Monthly Archives: March 2022

A driver sits in the cab of a combine harvester during the summer harvest in a field of wheat in Varva, Ukraine. Ukraine accounts for more than 10% of the global wheat market. Russia's war threatens to disrupt the spring planting season. Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

A driver sits in the cab of a combine harvester during the summer harvest in a field of wheat in Varva, Ukraine. Ukraine accounts for more than 10% of the global wheat market. Russia's war threatens to disrupt the spring planting season.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't only jeopardizing the lives of Ukraine's citizens. The war is also on track to cause a surge in severe malnutrition and even starvation around the world.

That's the grim assessment of many experts on global food security, who point to how heavily the rest of the world relies on Ukraine and Russia for wheat and a slew of other essential commodities. As that supply is cut off, it will drive up food prices that are already at record levels and at a time when the economic fallout from the pandemic has already pinched household budgets, most devastatingly in low-income countries.

"Frankly I'm extremely worried," says Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Programme. "People in Ukraine are in a disastrous situation and they're fighting for their lives. But this disaster is beyond borders. It is also going to hurt people thousands of miles away."

To find out just how bad things could get, NPR spoke to Husain, as well as to another prominent analyst, Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPR. Both Glauber and Husain laid out some alarming scenarios. But they also pointed to concrete actions the world could take to ensure the worst does not come to pass. Here are six takeaways:

While a military conflict in Ukraine was always going to have some impact on the world's food supply, WFP's Husain says, "the timing of this unnecessary, unwanted, unjustified war couldn't have been worse."

Take the cost of food. Over the last year the prices of key commodities have jumped to their highest levels since the spikes of 2008 through 2012. Back then the strain prompted people around the world to erupt in civil unrest particularly in the hard-hit Middle East and Northern Africa, notes IFPRI's Glauber.

Food prices have risen dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Above: Edith Obatuga (right), who is bringing up her two children and four nieces and nephews, shops at a market in Lagos, Nigeria. Benson Ibeabuchi /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Food prices have risen dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Above: Edith Obatuga (right), who is bringing up her two children and four nieces and nephews, shops at a market in Lagos, Nigeria.

He says the causes of this current price crunch are manifold. But much of it has to do with reduced supply. Droughts have cut into recent harvests for wheat in North America and for soybean and corn in South America. Typhoons in Malaysia last year shrunk the crop of palm oil used for cooking, among other purposes. The upshot, says Glauber, is that, "it's not like [the war in Ukraine] is coming as we're flush with grain reserves and other things. Prices have been high. This is going to send them higher."

The human cost has also been mounting. "After decades of seeing the percent of the population that is malnourished in the world decline, over the last four or five years we've actually seen rising percentages," says Glauber. Husain notes that currently about 276 million people worldwide are in the midst of a hunger crisis with 44 million of them "one step away from famine. If we cannot assist them they will die. It's that simple."

Then there's the impact of the pandemic. "I think probably the worst thing is that this is coming during the time of COVID," says Husain. "A lot of people in many parts of the world have lost their jobs. They don't have the incomes. They don't have the purchasing power. Now on top of that, they've been dealing with inflation. So you're getting squeezed from both sides."

Many governments too, are less economically resilient now after two years of dipping into their coffers to soften COVID's economic blow on their citizens, adds Husain. "People are tapped out. And governments are tapped out."

In recent years Ukraine and Russia have both become "a major engine" for feeding the world, says Glauber. In an analysis, he and some colleagues found that the various agricultural products exported by the two countries account for about 12% of the calories the world trades.

Much of this is through wheat. Ukraine alone accounts for more than 10% of the global market, says Glauber. Add in Russia and the share jumps to more than 30%.

But it doesn't end there. The two countries are also a major source of grains such as corn and barley that are mainly fed to livestock. Ukraine provides about 15% of the global supply of corn, for instance. And taken together Ukraine and Russia account for just under 30% of the world's barley supply.

Another important product is sunflower oil, one of the main vegetable oils used for cooking. The two countries contribute about 80% of the world's supply.

Russia along with Belarus is also a huge source of fertilizer, providing about 15% of the world's needs.

People line up in front of a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Vasylkiv, just outside Kyiv on Feb. 27. Overnight, Russian strikes hit a nearby oil depot. Dimitar Dilkoff /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People line up in front of a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Vasylkiv, just outside Kyiv on Feb. 27. Overnight, Russian strikes hit a nearby oil depot.

Then there's the crucial stream of oil and gas exported from Russia via Ukraine. While technically these fuels don't count as food, their impact on food prices is enormous, says Husain: "When the price of gas goes up, everything goes up."

There's a range of reasons why the supply of all these commodities could dry up.

The most obvious risk is to Ukraine's exports. "The good news," says Glauber, is that at present most of the wheat from Ukraine's last harvest has already been shipped out of the country. Still, he says, about 30% still awaits transport. That's also the case with about 45% of the corn crop. "Now the ports are shut," he says. So a key question is how long that will remain the case.

Another test will come in April, when planting for corn, barley and sunflower seed should begin much of it in areas where Russia's military is currently bearing down. This summer will be another crucial period. That's when the next major wheat harvest would need to take place.

Russia's planting and harvesting doesn't face the same disruptions as Ukraine's. And sanctions are not currently directly targeting Russia's food exports. Yet the war could still cause major disruption.

Husain notes that two major shipping lines have already refused to do business with Russia. "If you're tainted, nobody's going to do business with you, even if it is allowed," he says. And when even just one component in the export process gets affected the ramification can be enormous. "The supply chain network is so complicated that if somebody sneezes in one place, somebody else gets the cold in another place," says Husain.

Sudanese buy bread from a bakery in Khartoum on Oct. 11, 2021. The country has suffered from shortages of wheat and other essentials due to the closure of Port Sudan during protests. Mujahed Sharaf Al-Deen Sati /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

In the immediate term it would seem that the countries most likely to be affected by a cut-off in exports from Ukraine and Russia are those that currently get a large share of their imports from the two countries. For instance, in their analysis Glauber and his co-authors found that Egypt is one of several countries that get more than about half of their imported calories from Ukraine and Russia. Other heavily reliant countries of concern to food security experts include Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

But Glauber and Husain both stress that because world commodity markets are so interconnected, it won't take long for prices to rise even in countries that don't currently source their wheat, corn or other commodities directly from Ukraine or Russia. "Any disruption that happens in one place has an effect in another place," says Husain.

A vendor at a market in the war-torn Yemeni capital Sanaa, on Feb. 28, 2022. Ukraine supplies grains to many Middle Eastern countries; Russia's invasion of Ukraine could mean less bread on the table in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world. Mohammed Huwais /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A vendor at a market in the war-torn Yemeni capital Sanaa, on Feb. 28, 2022. Ukraine supplies grains to many Middle Eastern countries; Russia's invasion of Ukraine could mean less bread on the table in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world.

Another way to gauge where the fallout will be most severe is to look to countries that are heavily reliant on one of the products at risk regardless of where they're currently getting it from. Glauber says he worries about Bangladesh, for instance, because it is heavily reliant on fertilizers and because its government has already had to stretch itself to subsidize farmers hurt by the current rise in prices.

Husain, too, says that since every country is likely to feel the stress, he's most concerned about those that are "already in trouble" when it comes to food crises. Unfortunately, he adds, "that's a big list. I mean there are 38 countries where there are people facing emergency levels of hunger."

