there, life is complicated. They have families. They have jobs. They have obligations imposed on them. I would never judge them because it's really very hard. Each person has to find one's own way."

Bychkov places a caveat on that, however. "The only people that I object to are people who don't think that what's happening is so horrific and so uncalled for and so unacceptable. And they do support the action that the government has taken to invade Ukraine. They will find millions of reasons to say that it's justified."

Thurman cautions cautions that in these heated times, the impulse to stay away from certain performers allied with Putin means that all Russian artists and audiences might be scorned, because of Putin's actions, even outside of official sanctions.

She adds: "At what point can we try to hold on to the idea that art can bring us together even in times of conflict, and that art can be the bridge, so to speak, that we can use to communicate with others across these terrible times and terrible moments? I think the answer always, to my mind, is to think flexibly and to really have a context behind the decision."

For now, each individual and institution are left making their own choices.

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Arts organizations decide whether to work with Putin-supporting artists : Deceptive Cadence - NPR

Putins War to Bring Ukraine to Heel Unites Eastern Europe in Alarm – The New York Times

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PODBORSKO, Poland Scattered around the forest in Poland like archaeological ruins, the crumbling concrete bunkers for decades stored Soviet nuclear warheads. Today, they store only memories deeply painful for Poland, joyous for the Kremlin of the vanished empire that President Vladimir V. Putin wants to rebuild, starting with his war in Ukraine.

Nobody here trusted the Russians before and we certainly dont trust them now, said Mieczyslaw Zuk, a former Polish soldier who oversees the once top-secret nuclear site. The bunkers were abandoned by the Soviet military in 1990 as Moscows hegemony over East and Central Europe unraveled in what President Putin has described as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

Now Eastern European countries fear a catastrophe of their own could be in the making, as Mr. Putin seeks to turn back the clock and reclaim Russias lost sphere of influence, perilously close to their frontiers. Even leaders in the region who have long supported Mr. Putin are sounding the alarm.

Warnings about Moscows intentions, often dismissed until last Thursdays invasion of Ukraine as Russophobia by those without experience of living in proximity to Russia, are now widely accepted as prescient. And while there has been debate about whether efforts to expand NATO into the former Soviet bloc were a provocation to Mr. Putin, his assault on Ukraine has left countries that joined the American-led military alliance convinced they made the right decision.

A Russian attack on Poland or other former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact that now belong to NATO is still highly unlikely but Mr. Putin has made the unthinkable possible, warned Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, Polands neighbor to the north.

We live in a new reality. If Putin is not stopped he will go further, Mr. Landsbergis said in an interview. His country, bordering both Russia and its ally Belarus, has declared a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland gave his own warning of perhaps worse to come. We should be under no illusions: this could be just the beginning, he wrote in the Financial Times. Tomorrow Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Poland, could be next in line.

Fear that Mr. Putin is capable of just about anything, even using nuclear weapons, is just common sense, said Toomas Ilves, a former president of Estonia.

Mr. Ilves announced this week on Twitter that he was accepting apologies for all the patronizing nonsense from Western Europeans who complained that we Estonians were paranoid about Russian behavior.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Ilves said he had not received any apologies yet but was gratified to see Russias shills and useful idiots getting their comeuppance.

Western Europeans who once scoffed at his dark view of Russia, he added, have suddenly become East Europeans in their fearful attitudes. This past week marks the end of a 30-year-long error that we can all come together and sing kumbaya.

Memories of Soviet hegemony over what is now NATOs eastern flank imposed after the Red Army liberated the region from Nazi occupation at the end of World War II vary from country to country depending on history, geography and convoluted domestic political struggles.

For Poland, a nation repeatedly invaded by Russia over the centuries, they are of humiliation and oppression. Baltic states, extinguished as independent nations by Stalin in 1940 and dragooned at gunpoint into the Soviet Union, feel much the same way.

Others have fonder recollections, particularly Bulgaria, where pro-Russian sentiment has long run deep, at least until last week, and Serbia, which has for centuries seen Russia as its protector.

Mr. Putins war to bring Ukraine to heel, however, has united the region in alarm, with even Serbia voicing dismay. On Monday, Bulgarias prime minister fired his defense minister, who caused outrage by suggesting that the conflict in Ukraine should not be called a war but a special military operation, the Kremlins euphemism for its invasion.

March 3, 2022, 6:32 p.m. ET

Only Milorad Dodik, the belligerent, pro-Kremlin leader of Bosnias ethnic Serbian enclave, Republika Srpska, has shown any sympathy for Mr. Putins war, stating that Russias reasons for its invasion were received with understanding.

Outrage over Russian aggression, even in countries historically sympathetic to Moscow, has derailed years of work by Russian diplomats and intelligence operatives to cultivate allies like Ataka, an ultranationalist political party in Bulgaria that is so close to Russia that it once launched its election campaign in Moscow.

Even Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orban, who usually delights in defying fellow European leaders and stood with Mr. Putin last month in the Kremlin, has now endorsed a raft of sanctions imposed on Russia by the European bloc. He is still blocking transport of weapons into Ukraine across Hungarys border but has curbed his previously gushing enthusiasm for Mr. Putin.

So, too, has Milos Zeman, the previously Kremlin-friendly president of the Czech Republic. I admit I was wrong, Mr. Zeman said this week.

