Monthly Archives: April 2022

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny speaks with journalists during a 2019 rally in Moscow. Navalny premieres April 24 on CNN and CNN+. Maxim Zmeyev/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny speaks with journalists during a 2019 rally in Moscow. Navalny premieres April 24 on CNN and CNN+.

In his valuable new book, The Age of the Strongman, Gideon Rachman argues that our world is dominated by populist leaders who are destroying democracy, in part by making a cult of their own leadership. He devotes his first chapter to the strongman he calls "the archetype": Vladimir Putin, the Russian president/dictator whose true nature is currently on display in Ukraine.

Of course, Putin isn't shy about attacking his own citizens either. Among his top targets is Alexei Navalny, the charismatic, media-savvy dissident who's been so forceful in calling out the Kremlin's lies and corruption that Putin literally won't say his name.

Navalny, currently in prison, is the subject of a new documentary by Daniel Roher that, while sometimes heavy-handed, is never less than compelling. Made before the invasion of Ukraine, and titled simply Navalny, it offers intimate, sometimes amazing access to the bravery, and human cost, of opposing a despot.

Rather than offer a head-on summary of Navalny's career, the film centers on its most dramatic episode. In August 2020, Navalny is flying from Siberia back to Moscow we see footage from the plane when he suddenly becomes deathly ill.

The flight is diverted to Omsk, where he's taken to a hospital whose doctors are weirdly reluctant to let his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, see him. Fearing a murder attempt, she and his colleagues fight to get him flown to a hospital in Germany. There it's established that he'd been given a dose of Novichok, a deadly nerve gas known as Putin's signature poison.

Once he starts to recover, Navalny and his team try to figure out who had tried to kill him. They hook up with the investigative journalist Christo Grozev from the website Bellingcat, whom Navalny calls a "nice, very kind Bulgarian nerd with a laptop." Hacking into flight manifests and so forth, Grozev narrows down the possible killers, some of whom have been shadowing Navalny since 2017. In the film's most breathtaking moment which I won't spoil they get the smoking gun with the Kremlin's fingerprints on it.

While this investigation unfolds as excitingly as a thriller, Roher is equally interested in providing us with a close-up portrait of the man inside the hero. We see Navalny's joy at feeding donkeys with his wife and his love for his son and TikTokking daughter. We see his humor and brilliance on the stump: He gets a Russian crowd gleefully chanting that Putin is a thief. And we sense the fury that helps fuel him. At one point, a colleague tells him that in answering Roher's questions his eyes are too angry, that he needs to look kinder.

Now, Navalny is not beyond reproach. Although he's grown more enlightened over the years, he has a somewhat unsettling past as a Russian nationalist. He once walked in a march that included neo-fascists, an action he still defends by arguing that to oust one as powerful as Putin, you must be willing to work with groups you don't fully approve of.

In any case, one shouldn't be too critical of someone willing to risk everything battling oppressive authorities. A certain messianic vanity and wildness comes with this territory.

Navalny is obviously brilliant at channeling his rebelliousness, and his success as a YouTube provocateur shows the power of social media to challenge dictatorship. Putin clearly finds him threatening; after all, crowds turn up at the airport to greet Navalny on his return to Moscow.

Yet we're also reminded that social media's soft power is rarely a match for the hard power of state repression, like the cops arresting and beating those supporters who turned up at the airport. Navalny exults that one of his videos gets a million views in an hour, yet that doesn't stop Putin from putting him in prison he's still there, serving a nine-year term any more than the world's horror stopped Putin from invading Ukraine.

Late in the film, as he heads back to almost certain arrest in Russia, Navalny posts an inspiring video in which he declares that he's not afraid and he urges his supporters and us not to be afraid either. Now, he doesn't really expect that we will all be as flamboyantly brave as he is. Few are. Yet as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his fellow Ukrainians are proving right now, it's possible for ordinary people to be terrified by the malevolence of a tyrant like Putin and still muster the courage to fight him.

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'Navalny' review: The man who dared to take on Putin - NPR

Any aid, he added, is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.

Neither the Obama administration nor its key European allies believed Ukraine was ready to join NATO. But tensions in the alliance were growing as Europeans sought to maintain trade ties and energy deals with Russia.

The division was captured in a phone call in which a senior State Department official profanely criticized European leaders approach to helping Ukraine. A leaked recording of the call was posted on YouTube in February 2014 in what was widely believed to be an attempt by Russia to stir up discord between the United States and Europe.

Yet as much as anything else, Ukraine was a costly distraction to Mr. Obamas broader agenda.

It was hard to reconcile the time and energy required to lead the diplomacy on Ukraine with the demands on the United States elsewhere around the world, especially after ISIS took over much of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014, Derek H. Chollet, a senior Pentagon official at the time, wrote in a book about Mr. Obamas foreign policy.