As depressing as all this may sound, Glauber and Husain both point to a bright spot: Even with the loss of the contributions to the food supply from Ukraine and Russia, there would still technically be enough quantity left to feed the world. In other words, the only problem will be the increased price of that food. This in turn, suggests that the immediate solution will be monetary. As Glauber puts it, "someone has to pay for those higher costs." So if governments and other donors can fill the gap between what people are able to pay and the new, higher price of food, people will not go hungry.

Yemenis receive humanitarian aid provided by the World Food Programme in the capital Sanaa. WFP hopes to raise about $18 billion to assist some 140 million people worldwide this year. To date member states have provided about half of that. Mohammed Huwais /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Unfortunately, says Husain, the world has not been particularly generous even in better times. Just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the World Food Programme which is the main arm of the United Nations responsible for averting hunger crises was attempting to raise enough money to assist about 140 million people worldwide in 2022. That would require about $18 billion, says Husain. To date he says, member states have provided about 50% of that. And that's not even considering the $580 million that WFP will now be asking countries to contribute to help about 3.2 million Ukrainians inside the country and an additional 200,000 refugees who the United Nations estimates will now need food aid over the next six months.

"This is our world in the 21st century," he says.

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Russia's war on Ukraine is dire for world hunger. But there are solutions - NPR

Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Chinese Communist Party tabloid, Global Times, posted a video saying that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers had laid down their arms. Its source: the Russian state-controlled television network, RT.

Two days later, Chinas state broadcaster Central Television Station (CCTV) flashed a breaking news alert, quoting Russias parliamentary speaker, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had fled Kyiv. CCTV then created a related hashtag on the Twitter-like platform Weibo that was viewed 510 million times and used by 163 media outlets in the country.

On Feb. 28, as Russia became an international pariah, the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik shared a message of strength with its 11 million Weibo followers. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Sputnik said, said Russia still had friends in the world, especially a real giant like China.

Add oil, Russia, Sputniks Weibo follower @fengyiqing cheered on, using a Chinese expression of support. All the people in the world who love justice are friends of Russia.

As European and American officials press Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other online platforms to clamp down on Russian disinformation, China has embraced Russias propaganda and lies about the war. Chinas state-owned media outlets quoted their Russian counterparts coverage without verification, helping to magnify their disinformation on the Chinese internet. They put Russian officials on state television networks with little pushback on their claims.

When it comes to information, the Chinese government is a control freak, dictating and censoring what its 1.4 billion people consume. Beijing has silenced and jailed its critics and journalists. It has coerced and co-opted the biggest Chinese online platforms to enforce its censorship guidelines. It blocks nearly all major western news and information websites, including Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

Yet as the world faces one of its most serious geopolitical crises since the end of the Cold War, China let down its digital defenses and allowed Kremlins propaganda machine to help shape public perception of the war. No wonder the Chinese internet is overwhelmingly pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin.

If China wants to remain officially ambiguous about whether it supports Vladimir V. Putins war refusing to call it an invasion and abstaining from a U.N. vote to condemn the invasion its state-controlled media nonetheless makes very clear where China stands.

The China-Russia information alliance is forged over a shared worldview of two leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, who, out of deep distrust of the United States, are determined to challenge the Wests dominance in the competition for public opinion.

In a 2013 speech, Mr. Xi urged the countrys propaganda workers to enhance the countrys international discourse power under the notion of telling Chinas story well. During a visit to RTs headquarters in the same year, Mr. Putin said the network was created to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.

In 2015, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin decided the two countries should strengthen their cooperation in media. Since then, theyve held a Sino-Russian media forum each year, aiming to redefine the map of the international discourse.

Last November, a RT executive said at the forum that major Chinese media outlets quoted RT.com on average 2,500 times a week in 2021.

Many Chinese media organizations admire RT and Sputnik, which they believe have broken the Wests information monopoly, or at least muddied the water. Many media experts have analyzed what Chinas state-owned media could learn from their successes. One academic paper detailed RTs coverage of Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 to illustrate how the Russian network carefully planned its reporting strategy to increase its seeming credibility and accessibility so it could set its own agenda.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Kremlins media machines worked well in China. Combined with Beijings censorship of pro-Ukraine content, they wove a web of disinformation that proved difficult for most Chinese online users to escape.

The message they are trying to drive home: Russias military actions are anti-West, anti-NATO expansion and anti-Nazi thus justified and popular.

In Chinas state media, theres very little about the international condemnation of Russia; Ukraines success in the battle for public opinion, led by President Zelensky; or antiwar protests in Russia.

The one-two punch is working, keeping the Chinese public from facts while sowing confusion.

On the Chinese social media platforms, many people adopted Mr. Putins and Russian medias language, calling the Ukrainian side extremists and neo-Nazis.

They kept bringing up the Azov Battalion as if it represented all of Ukraine. The battalion, a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers but remains a fringe presence in the country and its military.

President Zelensky himself is Jewish and won the presidential election in 2019 with 73 percent of the votes. His approval rate soared to over 90 percent recently for his wartime leadership.

Gas supplies. Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.

Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the worlds largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.

Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctionsintended to restrict Russias access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.

The fog of disinformation thickens when Chinese state media portrays Russias war as an anti-fascism effort. After Russias defense minister announced this week that his country would host the first international anti-fascism conference in August, the CCTV posted a one-paragraph story, then created a Weibo hashtag. Within 24 hours, it had 650 million views and was used by 90 media outlets. Many commenters called Ukraine and the United States fascist countries.

Chinese media is also propagating Russian disinformation that Ukraine has been using civilians as human shields. In its prime-time news program on Feb. 26, CCTV quoted President Putin as making that allegation. A few days later the nationalistic news site, guancha.com, ran a banner headline that said the Russian military was going only after military targets, while the Ukrainian military was using civilians as human shields.

Taken collectively, Chinese online users are seeing a quite different war from much of the world.

While videos circulated outside China purportedly showing Ukrainians kind treatment of Russian prisoners of war, the trending social media topic in China was that captured Russians had endured Nazi-like torture. Both CCTV and the Peoples Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, created hashtags echoing the same, based on a briefing by the Russian defense ministry. They had combined views of more than 200 million.

Sputnik, with 11.6 million followers on Weibo, has been posting more than 100 items a day lately, populating its timeline with words like criminal Zelensky, empire of lies, fake news and Nazi.

We must stand with Russia! Weibo user @qingdaoxiaowangzi commented on one of Sputniks posts, using a popular line on the Chinese internet. If Russia falls, NATO and the neo-Nazi United States will bully China!

At the same time, Weibo and other platforms are censoring pro-Ukraine content. The Weibo account of the actor Ke Lan, which has 2.9 million followers, was suspended after she retweeted a video and a photo about an antiwar protest in Russia with the emoticon . So was the account of a transgender celebrity, Jin Xing, with 13.6 million followers. Respect all lives and resolutely oppose the war!!! her last post said.

But as the war continues and China recalibrates its position, some Chinese online users have begun to scrutinize the Russian news media reports. Under a Sputnik Weibo post contending that the Ukrainian military murdered civilians, a user with the handle @jialalabadededashen wrote, Is this another news item that was tailor made by the Russian news agency for China?

