Monthly Archives: March 2022

Russias offensive around Kyiv appears to have largely ground to a halt despite the regular bombing of residential areas in the capital as the invaders attempt to regroup and resupply in the north-west and east of Ukraine.

A week ago, the influential Institute of the Study of War, a US thinktank tracking the fighting, had thought that an encirclement of the capital could be achieved within 24 to 96 hours but the events of recent days have prompted it to change its mind.

On Monday and Tuesday, the Russian invaders could only muster local attacks involving a few hundred troops, leading the expert monitors to conclude that Russian forces were likely unable to complete the encirclement of Kyiv or resume mobile offensive operations in north-eastern Ukraine in the near future.

Some of this has been down to a spirited resistance from Ukrainian forces, who have managed to prevent the Russian advance on both sides of the capital to the suburbs beyond the city, around Brovary to the east and most notably around Irpin to the north-west, a once leafy district that has been the centre of fighting for over a fortnight.

Russian forces appear to have been proven unable to cross the Irpin River, which runs along the western edge of the city and the invaders remain 20km or more from the city centre, ruling out the cruel use of short-range artillery against the population that has proved so damaging in the eastern cities of Mariupol and Kharkiv.

That may offer some respite, but a critical period looms, if the war continues. The question is whether the Russian forces complete an encirclement of Kyiv and begin what could be a fearful siege of the city, which had a population of about 3 million people before the war began.

Mathieu Boulgue, a research fellow at Chatham House, said in an event organised by the thinktank on Tuesday that the danger of bombing of city centres underlined the importance of preventing a battle of Kyiv because Russia has no other way of capturing its most important strategic objective.

Three weeks into the conflict, footage from Kyiv showed the effort to defend the city centre with military reservists, volunteer soldiers who are former journalists, lawyers and prosecutors, guarding defences built out of sandbags. Steel hedgehogs lie scattered in the roads, intended to stop Russian armour from advancing at speed and generate opportunities for ambush.

But as Boulgue pointed out, Russia has sought to avoid urban warfare so far in the conflict where it is considered that an attacker needs numbers of five to one in its favour to have a chance of success. Instead, as Russian forces close in on a city, they have resorted to ground shelling and indiscriminate bombardment said Boulgue, to break the will of the residents to resist.

For both sides in the war, Kyiv is everything, and uncertainty also lingers over what would happen if Russia cannot close in on the city or if its inhabitants fight vigorously in its defence, as expected. Boulgue worried that could lead to increased frustration and risk-taking by the Kremlin.

Western leaders have repeatedly voiced concern denied by Russia that Moscow could use chemical weapons in Ukraine. Even if those fears were not realised, as Russia has showed throughout the conflict, it can launch cruise missile strikes on city centre targets, as happened in Kharkiv, or air-to-ground strikes, as against the Yavoriv military base at the weekend.

For now, Russias forces are pegged back. But an uneasy wait in the capital goes on.

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Uneasy wait in Kyiv continues as Russian advance appears to have stalled - The Guardian

Jake Sullivan looks flushed and his jaw is clenched. Across from President Joe Bidens National Security Adviser, over a row of ferns at a matching table draped in blue cloth, sits Chinas senior foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi, his mouth frozen in a sanguine smile. The official photograph released by Chinas state-run news agency of the two men sitting face to face on March 14 in Rome is a snapshot of how Beijing wants to be seen at this moment as Chinas sometime ally Russia continues its deadly invasion of Ukraine: as a confident, emerging power facing a frustrated and worried United States.

The reality is more complicated. Russias President Vladimir Putin is hoping Chinas leader Xi Jinping will see Russias invasion of Ukraine as another step forward for the two countries broader effort to push back against the worlds democracies. Russia is courting Chinas support of its assault on Ukraine and hopes China will prop up Moscows faltering economy battered by sanctions. But if China further backs Russias aggression with significant monetary help oreven more unsettlingweapons, the blowback from the U.S. and European countries could threaten Chinas long-term effort to rise as the dominant global power.

What China decides to do about Russias needs could mark a turning point in both the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations, and the outcome of Chinas choice will define what a new global order looks like. Will China continue to try to reshape the current global economy in its image by participating in it? Or will China join Russia behind a new Iron Curtain of sanctions, cut off from the U.S. and Europe and left to navigate a new monetary system and trading framework?

Yang Jiechi, left, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, right in Rome on March 14

Jin MamengniXinhua/Alamy

This is really a crucial moment and potentially a turning point, says Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. They really are siding with the Russians. They are more closely aligned with the Russians than theyve ever been.

China and Russia have occasionally had a strained relationship over the past several decades. Moscow and Beijing fought a border war in 1969 along the edge of Chinas northeast territory, and the two countries have never developed strong person-to-person ties across their shared 2,500 miles of border. As China has risen in global influence, Russias leadership have resented the prospect of becoming a client state of Beijing.

