Daily Archives: March 15, 2022

SAGINAW, MI Even thousands of miles removed from the shadow Mount Rainier cast on his childhood home, Jocephus Carlile can still find solace in a strange land.

Wherever hes stationed, the U.S. Army major keeps with him a photo of the stratovolcano that serves as the tallest point of the Cascades. Its 14,000-foot-tall snow-covered peak was part of the horizon in his hometown of Puyallup, Washington. Since he joined the military, the image began serving as a substitute for the real thing; a totem to represent home.

Its an awesome mountain, the 40-year-old said. I look at it whenever Im in my room.

Maj. Carlile hung that photo in a hotel room in Saginaw in December, when he and the 22-member Army medical unit he supervises arrived to reinforce the staff at Covenant HealthCare. The facility was one of four Michigan hospitals in recent weeks to welcome U.S. Department of Defense-commanded medical units, sent to assist civilian medical professionals in regions most vulnerable to a COVID-19 pandemic that regained deadly momentum.

In Saginaw County where 817 residents have died from COVID-19 since it arrived 23 months ago the Armys stay may span the entirety of a surge of virus cases tied to the highly-contagious omicron variant. Based on testing data at Covenant, officials calculated a dramatic increase in hospitalizations that began in late December may level off in February.

At any given point this week, more than 120 COVID-19 patients were housed at Covenant. Ten weeks earlier, when the Army arrived, that number was about 80.

Originally, the Saginaw-based mission was scheduled to end in mid-January, but omicrons wrath led federal officials to extend the Armys stay by one month. So, until mid-February, Carlile will continue to oversee an operation integrating his teams doctors, registered nurses and respiratory therapists with the hospital workforce.

Those reinforcements are desperately needed, Covenant staff members said. Nearly 300 job vacancies were listed this week at the hospital, which employs 4,800 people. The short-handed workforce combined with the influx of patients stretched resources there extraordinarily thin, said Kelly Dey, a 41-year-old pulmonary services manager at Covenant.

We will be forever grateful for their assistance during this difficult time, she said. They jumped right in and are a member of our team now. They are one of us. When they first started, I wanted them to feel as at home as possible.

Many members of the Army unit took that offer of hospitality seriously. Outside of their shifts at Covenant, they have adapted to Saginaw and its surroundings. That means: time spent exploring the state, meeting the locals, enjoying the menu of the Midwest, and making good use of the snow.

Fort Covenant

Saginaw presents a very different environment for some in the Army medical unit. Prior to the pandemic, most were stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas, where temperatures this week were sometimes 40 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in Michigan.

Capt. Ashley Del Rosario grew up in that balmy southwest climate; specifically, in Rancho Cucamonga, California, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. The 26-year-old earned her bachelors degree in nursing from Norwich University in Vermont, but otherwise, shes rarely experienced the wintry conditions shes witnessed so far in Saginaw.

I was super excited when it first snowed here, she said. I was like, Wow, its so beautiful.

Del Rosario took advantage of that snowfall, hiking in snowshoes across trails as far north as the Upper Peninsula.

She was joined at times by her Army colleagues, including Capt. Patrick Stevens. Like Carlile, Stevens was raised in Washington, where the climate much more closely resembled Michigan than the hot Texan environment where he spent much of his 4-year military career.

Its great to see some evergreens again, get some cooler weather and some snow, the 27-year-old said. I dont know why, but I thought there might be more mountains here, though.

Still, Stevens stay in Michigan has allowed him to enjoy one of his old Pacific Northwest pastimes: snowboarding. So, far, Stevens has visited ski resorts in Brighton three times; and Bellaire, Harbor Springs and Thompsonville, one time each.

Ive been collecting stickers from every single resort and putting them on my snowboard, he said. Ill always have Michigan with me now, wherever I go.

Del Rosario, meanwhile, said she will take memories of Michigan with her, including of the states distinctive delicacies.

I went to Mackinaw (City) and I tried pasties, she said. I heard that was a very Michigan food, and it was really good. It reminds me of a Hot Pocket or Shepherds pie.

Stevens said he also discovered a new favorite food here, although his supervisors cautioned him from naming the restaurant to avoid any appearance the Army favors specific businesses. His discovered delicacy: a strawberry- and cheesecake-flavored ice cream treat served at a Midwest burger chain.

Everybody was raving about it, Stevens said, so I finally tried it out. It was so good.

Stevens and others in the unit also were recommended to visit one of Saginaw Countys top tourist attractions. They obliged.

Frankenmuth is a pretty cool town, he said. The bars and restaurants there have some good food and a nice aesthetic to it.