Mr. Chollet is now a senior counselor to Mr. Blinken at the State Department.

Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian, won a landslide victory in Ukraines presidential elections in April 2019 after campaigning on an anti-corruption pledge.

Once in office, he turned to ending the war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine through negotiations with Mr. Putin.

The new Ukrainian president knew he needed the backing of the United States and the American president, said William B. Taylor Jr., who started his second tour as ambassador to Ukraine that June after his predecessor, Marie L. Yovanovitch, was pushed out on Mr. Trumps orders.

Mr. Zelensky tried to arrange a meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House. But Mr. Trump had negative views of Ukraine even before he took office, influenced partly by his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who had made more than $60 million consulting for a Ukrainian political party backed by Russia.

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Americas Road to the Ukraine War - The New York Times

Targeting sanctions at the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin is key to raising the pressure and exacerbating splits among his supporters over the war in Ukraine, says a former spokesperson for Alexei Navalny.

Anna Veduta is now vice-president of the anti-corruption foundation created by Navalny the jailed Russian opposition leader. She told The West Block guest host David Akin that Russians are feeling the impact of Western sanctions laid over Putins unprovoked and bloody invasion of Ukraine, but that continuing them and targeting his allies closely is vital.

All sanctions have an impact, both economic and personal sanctions. Personal sanctions are the key here, actually, she said.

So sanctioning those who are close to Putin, sanctioning oligarchs, sanctioning their family members and proxies and nominal owners of assets. All of that works, and all of that will help to exacerbate the split in Putins allies.

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On Tuesday, the Canadian government announced sanctions against the two adult daughters of Putin as well as 12 other close associates of the Russian regime.

The two daughters are suspected to be hiding their fathers wealth.

That followed a similar move by the United States on April 6, and comes after successive rounds of sanctions since the invasion began on Feb. 24.

Those rounds have targeted roughly 750 individuals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in an effort to impose steep economic and political costs on Putin for the invasion, which shattered international laws and has led to scores of Ukrainians killed in violence increasingly being described as war crimes.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested as much during a press conference last week, and has said it is absolutely right to consider whether Russian violence constitutes genocide under international law.

Veduta said Navalny, who is currently a political prisoner in Russia for opposing Putin, is urging an escalation in the campaign to get accurate information to the people inside Russia about what is going on. Putin severely limited access to information that is not propaganda following the invasion.

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As a result, there are growing questions about whether the scale of reported deaths of Russian men killed during attacks on Ukraine are known by their families and fellow citizens.

There is this demand for the truth in Russia, Veduta said. People are trying to find it.

Navalny has called for the West to buy up advertising placements on the websites that are still allowed in Russia, including YouTube, so that those ads can display accurate information about the butchery and horrors carried out at Putins orders.

Dissent in Russia carries steep consequences, but there is still an appetite for the truth, Veduta said.

Even with these high risks, a lot of people in Russia are still trying to protest this war, she said.Every attempt to convey the truth, every attempt to show the real picture of what is going on must be supported.

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Sanctioning Putins circle over Ukraine key to raising pressure: Navalny ally - Global News

When announcing Russias imminent invasion of Ukraine back in February, President Vladimir Putin mentioned NATO 40 times. It was clear he wanted to present NATO as the devil but it wasnt always like that.

I first met Mr. Putin while serving as the prime minister of Denmark in 2002. Back then, he was still willing to engage and work with the West. For some time, Russia even assisted the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

This all changed with the color revolutions of the mid-2000s: Seeing democratic movements spring up in Georgia and Ukraine terrified Mr. Putin. He worried Russia would be next. When I took over as NATOs secretary general in 2009, Mr. Putin coldly informed me the organization I oversaw was a relic that should be resigned to history.

The irony is that Mr. Putins cruel war in Ukraine will achieve the opposite of his ambitions: NATO will emerge from this crisis larger, stronger and more united. The sight of Russian tanks pouring across the border into Ukraine shattered many long-held beliefs about security in Europe. Nowhere is this more true than in Finland and Sweden. As Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland dryly put it, Russia is not the neighbor we imagined.

The change in public opinion is even more remarkable. Last year, an annual poll showed that only 26 percent of Finns wanted to join NATO. A more recent survey demonstrates this number has now increased to 68 percent. The same is true in Sweden. Both populations recognize the new reality in Europe. A dictator in charge of a nuclear-armed state has launched a full-scale invasion of a neighboring country. Joining a powerful military alliance with a specific commitment to collective defense is the logical response.

Finland and Sweden should seize this opportunity to become part of NATO. The governments of both countries should apply before the NATO summit in June. Finland and Sweden could join NATO relatively quickly and painlessly. Both countries are already closely aligned with the organization, take part in joint exercises and clearly meet the political requirements for membership, including a democratic system of governance and a market economy. At NATO headquarters, membership could be approved overnight. While the decision would need to be ratified by all members of the alliance, the urgency of the situation could expedite the process to a matter of months.