But Chinas leaders are now leaning toward Moscow much more heavily than they did when trying to appear neutral following Putins seizure of Crimea in 2014. When Xi and Putin met at the opening of the Beijing Olympics on Feb. 4, the two agreed their countries relationship would have no limits and no wavering, according to a Chinese government description of the meeting. That was two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

This has presented the Biden Administration with a delicate and growing challenge in how to talk to China about its assistance to Russia. The seven hours of talks between Sullivan and Yang inside the Rome Cavalieri hotel were intense and reflecting the gravity of the moment, a senior Administration official said, adding that the two officials had an extensive conversation about Russias war in Ukraine. Sullivan made it clear that the U.S. and European allies would consider cutting off Chinese financial institutions involved in backing Russias war financially, said a person familiar with the discussions.

Broadly, Xi Jinping has calculated that the U.S. is in decline and Western democracies have failed, Glaser says, and that Russia is one ally that can work alongside China to create a different international system thats more favorable. But with Russias violent effort to take Ukraine, that assessment comes with considerable risk for China. If Russia emerges weaker from its war in Ukraine, and China backed it, China could suffer major economic backlash. China relies heavily on its trading relationships with European countries and has worked hard to prevent Europe from restricting trade. That would be huge, if China ends up with a vast amount of countries around the world that are aligned against it because it has sided with Russia, Glaser says.

Convincing European powers to punish China could be a tall order for President Biden, whos had to work hard to convince Europe to limit its financial and energy ties to Russia. Biden is set to travel to Europe next week to meet with NATO allies, and Chinas degree of support for Russia will surely come up in those meetings. U.S. officials want to prepare allies for how to respond if China begins contributing more financially or militarily to Russia. Meanwhile, Xi showed the importance he puts on keeping lines of communication open with European powers when he joined a video call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 8 to talk about the war in Ukraine.

This moment has put on a collision course two competing objectives of Chinas foreign policy, says David Shullman, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst on East Asia. China wants Russia to be its partner in building a new global order, but it also wants to be viewed as a responsible power that can someday lead the current one, or at least be at the center of a new system of global governance and connectivity, Shullman says. If China provides Russia with drones, surface to air missiles, or other weapons, It would very clearly demonstrate that we have a break in what we expected out of the world order, Shullman says. It would be clear that China had very firmly sided with Russia against the democratic world and against developed democracies.

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How China's Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order - TIME

How close are China and Russia?

Under the rule of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin China and Russia have become increasingly isolated from the west and closer to each other.

Russias invasion of Ukraine came just days after Xi and Putin cemented a significant partnership on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics the first in-person, bilateral meeting Xi had attended since the pandemic began.

A joint statement from the two leaders said the bonds between the two countries had no limits and there were no forbidden areas of cooperation. It called on the west to abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war, and expressed support for each others stance on Ukraine and Taiwan.

Analysts say that the leaders believe they are stronger united.

Beijings rationale for the China-Russia relationship is that both countries confront a hostile west and both will be better able to withstand western pressure by standing together than apart, says Ryan Hass, a Brookings Institute scholar on China and Asia. Without Russia, the thinking goes, China would be alone to deal with a hostile west determined to obstruct Chinas rise.

Its worth bearing in mind that China and Russia do not have perfectly aligned interests, says Hass. China has a lot more to lose than Russia. China sees itself as a country on the rise with momentum behind it. Russia is essentially fighting the tides of decline.

The timing of the partnership signed between Russia and China has raised questions about what Chinas government knew of the invasion. Some analysts and US officials have suggested it was likely Beijing knew of the Russian plans for Ukraine but not the extent of them, and was caught somewhat by surprise. Beijing denies this. In the Washington Post on Wednesday, Chinas ambassador to the US said any assertions it knew about, acquiesced to or tacitly supported this war are purely disinformation.

One of the first signs that there might be limits on the partnership came on 25 February, when China abstained from voting on a UN security council resolution which would have deplored Moscows invasion of Ukraine. Russia used its veto power to quash the resolution but Chinas decision to not actively support the veto was reportedly seen as a positive sign by western officials.

Dr Courtney J Fung, an associate professor at Macquarie University and associate fellow at Chatham House, says China wants recognition as a responsible major country, but is applying this selectively when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine. China focuses on second order issues that result from the Russian invasion like humanitarian aid, civilian protection, evacuation and while these are of course important concerns, China is sidestepping efforts for it to mediate or resolve the crisis itself.

Chinas government and state apparatus are mostly not referring to it as an invasion or a war, although official English-language readouts of bilateral phone calls by Xi and foreign minister Wang Yi included the word war. It is instead usually referring to it as a situation, a crisis, or sometimes a conflict, and has emphasised a complexhistoricalbackground and context. It has expressed support for both Ukraines sovereignty and Russias security concerns.

