Today’s Russia/Ukraine Update
🇺🇦 Ukrainian troops have partially recaptured the port city of Kherson, according to Pentagon officials. Russia’s military is currently on the defensive near Kyiv, as Ukraine attempts to regain control of the surrounding towns.
- The next round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine – held in Turkey – is set to begin today and end on Wednesday.
- At least 1,035 Ukrainian civilians have died since the start of the invasion, according to the UN.
- Over 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes, including more than half of the country’s children.
- Ukrainian officials say their forces have killed seven Russian generals and eight other senior military commanders on the battlefield so far.
- After an off-the-cuff remark from President Biden at the end of a speech in Poland – "For God’s sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power" – the White House clarified that the US is not seeking a regime change in Russia.
How the invasion is impacting…
🛢️⚡ Energy: Germany announced plans to cut imports of Russian oil in half by the summer and out almost entirely by year’s end.
- US wind and solar energy projects are being postponed or canceled due to higher prices for key materials such as aluminum and steel, as well as increased transportation costs stemming from higher oil prices, per the WSJ.
🪙 Crypto: Ukraine’s government launched a “Museum of War” NFT collection that includes “every substantial event of the war”; the gov’t has reportedly received nearly $67 million in donated crypto and had spent about $34 million as of last week.
What should the US do next?
From the Left
- Some commentators argue that Biden’s gaffe in calling for a Russian regime change is not so different from Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire”, which drew praise at the time.
- Others say the fact that Russia’s death toll is estimated to be roughly the same as the entire decade-long Afghan War signals Putin is already backed into a corner, which could lead him to the point where he uses WMDs.
🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: These opinions take 1.90 minutes to read.
“I understand the argument that Biden blundered because raising the prospect of regime change in Russia runs the risk that Putin might now fight all the harder. Certainly the fact that Biden’s aides rushed to walk back his remarks with lame explanations (“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” one said) suggests that this was indeed a gaffe — one of many that Biden has committed over his long political career.
Yet I wonder if perhaps history will vindicate this Biden “gaffe” in much the way that many historians have praised comments by President Ronald Reagan that were once seen as dangerously provocative. Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and predicted it would wind up on the “ash-heap of history.” Those tough but true words contributed to raising superpower tensions in the early 1980s, but they also inspired many behind the Iron Curtain to fight for freedom. After the Berlin Wall came down, many saw Reagan as a visionary, not as a warmonger.
Future historians might similarly vindicate Biden’s hope that Putin — whom he has accurately branded a “war criminal” — will fall from power even though the United States apparently has no plan to remove Putin, just as in the 1980s the United States did not have any plan to topple the Berlin Wall.
Biden’s words give hope not only to Ukrainians but also to Russian dissidents fighting to build a freer country, and it is hard to see how they could make Putin fight any harder than he already is. I would rather have a president who is fearless in calling out Putin’s war crimes than one who toadies to the Russian tyrant.”
“The Russians are not winning the war in Ukraine and they may even be losing.
Neither option is good for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, which he surely knows well, both as a veteran of the Cold War and as a student of Russian history…
The official Soviet death toll during the Afghan War, which lasted more than nine years, was around 15,000 soldiers. It is therefore quite telling that the Russians may have already lost as many 15,000 soldiers in just one month in Ukraine, according to estimates given to CNN by senior NATO officials…
An edition of The Economist earlier this month declared "The Stalinization of Russia," which is surely Putin's goal. But it's hard to be neo-Stalinist if you are a loser -- and losing Ukraine isn't out of the question for Putin.
This, of course, raises the possibility that US officials keep warning of, which is that backed into a corner, Putin might use chemical or biological weapons…
Putin's war of choice in Ukraine could lead him to a point where he uses weapons of mass destruction. And even then, he may still lose the war.
This was surely not how Putin dreamed of restoring Russia's glory, a dream that is fast turning into ashes -- just as Putin has reduced the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to ashes.”
From the Right
- Some commentators advocate for the US to knock two birds out with one stone by taking in more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to help alleviate our labor shortages.
- Others argue that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine makes more sense when you realize current trends show Russia in a much worse position economically, socially and politically in the long term.
🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: These opinions take 1.93 minutes to read.
“Ukrainians continue to flee Vladimir Putin’s bombs, and 3.7 million have left the country, per the latest figures from the United Nations. This is a catastrophe, and the U.S. should do its part both to ease the suffering and to help relieve NATO allies like Poland.
President Biden committed Thursday to “welcome 100,000 Ukrainians to the United States with a focus on reuniting families.” That’s a good start, and it sounds like a large figure. Yet it’s less than 3% of the total refugees. Spread across the U.S., it breaks down to 2,000 per state, and New York is a pretty big place, to say nothing of Texas or California.
Why not welcome more? Past waves of refugees, including from Cuba and Vietnam, have found success here while enriching the fabric of American life. Many if not most Ukrainians may want to return home after the war ends, but meantime the U.S. gets a talent boom.
U.S. officials say the Ukrainians could arrive via a range of legal pathways, and if Mr. Biden wanted to go substantially higher, perhaps he would need to consult Congress. The U.S. has a labor shortage, and the Labor Department said Thursday the number of people getting unemployment benefits is at its lowest level since 1970. Go for it, Mr. President.”
“In the short to medium term, Russia is fairly screwed. But in the long term, Russia is really screwed.
We all know that the Russian economy is in dire straits as it faces unprecedented sanctions from the West... The ruble is now almost worthless outside the country, interest rates jumped to 20 percent, and inflation in Russia could rise to a jaw-dropping 20 to 30 percent….
The Russian military is performing badly, has lost its fearsome reputation, and will need a major expenditure to replace all its lost tanks and transport trucks in addition to its expended precision-guided missiles, artillery, and other weapons…
But it is in the long term — say, a generation from now — that Russia is screwed . . . really, really screwed.
Russia’s population dropped by a million people in 2021 — a stunning figure that reflects a team-up of an aging population, a low birth rate — the number of births per woman stands at around 1.5, well short of the minimum of 2.1 necessary to renew the population — and the Covid-19 pandemic…
None of these problems will be helped by the ongoing exodus of Russians who can emigrate; more than 200,000 Russians have reportedly crossed borders since the start of the invasion…
In addition to not-great life expectancy, Russia also has distressingly high rates of alcohol-related deaths, drug addiction, deadly accidents, violence, and suicides…
The collapse of foreign investment, high inflation and interest rates, severe economic recession with lingering drags on growth, a shrinking population, greater strain on health-care systems . . . on a variety of fronts, the Russia of 2030 is likely to be weaker than the Russia of today, and the Russia of 2040 weaker still. From this light, Vladimir Putin’s seemingly senseless decision to invade Ukraine makes a bit more sense, as perhaps he saw a window of opportunity slowly closing.”
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