In a social media discussion, some people called out Russia for waging an information war in China. Russias external propaganda has infiltrated China out-and-out, wrote a Weibo user called @juediqiangshou. Thats why all the excuses to justify the invasion are popular here.

Some people are also raising questions about whether the flood of pro-Russia information would be detrimental to the interests of China and its people.

Even Wang Xiaodong, a famous nationalist writer, suggested on Weibo that the Russia-Ukraine war was more complicated than it seemed. The Chinese people should have access to comprehensive and diversified information, he wrote on Wednesday.

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How China Embraces Russian Propaganda and Its Version of the War - The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine With hands still dirty from the battlefield, a dozen Russian prisoners of war sat, stony-faced, in a conference room of a Ukrainian news agency on Saturday and described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed.

Lt. Dmitry Kovalensky, who had fought in a Russian tank unit and spoke at the behest of his Ukrainian captors, said he recently came under fire from an armed drone and shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles on a road near Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine. The whole column burned, he said.

Around the same time and a few miles away, at a makeshift Ukrainian military base in an abandoned building on the western edge of Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers prepared for the same sort of ambushes that took out Lieutenant Kovalenskys unit.

Lt. Yevgeny Yarantsev, a Ukrainian officer, said his countrys soldiers fight differently than the Russians. The troops under his command organize in small, nimble units that can sneak up on and ambush the lumbering columns of Russian tanks.

They have a lot of tanks, we have a lot of anti-tank weapons, said Lieutenant Yarantsev, who previously fought with a volunteer group against Russia in eastern Ukraine. In the open field, it will be even. Its easier to fight in the city.

The two young officers the same rank, but each representing a different country gave some of the few firsthand accounts of the fighting that have emerged in the 10-day war. The Russian was a prisoner of war speaking under the watchful eye of heavily armed Ukrainian security officials. The Ukrainian spoke as he displayed newly obtained, sophisticated weapons from the United States.

The accounts of soldiers from both sides give a small glimpse of how the war is being fought around Kyiv in the north. There, relying largely on ambush tactics, Ukrainian forces have slowed the Russian campaign to encircle and capture the capital, even as Russian troops barrel across the south.

Lieutenant Kovalensky and the other Russian prisoners were presented at a news conference intended to support Ukraines claim that it had captured a significant number of Russian soldiers. In their statements, the prisoners blended woodenly phrased condemnations of their own countrys leadership with genuine-sounding details of the conflicts early firefights.

According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a public curiosity, a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting. The Russian soldiers looked exhausted, but showed no outward signs of having been mistreated.

The prisoners comments and the fact of their capture supported descriptions by Western military analysts and governments of a Russian offensive that has suffered grave setbacks. The Russian armys superior numbers and equipment, however, could well reverse that trend.

Near the end of the days movement on Feb. 27, our column was attacked, Pvt. Dmitry Gagarin of the Russian army told the reporters. My commander burned and died. I ran into the forest and later surrendered to local people.

Lieutenant Kovalensky said he learned Russia would invade Ukraine only the evening before the tank columns began moving, and that soldiers at the rank of sergeant and lower were not told where they were driving until after crossing the border.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

All the prisoners described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed on roads, accounts that supported Ukraines assertions that its military had made good use of Western-supplied anti-tank weaponry, such as the American-made Javelin missile. But independent analysts have also described more mundane problems for the Russian army, including logistical snarls and a lack of fuel.

Lieutenant Yarantsev, the Ukrainian officer, commands what he described as a mobile group of about 500 soldiers who are skirmishing with the Russians on the western approach to Kyiv. He said that their prospects were bolstered three days ago when they received Barrett 50-caliber sniper rifles in a shipment from the United States.

Sleek and black, with barrels so long they look almost like spears, the rifles were being unpacked and inspected. One sniper, who declined to offer his name, said he had fired one in combat on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

Lieutenant Yarantsev said the troops were more comfortable being able to garrison in buildings than in fields or forests. Ive noticed something about war, he said. Soldiers want to be somewhere where cellphones work and where there is internet.

The building the soldiers have taken up in, in a leafy residential area of the city, was cluttered with ammunition boxes. Two hand grenades sat on the floor beside a sofa. The soldiers had an electric kettle and offered coffee. In a hallway, a soldier oiled his Kalashnikov.

The fighting has been inching closer to the capital. Ukraines defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said in a statement on Saturday that the Russian forces primary objective is to encircle Kyiv, following the tactic they have pursued with smaller cities such as Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, which is now surrounded, with its heat and electricity cut off.

The fighting around Kyiv is mostly in Irpin and Bucha, two outlying towns to the northwest, where conditions are grim. A central street in Bucha is now clogged with the burned husks of Russian armored personnel carriers, destroyed in an ambush.

Stanislav Bobrytsky, a computer programmer reached by phone in Irpin, said he had not left his apartment since Tuesday. All the windows are shaking from blasts, he said. Its very scary.

In the center of Kyiv, at the news conference with captured Russian soldiers, the Ukrainian security officials present refused to speak. A moderator passed around a microphone, offering reporters an opportunity to question the prisoners.

Lieutenant Kovalensky said he was appealing to the Russian people to rise up and overthrow President Vladimir V. Putin because the Russian leadership had deceived the armys officers about the aims of the war and had used the guise of a military exercise to prepare for an invasion.

The prisoners said they did not know what would happen to them after the news conference. While they said they were treated well, days after their capture it was unclear if they had showered or been offered clean clothes.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.

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Russian Prisoners and Ukrainian Soldiers Describe Two Sides of the Conflict - The New York Times

WASHINGTON As they impose historic sanctions on Russia, the Biden administration and European governments have set new goals: devastate the Russian economy as punishment for the world to witness, and create domestic pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin to halt his war in Ukraine, current and former U.S. officials say.

The harsh penalties which have hammered the ruble, shut down Russias stock market and prompted bank runs contradict previous declarations by U.S. officials that they would refrain from inflicting pain on ordinary Russians. We target them carefully to avoid even the appearance of targeting the average Russian civilian, Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, said at a White House briefing last month.

The escalation in sanctions this week has occurred much faster than many officials had anticipated, largely because European leaders have embraced the most aggressive measures proposed by Washington, U.S. officials said.

With Russias economy crumbling, major companies Apple, Boeing and Shell among them are suspending or exiting operations in the country. The Biden administration said on Thursday that it would not offer sanctions relief amid Mr. Putins increasingly brutal offensive.

The thinking among some U.S. and European officials is that Mr. Putin might stop the war if enough Russians protest in the streets and enough tycoons turn on him. Other U.S. officials emphasize the goals of punishment and future deterrence, saying that the carcass of the Russian economy will serve as a visible consequence of Mr. Putins actions and a warning for other aggressors.

But Russias $1.5 trillion economy is the worlds 11th largest. No countries have tried pushing an economy of that size to the brink of collapse, with unknown consequences for the world. And the actions of the United States and Europe could pave the way for a new type of great-power conflict in the future.

The moves have also ignited questions in Washington and in European capitals over whether cascading events in Russia could lead to regime change, or rulership collapse, which President Biden and European leaders are careful to avoid mentioning.

This isnt the Russian peoples war, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a news conference on Wednesday. But, he added, the Russian people will suffer the consequences of their leaders choices.

The economic costs that weve been forced to impose on Russia are not aimed at you, he said. They are aimed at compelling your government to stop its actions, to stop its aggression.