Speaking to media after the annual two sessions meeting last Friday, Premier Li Keqiang said China was deeply concerned and grieved over the conflict.

On Ukraine, indeed the current situation there is grave, he said. The pressing task now is preventing tensions from escalating or even getting out of control.

Beijing has sought to present itself as neutral, and signalled it could act as a mediator, but Chinese media have amplified Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Government spokespeople have also promoted an anti-western narrative, blaming the US and Nato for inflaming tensions.

China has struggled to navigate a path between its partnership with Russia and the huge global condemnation of the invasion. China continues to back Russia through its comprehensive strategic partnership and to oppose Nato expansion and sanctions on Russia, Paul Haenle, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told China File.

At the same time, it is paying lip service to its principles of non-interference and positive relations with Ukraine. Haenle said Beijings aims were incompatible, but in recent days it had started to solidify its messaging into an attempt to straddle them anyway.

According to reports in US media, citing unnamed government officials, Russia has requested military equipment and support from China, as well as economic assistance as global sanctions and private sector abandonment starts to bite.

The initial reports didnt detail the types of weapons Russia was seeking or Chinas response, but drew warnings from the US that China would face consequences if it agreed. Subsequent reports, citing US diplomatic cables to allies, said Russia had requested equipment including drones, armoured vehicles and surface-to-air missiles, and that China had signalled a willingness to agree.

Chinese officials angrily dismissed the claims as malicious disinformation. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said hed never heard of such a request.

US officials fear China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones.

The Russian relationship remains important to Xi, and he is unlikely to jettison it in favour of aligning with a declining west, the director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Bonnie Glaser, told China File. But he must decide to what extent hell help the Russian economy as sanctions which China has long opposed kick in.

China is likely to find ways to help Moscow mitigate the impact of the sanctions, without blatantly violating them. The playbook it has used to assist Iran and North Korea evade sanctions provides possible actions China can take.

China has little incentive to provide direct military aid, says Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australian National University.

Beijings preferences are: one, international stability; two, to ensure the Russian economy and polity does not collapse under the weight of the international sanctions, and three, to not be seen as an overt enabler of Russian aggression.

Hass says its more likely that China will remain rhetorically committed to showing support for Russia but will largely comply with international sanctions against it, in order to avoid attracting secondary sanctions.

I also expect China to remain cautious in providing any materiel support to Russia, given that such support likely would have limited impact on the outcome of hostilities in Ukraine, but significant impacts on Chinas relations with the west.

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How close are China and Russia and where does Beijing stand on Ukraine? - The Guardian

While the precise scope of Russian President Vladimir Putins military operation in Ukraine is unclear, experts like Thomas Graham, a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff between 2004 and 2007, believe hes seeking regime change and the destruction of Ukraines military infrastructure in a bid to bring Kyiv back under the influence of Moscow.

But reports documenting a deepening bitterness toward Putin across Ukraine are a reminder that the fury and suffering hes generating with his brutal invasion could undermine his plans to control the country.

According to a recent New York Times report, the "one overriding emotion gripping Ukraine right now is hate." It said:

Billboards have gone up along roadsides in gigantic block letters, telling Russians in profanity-laced language to get out. Social media posts in spaces often shared by Russians and Ukrainians have been awash in furious comments.

The article described how the backlash against the invasion which has targeted civilian infrastructure, appears to be using indiscriminate cluster bombs and has already displaced millions of Ukrainians is not just driving hatred of Putin, but hatred of Russian society more broadly.

Yuri Makarov, the chief editor of the Ukrainian national broadcasting company and the head of a national literature and arts award committee, said the war had driven a deep wedge between the Ukrainian and Russian societies that will be hard to heal, the Times reported. Russians, he said, have become Ukrainians collective enemies.

This kind of shift in national sentiment undermines the idea that this invasion could serve as a straightforward way for Moscow to bring Kyiv back under its control after years of Kyiv drifting toward Western influence. Instead, its looking like the operation could backfire by intensifying anti-Russian attitudes and laying the groundwork for a potential long-term insurgency.

Experts like Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, have noted that Putin appears to be surrounded by yesmen who may want to confirm the assumptions that underlie his own worldview. That may have included an unwillingness among his advisers to point out that some of his assumptions about Ukrainian identity and Russia's ability to intervene militarily without much resistance were out of touch with reality.

I think, in general, Graham told me in an interview shortly after the invasion began, senior people in the Kremlin underestimate the degree of unity among the Ukrainian people at this point and that's Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers.

They have underestimated the consequences of their annexation of Crimea and what they've done in the Donbas over the past eight years and how that has changed attitudes towards Russia, he added, referring to Russias support for separatist rebels in Ukraines southeastern region since 2014.