Finland and Sweden joining NATO is a win-win. Both countries would receive the security guarantee of NATOs Article 5 on collective defense, and NATO would gain new capabilities in a strategically important region. This convenient buffer zone between Russia and current NATO members would make it easier to react to any incursion by Russian forces into the Baltic States.

While the debate on membership continues, the Kremlins propaganda machine will go into overdrive. It will warn against further NATO expansion, claiming it will destabilize the region and make war more likely.

Of course, this is not the case. The only person destabilizing Europe is Mr. Putin. Russia targeted Ukraine, and Georgia before that, precisely because they are not members of NATO. Russias international strategy is to threaten escalation in order to bully less powerful countries into submission and push more powerful ones toward inaction. In this war, Mr. Putin threatened to target NATO convoys bringing weapons to Ukraine and to cut off gas supplies to Europe if bills were not paid in rubles. On both of those issues, the West called Russias bluff. The threats did not materialize.

If Sweden and Finland do join NATO especially in the face of such threats it would show Mr. Putin that war is counterproductive, that war only strengthens Western unity, resolve and military preparedness.

Finland and Sweden are not the only countries reassessing decades-old foreign policy doctrine in the face of Russias invasion. Across Europe, governments are raising military spending to meet NATOs 2 percent target. About time. For too long, the United States has carried too great a share of the burden for European security.

The most significant change is in Germany. Its refusal to spend more on defense has been a consistent source of tension within the NATO alliance, which almost reached a breaking point during the Trump presidency. The war in Ukraine finally pushed the German government to act. It has committed to spending $112.7 billion on military procurement and more than 2 percent of its G.D.P. on defense going forward. Germany has also reversed its longstanding policy of not exporting arms to conflict zones, a policy that was based on the collective guilt and trauma of World War II. The countrys new positions on military spending and weapons exports have the potential to transform Germany into one of the most advanced militaries in the world.

Despite these commendable changes, Germany must do more. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other political leaders are still dragging their feet over imposing sanctions and sending higher-caliber arms to Ukraine. But if Germany ended all import of Russian oil and gas, Mr. Putin would be forced to quickly stop the war in Ukraine.

It is unconscionable that while Ukrainians are being slaughtered, NATO members still send hundreds of millions of euros every day to Mr. Putins coffers to buy oil and gas. Political leaders who oppose a total halt to transfers to Russia are complicit in Mr. Putins war crimes. They are indirectly paying the wages of those who committed atrocities in Bucha. Ending all imports of Russian oil and gas would come at a significant price, but it would be small compared to the continued destruction in Ukraine. Here too, Finland is moving in the right direction, promising to end the countrys reliance on Russian energy imports in a matter of weeks or months.

NATOs previous posture of deterrence with Russia did not work: It failed to avoid a full-scale war in Europe. If Mr. Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he is not likely to stop there. He will continue to test NATO wherever he sees weak links. Countries that are closely aligned with the Western alliance but not protected by its Article 5 such as Sweden and Finland will be at risk.

For the past 70 years, NATO has been the bedrock of security in Europe, creating an environment in which freedom and democracy can thrive. Mr. Putin may want to see NATO resigned to history but his actions in Ukraine show why the alliance is needed now more than ever.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) served as the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 2009-2014 and as the prime minister of Denmark from 2001-2009. He is the founder and chairman of Rasmussen Global.

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Opinion | Putin Is Pushing Finland and Sweden Into NATOs Arms - The New York Times

Just how dangerous is the Russian military after all? Considering its performance in Ukraine so far, its truly hard to say: During the 2012 Presidential Election, then-Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who is currently serving as a United States senator representing Utah, warned that Russia remained Americas great geopolitical threat.

This is without question our number one geopolitical foe, Romney said a decade ago while on the campaign trail in March 2012. He reiterated his stance during an October 2012 debate with President Barack Obama and was quickly mocked for it.

The1980s are callingto ask for their foreign policy back, Obama quipped. Because the Cold Wars been over for 20 years.

Then-Vice President Biden also scoffed at Romneys suggestion that Russia remained a significant foe on the world stage, stating, Romney acts like he thinks the Cold Wars still on I dont know where hes been.

In recent years, Obama and Biden have admitted that those comments havent aged well, and Russia underPresident Vladimir Putinhas been seen again as a near peer adversary. Moscow has made great strides in developing advanced weapons, including its hypersonic missiles.

Russia has certainly stirred up trouble, including its 2014 annexation of Crimea, while Moscow has sought to expand its presence to overseas bases in Africa and the Middle East. The 1980s didnt call, but the United States certainly has found itself inCold War 2.0.

Moreover, as Russia massed its forces on the border prior to its unprovoked invasion ofUkraine, it seemed that the Russian bear was showing its claws andwas again a near peer adversaryto fear.