Considering the serious nature of their stay in Saginaw, the leisure time plays an important role in keeping the Army units camaraderie strong, members said.

What also fortifies their sense of fellowship: They arent strangers to each other. Their bond spans shared experiences, on missions many of them never anticipated when they enlisted in the military. Prior to last month, Carlile, Stevens and Del Rosario never slept a night in Michigan. Since then, they spent a Christmas together in Saginaw and celebrated the arrival of a new year here.

A different kind of war

Carlile said much of the Army medical unit served together during two earlier U.S.-based missions supporting hospitals during the pandemic. The group in September was deployed to The University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. Prior to that, they were stationed at a California health care facility.

Stevens said he was one of 15 members in the 22-person unit who works in El Paso, Texas-based William Beaumont Army Medical Center when they arent traveling for COVID-19-related humanitarian missions.

Luckily, weve already got some friendships going because so many of us are from the same place, he said.

The few unit members not from El Paso originated from a military medical center in San Antonio.

They jumped right in and became part of this with us in Tennessee, and now were getting to know them even better here in Saginaw, Stevens said.

The years of experience in Army mobile medical response operations varies among the units personnel. Those like Stevens and Del Rosario are relatively new compared to Carlile, their supervisor.

Raised by a fourth-generation military family on Fort Lewis (since renamed Joint Base Lewis-McChord) in Washington, Carlile joined the Army 16 years ago. Among his first experiences in active duty involved responding to a different sort of surge. Carlile was stationed with medical units in Afghanistan and Iraq when the militarys Middle East presence was expanded in the latter half of the 2000s. He also was deployed to Kosovo.

Regardless of the setting, Carlile said military medical units are focused on preserving life. That objective involves providing medical care to civilians in regions facing crises; a task his team now is pursuing in the U.S.

Its a misconception that we only respond to combat operations, the major said. We help local populations too.

Responding to American cities facing emergency situations isnt a completely foreign task for the Army. Prior to the pandemic, military medical response missions aided communities recovering from natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Still, Carlile said his military career since 2020 has taken a turn he did not anticipate when he joined the Army nearly two decades earlier.

I never thought wed be involved in a pandemic, he said. Were a highly technologically-advanced country. When you think military, you think of going outside of the United States. Normally, the (National) Guard will respond to things inside the United States.

Responding to a pandemic was not on Del Rosarios mind either when she began her life as an officer four years ago.

I had imagined going on overseas missions, she said. This came as a surprise.

Del Rosario and Stevens are among the units nurses. Since arriving in Saginaw, she has spent much of her stay in Covenants intensive care unit, where staff tend to the worst of the worst COVID-19 patients. Stevens, meanwhile, has worked in the Emergency Care Center, Covenants entry point for most patients.

Clothed in scrubs, they blend in with the hospitals civilian workers.

Military or not, nurses all receive the medical training and certifications necessary to treat patients. And, nearly two years into the pandemic, the medical professionals both with the Army and Covenant have extensive experience responding to COVID-19 cases. They have all seen many of those cases end with death.

Stevens said members of his Army medical unit and the staff at Covenant share a kinship that makes them indistinguishable from each other; a commonality that makes them both veterans of the same conflict, no matter how far from home the battle sent them.

At the end of the day, the patient is our priority, Stevens said. Thats why were here.

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Germ warfare: Saginaw hospital becomes battleground in U.S ...

As part of its latest attempts to justify its invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials are once again pushing a false narrative that the Eastern European country is developing biological weapons with the assistance of the U.S.

On March 6, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed it had obtained evidence Ukraine and the U.S. had collaborated to develop biological weapons.

The claim was made by Major General Igor Konashenkov and widely reported in Russian media. Konashenkov alleged that pathogens for deadly diseases such as the plague, anthrax and cholera were being created to be used for biological warfare in Ukrainian laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

"Obviously, with the start of a special military operation, the Pentagon had serious concerns about disclosing the conduct of secret biological experiments on the territory of Ukraine," Konashenkov said, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.

This follows on from previous false claims peddled by Russia ahead of its invasion of Ukraine that the country was planning on developing so-called "dirty bombs."

According to a February 24 report by fact-checking website Snopes, Russian propaganda claiming the planned attack of Ukraine was actually to target secret U.S. biolabs in the country was also being widely shared on social media.

As noted by Snopes, the false claim that there exists U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine developing germ warfare capabilities has been pushed by Russia since 2018, and remerged in the wake of the outbreak of the coronavirus.

In May 2020, as the coronavirus had fully spread across the world, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) issued a statement urging politicians to stop spreading misinformation about the existence of U.S. military biological labs in Ukraine.