Ukraine has a mix of Ukrainian and Russian speakers, with the eastern regions of the country being more Russian-speaking and historically more receptive to or susceptible to Russian political influence. But it seems that Putin is providing a stronger force for fostering a more coherent and strongly held Ukrainian national identity than couldve ever emerged from within the country itself in the short to medium term.

As civilians organize resistance, take up arms or leave the country out of fear, we could be seeing the birth of the very kind of united anti-Russian sentiment and action that Putin constantly seemed to fear before his invasion. He may have just created his own worst nightmare.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation and elsewhere.

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Why Russia's attempt to bend Ukraine to its will could have the opposite effect - MSNBC

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. Vishegirskaya later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol. Mstyslav Chernov/AP hide caption

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. Vishegirskaya later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol.

The immediate toll of the Russian airstrike that devastated a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last week was three people dead and 17 injured, but the impact did not stop there. In the AP photo that has come to symbolize the attack, a wounded pregnant woman lies on a stretcher, holding her lower belly and splattered with blood, being rushed out of the hospital by emergency workers seeking care for her elsewhere. Neither she nor her baby survived.

An injured pregnant woman is carried from the maternity hospital damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. The woman and her baby subsequently died. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP hide caption

An injured pregnant woman is carried from the maternity hospital damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. The woman and her baby subsequently died.

The attack was condemned worldwide. The World Health Organization issued a statement: "To attack the most vulnerable babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives is an act of unconscionable cruelty."

WHO further pointed to the ongoing ripple effects such attacks pose by limiting access to health care as well as potentially endangering those who seek it and also straining and threatening the viability of the health-care system itself.

Yet this was only one of 31 attacks on health-care workers, medical sites and facilities documented thus far in the Ukraine conflict by WHO's Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA). Moreover, health facilities have been targeted in other wars, including those led or supported by Russia, like Syria's ongoing civil war and the war in Chechen from 1999 to 2009.

What happens to the health needs of the local population in the short-term and what are the long-term consequences of this kind of destruction? How can what happened in past conflicts help us gain insight into the plight of those in Ukraine now?

To learn more, we spoke with Leonard Rubenstein, professor at the Johns Hopkins University school of public health and author of Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War; Dr. Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights and a professor of internal medicine and of public health at the University of Michigan; and Dr. Houssam al-Nahhas, the Middle East and North Africa researcher at Physicians for Human Rights. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Physicians for Human Rights has documented 601 deliberate attacks on 350 medical facilities in Syria from 2011 onward. Why target medical facilities?

Heisler: It is a devastatingly effective weapon of war because there are few greater ways of terrorizing the population, of breaking their will and lowering morale, than through attacking health care. An article in The Lancet called this strategy "the weaponization of health care."

Al-Nahhas: When a country attacks health-care facilities they are sending the message that they don't have any boundaries to what they can do. This is targeting people who cannot defend themselves and who cannot pose a threat because they're patients. It is a way to break people's resilience. Going to the hospital becomes dangerous, going there to get help means risking your life.

In this photo from May 2016, citizens and firefighters gather at the scene after a rocket hit the Dubeet hospital in Aleppo, Syria. As attacks have continued during the war, some health-care facilities have moved underground to try and serve their patients in relative safety. SANA via AP hide caption

Was that one of the immediate consequences you saw in Syria and elsewhere?

Al-Nahhas: We documented this in a case history of what happened after three airstrikes hit al-Altareb hospital in Aleppo in March 2021. Afterward, there was a significant decrease in consultations and beneficiaries of health care due to the risk of being bombed at the facility.

There was a decrease of 78% of prenatal and reproductive care consultations. We also witnessed a 27% decrease in normal deliveries. Many would elect to do a C-section in order to know when they will come in and when they will go out and to limit the time spent in the facility.

That is also what I witnessed in Aleppo during my time there as an emergency physician between 2014 and 2016, when we saw a spike of C-sections in conjunction with military escalations in 2014.

What else happens when health-care facilities are attacked?

Heisler: In the short-term there is chaos. Supplies, medications, oxygen are in short supply. People are not getting IV fluids or necessary surgery or other treatments, such as dialysis, and there are needless deaths as a result.

Rubenstein: On top of that, the hospitals may not have a track record of dealing with the complex injuries resulting from these powerful weapons. There may also be fewer staff members. In Syria, many of the most experienced physicians left, leaving behind the less experienced and younger physicians. There was an effort at quick training and a shifting of inexperienced people doing more complex things. For instance, technicians who supported the anesthesiologists may have to do the anesthesia or dentists [may have to] do oral surgery.

A man walks with crutch in a hospital in western Aleppo, Syria, damaged by attacks by the Bashar al-Assad regime during the country's ongoing civil war. Muhammed Said/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption

A man walks with crutch in a hospital in western Aleppo, Syria, damaged by attacks by the Bashar al-Assad regime during the country's ongoing civil war.

Are there additional ramifications for health care as the conflict continues?