A Ukrainian city falls. Russian troops gained control of Kherson,the first city to be overcome during the war. The overtaking of Kherson is significant as it allows the Russians to control more of Ukraines southern coastline and to push west toward the city of Odessa.

In Poland, traditionally one of the most anti-Russian countries in the region, the populist governing party, Law and Justice, has gone almost overnight from aligning itself with Moscow in its hostility to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the defense of traditional values to become one of Mr. Putins most robust critics, offering its territory for the delivery of weapons into Ukraine and taking in more than 450,000 Ukrainians who have fled the war.

Gas stations and A.T.M.s in southeastern Poland along the border with Ukraine have been besieged in recent days by people worried that they might need to get out fast. That possibility hit home on Monday evening when missiles slammed into a Ukrainian village just a few miles from the frontier, rattling windows in nearby houses on the Polish side.

Just two weeks before Russian troops poured into Ukraine, Polands prime minister, Mr. Morawiecki, joined Mr. Orban and Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate who has frequently spoken up for Russia, at a meeting in Madrid focused on attacking the European Union and its liberal attitudes on immigration.

In recent days, however, Mr. Morawiecki has dropped the hostility to the European bloc to focus instead on opposing the Kremlin. He has lobbied for tough sanctions on Russia, traveling to Berlin to personally shake Germanys conscience and nudge it toward a dramatic U-turn in its policy toward Russia. On a recent visit to Warsaw, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III hailed Poland as one of our most stalwart allies.

On Friday, Poland hosted a summit meeting with nine regional leaders to rally opposition to Russias invasion and discuss ways to help Ukraine. We have woken up to a completely new reality, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, told the gathering, lamenting that it had taken a Russian invasion to interrupt the peaceful sleep of wealthy Europeans.

A nation of Slavs like Ukraine, Poland has long been viewed as a wayward family member by more messianic-minded Russian nationalists, whose views Mr. Putin channeled last week in his justification for the war. Russias foreign minister recently sneered at Poland and other new NATO members as territories orphaned by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.

To demonstrate that Poland has no desire to rejoin what Moscow imagines as its happy, obedient but sadly divided family, the mayor of Warsaw announced on Tuesday that refugees from Ukraine would be housed in apartment blocks built during the Cold War to house Soviet diplomats and left abandoned since because of legal disputes over ownership.

Few people expect Russia to try and bring Poles back into a Moscow-dominated Slavic family by force, as it is now trying to do with Ukrainians. Doing that, said Tomasz Smura, director of research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a research group in Warsaw, would mean that Putin has gone totally mad.

At the former Soviet warhead bunker in Podborsko, northwestern Poland, Mr. Zuk said he never really expected the Russians to try to retake their lost, Soviet-era military outposts. But he still wondered why, just before pulling out of Podobsko with its nuclear weapons, the Soviet military drew up a maintenance schedule for cranes used to lift warheads and other equipment at the facility stretching years into the future.

It seems they did not think they were leaving forever, Mr. Zuk said, standing in a cavernous underground hall once crammed with warheads and long off limits to all but Soviet officers. In its attitude toward Poland, he added, Russia has always acted like a master toward a servant, a relationship that it is now trying to impose on Ukraine. I worry that Putin may want to get hold of Poland and the Baltic states, too, he said.

Boryana Dzhambazova in Sofia, Tomas Dapkus in Vilnius and Anatol Magdziarz in Warsaw contributed reporting.

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Putins War to Bring Ukraine to Heel Unites Eastern Europe in Alarm - The New York Times

Reading Putin: Unbalanced or cagily preying on West’s fears? – The Associated Press – en Espaol

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WASHINGTON (AP) For two decades, Vladimir Putin has struck rivals as reckless, impulsive. But his behavior in ordering an invasion of Ukraine and now putting Russias nuclear forces on high alert has some in the West questioning whether the Russian president has become dangerously unstable.

In recent days, Putin has rambled on television about Ukraine, repeated conspiracy theories about neo-Nazism and Western aggression, berated his own foreign intelligence chief on camera from the other side of a high-domed Kremlin hall where he sat alone. Now, with the Wests sanctions threatening to cripple Russias already hobbled economy, Putin has ordered the higher state of readiness for nuclear weapons, blaming the sanctions and what he called aggressive statements against our country.

The uncertainty over his thinking adds a wildcard to Russias war on Ukraine. Western officials must confront Putin as they also wonder whether he comprehends or cares about cataclysmic consequences or perhaps is intentionally preying on the long-held suspicions about him.

An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke with Putin on Monday, said the Russian leader answered Macron without showing irritation, in a very clinical and a very determined manner.

We can see that with President Putins state of mind, there is a risk of escalation, added the aide, who spoke anonymously in line with the French presidencys practice on sensitive talks. There is a risk of manipulation from President Putin to justify what is unjustifiable.

Foreign leaders have long tried to get inside Putins head and have been wrong before. And Putin in this crisis is showing many of the same traits that he has displayed since becoming Russias leader. Putin has directed invasions of neighbors, unspooled conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods, and ordered audacious operations like interfering in the past two U.S. presidential elections.

He single-handedly made landmark decisions like the 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula, consulting only his narrow inner circle of KGB veterans and keeping everyone else in the dark. He has long been surrounded by lieutenants reluctant to risk their careers by urging caution, let alone voicing adverse opinions.