Putins Ukraine invasion is the first time in 80 years that a great power has moved to conquer a sovereign nation. It is without justification, without provocation, and without honor,Romney said last monthafter Russia launched its attack.

Romney also recalled his past warnings, adding, The 80s called, and we didnt answer.

Then It Invaded

Perhaps Romney was right, even if Russiasperformancein Ukraine has shown considerable shortcomings.

Russian tanks have been destroyed in ambushes, while others have been reportedly stolen by Ukrainian farmers who have used tractors to tow them away. Russiancasualties have mounted, and its combat losses after just three weeks have already overtaken Soviet casualties in Afghanistan over a nine-year period beginning in 1979.

Russia has also lost as many soldiers in Ukraine as theUnited States lostin Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001!

What is clear is that even if Russia has shown itself to be more of a paper tiger than a mighty bear, NATO wont and shouldnt let its guard down. Across the alliance, member states areincreasingdefense spending, while Sweden and Finland are moving ever closer to joining the alliance.

Officials from the United States Air Force have also made it clear that Russias setbacks wont give them reason to rethink existing strategy or spending.

I dont know that, for me personally, its really changed my perspective, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles CQ Brown Jr. told reporters March 3 at an Air Force Association conference in Orlando,Air Force Times reported.

We will learn more and more to really make an assessment of how we need to think about the Russians in the future, Gen. Brown added.

Russias invasion of Ukraine may have revealed significant problems with its militarys logistics, command and control, and even attempts to maintain control of the skies.

Lessons From History

It might be easy to dismiss Russia given its setbacks in Ukraine, but history offers a reminder that Moscow has overcome far worse.

The Soviet Union showed that it was largely unprepared when it launched its assault on Finland in 1939. It faced a determined enemy that it thought it would quickly defeat. Instead, the Winter War dragged on for months, and the Soviets looked weaker for it.

That helped convinced Nazi Germany that it would quickly roll over the Soviet Red Army, which did take significant losses and faced serious setbacks in the early stages of the Nazi invasion, but the Soviets came back stronger than ever.

The United States and NATO would be unwise to believe that Russia isnt still a significant threat. It is a nuclear power, has been more successful than the United States in developinghypersonic weapons,and still has a sizeable force of submarines and combat aircraft.

Nations often come back stronger from tough fights, as the military undergoes reforms to address shortcomings. Russia will learn from its mistakes, and possibly even be battle-hardened albeit battered in the process. Should Russia actually lose in Ukraine, this bear wont be declawed.

Now a Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear includingA Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also aContributing Writerfor Forbes.

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Putin's Real Problem: The Russian Military Is a Paper Tiger - 19FortyFive

But that reality apparently has not sunk in. If anything, Mr. Putin has grown more belligerent, focusing new fire on Mariupol as Russian forces seek to secure all of the Donbas region in the coming weeks. He has insisted to visitors like Mr. Nehammer that he remains determined to achieve his goals.

While Russian casualties have been high and Mr. Putins ambitions have narrowed in Ukraine, American intelligence assessments have concluded that the Russian president believes that the Wests efforts to punish him and contain Russias power will crack over time. With the help of China, India and other nations in Asia, he appears to believe he can avoid true isolation, just as he did after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Now, American officials are girding for what increasingly feels like a long, grinding confrontation, and they have encountered repeated reminders by Mr. Putin that the world is messing with a nuclear weapons power and should tread carefully.

On Wednesday, after providing warnings to the Pentagon that a missile test was coming a requirement of the New START treaty, which has four years remaining Mr. Putin declared that the launch should provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.

In fact, the missile, if deployed, would add only marginally to Russias capabilities. But the launch was about timing and symbolism: It came amid the recent public warnings, including by Mr. Burns, that there was a small but growing chance that Mr. Putin might turn to chemical weapons attacks, or even a demonstration nuclear detonation.

If Mr. Putin turns his sights on the United States or its allies, the assumption has always been that Russia would make use of its cyberarsenal to retaliate for the effects of sanctions on the Russian economy. But eight weeks into the conflict, there have been no significant cyberattacks beyond the usual background noise of daily Russian cyberactivity in American networks, including ransomware attacks.

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Russias Missile Test Fuels U.S. Fears of an Isolated Putin - The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) Nearly two months into the Russian-Ukraine war, the Kremlin has taken extraordinary steps to blunt an economic counteroffensive from the West. While Russia can claim some symbolic victories, the full impact of Western sanctions is starting to be felt in very real ways.

As the West moved to cut off Russias access to its foreign reserves, limit imports of key technologies and take other restrictive actions, the Kremlin launched some drastic measures to protect the economy. Those included hiking interest rates to as high as 20%, instituting capital controls and forcing Russian business to convert their profits into rubles.