Rubenstein: Childhood vaccinations tend to decline because the vaccinators are attacked as in Afghanistan and whole vaccine initiatives have to be suspended. Measles vaccinations have to be suspended either because of attacks on the vaccinators or because of the general insecurity, where it's too dangerous to go house to house. Attacks on a health-care facility in Zemio in Central African Republic [in 2017] led to HIV and AIDS programs being suspended.

In Yemen the Saudis have bombed both hospitals and water and sanitation infrastructure, such as pumping plants, which then led to a cholera epidemic that affected more than 2 million people.

Heisler: In Syria, hospitals went underground. You go from flying the white flag and when you realize that might indeed be a target, you take down the flag and you go underground. In Syria there was a whole system of underground hospitals.

Al-Nahhas: If all the intensive care units are occupied by people with war injuries, that equipment is not available to be used to help COVID patients or heart patients or any non-war related illness.

And what longer term consequences have you seen from such attacks?

Rubenstein: Even after a conflict ends it often takes a very long time to restore health capacity. And in the meantime people's health continues to suffer in ways similar to during the conflict.

Heisler: The concern is this might lead to the complete collapse of the health-care system. The continuing shortage of health-care workers and no supplies and no system to provide necessary care that is devastating. In Yemen, and in Tigray [Ethiopia, where a war began in 2020 and is still going on] almost all health-care systems are not functioning.

A nurse moves scrap from a damaged part of the Wukro General Hospital, which was shelled as government-aligned forces entered the city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on February 28, 2021. EDUARDO SOTERAS/Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A nurse moves scrap from a damaged part of the Wukro General Hospital, which was shelled as government-aligned forces entered the city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on February 28, 2021.

What about the impact on the physicians and health-care workers? The stress must be acute.

Al-Nahhas: I think it's important for people to know what the health-care workers are experiencing in Ukraine especially when health care is not protected in conflict.

It's knowing that you are in a hospital and treating patients and yet you can be targeted and killed at any moment. You need to provide the best care for your patients but you're also worried about your own safety.

I was in Syria for two years literally living in the hospital. It was rewarding to see the impact of [our] the work on people, but it was not sustainable because of the stress on all the health-care providers. We were not used to seeing so much trauma. We had to learn as we went along how to treat war-related injuries that we had never seen before.

This sense of how bad things can get the flashbacks from Syria are still with me after eight years.

What is being done to stop such attacks? Three international courts are now investigating possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. Could that make a difference?

Heisler: We need to establish accountability by documenting and gathering evidence of what has happened. That is the role of organizations like ours. If we live in a world in which you can bomb hospitals in war, killing patients and health-care workers, then we really would be returning to no-holds barred wars where no one is safe. We have to be sure that this does not continue.

Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is DianeJoyceCole.com.

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Russia's bombing of Ukraine hospital reflects a terrible wartime pattern : Goats and Soda - NPR

The Russian military's chief of general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov (right), speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last December in Moscow. Back in 2013, Gerasimov was the first Russian military official to talk about "hybrid warfare." The U.S. and NATO have not sent troops into Ukraine but are seeking to counter Russia through a variety of means outside the battlefield. Sergei Guneyev/AP hide caption

The Russian military's chief of general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov (right), speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last December in Moscow. Back in 2013, Gerasimov was the first Russian military official to talk about "hybrid warfare." The U.S. and NATO have not sent troops into Ukraine but are seeking to counter Russia through a variety of means outside the battlefield.

The U.S. and Russian militaries have both talked for years about "hybrid warfare" as the future of war. Yet it remains a fuzzy term with no fixed meaning. The general idea is waging unconventional war on multiple fronts and well beyond the traditional battlefield.

What's clear is the U.S. and its allies are doing this now perhaps on a scale never seen before as they attempt to counter Russia in the war in Ukraine.

Here's a look at what it means in the current conflict:

Q. How did "hybrid warfare" enter the military vocabulary?

The first prominent figure to talk about it publicly was James Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general and former U.S. defense secretary. He used the term in a 2005 speech, though he didn't go into detail.

Then in 2013, the Russian military's chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, gave a speech on hybrid warfare that caught the attention of some Western journalists.

Gerasimov, it turns out, was not talking about a new Russian military doctrine. He was actually addressing what he believed the U.S. was doing to support uprisings around the world. Gerasimov speculated on how Russia might respond but wasn't proposing a new Russian approach.

But in 2014, Russia stealthily seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula using disinformation, cyberattacks and "little green men" in unmarked military uniforms. There was virtually no fighting. Some in the West described this as an example of the "Gerasimov doctrine," though there has never been evidence that such a game plan exists.

Mark Galeotti, a British journalist who closely follows the Russian military, wrote a mea culpa in 2018 titled "I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine.' "

"To my immense chagrin," he wrote, "I coined the term 'Gerasimov doctrine,' though even then I noted in the text that this term was nothing more than 'a placeholder,' and 'it certainly isn't a doctrine.'"