The harshest sanctions by far are ones that prevent the Central Bank of Russia from tapping into much of its $643 billion in foreign currency reserves, which has led to a steep drop in the value of the ruble. Panic has set in across Russia. Citizens are scrambling to withdraw money from banks, preferably in dollars, and some are fleeing the country.

The United States and Europe also announced new sanctions this week against oligarchs with close ties to Mr. Putin. Officials are moving to seize their houses, yachts and private jets around the world. French officials on Thursday snatched the superyacht of Igor Sechin, the chief executive of Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant.

The sanctions have turned out to be quite unprecedented, said Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who has studied U.S. sanctions on Russia. Everybody in Russia is horrified. Theyre trying to think of the best way to preserve their money.

The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has used some of the harshest language yet to articulate the mission, telling a radio program on Tuesday that Western nations were waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia to cause the collapse of the Russian economy. He later said he regretted his words.

Evidence of shock and anger among Russians mostly anecdotal in a country with restricted speech and little public opinion polling has raised the specter of mass political dissent, which, if strong enough, could threaten Mr. Putins grip on power.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on Fox News, The best way for this to end is having Eliot Ness or Wyatt Earp in Russia, the Russian Spring, so to speak, where people rise up and take him down.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

Mr. Graham added: So Im hoping somebody in Russia will understand that hes destroying Russia, and you need to take this guy out by any means possible, reiterating his Twitter post on Thursday calling for an assassination of Mr. Putin.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said on Monday that the sanctions were intended to bring down the Putin regime. Mr. Johnsons office quickly corrected the statement, saying that it did not reflect his governments view and that the goal of the measures was to stop Russias assault on Ukraine.

Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, called the talk of Mr. Putins overthrow unhelpful, emphasizing that the sanctions should be tailored and described as a means of stopping the invasion. The objective should be to end the war, he said.

But while the Biden administration has said it is still open to diplomacy with Russia, it has not offered to reverse any of the sanctions in exchange for de-escalation.

Right in this moment, theyre marching toward Kyiv with a convoy and continuing to take reportedly barbaric steps against the people of Ukraine, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. So, no, now is not the moment where we are offering options for reducing sanctions.

But in an interview on Friday with the Russian news agency TASS, Victoria J. Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, suggested terms for possible sanctions relief, albeit maximalist ones. She said that Mr. Putin had to end the war, help to rebuild Ukraine and recognize its sovereignty, borders and right to exist. Those are conditions that the Russian leader is highly unlikely to consider.

All the while, Biden officials have sought to assure the Russian people that they take no pleasure in their suffering. The United States and Europe have tried to spare Russians some of the effects, including allowing sales of consumer technology to Russia despite sweeping new limits on exports.

They have also refrained from imposing energy sanctions because of Europes dependence on Russian gas and the risk of higher oil prices.

Even so, Mr. Putin and his aides are doing their best to find some political advantage in the sanctions, arguing that the real goal for the West has always been to weaken Russia. As he launched his invasion last week, Mr. Putin said the United States would have sanctioned his country no matter what.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Russias foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said that the sanctions were meant to target regular people and that the West had cut off cultural exchange programs and even Russian sports teams.

Whatever their precise goal, sanctions have a poor record of persuading governments to change their behavior. The Trump administrations sanctions on Iran, perhaps the harshest imposed on any country, failed to compel Tehran to stop supporting militias across the Middle East or halt its efforts at uranium enrichment after President Donald J. Trump withdrew from a nuclear agreement. North Korea has pushed forward with a nuclear weapons program despite major sanctions by four American presidents.

The same has largely been true of U.S. sanctions on Syria, Cuba and Venezuela.

On occasion, the U.S. government has achieved modest goals with sanctions. Some analysts and U.S. officials argue that Iran began negotiations on a nuclear agreement after the Obama administration imposed sanctions. Trump administration officials said sanctions helped compel Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, to meet with Mr. Trump (along with Twitter messages and letters between the leaders).

And some former Obama officials, including ones who now serve in the Biden administration, have argued that sanctions on Russia in 2014 helped to dissuade Mr. Putin from pushing deeper into Ukraine after he annexed Crimea and started a separatist war in the countrys east.

This winter, the Biden administration used the threat of sanctions to try to deter Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine. It warned that the measures would be severe but did not go into details. U.S. officials did not publicly mention the possibility of penalizing Russias central bank the harshest sanction imposed so far because they were uncertain whether European nations would be on board, a former U.S. official said.

After the United States, Britain and the European Union announced sanctions on the central bank, the ruble plummeted in value on Monday. The bank no longer has access to foreign currency reserves held outside Russia, so it cannot use those assets to buy rubles and prop up its value. The Treasury Department has also imposed sanctions on some Russian state-owned companies that have foreign currency holdings that the central bank could tap.

As its economy trembled, Russia suspended trading on its stock market. On a Russian news program, Alexander Butmanov, an investment analyst, raised a toast and said, Dear stock market, you were close to us, you were interesting. Rest in peace, dear comrade.

Some Russians this week were driving to borders with bags of cash.

But if the goal of sanctions is to compel Mr. Putin to halt his war, then the end point seems far-off.

The Russian political system doesnt depend on the peoples approval. That matters, but its not the most important thing, Ms. Snegovaya said. It might depend on the scale of the crisis if we see lots of protests in the streets, it might make the Kremlin think twice.

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With Sanctions, U.S. and Europe Aim to Punish Putin and Fuel Russian Unrest - The New York Times

The first week of Vladimir Putins invasion into Ukraine has not gone to plan, with the Russian military admitting the deaths of 500 soldiers (Ukrainian estimates are higher) and western sanctions dealing a body blow to the Russian economy that will only grow worse in the coming weeks.

And yet the Russian leader seems even more invested in his campaign to conquer Ukraine, lured in by the growing stakes of the most ambitious and dangerous gamble of his 22 years in power.

Putins in the corner, said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. Its him against the whole world.

Despite some early defeats, Russia maintains military superiority in Ukraine, where its firepower is likely to give it the edge as the war continues. But the question remains how far Putin is willing to go in bombing Ukrainian cities, in resisting western sanctions, and in punishing those at home who dare to call for peace.

Much further, say Kremlin watchers.

I think its going to get worse, said Kadri Liik, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. For Putin, the incentive is to escalate. He has gone all in. I cannot see him modifying his war because that would be a loss in his eyes. Any chance to come to an agreement with western powers had probably passed, she said.

And I think itll be pretty full-blown dictatorship at home. You can see it coming.

Western officials believe the risks are high for the Russian leader. While the rule of thumb in diplomatic circles was that Putin would be in power for the next decade, his appetite for risk has raised questions about whether he could provoke a public backlash or an elite power struggle earlier, especially as Russias economy enters recession.

For now, all the public data suggests Putin enjoys popular support for the war in which the major cities of Kharkiv, Kyiv and Mariupol have been shelled.

Employees of several Russian pollsters have said that they are concerned that the robust numbers in support of the war could embolden the Kremlin and prolong the conflict.

Russian state television has largely stuck to its script that the special military operation is going according to plan. State TV hosts have decried fakes about the Russian army enduring heavy losses, or missile strikes against population centres, trying to get a step ahead of the disturbing images coming out of the war through social media.