As a result, the value of the ruble has recovered after an initial plunge, and last week the central bank reversed part of its interest rate increase. Russian President Vladimir Putin felt emboldened and proclaimed evoking World War II imagery that the country had withstood the Wests blitz of sanctions.

The government wants to paint a picture that things are not as bad as they actually are, said Michael Alexeev, an economics professor at Indiana University who has studied Russias economy in its transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A closer look, however, shows that the sanctions are taking a bite out of Russias economy:

The country is enduring its worst bout of inflation in two decades. Rosstat, the states economic statistics agency, said inflation last month hit 17.3%, the highest level since 2002. By comparison, the International Monetary Fund expects consumer prices in developing countries to rise 8.7% this year, up from 5.9% last year.

Some Russian companies have been forced to shut down. Several reports say a tank manufacturer had to stop production due to a lack of parts. U.S. officials point to the closing of Lada auto plants a brand made by the Russian company Avtovaz and majority-owned by French automaker Renault as a sign of sanctions having an effect.

Moscows mayor says the city is looking at 200,000 job losses from foreign companies shutting down operations. More than 300 companies have pulled out, and international supply chains have largely shut down after container company Maersk, UPS, DHL and other transportation firms exited Russia.

Russia is facing a historic default on its bonds, which will likely freeze the country out of the debt markets for years.

Meanwhile, Treasury officials and most economists urge patience, saying that sanctions take months to have their full effect. If Russia cant get appropriate amounts of capital, parts or supplies over time, that will cause even more factories and businesses to shut down, leading to higher unemployment.

It took nearly an entire year after Russia was sanctioned for seizing Ukraines Crimea peninsula in 2014 for its economic data to show signs of distress, such as higher inflation, a decline in industrial production and a slowdown in economic growth.

The things that we should be looking for to see if the sanctions are working are, frankly, not easy to see yet, said David Feldman, a professor of economics at William & Mary in Virginia. Well be looking for the price of goods, the quantity of goods they are producing and the quality of goods. The last being the hardest to see and probably the last to appear.

Transparency into how sanctions are affecting the Russian economy is limited, largely because of the extraordinary lengths the Kremlin has taken to prop it up. In addition, its largest sector oil and gas is largely unencumbered due to European, Chinese and Indian reliance on Russian energy.

Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, estimated in a report released last month that if the European Union, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and natural gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. Current projections forecast a 15% contraction.

While the EU has agreed to ban Russian coal by August and is discussing sanctions on oil, theres been no consensus among its 27 nations so far about halting oil and natural gas. The European Union is far more reliant on Russian supplies than Britain and the U.S., which have banned or are phasing out Russian oil. In the meantime, Russia gets $850 million a day from Europe for its oil and gas.

The U.S. and its allies have argued that they have tried to tailor sanctions to affect Russias ability to wage war and financially hit those in the highest echelons of government, while leaving everyday Russians largely unaffected.

But Russians have noticed a spike in prices. Residents of one Moscow suburb said 19-liter jugs of drinking water they regularly order have become nearly 35% more expensive than before. In supermarkets and stores in their area, the price for 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of sugar has risen 77%; some vegetables cost 30% to 50% more.

Local news sites in different Russian regions in recent weeks have reported that multiple stores are shuttered in malls after Western companies and brands halted operations or pulled out of Russia, including Starbucks, McDonalds and Apple.

The Kremlin and its allies on social media have repeatedly pointed to the recovery of Russias ruble as a sign that Western sanctions arent working. The ruble crashed to around 150 to the dollar in the early days of the war but recovered to around 80 to the dollar, about where it was before the invasion. A gauge of weekly inflation by Rosstat has shown inflation slowing, but that is not surprising after the central bank raised interest rates as quickly as it did.

Russias central bank had doubled its benchmark interest rate to support the rubles plunging value and stop bank runs. It dropped the rate to 17% from 20% this month and signaled it might lower it further.

This isnt the first time Russia has thrown its full force behind defending the rubles value as a symbol of resistance against the West. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the Soviet Union had an official exchange rate of one ruble equaling about $1.35, whereas the black-market exchange rate was closer to four rubles to the dollar. The Russian debt crisis of the late 1990s also was caused partially by the Kremlins active defense of the currencys value.

U.S. Treasury officials have dismissed the significance of the rubles recovery.

The Russian economy is really reeling from the sanctions that we put in place, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, adding that the rubles value has been artificially inflated by central bank intervention.

If and how Russia wins the economic war will come down to whether the Kremlin can drive division in the West, causing the sanctions to become patchy and less effective. At the same time, Russia will have time to develop alternatives for goods it can no longer access, a concept known as import substitution.

Looking back at the 2014 sanctions, the Congressional Research Service said in January that the impact on Russia was modest only because the U.S. effectively acted alone. This time, there are multiple international actors.

But Alexeev, the Indiana University professor, sees one glaring gap.

As long as Russia can continue to sell oil and gas, they will muddle through this, he said.