"No foreign biological laboratories operate in Ukraine. Statements recently made by individual politicians are not true and are a deliberate distortion of the facts," the statement said.

In April 2020, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine also issued a statement saying they want to "set the record straight" regarding disinformation surrounding U.S.-funded biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine.

The statement explained that the U.S. and Ukraine have had a partnership since 2005 to prevent the threat of outbreaks of infectious diseases, as well as allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development

The partnership between the U.S. Defense Department and the Ukraine Ministry of Health is part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which began in 1991 with the aim of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction following the fall of the Soviet Union.

As explained by Andy Weber, member of the Arms Control Association board of directors and former assistant secretary for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, this partnership doesn't mean that there are U.S. military-run labs in Ukraine.

In fact, the U.S. Defense Department has never had a biological laboratory in Ukraine.

"Rather, the U.S. Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has provided technical support to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health since 2005 to improve public health laboratories, whose mission is analogous to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)," Weber told PolitiFact.

"These laboratories have recently played an important role in stopping the spread of COVID-19."

Filippa Lentzos, a bioweapons researcher and faculty member at King's College of London, also told the Agency France-Presse news agency that there are no indications that these labs in Ukraine are being used to develop biological weapons and actually aim to prevent preventing disease outbreaks.

"These are public health labs like those of the CDC or the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control," Lentzos said.

Just weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, falsehoods about the U.S having biological laboratories in Ukraine were once again emerging.

In January the Department of Defense released a five-minute video to combat the "false allegations" being targeted at its Cooperative Threat Reduction program, including stating that its biological laboratories are "owned, operated and managed by host governments to meet local needs."

Speaking to Politifact, Weber said that there has been a "Soviet-style disinformation campaign promoting such lies" regarding U.S-owned biological laboratories for decades.

"It harkens back to the Soviet KGB 'Operation Infection' disinformation campaign to spread the total fabrication that HIV/AIDS originated in a U.S. military lab," Weber said.

Originally posted here:

U.S. Biological Weapons in UkraineSeparating the Facts From the Fiction - Newsweek

In the first months after World War 2, the taste of victory was still palpable for many in the Allied nations. There was a celebratory sense that despite its cost, the Allies coalition was about to remake the world into a better, safer place, including the new international body, the United Nations.

In those months just after the war, two Georges one a studious American career diplomat and the other a British essayist, novelist, and increasingly disillusioned socialist each offered starkly different views about the shape of the future for the West. But between them, in what they had written, and despite their differences, they created a major share of the mental landscape of the post-war world, populating that landscape with defining and enduring images and fears about the future.

By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had conquered much of Eastern Europe from the Nazi regime (including all those capitals now behind what Winston Churchill would soon label the Iron Curtain). Nonetheless, it was still not yet certain those Soviet military victories would become a decades-long military occupation and establishment in those states of the Stalinist model already in place in the Soviet Union.

That Stalinist model came with economic and political decision-making centralism, the inevitable purges and round-ups of undesirables, and everything else emanating from such rule. As the shape of this world was just becoming clearer, a few individuals were trying to determine what the global politics of a new world would or should look like after the end of World War 2.

On top of everything happening in Europe, the stirrings of independence by then-colonised peoples of Asia and Africa were coming into sharper focus. First was the break-up of British India, then rebellion in French Indochina, and struggles over the fate of China and other Southeast Asian colonies such as the Dutch East Indies, now freed from Japanese occupation. Societies frozen in political, economic or social amber for many years were now changing in the aftermath of World War 2.

Demands were also beginning to be made on the leadership of more established nations in the aftermath of the recent war. Moreover, new technologies ranging from television, antibiotics and jet aircraft, to atomic weapons were washing over nations. Then, too, a massive new population cohort the Baby Boomers was about to come on to the scene and in the coming years would deeply affect the politics of their respective nations.

Even as these developments were happening, some were trying to absorb the recent experiences to understand a sense of what was coming next. Early on, one of these was George Orwell. A highly admired and respected British journalist, essayist, novelist and political activist who had lived his convictions fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell had hit the global big time with a new novel, Animal Farm. This political fantasy was a warning shot, a premonition issued by an increasingly disillusioned socialist, published just days after the war ended.

Then, two months later, he published an essay, You and the Atomic Bomb in the British left-wing periodical, The Tribune. In that essay, Orwell became the first person to offer the profoundly disturbing prediction encapsulated within the phrase, the Cold War, in its post-World War 2 meaning.