And with an eye to a potential backlash over the war, Russian lawmakers have passed a tough new law that carries a punishment of up to 15 years for publishing fakes about the Russian military, meaning information not distributed by official sources.

It is clear that the Russian government has always been worried how this war would be perceived by the public, especially if it begins to go poorly.

Maybe some people can open their eyes and see that it is Putin who is responsible for the situation and his ambitions are not the ambitions of the whole nation and the war was in vain, the war was unjust, said Kolesnikov. But thats only a hypothesis because for now, most of the people support this operation.

Putin has put his top advisers on television to imitate a public discussion about a war that has been a surprise for many Russians. Beyond selling the war to the public, the televised show also tied many of those officials closer to Putin, making it harder for them to later denounce the war or act as if they had not lobbied for it.

You cant discuss the situation in rational terms, said Kolesnikov. All these people at the very top are in one boat, one submarine with Putin and they dont have an exit from it right now.

While some have whispered about dissent in the Kremlin ranks, a few western officials have openly called for it.

In an extraordinary statement, Lindsey Graham, a US senator from South Carolina, asked: Is there a Brutus in Russia?

The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, he said in a tweet.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, called the remarks a massive hysterical Russophobic fit.

But they will fit neatly into the Russian propaganda about the recent sanctions, which Russia claims are aimed more at punishing Putin and seeking regime change than in trying to end the war in Ukraine.

The war will now enter its second week. Natos Jens Stoltenberg has warned that the coming days are likely to be worse as Russia begins to turn to its advantage in air power and artillery to break into resisting cities. And after Putin spoke with Emmanuel Macron, a French official said that Putin was prepared to go all the way.

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Russia appears to have no way out as Putin goes all in - The Guardian

The U.S. State Department denounced the Russian government on Wednesday evening for cracking down on independent media coverage in Russia of the invasion of Ukraine including threatening Voice of America.

Why it matters: Russia's Putin-dominated parliament will hold a special session this Friday "to consider a bill that would make 'unofficial' reporting on Russias further invasion of Ukraine punishable by up to 15 years in prison," per an emailed statement from State Department spokesperson Ned Price.

Driving the news: The Russian government's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, claims VOA's news site "contains false messages about terrorist attacks or other kind (sic) of information of public concern," according to a statement from the broadcaster.

Reality check: The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced on Wednesday he was immediately launching an investigation into allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed in Ukraine.

Context: The action follows a series of sanctions imposed on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government by the U.S. and other countries over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What they're saying: "Any attempts to interfere with the free flow of news and information are deeply troubling. We find this order to be in direct opposition to the values of all democratic societies," said acting VOA director Yolanda Lpez in a statement.

The bottom line: "Russia is engaged in an unprovoked war on Ukraine. At home, the Kremlin is engaged in a full assault on media freedom and the truth, and Moscows efforts to mislead and suppress the truth of the brutal invasion are intensifying," Price said.

Go deeper: The latest on the Russia-Ukraine crisis

Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from Price.

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Russia threatens to block VOA unless it removes Ukraine invasion coverage - Axios

NAIROBI, Kenya Since the days of Nelson Mandela, South Africas leaders have rejected American criticism of their friendships with autocrats like Fidel Castro of Cuba and Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya, whose countries backed them during the most desperate moments of the anti-apartheid struggle.

Now South Africans are defending their loyalty to another autocrat Vladimir V. Putin and sitting out the global outcry over his invasion of Ukraine.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, South Africa was among 24 African countries that declined to join the resounding vote denouncing Russian aggression: 16 African countries abstained, seven didnt vote at all and one Eritrea voted against it, keeping company only with Russia, Belarus, Syria and North Korea.

The striking tally reflected the ambiguous attitude across much of the continent where, with a handful of exceptions, the Ukraine war has been greeted with conspicuous silence a sharp contrast with Western countries that are expanding sanctions, seizing oligarchs yachts, pressing for war crimes investigations, and even openly threatening to collapse the Russian economy.

Russia is our friend through and through, Lindiwe Zulu, South Africas minister of social development, who studied in Moscow during the apartheid years, said in an interview. We are not about to denounce that relationship that we have always had.

Many African countries have a longstanding affinity with Russia stretching back to the Cold War: some political and military leaders studied there, and trade links have grown. And in recent years a growing number of countries have contracted with Russian mercenaries and bought ever-greater quantities of Russian weapons.

A few African countries have condemned Russian aggression as an attack on the international order, notably Kenya and Ghana. Some 25 African nations voted for the U.N. resolution that denounced Mr. Putins actions on Wednesday. But deep divisions in the continents response were apparent from the start.

The deputy leader of Sudan flew into Moscow on the first day of the conflict, exchanging warm handshakes with Russias foreign minister as warplanes bombed Ukrainian cities. Morocco, a longtime American ally, offered a watery statement, annoying American officials who nonetheless kept quiet.

In Ethiopia, Russian flags flew at a ceremony on Wednesday to commemorate a famous 19th century battle against Italian invaders, recalling the involvement of Russian volunteers who sided with Ethiopian fighters.

African sympathies for Ukraine were also diluted by reports of Ukrainian border guards forcing African students to the back of lines as they attempted to leave the country, raising a furor over racism and discrimination. President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, which has 4,000 students in Ukraine, decried the reports.

Mr. Putin has partly sidestepped opprobrium in Africa by calling in chits that date back to the Cold War, when Moscow backed African liberation movements and presented itself as a bulwark against Western neocolonialism. On Sunday, Russias foreign ministry paused its focus on Ukraine to remind South Africa, in a Tweet, of its support for the fight against apartheid.

But Mr. Putin has also divided African opinion thanks to his own efforts to expand Russian influence across the continent through an unusual combination of diplomacy, guns and mercenaries.

In an effort to regain some of the influence that Moscow lost in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Putin hosted a glitzy summit in the southern Russian city of Sochi in 2019 that was attended by 43 African heads of state. A second Russia-Africa summit is scheduled for this fall.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

But as Russias economy strained under Western sanctions imposed following the annexation of the Crimea in 2014, it could not afford the expensive enticements offered by other powers in Africa, like Chinas cheap loans or Western development aid.

So it has offered no-questions weapons sales and the services of Russian mercenaries, many employed by the Wagner Group, a company linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Mr. Putin who is known as Putins cook.

In recent years, Wagner mercenaries have fought in civil wars in Libya and Mozambique, and are currently guarding the president of the Central African Republic, where they helped repel a rebel assault on the capital last year.

In January, Wagner fighters appeared in Mali, as part of a deal to combat Islamist insurgents that infuriated France, the former colonial power, which last month declared it was pulling its own soldiers out of Mali.

The military junta ruling Mali denies inviting Wagner into the country, but U.S. military officials say as many as 1,000 Russian mercenaries are already operating there.

Russias influence also stems from weapons sales. Russia accounts for nearly half of all arms imports into Africa, according to Russias arms export agency and organizations that monitor weapons transfers.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

One of Mr. Putins staunchest defenders in the past week was a powerful figure in Uganda, a major customer for Russian weapons. Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandas President Yoweri Museveni, said in a Tweet:

The majority of mankind (that are non-white) support Russias stand in Ukraine.

He added, When the USSR parked nuclear armed missiles in Cuba in 1962, the West was ready to blow up the world over it. Now when NATO does the same they expect Russia to do differently.