He has also talked about nuclear war and once mused that such a conflict would end in Russians going to heaven as martyrs.

Experts say Putin could be using the specter of nuclear conflict to fracture the growing support for Ukraines defense and to force concessions. His latest comments also suggest the sanctions are working.

We have to know this is a sign that were getting to him, said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. We just have to take that into account. We have to be cool.

Officials in the U.S. were alarmed by a 5,000-word essay published under Putins name in July that argued Russians and Ukrainians are one people and blamed any divisions on foreign plots. One Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. governments internal thinking, said the intelligence community was concerned Putin was operating from an emotional place and driven by long-simmering grievances.

More recently, Macron went to meet with Putin and had several long phone calls before the invasion. A top official in Macrons office said last week that Putin was no longer the same, had become more stiff, more isolated, and at his core had veered into the approach now playing out.

During a five-hour dinner between the two leaders, Putin spent more time railing about NATO expansion and the 2014 revolution in Ukraine than discussing the immediate crisis.

Putins perceived self-insulation was highlighted in recent official meetings broadcast by state television. He faced foreign leaders and close aides from the opposite end of a long table. No Russian official who spoke gave a dissenting view.

Hes not had that many people having direct inputs to him, said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. So were concerned that this isolated individual (has) become a megalomaniac in terms of his notion of himself being the only historic figure that can rebuild old Russia or recreate the notion of the Soviet sphere.

Putin has long been committed to recovering lost glory, suppressing dissent and keeping neighbors in Moscows orbit. In 2005, he called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. Russia has fought a war with Georgia, annexed Ukraines Crimea, backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and earlier this year briefly deployed troops to help quell protests in Kazakhstan.

His public dismissals of Ukrainian sovereignty go back many years. In 2008, he is reported to have told President George W. Bush, George, you have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country.

A year before that, he displayed his anger toward the U.S. and NATO in a pivotal speech at the Munich Security Conference, blasting the alliances expansion eastward and attacking American military intervention abroad. The U.S. was mired at the time in the Iraq War, launched on the basis of false assertions about Iraq having nuclear weapons capability.

The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way, Putin said then. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.

Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had not seen evidence prior to the Ukraine invasion to suggest Putin was behaving irrationally, and he noted that other world leaders in history have been dismissed by outsiders as irrational. Putin, he said, has an incredible appetite for risk when it comes to Ukraine.

Two years ago, Putin endorsed the latest version of a Russian nuclear deterrent policy that allows for the use of atomic weapons in response to a nuclear attack or aggression involving conventional weapons that threatens the very existence of the state.

Putins associate Dmitry Medvedev, who served as placeholder president when Putin shifted into the prime ministers seat due to term limits, said in 2019 that a move by the West to cut Russia off from the SWIFT financial system would amount to an effective declaration of war a signal that the Kremlin may view Western sanctions as a threat on par with military aggression. The sanctions announced in recent days include cutting key Russian banks out of SWIFT. The ruble has since plummeted.

In 2018, Putin told an audience that Russia wouldnt strike first in a nuclear conflict but theorized about retaliating against an imminent enemy attack, adding with a smirk: We would be victims of aggression and would get to heaven as martyrs. And they will just die and not even have time to repent.

James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he did not believe nuclear war was imminent but there was real potential for escalation. Another possibility was Putin would use increasingly brutal non-nuclear tactics in Ukraine.

Acton suggested finding an off-ramp that might allow Putin a perceived victory. In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets pulling back from Cuba.

But, Acton added, Im not entirely clear whether he in his own mind knows what an off-ramp looks like right now.

Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear policy at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said he wasnt immediately worried about a nuclear escalation. But one danger of sending public signals about nuclear weapons is that they can be difficult to interpret, Lewis said, just as the world is trying now to understand Putins latest moves and intentions.

He is isolated and making poor decisions and losing, Lewis said. And that is dangerous.

___

Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Robert Burns in Washington, Angela Charlton and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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Reading Putin: Unbalanced or cagily preying on West's fears? - The Associated Press - en Espaol

Ill Stand on the Side of Russia: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online – The New York Times

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On a podcast on Wednesday, Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trumps former adviser, also praised Mr. Putin as anti-woke. He suggested the Ukrainian conflict was not our fight.

After Russias attack began, some online users explained Mr. Putins motives by blending them with conspiracy theories about Covid-19. One Twitter account named War Clandestine declared that Mr. Putin was targeting biolabs in Ukraine that were operated by the United States. The idea was made more believable, the author said, because of the conspiracy theory that the United States engineered Covid-19 at a lab in Wuhan, China.

Pro-America influencers like Mikel Crump and John Basham, who have a combined following of 99,200, amplified the thread. Twitter later suspended the War Clandestine account, plus a second one by the same user for trying to evade the ban, but people continued posting screen recordings of the thread online.

Twitter said that the accounts by the user were permanently suspended for violating its abusive behavior policy and that it was monitoring for emerging narratives that violate its rules. Mr. Crump and Mr. Basham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some pro-Russia commentators insisted they were right. Many blamed Mr. Biden, dredging up old conspiracy theories about his son Hunter and Hunters employment at a Ukrainian gas company when Mr. Biden was vice president and engaged in diplomatic efforts with the country. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, but conservatives seized on the narrative during the 2020 election.