Q. How exactly are the U.S. and its allies waging this type of warfare?

The U.S. and its NATO allies haven't sent a single soldier into Ukraine, but they began their unconventional warfare before the first shot was fired.

The U.S. released intelligence in advance of the Russian invasion, "pre-bunking" Russian disinformation such as the claim that Ukraine is being run by Nazis.

President Biden's administration worked closely with Europe for months to ensure they would roll out a tough, unified sanctions package as soon as the war began.

The comprehensive sanctions continue to mount by the day. The U.S. on Tuesday announced sanctions against 11 Russian military leaders. The European Union and Japan both announced they were placing additional sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

One of the most important steps has been the U.S. sanctions on the Central Bank of Russia. This will keep President Vladimir Putin's government from getting access to roughly half of the $600 billion war chest it had amassed before the war.

Russia faces a cascade of bond payments that are due, starting Wednesday. If Russia defaults on any of these payments considered a real possibility in the near future it could become a pariah on international financial markets for years to come.

Q. These moves are being made at the government level. What else are we seeing?

On social media, the West is generating wave after wave of public support. Every day, sympathetic scenes of Ukrainian civilians are going viral.

Contrast this with Putin's crackdown on all forms of media, the arrests of thousands of protesters and swift punishment for those who stray from the Kremlin's version of the events in Ukraine.

"What we're seeing now is Russia failing dramatically at implementing its hybrid war objectives," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russia expert who heads the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator. "In fact, they're prosecuting a conventional war on the ground in Ukraine and not doing a good job of it. They're just getting completely destroyed in the information sphere, with Ukrainians being much more adept at pushing their narratives globally."

In another major development, many iconic Western companies have already announced they are suspending operations or pulling out of Russia altogether. They include McDonald's, Apple, Starbucks, big airlines, big banks and big oil. Before the war, it was far from clear they would respond this way.

"Most of the impact is actually coming from Western companies that are unilaterally deciding to pull out of Russia," said Alperovitch. "They're not getting their marching orders from the CIA or the White House. They're doing this on their own. This is what the Russians truly underestimated. They thought that this would be all driven top down, and it's actually bottom up."

Q. Hybrid warfare may be widespread, but can it determine the outcome of the war?

The punishment for Russia is real. The country has been largely cut off from the world overnight. Russians are waiting in line at banks for hours to get money. The ruble has crashed; interest rates have doubled to 20%; the stock market is closed for a third week.

Collectively, this may be an unprecedented global pressure campaign against Russia.

But the single most important factor is still likely to be what happens on the ground between the Russian and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine has put up strong resistance, but Russia has the advantage in sheer firepower, allowing it to grind down Ukraine's defenses over time.

"We have to determine how we change Putin's calculus," said Alperovitch. "I think that can only come with economic pressure turning Russia into a new North Korea, completely isolated economically and diplomatically. Putin's all in now, so it's very difficult to actually get him to change course."

Greg Myre is a national security correspondent for NPR who was based in Russia from 1996 to 1999. Follow him on Twitter: @gregmyre1.

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Without sending troops, the U.S. wages 'hybrid warfare' against Russia - NPR

Russia announced sanctions against top U.S. officials in retaliation for American sanctions against Russia. Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Russia announced sanctions against top U.S. officials in retaliation for American sanctions against Russia.

As sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Union and allies continue to roil Russia's economy, Russia responded by issuing sanctions of its own against top American officials.

Russia's foreign ministry said it was issuing a "stop list" to prevent members of the Biden administration from entering Russia.

"This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The list includes President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns, press secretary Jen Psaki, deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo and U.S. Export-Import Bank President and Chair Reta Jo Lewis.

Hillary Clinton and President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, are also on the list.

Psaki downplayed the significance of the announcement Tuesday, saying "none of us are planning tourist trips to Russia, none of us have bank accounts that we won't be able to access, so we will forge ahead."

The U.S. and allies have sanctioned Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov personally over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia said it would soon announce more sanctions on U.S. officials, lawmakers, business people and media personalities that the country accuses of "Russophobia."

Russia also said on Tuesday that it was sanctioning top Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and more than 300 lawmakers and officials.

Western countries have imposed a plethora of sanctions against Russian oligarchs and officials, Russian companies, Russian oil and Russian banks.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday that the sanctions are having a severe impact on Russia's economy.

"We expect a deep recession in Russia," she told CBS.

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Russia sanctions Biden and Blinken in retaliation for US sanctions - NPR

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, 400 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russiabut some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred.