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This story corrects the name of the university to Indiana University.

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Hussein reported from Washington. White House reporter Joshua Boak contributed from Washington.

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Follow all AP stories on Russias war on Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

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Sanctions hit Russian economy, although Putin says otherwise - The Associated Press

The 360 shows you diverse perspectives on the days top stories and debates.

Sweden and Finland, two European nations that have long valued strategic neutrality, appear to be inching closer to joining NATO in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The security landscape has completely changed, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters last week at a meeting with her Finnish counterpart, Sanna Marin. Anderssons recent comments represent a significant shift in her view on the value of NATO membership. Early last month, she said that Sweden joining the alliance would further destabilize this area of Europe and increase tensions.

Anderssons change in opinion is indicative of evolving views among the citizens of both countries in reaction to the steady stream of horrifying news out of Ukraine. In a recent poll, 68% of Finns said they support joining NATO, up from just 24% last year. For the first time ever, a majority of Swedes said they also favor joining, according to a poll released this week.

Although both nations have deep cultural and economic ties with Europe, Finland and Sweden have historically declined to pursue NATO membership even as more than a dozen countries in eastern Europe have joined the alliance since the fall of the Soviet Union. Swedens resistance is rooted in its policy of neutrality, which dates back to the early 1800s. After fighting off a Soviet invasion during World War II, Finland established a formally neutral position, largely to avoid provoking further aggression.

Formed in the aftermath of World War II, NATO is a military alliance built on the principle of collective defense meaning that all NATO countries agree to come to the defense of any individual member that comes under attack. Russia considers NATO to be a direct threat, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the possibility that Ukraine might join motivated his decision to launch the Russian invasion. Russias Foreign Ministry has warned of serious military and political consequences if Sweden and Finland join the alliance.

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Supporters say there are clear benefits to adding Sweden and Finland to NATO. They argue that the invasion serves as a startling reminder of how dangerous it can be for countries on Russias borders. If they were NATO members, the two Nordic countries would have the force of some of the worlds most powerful militaries including the U.S. as a bulwark against any Russian incursion.

Some defense analysts believe NATO and its members have plenty to gain by bringing in Sweden and Finland. Though both nations are relatively small, experts say their militaries are still formidable. The two countries would also provide a valuable strategic foothold along Russias northwest flank, particularly along Finlands 830-mile border with Russia. Others say expanding NATO would be yet another nonmilitary means of punishing Putin for his assault on Ukraine.

But skeptics worry about potential retaliation from Putin, particularly at a time when hes vulnerable and liable to lash out. Some also argue that increasing NATOs foothold along Russias border would create opportunities for conflict that could spiral into another world war.

There are also those who believe that NATO shouldn't exist at all. Some on the right believe that the alliance allows smaller nations to neglect their own defense capabilities, knowing that major powers will come to their rescue. Observers on the far left, on the other hand, say that anything that promotes military force over nonviolent forms of collaboration is ultimately harmful to the world.

There are two major steps that need to be taken before Sweden and Finland could become part of NATO. First, their Parliaments would have to formally vote to join. Then, the legislatures of each of the 30 current NATO countries would have to approve their membership a process that has taken about a year in the recent past.

The war in Ukraine has made it obvious why Sweden and Finland should join

Who can blame the Finns and the Swedes for wanting to jump right in? After seeing what's happening to Ukraine, they dont want to be the next Ukraine. And its clear that Putin does not want to challenge any of the NATO countries directly. Kevin Baron, Defense One executive editor, to MSNBC

Russia probably isnt willing to go to war to keep Sweden and Finland out of NATO

Putin views Finland and Sweden differently than Ukraine because of their different histories. Ukraine is seen as part of an imagined Russian world by Putin. Sweden and Finland are, therefore, less comparable to Ukraine, beyond their proximity to Russia. Thomas O Falk, Al Jazeera

Adding new NATO members is a sound, nonmilitary way to punish Russia

It would be a dramatic reversal of fortunes and would demonstrate the agility of the liberal democratic countries in applying the diplomatic element of power, well below the threshold of war, that gray-zone space in which Russia and, for that matter, China has been so nimble in the recent past. Michael Miklaucic, The Hill

Both countries would bring plenty of benefits to the NATO alliance

Finland and Sweden wouldnt be alliance freeloaders. Their strategic location in the Baltic Sea could be critical in a wider conflict with Russia. Finland already punches above its weight militarily, and wealthy Sweden can afford its announced defense-spending increases. A secure Europe better capable of defending itself serves American interests. Editorial, Wall Street Journal

Ukraine is a reminder of our responsibility to protect each other

Ukraine is a game-changer in European security. The real threat to fellow member-states leaves us all with no option but to look again at how we see our responsibilities to one another. Editorial, Irish Times