When reached for comment, Mr. Oltmann, the conservative podcaster, said, You really have no idea about Ukraine. People support Russia because you did not do the right thing when it came to the fraud and corruption of Biden. I pray for the people in Ukraine but equally pray the people who facilitated the evil communist agenda in the U.S. are held accountable.

In an email, Ms. Owens, the conservative talk show host, also said the Russia-Ukraine war was Mr. Bidens fault. Ukrainians are dying because of the Biden familys criminal connections and insistence on stoking conflict in the region, she said.

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Ill Stand on the Side of Russia: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online - The New York Times

Biden and Putin, Children of the Cold War, Face Off Over Ukraine – The New York Times

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If Mr. Biden underestimated his counterpart, Mr. Putin may have done the same. Perhaps influenced by the chaotic American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, Mr. Putin knew that the United States had no appetite to commit forces to Ukraine and may have calculated that Mr. Biden would not otherwise strongly resist Russian aggression, according to American and Russian analysts.

March 3, 2022, 6:32 p.m. ET

But while some critics believe he should be even tougher, Mr. Biden was unrelenting in calling out Mr. Putins plans to invade Ukraine in recent weeks and has rallied European allies into a more or less common front.

Like Kennedy and Khrushchev, theyre such polar opposites in many way but they also share an understanding of the Cold War, said Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the Soviet leader, who now teaches at the New School in New York. And I think they do understand each other.

Still, she added that they both may have miscalculated in thinking that their familiarity would lead to concessions when neither was actually in a position to deliver what the other really wanted. Mr. Biden wanted Mr. Putin to basically stay in his box and Mr. Putin wanted to expand the size of his box.

They are both children of the Cold War, raised, educated and married in an era when the specter of a planet-ending conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union hovered over everything. Yet they emerged from that twilight struggle with radically different views of how it ended, one celebrating it as a victory for freedom and democracy, the other mourning it as a disaster for his nation and people.

They both come from modest upbringings and are products of their disparate systems, but they rose to power along distinct paths. Mr. Biden, 79, is a backslapping politician who relies on the force of his upbeat personality to drive diplomacy while Mr. Putin, 69, is a dour former intelligence agent who nurses resentments and conspiracy theories.

Mr. Putin never talks about his family, while Mr. Biden can hardly stop talking about his. Mr. Putin spent no time in elective politics before being plucked out of obscurity to succeed Boris N. Yeltsin, while Mr. Biden spent a lifetime running for office. They each have a penchant for macho exhibitionism, Mr. Putin posing for pictures shirtless or with tigers and Mr. Biden showing off his muscle cars and boasting that he would like to beat up Mr. Trump.

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Biden and Putin, Children of the Cold War, Face Off Over Ukraine - The New York Times

Fuming Vladimir Putin is isolated and erratic, fears he might be assassinated – Marca English

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As the invasion in Ukraine keeps going, countless Russian citizens keep protesting a war they never asked for and demanding Vladimir Putin's head on a spike. That's something the president of Russia can control to a certain extent, however, the many economic sanctions are affecting all Russians and this is a very dangerous practice for Putin himself. There is nothing more uncontrollable than an angry population whose way of life has been turned completely upside down. Isolating the whole country from the rest of the world through his actions is a dangerous game Putin is playing and he is fully aware of the potential consequences. In fact, reports from the Kremlin suggest he doesn't even trust the closest allies from his own cabinet.

In images of him having meetings with his most "trusted" advisors, we can see an isolated Putin at the other end of a very large table. Initially, reports suggested he was scared of contracting Covid-19 but later reports are painting a very different picture. With so many different Russian nationals completely against this invasion on a neighbour country like Ukraine, there are many concerns Putin has. For starters, many Russians actually have family in Ukraine and completely oppose the president destroying civilian areas arcoss the country. The most recent use of thermobaric bombs has created an unprecedented level of unrest in his own country. Add this to the increasing sanctions, it's only natural Putin would fear for his life.

European Defence Consultant, Dr Andy Scollick is convinced that Vladimir Putin's own people will assassinate him within the next seven days. Here's what he told The Mirror: "Prediction or, rather, hypothesis: Putin will be assassinated by his own people within the next 7 days." Also, European Parliament member Riho Terras revealed Vladimir Putin is hiding out in his lair located in the Urals and brought some Russian oligarchs so they couldn't leave the country. In recent hours, a Russian businessman also placed a bounty on Putin's head for $1 million dollars. It seems like the clock is ticking for the president of Russia and his days might be numbered.

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Fuming Vladimir Putin is isolated and erratic, fears he might be assassinated - Marca English

Putin shunned by world as his hopes of quick victory evaporate – The Guardian

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Vladimir Putin was facing growing international isolation and the prospect of pariah status on Saturday night as long-term allies dramatically turned against him following the invasion of Ukraine, and western nations planned further decisive military and financial action against Moscow.

As his hopes of a quick victory evaporated in the face of fierce resistance by Ukrainian soldiers and armies of citizen volunteers, Russias president was deserted by his key ally, China, and had his ultimatum demanding Kyivs surrender defiantly brushed aside by Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In perhaps the most striking development, Germany announced on Saturday night that it would supply Ukrainian troops with 1,000 anti-tank weapons as well as 500 Stinger missiles from its own military reserves.