Orwell argued the world would be divided into three great blocs one led by the US and its junior partner Great Britain, a second on the Eurasian landmass dominated by the Soviet Union, and a third guided by a resurgent China. Each would be bolstered by the power of the new atomic weapons, but held partially in check via the balance of terror. His prediction soon seemed to be coming true once the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons a few years after the Americans had first constructed them. Readers can see in this essay, the germ of what became the political landscape of Orwells most famous novel, the dystopian classic that is 1984.

Summing up his baleful predictions, just weeks after the end of the war, Orwell had written, More and more obviously the surface of the Earth is being parcelled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. The haggling as to where the frontiers are to be drawn is still going on, and will continue for some years, and the third of the three super-states East Asia, dominated by China is still potential rather than actual. But the general drift is unmistakable, and every scientific discovery of recent years has accelerated it

For forty or fifty years past, Mr HG Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnhams theory [regarding the political rise of a professional managerial class by another then-influential writer] has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications that is, the kind of world view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbours. [Italics and boldface added].

Anyone who has read 1984 can recall the militarised world of Airstrip One (formerly Britain). In fact, the books shape was already in Orwells thinking by the time the war had ended. Prophetically, his depiction of the incoming international order foreshadowed the strategic balance between the Soviet Union and America right until the end of the Cold War. (Moreover, following the American-China rapprochement after 1973, a balance between three great states actually came true, similar to what Orwell had predicted in his 1945 article.

Nevertheless, with the fall of the Soviet Union, many even several US presidents fell under the sway of Francis Fukuyamas The End of History thesis, with its bold but reassuring prediction about the inexorable expansion of the liberal democratic order and a concomitant open global economic regime. The governmental and political leadership in the US and much of the West generally effectively assumed that the new Russia was about to join the march. The Cold Wars containment was yesterdays news.

True, Orwell missed predicting one element of the post-war world. From his understanding of nuclear technology in 1945, he assumed nuclear weapons would be so expensive and difficult to create that only very large and very rich nations could afford them, rather than what has become one of the most important fears of todays world. Instead of Orwells surmise, now some 10 nations have nuclear capabilities, and at least that many more could readily go nuclear.

In our world, beyond the horrific possibilities of a nuclear war between major nuclear powers (on the minds of many after Putins public announcement his nuclear forces had been put on a heightened state of readiness), a great fear is such weapons or the wherewithal to create them could fall into the hands of a terrorist or an irredentist non-state actor. That could effectively destroy the nuclear balance of terror MADD, mutually assured destruction deterrence in force, so far, among nuclear nations.

Coincidentally, at the same time Orwell was offering his glimpse of the shape of things to come (with its deliberate nod to HG Wells and his novel by that title), another George, in this case, an American, George Kennan, was analysing the nature and origins of the Soviet Unions conduct of its foreign policies. His task was to identify how much of that behaviour evolved out of traditional, historical Russian ideas and values, and how much derived from the Soviet Unions official communist ideology. His answer to that question became the lodestar to determine what the US should do in response to the threats coming into clearer view.

Kennan was a distinguished career foreign service officer with decades of experience in, or in neighbouring countries to, the Soviet Union. He had studied the country, its history, language and literature for decades. Then, in the beginning of the Cold War, Kennan was charg daffaires of the US embassy in Moscow, effectively the acting ambassador. At the end of 1945, he was asked by the State Department for a comprehensive analysis of his views about the Soviet Union and its relationship with the US. In the late 1940s, given the technical limitations on classified telegraphic transmissions, State Department cables had to be terse, eschewing words like the, a, or an.

In response, in February of 1946, he wrote the longest cable ever sent by an American diplomat, coming in at over 7,000 words. After it had been digested by senior officials in Washington, Kennan reshaped it slightly and it was published in Foreign Affairs magazine, Americas apex journal of international affairs. Retitled The Sources of Soviet Conduct, and while the author was identified as X, most figured out Kennan was the author.

Kennans Long Telegram quickly became the ur-document for dealing with the country that was becoming the key antagonist of the US and as a roadmap for policymakers in addressing that Soviet challenge. Kennan had defined the core principle of how to deal with the Soviet Union through his defining use of the term containment.

In fact, Kennan wrote his telegram even as fear of domestic communist subversion (presumably directed by the Soviet Union) was seizing governmental and public attention. But Kennan was less than totally convinced the Soviet challenge was primarily derived from the ideology of communism and that, instead, it was rooted much more in Russias historical traditions, its historical experiences and the psychological makeup of leaders steeped in that mix.

Kennan began by arguing, At [the] bottom of Kremlins neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on [a] vast exposed plain in [the] neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with [the] economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between [the] Western world and their own, [and] feared what would happen if Russians learned [the] truth about the world without or if foreigners learned [the] truth about [the] world within. And they have learned to seek security only in [a] patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it

In offering his policy advice, Kennan concluded, We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of [the] sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in [the] past. It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by [the] experiences of the past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, Russians certainly will.

Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

Nevertheless, despite Kennans advice about marshalling a wide range of strengths and influences, over the years, containment became an increasingly militarised policy, bound up largely with military pacts and alliances. Kennan increasingly became an opponent of that transformation, stressing he had always meant containment was a strategy drawing on a wide array of tools, including economics, culture and more traditional diplomatic means rather than simply military strength.

The debate about containment became more about whether it should be based on traditional realpolitik concepts plus the marshalling of national ideals and the use of new tools, measures, and sustained pressures, or would it, instead, be imbued with the fervour of an increasingly militarised, anti-communist crusade. That crucial divide ultimately drove Kennan to oppose Nato expansion, seeing in that development a version of the triumphalism in Francis Fukuyamas The End of History and its view of an inevitable, irrevocable expansion of democratic ideals, following the Soviet Unions collapse.

Given the still-ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the consequent rupture of the broader post-war European settlement, let alone the post-Cold War balance, virtually all American leaders (save for those inhabiting the wilder and nuttier fringes of the Republican Party) have now abandoned any illusions Russia can become a normal democratic nation led by rational actors. Instead, American leadership is coming to the realisation that Vladimir Putin holds near-mystic aspirations of reconstructing the third Rome and the maximal Russian world under his leadership including military invasions of neighbours, if necessary to make the dream come true.

Given this realisation, the challenge now becomes: What kind of responses are appropriate and necessary for todays circumstances? Moreover, how will the US and the West more generally shape a set of principles to replace the policies that had been shaped for the post-Cold War world, but without automatically falling back on the old policy of containment of the Cold War? Further, who will (or can) articulate that new approach, complete with the phrasing that makes convincing, coherent sense?

In the rapidly evolving crisis, so far, the Western response has largely been a series of ad hoc decisions, including ratcheting up economic and financial pressures, national and personal sanctions, and other restrictions and shipping in defensive weaponry useful in halting the Russian advance. These measures are important and they carry real impact, but they likely will be insufficient to save Ukraine from conquest even if the Russians may well find that beating the Ukrainian military is one thing, but holding on to the country and enforcing their will on that vast region is something entirely different.

So far, the underlying principles from the West seem built on a refusal to accept border and territorial changes by virtue of military force in Europe; an insistence all nations have the right to elect their own leaders; that nations have the right to join multinational and international bodies of their choice; and that military actions by belligerents must take into full account the generally accepted laws of war, standing international agreements, and an avoidance of attacks on civilians, schools, hospitals and refugee columns. The Russians fail on all these counts, even while a broader, definitive statement of fundamental principles from the West remains less than fully clear.

Needed now is a synthesis that acknowledges the requirement for a new form of containment to address a Cold War v.2.0, even as it prevents unravelling the strategic balance such that it opens the door to nuclear, chemical or biological warfare, or creates the unending tripartite balance of power and terror predicted by Orwell. Any new containment must also take into account the full panoply of economic measures that can be employed by governments, individual businesses and NGOs, as well as a vigorous enunciation of why such policies are necessary now.

Any such message (and the policies carrying it out) must be one that governments and citizens alike can embrace on the basis of the force of its logic, even as it is congruent with Americas national interest and its fundamental national principles and traditions. This new contest will not simply be one of weapons and military alliances, although they will obviously be important. This new confrontation will also be about ideas, just as Kennan had urged upon the government back in 1946. But achieving such a new synthesis will require the original insights of both Georges harnessed to new and creative thinking in order to deliver this new message clearly and convincingly, and for it to be one appropriate for the dangerous age we now find ourselves in the midst of exploring. DM

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Wanted: A rallying cry to hold back the coming 'Dark... - Daily Maverick

The Russian president had only been in office for a year and a half when he addressed the German parliament on Sept. 25, 2001.

That day, Vladimir Putin wore a dark suit and a silver-gray tie. His face was still thin at the time, and his audience included German President Johannes Rau, Chancellor Gerhard Schrder and Wolfgang Thierse, the president of the Bundestag. Putin delivered his speech in German, telling his "colleagues" in German parliament that he was speaking the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant. He referred to Lessing and Humboldt, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and, of course, to Princess von Anhalt-Zerbst, who would later become known to the world as Catherine the Great.

The Russian leader invoked the "ideas of democracy and freedom" and said that, "Russia is a friendly country. We are making our joint contribution to the construction of the European house," adding that peace on the Continent is the goal.