NATO membership would have saved Ukraine

If only NATO was more popular amongst Ukrainians and properly marketed as a security guarantee against Russia, Ukraine could have been saved from eight or more years of violence and suffering. The lesson to be learned is that NATO did not enlarge far or fast enough. Daniel Ramallo, National Interest

Russia might attack to keep Sweden and Finland out

Would Russia seriously consider an attack on Finland or Sweden? While it may seem unlikely, the West should not underestimate the possibility that Mr. Putin, feeling isolated, backed into a corner, and under a time constraint, may make an otherwise rash decision. Sascha Glaeser, Washington Times

A greater NATO presence on Russias border increases the odds of catastrophic conflict

Finlandif it allows NATO bases, troops, and weaponry within its borderscould permanently heighten the hair-trigger environment that now exists between the Kremlin and Washington. Michael Hirsh, Foreign Policy

NATOs expansion after the Cold War inspired Putins invasion of Ukraine

If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine. John Mearsheimer, political scientist, to New Yorker

NATO makes the world less safe

To the degree that this rudderless security pact has made war easier, more salable, and more attractive for Western leaders than diplomacy, the alliance has been a liability to peace and stability. Chase Madar, The Nation

Greater militarism will never create a path to peace

Europe goes ahead and arms itself to the teeth to protect itself. So therefore, [Russia says] we have to arm ourselves to the teeth to defend ourselves from the onslaught of this extraordinarily powerful force against NATO. I mean, if anybodys observing this from outer space, theyd be cracking up in laughter. Noam Chomsky, linguist and political commentator, to Intercept

The U.S. shouldnt sign up to protect even more weak countries

We have to understand that nothing is done in a vacuum, and for Finland and Sweden to be added to NATO adds a burden to the entire alliance. And it adds yet another level of potential risk for the United States. Daniel Davis, foreign policy expert, to The Hill

Is there a topic youd like to see covered in The 360? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images (2)

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Is it worth provoking Putin to add Sweden and Finland to NATO? - Yahoo News

Just over a week ago, Joe Biden acted like Joe Biden and called the Russian campaign in Ukraine a genocide leaping ahead of our major allies, our State Department and the available facts.

The comment prompted head-shaking from people nervous about American escalation and praise from people seeking it (notably, the president of Ukraine). I am generally on the side of the nervous people: In a conflict with a nuclear power there is always an interest in reducing the existential stakes, and accusations of genocide should be made only with the clearest possible evidence, just as calls for regime change (Bidens previous Bidenism, which had to be walked back) should be made, well, practically never.

But unlike the talk of regime change, which the Kremlin takes seriously because it assumes the United States wants to plot a color revolution in Moscow itself, the accusation of genocide might seem to Vladimir Putins ears much more like a flourish than a threat. After all, theres nothing in recent history to suggest that the term is used by Western powers with real consistency or certainty, or in a way that engenders a consistent American response.

This is not for want of argument and effort. The experience of the 1990s, when America stood back from the massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda and then (eventually) intervened from the air to stop ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, seemed to yield templates for how the Pax Americana or the rules-based international order ought to work. When genocide was threatened, there was a responsibility to protect the endangered population. When genocide was determined to have taken place, there was a responsibility to place the responsible parties before an international court.

But reality has not yielded to this idealistic framework. Instead we have cases, as in Iraq and Libya, where dictators were punished for either past or threatened atrocities but they faced rough justice, not The Hague, and the American-led military interventions that toppled them were widely seen as unwise or disastrous. We have cases, as in Sudans Darfur region and now with the Rohingya in Myanmar, where the genocide label was affixed but there was no American military response. We have a case like the Second Congo War, where mass killings and atrocities went on for years without a determination of genocide or, indeed, without much Western attention being paid at all.

And then we have the recent case of Chinas oppression of its Uyghur minority, which our State Department declared to be a genocide in early 2021 a declaration that did not exactly lead to serious international consequences for the regime in Beijing.

This last example is especially relevant for Russias invasion of Ukraine, in the sense that it answers a question raised by Bidens genocide comment. If a nuclear-armed power commits crimes against humanity in territory that it controls, will the United States go to war to stop it? Go ask the Uyghurs. Or, for that matter, the Chechens, who certainly suffered as much from Russian cruelty as the Ukrainians, without anyone suggesting that we might risk a nuclear war for their sake.

But this cold observation is not a counsel of despair. The idea of a lawbound, process-driven international approach to genocide or any war crime was always just a fantasy. But a more realistic calculus still leaves room to do what you can to make sure that mass murderers pay a price. You just have to tailor your approach and accept that you arent establishing a universal rule.

Both the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, for instance, ended with the genocidaires suffering a devastating military defeat but at the hands of rebel Rwandan and Croat armies, respectively, not United States or United Nations ground troops. The end of the Islamic States depredations, meanwhile, happened with U.S. military support, but with the Iraqi Army as a key actor on the ground.