The Russian assault on Ukraine marks a turning point, Germanys chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said, signalling a major shift in his countrys postwar military stance. It threatens our entire postwar order. In this situation it is our duty to support Ukraine to the best of our ability in its defence against the invasive army of Vladimir Putin. Germany stands closely on the side of Ukraine.

Significantly, the German government was also said to be bowing to intense pressure from Britain, the US and Canada to ban Russia from the crucial Swift banking payments system after repeated appeals from Kyiv for the west to do so. Sources in Berlin said German ministers views were shifting on the issue and they were actively discussing measures that would hit the right people, having previously resisted, partly because of fears that a ban would affect the flow of funds to aid agencies in Russia.

In further blows to Putin, Hungarys leader, Viktor Orbn, long seen as friendly towards Moscow, abandoned his support, saying he would back all EU sanctions against Russia, while Turkey was reported to be considering blocking the passage of Russian naval vessels into the Black Sea.

As a global diplomatic outcry intensified, Russias defence ministry ominously announced it was ordering all units to advance in all sectors as it accused Ukraine of refusing to negotiate. And in a desperate attempt to restore a positive narrative in the information war, the Kremlin banned street protests and restricted access to social media such as Facebook. A growing list of Russian celebrities and influencers announced they backed global efforts to stop the war.

Having held off Russian forces for two nights, morale in Kyiv remained high among Ukrainians of all ages and from all walks of life, as many queued to take up arms. Many also gleefully shared videos of unarmed civilians rushing into the road to stop advancing convoys and fearlessly berating Russian soldiers about why they had come to Ukraine. Around the country, Russian forces were not confirmed as having control of a single major city, while Zelenskiy remained in Kyiv and told Americans who offered to evacuate him: The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.

Adding to the sense of crisis enveloping the Kremlin, the US said it would send a further $350m (260m) of military assistance to Ukraine, taking its total for the past 12 months to more than $1bn; Nato moved more troops and weaponry to eastern member states bordering Russia and Belarus; and a sporting boycott mushroomed, with Russia facing a ban from motor racing and Poland refusing to play a World Cup football game . YouTube barred the Russian state-owned media outlet RT and other Russian channels from receiving money for advertisements that run with their videos.

Opposition to the invasion also spilled over into the UKs Premier League football programme. At the game between Manchester City and Everton, the Everton players came out draped in Ukrainian flags while Manchester City wore shirts bearing the words No War.

The head coach of Chelsea, which is owned by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich who last week was named in parliament as one of 35 oligarchs and enablers of the Putin regime even suggested that he would be happy to lose Sundays Carabao Cup final against Liverpool.

Given the situation, that we have a war, this is simply not important enough, said Thomas Tuchel. It unfortunately will not help, but, if it would, I am happy to lose the match.

On Saturday night, Abramovich announced he was handing stewardship of the club to the trustees of its charitable foundation.

In London, the Ministry of Defence announced that Challenger 2 tanks and armoured vehicles from the Royal Welsh Battlegroup had arrived in Estonia from Germany, with further equipment and about 1,000 troops following over the coming days.

The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said the aim was to stop invasions of Nato member states: Alongside our Nato allies, these deployments constitute a credible deterrent to stop Russian aggression threatening the territorial sovereignty of member states.

On Saturday, Russian advances on major cities, including Kyiv, appeared to have slowed or ground to a halt. Ukraines defence ministry claimed Russia had suffered more than 3,000 casualties and that many other soldiers had been captured.

UK and other diplomats said a decision by China to abstain rather than back its ally Russia in a UN resolution on the invasion was being viewed as a huge victory for the west. Beijing called on both Moscow and Kyiv to find a negotiated settlement.

Ukraines health minister reported on Saturday that 198 people had been killed, including three children, and that more than 1,000 others had been wounded since the Russian offensive started before dawn on Thursday with massive air and missile strikes and troops forging into Ukraine from the north, east and south.

Among the Kyiv buildings hit in the latest wave of Russian strikes was a high-rise residential building. Kyivs mayor, Vitali Klitschko, posted an image showing a gaping hole in one side of the building and damaged apartments on several floors.

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Putin shunned by world as his hopes of quick victory evaporate - The Guardian

We have no illusions: we know Putin will try everything to bomb us into submission – The Guardian

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As soon as the curfew was lifted in Kyiv, I drove around to understand what had happened to our capital overnight. For two full days residents had not been allowed to go out, even during the daytime. Russian saboteur groups were identified, and random street fights took place.

I did not recognise my city, with checkpoints in the old town, with people digging trenches, bridges being fortified and the subway turned into a bomb shelter.

A huge crowd, up to 500 people, lined up to volunteer for the territorial defence unit in one of the neighbourhoods.

Do you enrol everybody who shows up? we asked a young guy in charge. Almost all, but I do not accept those under 18, he said. And there are a lot of them. I wouldnt be able to look their mothers in the eyes. I fought in 2014-2015 in Donbas, so I know what the war is.

Its a predominantly male group but there are three women. The youngest is a lawyer. What Russia has already done to the civilians has made us act, she said. She had not told her family of her decision to fight. They live in a small town on the Ukrainian-Russian border, which has been partially destroyed. Another woman, in her 60s, said she was a nurse. Her husband had joined the defence units and she felt she needed to be with him. The last was a retired officer. She enrolled because her son had already joined the Ukrainian army. When our grandparents, who remember the second world war, were wishing for peace, we didnt understand why, she said. But now I know.