His speech would be interrupted 16 times by applause, and in several instances, the protocol even notes "merriment." When he finished at 3:47 p.m., the German parliamentarians rose from their seats. From the Left Party to the center-right Christian Democrats, they applauded Putin for several minutes, this new hope bearer for Russia.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 11/2022 (March 12th, 2022) of DER SPIEGEL.

Today, few in Germany would applaud him. Putins contribution to the European house today is to bomb it. No one would associate his name with democracy or freedom anymore. Putin has done what no one in Europe has dared to do since Adolf Hitler: He has attacked another country in the middle of the continent with his troops and air force, sending in more than 100,000 men.

On closer inspection, the euphoria shown by German lawmakers was misplaced even then. They allowed themselves to be blinded. Perhaps because, for a moment at least, they saw in Putin a second Gorbachev. Perhaps because they hadnt noticed the hints hidden in the speech: That Europe should turn away from the United States, that loyalty to NATO is problematic and that the security system in Europe no longer suits Russias interests.

But they should have been wide awake for another reason because Putin, who carefully donned his sheep's clothing for his appearance in Berlin, had begun his term in office 20 months earlier in the most brutal of ways. Even in 2001, the Germans should have recognized that his Berlin peace speech and his actual actions back in Russia didnt correspond.

The war in Ukraine is a continuation of what began on New Years morning in 2000 in the Chechen city of Gudermes: the rebirth of Russia, at least as Putin sees it. That day, a brawny man dressed in a parka showed up in the city to speak to soldiers form the 42nd Russian Motorized Rifle Division. "You are not only defending the dignity and honor of Russia in Chechnya. This is also about ending our countrys disintegration," said the guest, a man from distant Moscow who most didnt know at the time: Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin and soldiers in 2000 in Gudermes, Chechnya: A war that was close to his heart.

Putin had been president for less than 24 hours at the time. In a surprise coup the previous day, Boris Yeltsin had resigned and handed over the office to his prime minister. The fact that Putin flew to the front lines of the Chechen war that same night was a deliberate gesture. For this war was close to his heart the Caucasian republic of Chechnya was threatening to break away from Russia. Putin saw this as a further reduction of Russian power - and one that had to be stopped.

Following an attack in the Caucuses republic of Dagestan and several bombing attacks on residential buildings in Moscow and southern Russia, Putin had already declared war on the "Chechen terrorists" in late summer 1999, but he really meant Chechnya as a whole. It hadnt been proven that Chechens were responsible for blowing up the buildings. Indeed, there was strong evidence that Russias domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, had been involved in the attacks. And Putin had been the head of that agency until only a short time before.

Had he and the people in his circle fabricated a pretext for the new war in Chechnya? Just as they now provided false pretexts for the invasion of Ukraine?

Daily air raids on the republic in the Caucasus began in September 1999, and the Russian army invaded Chechnya in early October of that year. Just as today in Ukraine, the war was not referred to as a war, but rather as an "anti-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus." Hundreds of thousands of people died or fled that war because the Russian military acted with such incredible brutality.

That early morning in Gudermes was also the moment when Russias resurgence as a world power began. And it marked the career launch of a man of whom his mentor, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, once said: "He is tough as nails and follows through on decisions to the end."

Ukrainian emergency workers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol: Putin is seeking to restore former Russian glory by whatever means necessary.

If you take the war in Chechnya as the starting point and then look at the most important political decisions taken in Moscow in subsequent years, it raises the question of why the West didnt see Putin as a serious threat far earlier. For what he was doing clearly served but a single goal: The restoration of former Russian glory, by whatever means necessary.

During his inaugural speech when he took office, Putin promised that Russia would "never copy the liberal model of the West," and pledged to take large-scale industry back under state control as well as to once again make Russians proud of their country.

But Putin also suffered defeats during his years in office defeats that are likely to have only further incited this man, who has perceived resistance as a personal slight since his childhood. One of these came in 2004, when Putins favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, a politician with a criminal record from Russian-influenced eastern Ukraine, won the Ukrainian presidential election with the help of 3 million fraudulent votes an event which triggered the Orange Revolution.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets in protest, forcing a third round of voting that opened the path for opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to become president. Putins defeat was clearly visible to all: Before the election, he had brought Yanukovych to Moscow twice, kissing him in front of the cameras, and even visiting him twice in Kyiv and praising him as a guarantor of "democratic transformation."

A repeat took place in March 2005, when the Tulip Revolution broke out in faraway Kyrgyzstan. Regime opponents seized the seat of government in Bishkek in a coup d'tat, and President Askar Akayev and his family fled to Russia by helicopter. It seemed only a matter of time before the germ of revolution would infect another former Soviet republics.