This suggests that where there is a plausible local military actor to lead the effort, international support can tip the scales against war criminals. Where there isnt, sometimes you can play a longer game: Years after the Darfur genocide, the Sudanese dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir may finally face an international tribunal after being toppled in a coup.

But then, too, sometimes all you can do is bear witness. We werent going to invade the U.S.S.R. to avenge the Holodomor or put Mao Zedong on trial for the Great Leap Forward, and we shouldnt expect to see Xi Jinping in the dock, either.

The situation in Ukraine is its own distinctive case. It is very unlikely that Putin will fall from power; it would be insane for us to try to force regime change. At the same time, there is a military on the ground thats proven capable of countering him, with international support but without direct U.S. intervention.

And this good news, however provisional, seems like what our president should be stressing the real situation, not the escalatory hypothetical.

Is Putin committing genocide? Not yet, folks, and right now, with our support, the Ukrainians are making sure he doesnt get the chance.

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Opinion | It will neither rattle Putin nor change our obligations in the war. - The New York Times

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, daily anti-war demonstrations and protests broke out across Russia, while a number of public figures, both cultural and political, released statements in opposition to the war.The protests were met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities, however, with Russian human rights group OVD-info having claimed that 14,906 people were detained from the start of the war in February to March 13.March 6 saw the most mass arrests in post-Soviet history, as Russian took to the streets to voice their opposition to Putins brutal Ukraine invasion.

The Kremlin has continued its initial response and cracked down on protest by rolling-out censorship laws most commonly seen in authoritarian regimes.

Putin clampeddown on external news and comments about the warby blocking access to Facebook, Instagram and major foreign news outlets.

Those accused of spreading false information about the invasionare now subjectto up to 15 years in prison.

Many critics argue that Putins crackdown on free speech may be due to hisfear that he could be ousted from power..

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According to human rights reporter Amanda Taub, who visited Russia to assess the strength of Putins regime, the President fears that frequent demonstrations could see his closest allies turn on him.

The president reportedly believes he could suffer the same fate as Viktor Yanukovych, his Ukrainian counterpart who was removed from office in the Maidan Revolution in 2014 after a series of protests.

In 2015, writing for Vox, Ms Taub said:: To Putin, Yanukovychs fate is a reminder of the danger protests could pose to his own regime, not by unseating it directly via a mass uprising, but in causing Russian elites to push out Putin themselves.

And that lesson has not been lost on the opposition either: Every single opposition figure I met with in Russia spoke of the need to split the elite in order to bring down Putins regime.

Putin, [former opposition politician Vladimir] Ryzhkov explained to me, is afraid that popular protests could cause him to suffer a similar fate that he could be ousted from power via Maidan technology.

Although Putin tends to couch those fears in warnings of foreign coups or CIA plots when he speaks publicly, his concern is that another mass protest movement could force him into a similarly impossible choice between popular support, political control and the loyalty of different factions of Russias elite.

Ms Taub continued: Putin is probably right to be concerned.

He simply cannot maintain his power without the support of Russias elites, the powerful factions within Russias security forces, business community, and political elite which provide vital support to Putins regime.

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Their support for Putin is pragmatic, not ideological.

If they sense that his control is slipping, or that Putin can no longer protect their interests, then they will abandon him, just as Ukraines elites abandon Yanukovych.

In December 2011, tens of thousands of Russians streamed onto Moscows streets to protest against Putins regime.

At the time, Russians had been particularly exercised by the 2011 legislative elections, which had been fixed in favour of Putins ruling party, United Russia.

For a short while it appeared Putin may have been losing his grip on the Kremlin, but the protest movement never garnered broad support.

Many of the activists who led the opposition groups were exiled or put into prison.

Since, Putins government has cracked down on all forms of dissent.

Ms Taub wrote: Even though Putin emerged from that crisis of legitimacy, he was clearly deeply shaken by the protests.

It wasnt just the protestors who believed their marches could shake Putins hold of power: Putin himself seemed worried about the same thing.

When Ms Taub asked Vladimir Ryzkhov, who is now a professor at Moscows Higher School of Economics, why Putin had cracked down so harshly on dissent after the 2011 protests, the former opposition leader suggested that the President had an insecure grip on power.

Mr Ryzkhov said: You know I had a very interesting conversation with Putin two years ago. It was a meeting with him and a small group of opposition leaders in 2013.

There was an open part, after that, a 20-minutes closed part. And I asked him, Why do you turn the screw so hard? Because you did it so strongly that the atmosphere is increasing pressure from inside

And he said, very sincerely, that, You know, Vladimir he has known me for many years You know Vladimir, I am afraid that if I turn back a little bit, Russia could be extremely destabilised.

He really believes that only through this hard line is it possible to keep control of this huge country. Thats his mind.

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Putin 'afraid' protest could see him abandoned by allies and 'ousted from power' - Express