The figures say one thing, experience another. The official toll of civilian deaths is 350, but after seven days fighting, there cannot be a single Ukrainian who doesnt know somebody who has been touched by tragedy. There are more than 1,600 wounded.

Thats my classmate, one colleague wrote, on seeing the front page of the Guardian, with a photo showing a woman wounded by shrapnel during the first attacks in Chuguev, on the eastern border. Elena Kurilova is not well. She cant see with her left eye, and its getting worse. Her daughter, whose Instagram account looks like that of a beauty blogger, now livestreams with her mother in bandages to prove to Russian commentators that the injuries are real; her mother is not a fake.

One of the flats destroyed belongs to a colleague in Kyiv. It was hit by a rocket and she circulates the pictures, but first she complains how unfair it is that Russian media have used pictures of her flat to accuse Ukraine of bombing its own people.

Those of you who have come to rescue us, just go away, cries a woman holding a baby at Kyivs main station. We were all right before you came. Just leave. All I have is some cash and a backpack. Like thousands of people here, her mission is to go somewhere else, anywhere. The Ukrainian railway allows everybody to ride without tickets, including foreign citizens, and is running extra trains to the west.

We count the hours: seven, 20, 70, 100, 144: hours of the Ukrainian army on its own, its citizens holding off one of the mightiest armies in the world, which is now being bolstered by support from Belarus. The count becomes symbolic. For those under bombardment, each hour seems like a year.

The primary Russian target is the capital, and that army has been struggling to take it, but the fight is also a fierce one in many small towns whose names are never mentioned in the headlines. Irpin, Hostomel, Bucha were all attacked, but not captured.

In Vasylkiv, on the Stuhna river, the college where IT specialists, construction workers, chefs and barbers study and train has been destroyed. Luckily 18 people who were staying in the colleges dorm were evacuated. The director of the college, Liudmyla Postolenko, walks through the debris, showing a damaged hall that had only recently been renovated. Thank God, all are alive, she says. But our hearts are broken. Our kids are crying But, you know, among our students there are construction workers, welders so we will rebuild. What we need to do is care, and support those who are fighting.

Two weeks before the invasion, when things were still calm, I travelled to a town in Donbas and met a friend: a humanitarian worker from Kyiv, who had moved there after the start of the fighting. He took a day to walk around the city to say goodbye to the last peaceful days. He was confident, as were many, that the Ukrainian army, which managed to defend and take over towns in the area eight years ago, was in better shape. Still, while walking in a chilly but tranquil industrial town, he took pictures to remember. With every shot I felt more anger. I didnt want to accept the notion of saying goodbye to peace.

Driving through Kyiv, I film the queues outside the pharmacies and shops. The scenes in heavily shelled areas are surreal. The post office window has been broken for four days but no one has looted it. The computers and parcels are all perfectly in place.

I film the billboards above the roads. Theyre written in Russian, saying: Russian soldier, stop! How can you look into your kids eyes? Remain human; Russian soldier, stop! Do not kill your soul for Putins oligarchs. Leave without blood on your hands. There are details of the deal being offered by Ukraines defence minister to Russian conscripts: 5m roubles for anybody prepared to lay down their arms.

I take photos of random buildings: Kyiv zoo, the opera house, my former office. The next day, they may not be there.

For months before Putins air force attacked Ukraine, I was being asked by those abroad why Ukrainians were not panicking. I said we were not scared and that the source of our confidence was a belief that we could prove to Russia that in the long run we were unconquerable.

And in the first days of the invasion, when civilians were killed by airstrikes that mainly missed their targets, it seemed clear that the Kremlin blitzkrieg was not working. But the cruise missiles that killed people in Freedom Square in Kharkiv, in the north-east, in the hospitals in Zhytomyr in the west, and in the residential areas in Mariupol in the south, showed us that the strategy has changed: now the plan is to terrify Ukrainians into submission. And this is just the beginning.

Looking at the courage, unity, support and the heroics of our troops, 90% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine will win. The question is the price.

Seven days were enough to get used to sirens and bomb shelters; a new reality in which I did not walk outside without a flak jacket. In a few days we might need to get used to life without electricity or running water. Ukrainians are ready for that.

But the loss of all the lives feels different. These are losses that could and should have been prevented. They are something neither we nor the outside world should get used to.

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We have no illusions: we know Putin will try everything to bomb us into submission - The Guardian

Vladimir Putin: Whats going on inside his head? – The Guardian

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Youve all seen it now. The small, mean, vicious yet weirdly blank eyes. The stubby stabbing fingers that jab as he humiliates his underlings, making them shake with fear. The joy he takes in sadism. Its almost comedy villain stuff. But cliches exist for a reason. And we need to stop kidding ourselves about Putin and start taking steps to deal with him.

For decades weve wanted to avoid the challenge. Not so much appease as just hope he goes away. Its a headache having to face up to the blunt fact that Putin is trying to utterly change the world. His aims are impossible to ignore now. The Kremlins foreign policy thinktanks are already churning out articles about how his invasion of Ukraine means the start of a multipolar world. Ignore the geopolitical PR. All multipolar means here is emboldened fascism. Before the political scientists among you get all carried away debating endlessly what fascism means let me explain my terms.