That reference highlighted a jarring contradiction in Mr. Putins new embrace of Africa, said Maxim Matusevich, a history professor at Seton Hall University, in New Jersey, who studies Russias relationships in Africa.

During the Cold War, the Soviets were trying to sell socialism to African nations while criticizing Western colonialism and imperialism, he said. Now, Russia is engaged in a fresh bid for influence in Africa, but driven by right-wing nationalism.

A similar divide has emerged in Asia, where nations with authoritarian leaders or weak ties to the West have embraced Mr. Putins war or avoided criticism of Russian military aggression.

For Africans, the war could hit hard in the pocket. Last week the Automobile Association of South Africa predicted that rising fuel prices would reach a record high in the coming weeks. Food is getting more expensive too Russia and Ukraine are major sources of wheat and fertilizer in Africa at a time when many African countries are still reeling from the pandemic.

But the war could also have an economic upside for Africa, albeit one that could take years to be felt. As Europe pivots away from Russian gas imports, it could turn to African countries looking to exploit recently-discovered energy reserves.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania, which is seeking a $30 billion investment to tap a huge gas discovery in the Indian Ocean, said the invasion of Ukraine could provide an opportunity.

Whether Africa or Europe or America, we are looking for markets, she told The Africa Report, an online news outlet.

Elsewhere, though, Mr. Putin is still benefiting from his image as a thorn in the Wests side. Many South Africans remember that the United States supported the apartheid regime until the 1980s. South Africans also took a sour view of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Sithembile Mbete, a senior lecturer in political science and international relations at the University of Pretoria.

However, aside from the historical ties with Russia, South Africa is motivated to call for diplomacy rather than fighting because that approach aligns with the countrys stance on international conflicts for the past 30 years, she said.

That is the lesson they took from South Africas own struggle that actually apartheid ended when the two sides sat down at the table, Ms. Mebete said. When it came down to it, the conflict only ended through negotiation and through compromise.

Reporting was contributed by Abdi Latif Dahir in Nairobi, Kenya, Ruth Maclean in Dakar, Senegal, Lynsey Chutel in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Aida Alami in Casablanca, Morocco.

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Shunned by Others, Russia Finds Friends in Africa - The New York Times

MOSCOW President Vladimir V. Putin has ushered in a crisis for his country in its economy and identity.

The Kremlin is hiding the reality of the countrys attack on Ukraine from its own people, even cracking down on news outlets that call it a war.

But the economic carnage and societal turmoil wrought by Mr. Putins invasion are becoming increasingly difficult to obscure.

Airlines canceled once-ubiquitous flights to Europe. The Central Bank scrambled to deliver ruble bills as the demand for cash spiked 58-fold. Economists warned of more inflation, greater capital flight and slower growth; and the S&P credit rating agency downgraded Russia to junk status.

The emphasis on hiding the wars true extent was a sign that the Kremlin fears that Russians would disapprove of a violent, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a country where many millions of Russians have relatives and friends.

Even so, more public figures with ties to the state spoke out against the war, including a lawmaker in Russias rubber-stamp Parliament. Business owners tried to assess the consequences of an economic crisis that appeared already to be beginning, even before sanctions were fully in place.

Facing the greatest test yet of its reality-distorting prowess, the Kremlins propaganda machine for the moment appeared to be keeping widespread opposition to the war in check. There were no signs that the war could undermine Mr. Putins hold on power, and in the event of a speedy victory, analysts noted, it could end up strengthening it.

But the enormous risks of the war, along with the economic pressure the country was suddenly under, have created a new and more treacherous reality for both the Kremlin and Russias 145 million people.

Russians have been stunned at how quickly the economic impact of the war was being felt. The ruble hit its lowest level ever against the dollar, which traded at about 84 rubles on Saturday compared to 74 a few weeks ago. That sent prices for imports surging, while sanctions on Russias largest banks wreaked havoc in the financial markets and new export restrictions promised to scramble supply chains.

Those who shout that Putin is great and bravo to him are no longer shouting as loud, said Lalya Sadykova, the owner of a chain of beauty salons in St. Petersburg. Theyre in shock from what is happening, from how quickly prices are changing and how suppliers are stopping deliveries.

The chief executive of one of Russias biggest electronics retailers, DNS, said on Thursday that a supply crunch had forced his chain to raise prices some 30 percent. Days earlier, the chief executive, Dmitri Alekseyev, had posted on Facebook: For the life of me I cant understand why Russia needs a war.

I understand that the prices in stores provoke frustration, Mr. Alekseyev wrote. But thats the reality.

S7, Russias second-largest airline, suspended all of its flights to Europe because of airspace closures to Russian companies, an early sign that the cheap and easy travel to the West that middle-class Russians had grown used to could become a thing of the past. Photos of retailers changing or removing their price tags went viral on social media.

Were all waiting for what happens next, said Anastasia Baranova, describing a wave of cancellations on Friday at the hotel she runs in St. Petersburg. Its as though the whole country is on pause.

The Kremlin rushed to maintain its narrative, signaling the start of a new and more brutal phase in its long-running crackdown on dissent. The governments communications regulator slowed down access to Facebook and warned 10 Russian news outlets that their websites could be blocked. The outlets declared offense was publishing articles in which the operation that is being carried out is called an attack, an invasion or a declaration of war.

Even as a vicious battle for Kyiv unfolded on Saturday morning, a Russian Defense Ministry statement about the situation in Ukraine made no mention of the Ukrainian capital or any Russian casualties. The ministry, which typically releases sleek and copious footage daily of the Russian military in action, published no videos of its combat operations in Ukraine.

And Russias state-run news channel on Saturday showed footage of a peaceful day in Kyiv to try to counter the videos of violence spreading on the social network Telegram.

As you can see, the situation in the cities is calm, the anchor said. No explosions, no bombings, unlike what some of the Telegram channels are writing.

March 6, 2022, 7:39 p.m. ET

A hint of the potential opposition came on Saturday when Mikhail Matveyev, a Communist lawmaker who had voted to endorse Mr. Putins recognition of the Russian-backed separatist territories, wrote on Twitter that he had been tricked.

I was voting for peace, and not for war, he wrote, and not for Kyiv to be bombed.

It was a rare crack in the firmament of the Parliament, where dissent over Mr. Putins key foreign policy decisions has been virtually nonexistent in recent years. Tatyana Yumasheva, the daughter of former President Boris N. Yeltsin who helped bring Mr. Putin to power, posted an antiwar message on Facebook.

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, a sleek showcase of a Westward-looking Russia founded by the Kremlin-friendly oligarch Roman Abramovich, declared it would cease working on new exhibits until the human and political tragedy ceased in Ukraine.

We cannot keep up the illusion of normality, the museum said. We see ourselves as part of a greater world that is not broken up by war.

Still, it appeared on Saturday that the Kremlins enforced blinders were doing their job, as were the clear dangers of voicing dissent. The spontaneous antiwar rallies that brought several thousand people to the streets in cities across the country on Thursday, with more than 1,500 arrests, were not repeated at that scale on Friday.

While many in Russias intellectual elite voiced horror and the fence across from the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow filled up with flowers, there was little evidence of a broader groundswell of opposition.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

The propaganda is working very well, said Anastasia Nikolskaya, a Moscow sociologist. Its not that anyone is welcoming the war, but it is being seen as a last-ditch measure that is necessary.