In Moscow, disappointment with the suddenly hapless Putin became widespread. Victor Cherkashin, a man who served the KGB for 40 years, said disparagingly that the former intelligence chief had changed nothing at the top in the Kremlin and that he was a mere "bureaucrat." One Kremlin adviser was quoted as saying that Putin had "lost his decisiveness." And that it was due to the rulers lack of will "to use force" if the opposition gained the upper hand everywhere.

It's not difficult to imagine the effect of such criticism on Putin. Indeed, this could have been the real turning point and it had little to do with NATO and the alleged encirclement of Russia from the outside.

"Post-Soviet humiliation is a thing of the past; Russian leaders like playing hardball."

Dmitry Trenin, political scientist

Only a year later, Putin proved that he had learned his lessons. Thats when he hosted the G-8 summit at Constantine Palace near St. Petersburg. A barrage of criticism of the West, which had now been defined as the main enemy, began during the run-up to that meeting. Putin proclaimed that Russia represented "a world power again in terms of economic growth, saying that it "was, is and always will be a major power." And the Russian economy was indeed booming at the time and the ruble had even been positioned as an additional global currency reserve.

The primary focus of the 2006 summit was global energy security. By then, Putin had largely renationalized the oil and gas sector, calling it his "holy of holies. Only a few months earlier, on New Years Day in 2006, the state-owned company Gazprom had cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine and its unpopular reformist president, Yushchenko. It was a clear indication to the world that Putin and his people knew the value of the cards they held and were more than willing to play them.

As such, the geostrategic showdown actually got started 16 years ago. But for most of those 16 years, it did nothing to change Western thinking. Despite the fact that even back then, Europe had already begun talking about diversifying its energy supply.

Putin also regained his footing in foreign policy. He regained lost influence in the post-Soviet states and forged alliances with China, India and Pakistan. Russian foreign policy managed to swap out a position of weakness for one of strength, Moscow political scientists Dmitry Trenin wrote at the time. "Post-Soviet humiliation is a thing of the past; Russian leaders like playing hardball.

In order to avoid violating the constitution, which limited each Russian president to only two successive terms, Putin temporarily agreed to a change of power in 2008 and handed over the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev, who was deputy prime minister at the time. Medvedev was considered at the time to have liberal tendencies, and just a few months after installing him, Putin had cause to regret it.

Then Prime Minister Putin and President Dimitry Medvedev in 2011: A political chess move

In early August of that year, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to bring the South Ossetian autonomous region back under his control triggered the Georgian War. Russia responded by invading Georgia. Moscow called the first real war between Russia and a Soviet successor state a "peace enforcement operation." It ultimately amounted to the punishment of a Georgia that had turned westward under Saakashvili. The Russians even dropped bombs on Gori, the town of Stalins birth.

The West showed itself to be impotent in the face of Russias neo-imperialism then, just as it is now in the face of the invasion of Ukraine. In the summer of 2008, DER SPIEGEL wrote, "The West has presumably misjudged Russia under Putin until now," - despite the fact, the article noted, that the signs had been rather difficult to overlook.

After swapping places with Medvedev and returning to the presidency, Putin abandoned all pretext. In late 2013, he persuaded his Ukrainian counterpart, Yanukovych, to overturn an Association Agreement with the European Union that had been years in the making, triggering unrest in Ukraine. This was followed by the war in eastern Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea. Putin had thus decoupled Russia from the world and declared his country a fortress. He openly paid homage to the violence. In the mind of the Russian people, suddenly "inhuman, demonic complexes of revenge, self-assertion and hate are being awakened within and put on display" Andrei Zvyagintsev, the Russian director of the Oscar-nominated film "Leviathan" said in horror a few years back.

All this should be remembered when people scratch their heads today over Putin's motives for invading Ukraine and express surprise at how dangerous he is. At the beginning of the third week of the war, the first question that arises is: Did Putin miscalculate this time? Has he strayed too far from reality?

Russian forces are making slow progress, it is believed that the number of fallen Russian soldiers is in the four digits, and several senior generals have already been killed. Economically, the damage will be greater than the Kremlin is admitting to the Russian public. This realization even flashed across the radar of Russian state news agency Ria Novosti when it examined the implications of the sanctions for Russian aviation: Of the 980 aircraft in the country, 777 are leased, the news agency noted. Only about 150 aircraft were manufactured in Russia, and even those fly with French engines and Western onboard electronics. They have to be maintained and need spare parts for wear and tear parts which will now be almost impossible to come by. The agency said the collapse of air traffic in Russia is only a matter of time.

Does all this mean that the intelligence service, especially the SWR foreign intelligence service, fail in the analysis of the situation? Or did Putin just ignore their assessments?