Originally conceptualized as a simple "withdraw" vs. "remain" list, our new list of companies now consists of four categories:

1) WITHDRAWAL - Clean Break: companies completely halting Russian engagements;

2) SUSPENSION - Keeping Options Open for Return: companies temporarily curtailing operations while keeping return options open;

3) SCALING BACK - Reducing Activities: companies scaling back some but not all operations, or delaying investments;

4) DIGGING IN - Defying Demands for Exit: companies defying demands for exit/reduction of activities

Download the list by clicking here.(make sure to "download" the file from Box as an excel document rather than "previewing" for best file quality)

The list is updated continuously by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute to reflect new announcements from companies in as close to real time as possible.

Our list has already garnered extensive coverage for its role in helping catalyze the mass corporate exodus from Russia.

When this list was first published the week of February 28, only several dozen companies had announced their departure.

Hundreds of companies have withdrawn in the days since, and we are humbled that our list helped galvanize millions around the world to raise awareness and take action.

Although we are pleased that our list has been widely circulated across company boardrooms, government officials, and media outlets as the most authoritative and comprehensive record of this powerful, historic movement, we are most inspired by the thousands of messages we have received from readers across the globe, especially those from Ukraine, and we continue to welcome yourtips, insights, and feedback.

Please refer to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's insights and commentary below on why our work matters.

Click here to read the March 17th commentary from Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian in Fortune accompanying the release of our new list.

Click here to view Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's related PBS NewsHour appearance on how business blockades and sanctions pressure Putin by crippling Russia's economy.

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400 Companies Have Withdrawn from RussiaBut Some Remain - Yale School of Management

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with his China's counterpart Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following the Russian-Chinese talks on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 11, 2018.

Sergei Chriikov | AFP | Getty Images

Sanctions, asset freezes and withdrawals of international companies are hammering the Russian economy in response to President Vladimir Putin's military assault on Ukraine, leaving Moscow with only one ally powerful enough to rely on as a source of potential support: China.

"I think that our partnership with China will still allow us to maintain the cooperation that we have achieved, and not only maintain, but also increase it in an environment where Western markets are closing," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Sunday.

U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan, in response, said it had warned Beijing that there "will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them." On Monday, U.S. and Chinese diplomats discussed the issue over seven hours of talks.

Siluanov had made reference to U.S.-led asset freezes on nearly half of Russia's central bank reserves $300 billion of the $640 billion in gold and foreign currency that it had amassed since a previous wave of Western sanctions that followed its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014.

The remaining reserves are in gold and Chinese yuan, effectively making China Moscow's main potential source of foreign exchange to back up the spiraling ruble amid devastating capital outflows.

In some of Beijing's most explicit comments on the sanctions yet, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yisaid Monday during a call with a European counterpart that "China is not a party to the crisis, nor does it want the sanctions to affect China." He added that "China has the right to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests."

Spokespersons for China's Dubai consulate, its Abu Dhabi embassy and its South African embassy were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

How much could China help ease Russia's economic pain? Quite a lot, theoretically.

If China decided to open up a full swap line with Russia, accepting rubles as payment for anything it needed to buy including crucial imports like technology parts and semiconductors that Moscow has been cut off from in the latest rounds of sanctions China could essentially plug most of the holes fired into Russia's economy by the West.

But whether that's entirely in Beijing's interest to do so, and how much it could backfire, is another matter.

"In terms of to what extent China could help Russia, they could help them a ton," Maximilian Hess, a Central Asia fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC. "But they would be risking major secondary sanctions on themselves, major renewed trade and sanctions war with the U.S. and the West as well."

Given the uncertain state of Chinese markets over the last few weeks, amid mounting inflation and a major new Covid-19 outbreak in the country, "it might not be the best time to do that," Hess said.

Still, Beijing does have a long-held alliance with Russia and can benefit from its position.

Before the invasion, Beijing and Moscow announced a "no limits" strategic partnership they said was intended to counter U.S. influence. China's position has been to ultimately blame the U.S. and NATO's eastward expansion for the conflict, and on March 7 its foreign minister, Wang, called Russia his country's "most important strategic partner."

"No matter how perilous the international landscape, we will maintain our strategic focus and promote the development of a comprehensive China-Russia partnership in the new era," Wang said from Beijing.

(China would) be taking all the liabilities and risks of the Russian economy onto their own balance sheet at a time when the Russian economy is at its weakest in decades

Maximilian Hess

Central Asia fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute

And while China's government has expressed "concern" over the conflict in Ukraine, it has refused to call it an invasion or condemn Russia, largely pushing Moscow's narrative of the war on its state news outlets.

"China and Putin have a clear interest in working together more closely," Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, wrote in an early March research note.

"China is happy to cause problems for the West and would not mind turning Russia gradually into its pliant junior partner." It could also take advantage of its position to buy Russian oil, gas and other commodities at discounted prices, similar to what it's been doing with Iran.