I mean Orwells boot stamping endlessly on peoples faces. I mean the underlying psychology that shines through in the violence that suffuses all of Putins language. Just last week, to give one small example, as Putin spoke with Macron, the Russian president casually invoked a Russian rape joke about Sleeping Beauty to explain what he would soon do to Ukraine. Conflating Ukraine and Sleeping Beauty, he gleefully put himself in the role of the rapist: Whether you like it or not my beauty, you will need to put up with all I do to you. (It rhymes in Russian.)

I mean the way he uses grievance narratives, always complaining how the world has put him down. There are many people minorities, the economically disadvantaged who bear righteous grievance. But when the worlds richest man, a blatant bully, does it, it means something else.

The German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, in his great study of the Nazi mind, described how for the Nazis claiming they were victims was really a way to excuse how they would victimise others. Its the same for Putin. His regime is, on the surface, nothing like the Nazis. Russia has its own totalitarian traditions to tap into. But the underlying mindset is the same.

Even his claims to Russias spheres of influence are more about his state of mind than international relations. The issue here is not about rational security demands which can be defined in negotiations and balanced with the security concerns of others not least Ukraine.

Putins sphere of influence waxes and wanes. It can mean the Russosphere, the 100 million or so Russian speakers who live beyond Russias borders, many in the EU. It can mean the mystical idea of a single people that encompasses Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It can denote much of central Europe, the countries which, according to Russias foreign affairs ministry, were orphaned by the end of the USSR and now, its implied, need to return to the suffocating embrace of Moscow.

Henry Dicks, the psychoanalyst who studied Nazi soldiers during the second world war, came to the conclusion that Hitlers idea of Lebensraum, the land (much of it in Ukraine) Germans claimed belonged to them, was not just a geopolitical idea but a sign of a psychology that was so steeped in humiliation it grabbed things outside itself to sate its sense of endless inadequacy. Like an angry infant that doesnt understand its own borders, grabbing things beyond it and screaming mine! This is the endless cycle in these regimes: a culture of humiliation; a sense of inadequacy; aggression.

But lets not over-focus on the Nazis that always makes us feel good because we fought them. Putin reminds us of the worst about ourselves as well. The day the invasion launched, at the UN, it was the representatives from Kenya and Ghana who grasped the meaning of what was going on the quickest, comparing Ukraine to their own colonial legacy. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression, said Kenyas permanent representative.

It might be comforting to think of Putin as merely a throwback to the past but his ambition is for his worldview to dominate the future, and his mindset to be normalised.

He does not think parochially. He is already threatening Finland and Sweden. His theory is to attack his great adversaries the EU, Britain and America in any way he can to keep us weak and clear his way. He has been doing it for years by making Europe addicted to his energy, Britain to his corruption, everyone intimidated by his assassinations.

For decades we tried to tell ourselves this was just an inconvenience, that ultimately he just wanted a stake in a world, or at least a transatlantic space, where wars were over. He didnt see it that way. His political and economic warfare will now increase to pave the way for more kinetic wars.

Today this is all focused on one place: Ukraine. Which Putin is invading, bombing, murdering with impunity. He claims Ukrainians dont exist as an independent people so its OK to murder them. His plan is to install a puppet government and then execute any dissidents. But Ukrainians arent puppets. Ukrainians very much exist. This is the great achilles heel in Putins worldview. He is the arch conspiracy theorist: and for conspiracy theorists people are all puppets, moved around great chess boards. He doesnt understand that people have volition.

Sean Penn, the actor turned film-maker who is in the capital Kyiv shooting a documentary, summed it up thus: Ukraine is at the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.

Democracy; dreams; soul: these are big words. So overused in political speech I sometimes struggle to know what they signify.

Ukrainians are giving them meaning again. They are fighting and dying for a new democracy to make people in rich, old democracies remember what democracy is all about. Many of these Ukrainians are my friends, relatives, colleagues, loved ones.

I was born in Kyiv though from childhood I grew up in London and much of my work is there. Theyve all chosen to remain and take up arms. Over the last years weve all been researching Ukrainian identity together. Weve found that what unites Ukrainians is the resilience and resourcefulness to survive endless hardships: a people who have got through the oppressions of Russian tsars; Stalins enforced famine; the second world war (where most of the fighting was in Ukraine); Nazi occupation; Chernobyl; the revolution of dignity and now this.

My friends are taking up arms, and when I message them are miles more calm, resolute and focused than I am, typing away in a Nato country and praying for the best.

Watching Putins invasion on television can make one feel quite powerless. Putin wants the whole world to witness his aggression, to grind in the point theres nothing that can stop him. What can we, sitting in Britain, do to join the fight? Plenty.

For starters, we can all help to support now by pressuring our governments, and raising funds ourselves, to do the following smattering of urgent causes.

First: Ukraine has a right to zones safe from bombing and missile attack. According to the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine the international community has a duty to provide appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and if necessary military means to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Creating such safe zones would be a start, though what every Ukrainian is pleading for is to protect their skies with no fly zones, and help them against one of the largest air forces in the world.

Meanwhile people need water, blankets, food, fuel and helmets. The army needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

Though sanctions are starting, we need to hit the money behind Putins war machine much harder. Sanction the central bank and state-owned banks, the wallets Putin uses to finance his imperial adventures. Freeze the western assets and visas of Putins oligarchs and their families who help finance his war.