The televised meeting of his Security Council allows some conclusions to be drawn. Putin scolded Sergei Naryshkin, director of the foreign intelligence service, ike a schoolboy, something the president never would have done to a henchman who supported the war. Putin adviser Dmitry Kozak, his special envoy to Ukraine, also came in for some gruff treatment.

The other Security Council members, too, were essentially extras on the stage, with four exceptions: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Domestic Intelligence Chief Alexander Bortnikov, his predecessor Nikolai Patrushev, and Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard. Their police forces are directly subordinate to Putin and are supposed to suppress resistance in the country. Neither officials in parliament nor in the presidential administration have the power to intervene on important questions. Russias oligarchs and business leaders also no longer have any direct influence over Putin. At this point, Putin likely only listens to his closest confidants, men like Shoigu or Patrushev. And they tell the president what he wants to hear, and none of them will question Putins judgement.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Governor Dyumin in 2016.

If Putin had won the war in two days, he probably would have secured the enthusiasm of the Russian elite and enjoyed the full support of the public at large. But the blitzkrieg failed. It stands to reason that Putin is frustrated as a result. And as the last two decades have shown, he generally deals with frustration by ramping up the brutality.

It is possible that the slow start was only a preliminary push with difficulties already factored in and that Putins military machine will strike in full force in the coming days. In Kyiv, for example. Given that the Russian leader has declared Ukraine to be a fascist-run state and the West its accomplice, further escalation is likely.

Bringing the army back to Russia without victory is out of the question. Doing so would force Putin to come up with a plausible explanation for how he had already "won" the fight against "Nazism" and "genocide" in Ukraine. A more likley eventuality would see him halting his troops on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River and not advancing any further west, but this wouldnt really provide him with any peace politically or militarily. At home, though, he could justify the move with the lie that he was only really ever concerned about protecting eastern Ukraine.

Occupying anti-Russian western Ukraine would inevitably lead to partisan warfare. Either way, as CIA chief William Burns said this week, it is unclear how Putin "could sustain a puppet regime or pro-Russian leadership that he tries to install in the face of what is massive opposition from the Ukrainian people."

One way out of the dilemma for Russia could be another propaganda ploy: He could surprisingly announce supposed progress in the negotiations with the Ukrainians and then generously announce a cease-fire - a cease-fire that could then be used to search for other options.

But these options do not take into account whether cracks are opening up inside the Russian power circle. The few remaining Russian opposition media on the internet this week recalled the "tobacco can scenario," a reference to the assassination of Russian Emperor Paul I, the son of Catherine the Great. Due to his difficult childhood, he was seen as being extremely suspicious of even his closest surroundings, unpredictable and erratic, and enamored of all things military. When he proposed to attack British India together with the French, the Russian aristocracy thought he had gone insane and prepared his assassination.

There dont appear to be any conspirators of that nature in Russia at the moment. But many Russians have begun wondering what will come after Putin. No one knows what Putin himself will do in the event of his departure, but he does have some favorites. The likely candidates, though, do not include the usual suspects, whose names are always dropped the prime minister, the head of parliament or the mayor of Moscow. Even Defense Minster Shoigu is unlikely to be considered for succession he isnt well known enough.

But there is one man who has been mentioned several times in Russian circles as a promising successor to Putin. He used to be very close to Putin, but he was transferred from Moscow to the provinces a few years back. The mans name is Alexi Dyumin and he is currently the governor of the Tula region, located just under 200 kilometers south of Moscow. Dyumin served in the Presidential Security Service from 1999, precisely from the time Putin became prime minister and shortly thereafter president.

When Putin took over the reins of government again in 2008, Dyumin rose to become his security chief and aid. He also returned to the Kremlin with Putin in 2012, becoming deputy head of the entire Presidential Security Service and deputy chief of the GRU military intelligence service. Dyumin was one of the leading men in the annexation of Crimea. He was later appointed to the position of deputy defense minister and now holds the military rank of lieutenant general.

The fact that Putin appointed him as governor of Tula in 2016, only a few months later, surprised many at the time, including Dyumin himself. But that could have its own logic, because in the Moscow political cosmos, as rich as it is with intrigues, up-and-comers are quickly burned out. Putin values Dyumin for his loyalty, his anchoring in the intelligence services and his experience in difficult operations. Moreover, Dyumin, who is 20 years younger, would be considered a fresh force if deployed in the highest circles of power, unconnected to the previous establishment. But even Putin himself probably doesnt know when he will leave the political stage. That is also likely to hinge on how the war in Ukraine ultimately plays out.

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Putin's Apocalypse: How Far Is the Russian President Willing To Go? - DER SPIEGEL International Edition