The main determining factor for what comes next, of course, will be what happens on the battlefield in Ukraine the longer the war lasts and the greater the loss of life and destruction, the more difficult it will be for the Kremlin to cast the war as a limited operation not directed against the Ukrainian people.

Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, said he believed that the Kremlin expected the fighting to last no more than two weeks.

If Russia forced a capitulation of the Ukrainian army within that time, with limited destruction and limited Russian and civilian casualties, Mr. Kortunov said, Mr. Putin should be able to count on continuing domestic support.

But if the war does not go according to plan, Mr. Kortunov cautioned, the country could see serious political consequences and consequences for the popularity of the leadership.

Victory will write off a lot not everything, but a lot, Mr. Kortunov said. If there is no victory, then there may be some complications because of course, many doubt that there were no other policy alternatives.

There were indications that recent days were only the beginning of a new chapter in Mr. Putins conflict with the West and of his crackdown on freedoms at home. Dmitri A. Medvedev, the vice chairman of Mr. Putins security council, speculated in a social-media post on Saturday that Russia might reintroduce the death penalty or seize foreigners assets in Russia as a response to Western sanctions.

The interesting part is only beginning , he wrote.

Despite the economic pain, sanctions are unlikely to alter Russias course in the near term, analysts say. Russia has the reserves to prop up the ruble, and the Kremlin has worked to insulate the economy from external shocks since it was hit by sanctions over the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The real cost of sanctions will be Russias long-term development, said Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at the PF Capital consulting company in Moscow. Incomes will further stagnate, and the countrys middle class will continue shrinking. Many of the countrys manufacturers that launched the production of modern trains, cars and other products over the past decade will face serious trouble if the West bans technology exports to Russia, he said.

The country will be stable, Mr. Nadorshin said. However, he added, this stability will resemble a swamp where nothing happens and changes even as forests burn around it.

Some reeds will bloom in this swamp, but there will only be scorched land around it, said Mr. Nadorshin. You can get into that swamp, but you will get stuck in it and you may eventually drown.

And beyond the economic impact of the war, many Russians could not yet imagine coming to terms with living in a country that had launched an unprovoked assault on its neighbor. A steady stream of people came to the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow on Friday, bringing flowers. A police officer prevented a woman from also leaving a small sign that said: Yes to peace.

I fear meeting Ukrainians and looking them in the eye, said a designer, Aleksei, 28, declining to give his last name for fear of repercussions from the security services. That is the scariest thing of all.

Alina Lobzina and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Moscow.

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Russia's War With Ukraine Is Already Costing Russian Economy - The New York Times

Former President Donald Trump, in remarks to top Republican National Committee donors Saturday evening, renewed his criticism of NATO, hinted again at another run for the White House and suggested that the role played by the "vote counter is oftentimes more important than the candidate" in elections.

Trump's remarks came about 24 hours after former Vice President Mike Pence took several shots at Trump during his address to the same donor retreat, which is taking place in New Orleans.

Pence told them Friday evening that "there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin" days after Trump had referred to the Russian president as "smart" and "savvy." On Saturday evening, Trump mentioned that "somebody called me a Putin apologist the other day," but didn't bring up Pence, according to a source.

And whereas Pence defended NATO in his remarks, Trump showed he still thinks little of the alliance, dismissing it as a "paper tiger," according to a source.

"Are all of these nations going to stand by and watch perhaps millions of people be slaughtered as the onslaught continues?" Trump said, according to a source. "At what point do countries say, 'No, we can't take this massive crime against humanity?' We can't let it happen. We can't let it continue to happen."

The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out sending troops to help Ukraine to avoid an escalation of the conflict, but have provided military equipment, funding, humanitarian aid and diplomatic support. The U.S. and European countries have also issued strict sanctions against Russia over the invasion.

Trump joked about the conflict, too, though, telling donors that the U.S. should put the "put the Chinese flag" on F-22 fighter jets and "bomb the s***" out of Russia.

"And then we say, China did it," he said, to laughter in the room, according to the source. "Then they start fighting with each other, and we sit back and watch." The Washington Post first reported Trump's comments about Russia and China.

Trump derided President Biden over his handling of Russia, and hammered him for his openness about what actions the U.S. would and would not take to curtail Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

"We have to have Biden stop saying that and this is for everyone to hear that we will not attack Russia ever because they are a nuclear power, right?" Trump said, according to a source. "You know who is saying this? Okay, whether it's fact or fiction, 'We will not attack Russia. You see, they are a nuclear power.' Oh, thanks for telling us."

Pence, in his address Friday, warned the party's top donors that dwelling on the 2020 election would damage its future prospects, insisting that the Republican Party "cannot win by fighting yesterday's battles, or by relitigating the past." He drew a stark contrast with Trump, who rarely speaks publicly without raising baseless allegations that the election was rigged. He did so again Saturday. The lesson Trump took from 2020 was this:

"The vote counter is oftentimes more important than the candidate and the Republicans are going to have to get a lot tougher," he said, according to a source, shortly after he falsely asserted that he has won "two presidential elections."

Trump is still popular in many circles of the Republican Party. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans said they want Trump to run for president again in 2024, according to a recent CBS News poll. And he has been indulging the idea that he'll run again.

"We will see a Republican president reclaim that magnificent White House in 2024," Trump said, according to a source in the room. "I wonder who that might be."

The comment elicited some "Trump" chants from the crowd, according to a source.

Trump is still annoyed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and has been trying unsuccessfully to find a GOP senator to replace him as the Republican leader. Trump referred to him Saturday as "stupid, corrupt Mitch McConnell" and elicited some applause, according to a source.

And as he has in the past, Trump made light of climate change, dismissing it as a "hoax," and he joked that rising sea levels will lead to "more waterfront property." The donor event in New Orleans was held just weeks after federal officials warned Louisiana's coastal water levels could rise by a foot and a half by 2050.

The former president also weighed in briefly on the North Carolina Senate GOP primary. Trump has endorsed Representative Ted Budd and told donors, according to a source, that Republicans need to get former Representative Mark Walker "out of that race." Walker filed for the Senate run last week, defying Trump's wishes that he run for a fourth term in the House instead.

Pence and Trump's appearances on back-to-back nights could be a preview of what's to come in 2024 if both men decide to run for president. At a private CPAC event last week, in response to a question about a 2024 presidential run, Trump told supporters they would be "very happy" and added that he knew who they "don't want as your VP."

Pence has been airing his disagreements with Trump more openly lately. Last month, he said that "Trump is wrong" for claiming Pence had the authority to overturn the presidential election, and he has said he doesn't know whether he and Trump will "ever see eye-to-eye" about the January 6 attack at the Capitol.

CBS News political reporter.

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Trump renews NATO criticism after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and also says "vote counter" can be more important than candidate - CBS News

LONDON In Switzerland, the Lucerne music festival canceled two symphony concerts featuring a Russian maestro. In Australia, the national swim team said it would boycott a world championship meet in Russia. At the Magic Mountain Ski Area in Vermont, a bartender poured bottles of Stolichnaya vodka down the drain.

From culture to commerce, sports to travel, the world is shunning Russia in myriad ways to protest President Vladimir V. Putins invasion of Ukraine. Not since the frigid days of the Cold War have so many doors closed on Russia and its people a worldwide repudiation driven as much by the impulse to show solidarity with besieged Ukrainians as by any hope that it will force Mr. Putin to pull back his troops.