But these tiny moves are just the start of what is needed. For the EU it will mean weaning itself quickly off Russian energy. For the UK it will mean reforming our rotten financial sector and stop being, in the journalist Oliver Bulloughs killer phrase, butlers to the world: that would be real sovereignty. And for Nato members beyond America it will mean getting ready to spend much more on arms.

Putin thinks we wont go through with any changes because all our talk of democracy and values are just bunk. As he announced the invasion of Ukraine, his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, scoffed that the west would soon give up on sanctions because we are dependent upon Russia. We may have taken Putin for a comedy villain hes betting that were the joke.

Peter Pomerantsev is the author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia

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Vladimir Putin: Whats going on inside his head? - The Guardian

Putins war is a watershed moment for the EU the days of never again are back – The Guardian

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Interpreters in the European parliament usually sound so monotonous and mechanical that even well-rested listeners have trouble staying awake. But when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed a parliamentary session via video link on Tuesday, something extraordinary happened: the person relaying his words into English was so moved that he audibly fought to hold back his tears. Were fighting just for our land and for our freedom, he said, then sniffed, his voice almost breaking as Zelenskiy, wearing a khaki T-shirt in what looked like a bunker, declared: Despite the fact that all our cities of our country are now blocked nobody is going to enter and intervene with the freedom and our country.

This is just one example among many, of how Vladimir Putins brutal war on Ukraine is shaking Europeans to the core. Having long believed that war was impossible on the continent, they are shocked and embarrassed that Ukrainians must not only defend their country against Russian aggression, but must also defend democracy, freedom and the right of sovereign states to determine their destiny the very principles that underpin the European Union.

This war reinforces, with a jolt, the very raison detre of the EU as a peace project. After 24 February, no one will again be able to say that the EUs founding credo, Never again, is outdated, and that the EU needs a new narrative to help younger generations who have no memory of war relate to European integration.

This is why the 27 member states, notoriously divided and slow when it comes to decision-making in Brussels, are showing such remarkable resolve today especially over foreign policy and defence, which they traditionally prefer to keep national. In the past week, they have cut off Russian banks from the Swift payment system, financed the procurement of weapons to send to Ukraine (ironically from a fund called the European Peace Facility), blocked the Russian propaganda channels RT and Sputnik, and closed European skies for aircraft to and from Russia. Parliament even applauded the idea of Ukrainian membership of the EU, although most member states remain sceptical, because this process takes years.

Fuelled by emotion, the European train is rolling so fast that some are cautioning restraint in the face of Putins threat of nuclear escalation emphasising that the US and European countries will not directly fight in Ukraine.

Yet the need for a strong territorial defence now tops the agenda not just in Germany, which just doubled its defence budget for 2022, but even in militarily neutral Finland and Sweden, which are sending weapons to Ukraine. Neither of these Nordic EU members is in Nato, although both are closely collaborating with it. Public support for Nato membership is markedly growing. In Austria, where anti-Americanism is rife, similar discussions are taking place. A former ambassador to Moscow told public radio that Austrians are suddenly discovering that Nato is our security, adding, Das sind neue Zeiten (This is a new era).

Putins war is now dominating EU debates on a range of other policies. After 15 years of talking, Brussels suddenly agreed to connect Ukraine and Moldova (feared to be next on Putins hitlist) to the European electricity grid. EU agriculture ministers have discussed extra supplies of wheat, food and fertiliser to countries that depend on shipments from Ukraine. Even eurozone monetary policies will change. No country will be punished for budget deficits and, with the increasing weaponisation of the worlds reserve currencies, eurozone membership will become more than a form of protection against exchange rate upheavals or a way to foster intra-EU trade it will be a geopolitical insurance policy. Under these circumstances, Dutch-German resistance to common borrowing (Eurobonds) could melt away.

Poland and Hungary, until now unwilling to welcome refugees, have suddenly opened border crossings to admittedly white, Christian ones. Polish workers in Belgium jump in their cars and drive east to help out as Ukrainians flee the fighting. A week of Russian bombardment has driven more than a million people from Ukraine into neighbouring countries of the EU. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, expects another 4 to 5 million to come In 2015, the arrival of a million Syrian refugees led to political turmoil across Europe; now there is no panic at all. Rather, according to Hugo Brady of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna: Eastern European countries are having their Wir schaffen das moment.

The German-French writer and political scientist Alfred Grosser wrote in Wie anders sind die Deutschen (How Different Are the Germans?) that Joseph Stalin deserved the first Charlemagne prize for services to European integration, for without the shared, transatlantic fear of communist totalitarianism, there would never have been a [European] community.

Fear of Putin now has a similar function. It brings the US and Europe closer together, mutes internal discord in the EU for now, and makes clear that Nato is not, as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, once suggested, brain-dead but Europes ultimate guarantor of peace.

Putins invasion appears to be pushing the EU to centralise more rapidly than before in its history, Kathleen McNamara and Daniel Kelemen, professors of Georgetown and Rutgers university respectively, argued in the Washington Post this week. For the moment, this is very much the dynamic. Undoubtedly, divisions between EU member states will reappear soon. They always do. And, as always, the EU will deal with them this is why it was set up in the first place.

But one thing is sure: because of Putins war, Europeans have discovered that Never again is here again.

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Putins war is a watershed moment for the EU the days of never again are back - The Guardian