True Left

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of using white phosphorus bombs against civilians in his country. David Johnson, a principal researcher at the RAND Corporation and a retired army colonel, joins CBS News' Elaine Quijano to discuss the effects of the weaponry.

My brother sent this to me. Town of Bucha northwest of Kyiv. The amount of dead citizens on one street alone…I just can’t even process.

Combat footage from the First Chechen War.  Video by: Alexander Sladkov.

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated.

He thought Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops. They didn’t. He thought he’d swiftly depose Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government. He hasn’t. He thought he’d divide NATO. He’s united it. He thought he had sanction-proofed his economy. He’s wrecked it. He thought the Chinese would help him out. They’re hedging their bets. He thought his modernized military would make mincemeat of Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are making mincemeat of his, at least on some fronts.

Putin’s miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and mental state. Has he lost contact with reality? Is he physically unwell? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He’s not in control of his emotions. Something is wrong.” Russia’s sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two heavily Russian-speaking cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, Poland, and what Putin himself did to Grozny, Chechnya.

Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he’s no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself.

The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving way out: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The New York Times’ Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.

Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?

“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas.

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.

It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelenskyy to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Alexei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.

This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.

UKRAINE'S Foreign Minister today warned NATO Allies, Russian killings in Bucha are 'just the tip of the iceberg'.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba today told the media: "What you've seen, the horrors that we've seen in Bucha are just the tip of the iceberg of all the crimes (that) have been committed by the Russian Army in the territory of Ukrainevso far.

"And I can tell you without any exaggeration, but with great sorrow, that the situation in Mariupol is much worse compared to what we've seen in Bucha, and other cities, towns and villages nearby Kyiv."

The Sun newspaper brings you the latest breaking news videos and explainers from the UK and around the world

ABC News National Security and Defense Analyst Mick Mulroy says Russia committed war crimes and should be held accountable.

Dmitri Alperovitch is a former NATO advisor and Jerry Boykin is a retired former undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Mondayy night, they joined On Balance to give an update with what’s going on in the Russia-Ukraine war, including whether the world should be shocked at the atrocities in Bucha. 

#Ukraine #Russia #Poland #America #VladimirPutin #JoeBiden #VolodymyrZelenskyy #Bucha #Kyiv

Ukrainian officials said more than 400 civilians were found dead in a suburb of Kyiv. President Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin “a war criminal.”

The United Nations is calling for an independent investigation into evidence that war crimes have been committed by Russian forces around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

As Ukrainian troops have re-entered areas close to the capital, after Russian forces retreated, they have reported finding mass graves and hundreds of bodies.

The BBC has seen evidence of bodies of civilians lying in the street in the town of Bucha, some with their hands and feet bound. 

Russia says the scenes have been fabricated.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby discusses with Nicolle Wallace the latest from Russia's invasion into Ukraine.

“It shows a general callousness for human life,” says Lt. Col. Vindman on the Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. “Certainly they are callous with their soldiers’ lives, they’re going to be callous with the civilians’ lives.”

Ukraine's defence minister on Sunday accused Russian forces of an array of atrocities.

Oleksii Reznikov said the crimes came to light after Ukrainian forces moved into cities and towns after the invaders withdrew.

"This is not a special operation, these are not police actions. These are ordinary racists, fascists, and inhumane, who simply committed crimes against civilians, ****, killed, shot them in the back of the head.

 The whole world needs to know about this."

An image from eyewitnesses in Bucha shows hands poking out of what appear to be victims in a mass grave, and bodies lying in the streets.

Bucha lies 23 miles northwest of the capital Kyiv, an area Ukrainian troops said they recaptured on Saturday.

A reported 410 residents had been killed during a month-long occupation by the Russian army.

Russia's defence ministry denied the Ukrainian allegations, saying footage and photographs showing dead bodies in Bucha were "yet another provocation" by Kyiv.

It said Russian military units had left Bucha on March 30, and that civilians had been free to move around the town or evacuate while it was under Russian control.

But the reports and images of dead civilians brought outraged pro-Ukrainian demonstrators to the streets of Berlin on Sunday.

"It is horrible, it is not about the war. It is not the war right now. They want to erase the Ukraine as the culture, as the people."

And that sentiment echoed across Western capitals.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described images of dead bodies there as "a punch in the gut."

And the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain, along with the European Union's foreign policy chief, expressed outrage over the reports from Bucha.

Reznikov vowed to document the alleged atrocities, and said Ukraine would weigh bringing charges in the International Criminal Court.

”There is a whole list: these are war crimes, these are crimes against humanity."

The images of corpses in civilian clothes left behind by departing Russian troops has prompted calls from officials in Ukraine and Europe for tougher sanctions on Moscow.

ABC News’ Linsey Davis speaks with retired Army Gen. Robert Abrams about Russian troop deployments in Ukraine, how Ukraine has fended off Russia and how long the war may last.

Debunking Russian claims

Bucha killings: Russian UN envoy rejects Russia's responsibility

PRO-RUSSIAN fighters wearing 'Nazi patches' are allegedly 'honoured for killing Nazis' in Donetsk, Ukraine.

The pro-Russian fighters were honoured on April 3 by the Putin-sponsored head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, who said the man’s unit had killed “more than 250 Nazis” in Mariupol.

To justify its invasion, Russia has aggressively promoted the falsehood that Ukraine is being run by Nazis, with President Vladimir Putin branding the assault as a “special operation” to “denazify” the country.

As part of its propaganda efforts, the Kremlin has sought to distort the size and influence of Azov Battalion, a far-right paramilitary group active in the southern city of Mariupol that was absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard.

Footage of the awards ceremony was released by Pushilin on his Telegram channel. In a statement accompanying the video, Pushilin said awards were given to fighters who had “especially distinguished themselves” in Mariupol.

ABC News' Linsey Davis speaks with ABC News contributor retired Col. Steve Ganyard about Russia’s alleged war crimes, and Vladimir Putin’s new military strategy in the conflict.

Professor Nina Khrushcheva joins Morning Joe to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine and her latest column 'Putin's War Will Destroy Russia.'

Out of the thousands of foreign volunteers to have taken up arms in Ukraine, 73-year-old Florida retiree Steven Straub is perhaps the oldest. But he is hoping his combat experience as a veteran of the Vietnam war will come in handy in the fight against the invading Russian forces.
#Ukraine #veteran #Vietnam

Russian forces have fully withdrawn from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and the city of Chernihiv to its north, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Pentagon Press Secretary Jack Kirby joins Morning Joe to discuss the withdrawal and Russia's plans to invade Eastern Ukraine.