The boycotts and cancellations are piling up in parallel with the sanctions imposed by the United States, Europe, and other powers. Although these grass-roots gestures inflict less harm on Russias economy than sweeping restrictions on Russian banks or the mothballing of a natural gas pipeline, they carry a potent symbolic punch, leaving millions of ordinary Russians isolated in an interconnected world.

Among the most visible targets of this opprobrium are cultural icons like Valery Gergiev, the conductor and a longtime backer of Mr. Putin. He has been dropped by Lucerne, Carnegie Hall, La Scala in Milan, and faces imminent dismissal by the Munich Philharmonic, where he is chief conductor, unless he disavows the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has been banned from this years Eurovision Song Contest, which it last won in 2008, with Dima Bilan performing his power ballad, Believe. Russias Formula 1 Grand Prix, scheduled for September in Sochi, has been scrapped. St. Petersburg has lost the Champions League soccer final, which was relocated to Paris.

Russias World Cup hopes were dashed on Monday after a dozen countries joined Poland in refusing to play its national soccer team in qualifying rounds. Under intense pressure, soccers two main governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, ruled that Russia was ineligible to play in their tournaments. In Germany, the soccer club Schalke severed a sponsorship deal with the Russian oil giant Gazprom. The National Hockey League also suspended its business dealings in Russia.

Also on Monday, Greece announced that it would suspend all collaborations with Russian cultural organizations. A French former ballet star, Laurent Hilaire, resigned as the director of the Stanislavksi Theatre Company in Moscow, saying that the context no longer allows me to work with peace of mind.

Canceling all these cultural exchanges and sporting events will be felt by the Russian population, said Angela E. Stent, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book, Putins World. Unfortunately, at the Kremlin level, it will be seen as just another example of the West trying to paint us into a corner.

It will become part of the narrative of victimhood, which weve heard from Putin in spades over the last few weeks, Ms. Stent said. The boycotts affect the people involved in those events, but were talking about Putin and the few people around him. Im not sure its going to make him change his mind.

The last time the countrys leaders provoked such a global backlash was in 1980 when the United States, West Germany, Japan, and Canada boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets retaliated by skipping the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

That was during the depths of the Cold War, when Hollywood released jingoistic films like Red Dawn, about a fictional Soviet invasion of Colorado, and more than 100 million Americans tuned into The Day After, a television movie about a calamitous nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Olympics boycott had a major impact on popular sentiment, according to Russia experts, because the then-Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, had presented them as a simulacrum of Soviet power and influence, much as Mr. Putin has framed the invasion of Ukraine in terms of reclaiming Russian greatness.

The Soviet government had to explain why the United States and other countries werent there, said Michael A. McFaul, a former American ambassador to Russia. It began to affect the way that Soviet citizens saw themselves in the world.

Though Russian villains remained a Hollywood staple, the countrys black-hat image faded after the collapse of the Communist regime. Younger Russians grew up in a relatively open, if rough-and-tumble, society. Those with money had access to a foreign education and European holidays, where the hosts catered to free-spending Russians.

In Jerusalem, Russian-speaking Israelis flocked to the popular Putin Pub, where the name seemed a lark no more problematic than the bars late-night Russian karaoke. On Thursday, the Russian-born owners stripped the golden P-U-T-I-N letters from its facade and announced that they were looking for a new name.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

It was our initiative, said Yulia Kaplan, one of the three owners, who moved to Israel from St. Petersburg in 1991. Because we are against war.

Israel, in its own way, serves as an example of the limits of these kinds of boycotts. For years, critics of its occupation of the West Bank have tried to pressure the government through the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. While it has had successes, it has antagonized people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide and failed to pressure successive Israeli leaders to change policy toward the Palestinians.

Such boycotts wont change Putins mind, for sure, said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel. But it will boost the morale of the Ukrainians to know that people around the world are on their side. And it will put the oligarchs on the spot in a way that I suspect financial sanctions will not.

Still, the backlash will hit ordinary Russians hard as well. Already, they cannot fly to London and large swaths of the European Union because of bans on Russian flights. Canada closed its airspace to Russian planes on Sunday and announced it was investigating the Russian carrier, Aeroflot, for violating the restrictions.

Middle-class Russians have been going to Turkey to vacation for a decade, Mr. McFaul said. Now they will have to wonder: Will their credit cards work? Will their money be worth anything?

In capitals from Madrid to London, tens of thousands of people marched in solidarity with the Ukrainians and against the Russian invasion. In Ottawa, the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, the backdrop for three weeks of trucker protests in the Canadian capital, was lighted up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

In Rio de Janeiro, where the invasion coincided with the start of the annual Carnival festival, people wore costumes and carried signs related to the conflict. Drop acid, not bombs, one sign said in English.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

The totality of it the sanctions, the cheering football fans for the Ukrainians, the crowds marching in Berlin and Prague I do think it matters because it makes Russians feel isolated, Mr. McFaul said.

That is likely to deepen the opposition of some Russians to the invasion, he said, particularly among urban, educated elites. These people have access to the internet and are aware of the scornful reaction to Mr. Putins aggression. But among those who live in more provincial areas, where the media is tightly controlled by the government, the backlash against Russia could breed further resentment.

Some cultural institutions have tailored their actions against people who are known for their close ties to Mr. Putin. The Metropolitan Opera, for example, said it would no longer work with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him, Peter Gelb, the Mets general manager, said in a video statement.

That has prompted a show of defiance from some Russian artists. The star soprano Anna Netrebko, who is scheduled to perform at the Met in Puccinis Turandot in April, has tried to distance herself from the Russian invasion. But she also posted on her Instagram account, forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right.

Not all cultural exchanges have been sundered. A blockbuster show of French and Russian paintings at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris remains open.

The exhibit showcasing 200 works collected by two 20th-century Russian textile magnates grew out of high-level discussions between President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Putin and the chief executive of LVMH, Bernard Arnault. Both leaders signed contributions to the exhibits catalog, and Mr. Putin signed off on loans for the paintings.

For many, however, the idea of supporting Russia is simply intolerable. Pennsylvania, Utah, Ohio, New Hampshire, and other states, as well as Canada, have pulled Russian-branded vodka off the shelves of liquor stores.

In some cases, the gesture is misplaced: Stolichnaya, though historically a Russian brand, is manufactured in Riga, Latvia. In Brazil, a So Paulo bar has renamed its Moscow Mule a drink that was concocted in the United States and is made with vodka, ginger beer, and lime as a U.N. Mule.

Were not too happy with what Moscow has done, with what Russia has done, said the bars co-owner, Maurcio Meirelles, a well-known comedian and television host in Brazil. And then we thought about changing the name, he added. The U.N. Mule: the drink that isnt attacking anyone.

Reporting was contributed by Jack Nicas in Rio de Janeiro, Andre Spigariol in Braslia, Aurelien Breeden in Paris, Raphael Minder in Madrid, Elisabetta Povoledo in Rome, Carlotta Gall in Istanbul, Niki Kitsantonis in Athens, Vjosa Isai in Ottawa, Livia Albeck-Ripka in California and Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem.

Excerpt from:

Invasion Brings Russia Global Repudiation With Cold War Echoes - The New York Times