To what extent China's leadership steps in to support Moscow will play a key role in the future of Russia's economy. China is Russia's top export market after the European Union; trade between China and Russia reached a record high of $146.9 billion in 2021, up 35.9% year on year,according to China's customs agency. Russian exports to China were worth $79.3 billion in 2021, with oil and gas accounting for 56% of that. China's imports from Russia exceeded exports by more than $10 billion last year.

"Russia can use China over time as a bigger alternative market for its raw material exports and a conduit to help circumvent Western sanctions," Schmieding said.

"But for both countries with their very different perceptions of history, it could be an uneasy and fragile alliance that may not outlast Putin."

The powerful alliance of the G-7 economies, composed of the U.S. and its European and Asian partners, can slap harsh secondary sanctions on any entity that supports Moscow. But the problem here is that China's economy is the second largest in the world and is a key part of global supply chains. It impacts global markets far more than Russia does. Any move to sanction China would mean much greater global effects, and likely economic pain for the West, too.

Beijing likely seeks a "third way somewhere between the binary choice of supporting Russia or refusing to do so," analysts at New York-based research firm Rhodium Group wrote in a note in early March. That middle path involves "quietly maintaining existing channels of economic engagement with Russia while minimizing the exposure of China's financial institutions to Western sanctions."

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Indeed, in early March, the chairman of China's banking regulator, Guo Shuqing, said China opposed "unilateral" sanctions and would continue normal trade relations with the affected parties.

But maintaining that kind of economic engagement with Russia will be "hard to conceal under the current sanctions architecture," Rhodium's analysts wrote.

Could Beijing keep letting Russia access and trade with its yuan reserves, which total around $90 billion, or about 14% of Russia's FX reserves? Yes. But what if Beijing allowed Russia's central bank to sell yuan-denominated assets for dollars or euros? That would likely expose it to sanctions.

China can still trade with Russian firms in rubles and yuan through the Russian banks that haven't yet been sanctioned. But despite many years of working to increase bilateral trade in their own currencies, the vast majority of that trade including 88% of Russian exports is still invoiced in dollars or euros.

Not only that, but China could be essentially catching a falling knife by taking on the credit and sanctions risks of Russia's rapidly deteriorating economy.

"China could alleviate the vast majority of the pain," Hess said. "But if they offered those swap lines and everything, effectively they'd be taking all the liabilities and risks of the Russian economy onto their own balance sheet at a time when the Russian economy is at its weakest in decades."

"So that's maybe not the wisest move economically," Hess said. "But politics are different decisions."

More here:

How much can and will China help Russia as its economy crumbles? - CNBC

A worker attaches a wiring harness to the chassis of an X model SUV at the BMW manufacturing facility in Greer, South Carolina, November 4, 2019.

Charles Mostoller | Reuters

DETROIT The war in Ukraine is expected to lower global light-duty vehicle production through next year by millions of units, according to S&P Global Mobility.

The automotive research firm, formerly known as IHS Markit, on Wednesday downgraded its 2022 and 2023 global light vehicle production forecast by 2.6 million units for both years, to 81.6 million for 2022 and 88.5 million units for 2023.

The conflict has caused logistical and supply chain problems as well as parts shortages of critical vehicle components. Most notably, many automakers source wire harnesses, which are used in vehicles for electrical power and communication between parts, from Ukraine. The problems add to an already strained supply chain due to the coronavirus pandemic and an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips.

European auto production is expected to experience the most disruption, according to S&P. The firm cut 1.7 million units from its forecast for Europe, including just under 1 million units from lost demand in Russia and Ukraine. The rest of the cuts are from parts shortages involving chips and wiring harnesses caused by the war.

That compares to S&P cutting its North America light-duty vehicle production by 480,000 units for 2022 and by 549,000 units for 2023.

About 45% of Ukraine-built wiring harnesses are normally exported to Germany and Poland, placing German carmakers at high exposure, according to S&P. Automakers such as Volkswagen and BMW have been among the most impacted since Russia's invasion of Ukraine about three weeks ago.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess earlier this week said the war has put the company's 2022 outlook into question, as the automaker experiences parts problems. He said the company was moving some of its production out of Europe to North America and China in response to war-related supply-chain disruptions.

BMW cut its car division's 2022 profit margin forecast on Wednesday from 8%-10% to 7%-9%, due to the impact of the unfolding Ukraine crisis.

BMW's plants will be back to full production next week following the luxury automaker halting or lowering production output at some German plants after the invasion, said the company's chief technology officer, Frank Weber.

Weber said the company has worked with suppliers to duplicate, not relocate, the wire harnessing production to attempt to keep jobs in the country.

"When you look at Ukraine, this wire harnessing industry gives work to maybe 20,000 people," Weber told reporters Wednesday during a remote roundtable. "We didn't just want to take away the work there."

In total, S&P on Wednesday said it removed nearly 25 million units from global light-duty vehicle production from its forecast between now and 2030.

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine will lower car production by millions of units over two years, S&P says - CNBC