WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Satellite images taken on Monday show a Russian military convoy north of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv that stretches for about 40 miles (64 km), substantially longer than the 17 miles (27 km) reported earlier in the day, a U.S. private company said.
Maxar Technologies (MAXR.N) also said additional ground forces deployments and ground attack helicopter units were seen in southern Belarus, less than 20 miles (32 km) north of the Ukraine border.
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KYIV, Ukraine—A delegation led by Ukraine’s defense minister held cease-fire talks on Monday with Russian officials in Belarus as Russian forces shelled two residential neighborhoods in the eastern city of Kharkiv, killing at least 10 civilians, and Ukrainian defenders repelled attacks on the capital, Kyiv.
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KYIV, Ukraine—A delegation led by Ukraine’s defense minister held cease-fire talks on Monday with Russian officials in Belarus as Russian forces shelled two residential neighborhoods in the eastern city of Kharkiv, killing at least 10 civilians, and Ukrainian defenders repelled attacks on the capital, Kyiv.
The talks on the fifth day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine come after Russian forces have struggled to make headway in most of the country, and failed so far to take any of Ukraine’s major cities as they faced fierce resistance. Russia was pouring large reinforcement convoys across the border on Monday, in what could be preparation for a renewed push on Kyiv and an attempt to besiege it.
In an indication that Moscow may be shifting to a more destructive approach of targeting civilian areas, two residential neighborhoods of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, came under heavy shelling on Monday, likely by multiple rocket launchers.
At least 10 civilians were killed and more than 40 injured, with the toll likely to grow because continued shelling made it impossible for rescue workers to reach all the damaged areas, said Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Synehubov. “It’s a war crime,” he said. Most of Kharkiv’s residents are Russian-speakers, the population whose rights Moscow says it wants to protect through its military operation.
The chances of a cease-fire being agreed to at Monday’s talks were uncertain. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded a full Russian withdrawal and a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, wearing a green baseball cap, arrived Monday for talks with Russian delegates in Belarus.
Photo: Sergei Kholodilin/Associated Press
Russian delegates sat opposite their Ukrainian counterparts at Monday’s talks in Gomel, Belarus.
Photo: Alexander Kryazhev/TASS/Zuma Press
Russia’s financial system is starting to feel the impact of Western sanctions imposed at the weekend. The ruble nosedived and Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to 20% to try to prevent an outflow of deposits from Russian banks as sanctions curb their access to international markets.
As additional Russian forces entered Ukraine, Kyiv continued to bolster its own military by mobilizing 100,000 new troops and arming its units with sophisticated new weaponry flowing in from the West.
Authorities in Kyiv, which was under curfew starting Saturday afternoon while Ukrainian forces engaged in firefights in several neighborhoods with Russian infiltrator units wearing civilian clothes or Ukrainian uniforms, allowed residents to move around on Monday morning. Long lines snaked around grocery stores and pharmacies as Kyivites patiently waited for their turn.
Outside one supermarket on the western side of Kyiv, the waiting time to enter was roughly two hours, even though many of the neighborhood’s residents have fled the city for the relative safety of western Ukraine. “We’re not going anywhere. I was born in Kyiv and I will die here,” said Valeria Voytenko, a 23-year-old post-office worker whose husband is fighting on the front lines of Kharkiv.
Russian forces faced heavy resistance in Ukraine and satellite images showed the extent of damage from combat. Delegations from Ukraine and Russia agreed to meet Monday, a day after Vladimir Putin said he had put his country’s nuclear forces on alert. Photo: Maxar Technologies The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
“If they had given us weapons, I would also go shoot them up and defend my home,” chimed in her friend Yana Kamun, a 20-year-old manicurist. “We will fight to the last one. And we have faith that Ukraine will win.”
The city was calm, with no looting or violence, as regular troops and volunteers with yellow armbands manned checkpoints at key intersections. Kyiv authorities warned that any looters would be shot on sight. In some areas, signs of intense fighting were visible: broken glass, a car with a bullet hole in its windshield, fragments of shells and grenades.
One of the volunteer troopers, 30-year-old Taras Oleksandovych, joined the new Territorial Defense force on Sunday, after a shootout with Russian infiltrators in his neighborhood of high-rise buildings on Kyiv’s western edge. “Neighborhood people gave us all this—old washing machines, tires, roofing, anything they could throw out of their windows—to create this barricade,” he said. “We will resist.”
Myroslav Malynovski, a construction worker, said he drove his family to western Ukraine as the war began but has now returned to Kyiv to help the military. When a Ukrainian T-64 tank on the western edge of the city broke down, he drove to the city center to find a welder to fix it, and brought camping gear, food and warm clothes for the tank’s crew.
A Ukrainian serviceman climbed into a tank outside Kyiv on Monday.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Sturdier tank traps, concrete blocks and orange garbage trucks blocked key roads. Electronic billboards that once advertised nightclubs, vacations in the Dominican Republic and sushi restaurants beamed black-and-white messages to the enemy. One, in central Kyiv, instructed Russian soldiers in vulgar language what to do with themselves.
On the front lines along the city’s northern and western edges, soldiers were buoyed by recent victories. “The famed Russian special forces came here, and ran away so fast that they left us three vehicles as trophies,” said a Ukrainian trooper as he readied to leave on a mission with a squad armed with sniper rifles.
In a sign that Russia doesn’t so far have control of the skies, convoys carrying Ukrainian reinforcements rumbled in broad daylight through the city, including several long-range artillery pieces followed by truckloads of shells.
“On the fifth day of the full-scale Russian war against the people of Ukraine, we’re standing firm,” Mr. Zelensky said Monday. “Every crime that the occupiers commit against us brings us closer and closer to each other. Russia never imagined that it would face such solidarity.”
While air-raid sirens sounded through the early hours of Monday, the intensity of Russian airstrikes was much lower than in previous nights.
In recent days Russian forces have cut off the main direct highway leading from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv. But connections between the capital and Lviv have remained open via central Ukraine and by train.
Ukrainian civilians from the Territorial Defense forces stood at a checkpoint in Kyiv on Monday.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Tires blocked a road at a checkpoint in Kyiv.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
On Monday, Ukraine’s railways operated additional evacuation trains from Kyiv free of charge, on top of the previously scheduled connections to Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities. A large proportion of Kyiv’s population, which stood at three million people before the war began, has fled the city in the past five days.
Nikita Darnostup and Ulyana Panteleeva, both computer graphic designers, decided after watching the news on Monday morning that it was time to leave Kyiv while they still can. “We are getting ready for the worst,” said Mr. Darnostup, 28, as they waited for their train to Lviv outside Kyiv’s crowded main station. “We see that the situation is escalating, and it’s getting scarier and scarier.”
The couple previously fled their hometown of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, in 2014 after Russian-backed forces seized it. “This is complete surrealism,” sighed Ms. Panteleeva, 27. “I never imagined we would have to go through this for a second time.”
Mr. Darnostup said, “I really want to believe that we will be able to see Kyiv again, one day.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to take a call from Mr. Zelensky on the eve of Thursday’s invasion, which he said seeks to oust the Ukrainian government and “demilitarize” the country.
Russian officials said shortly after the war began that they would talk to Kyiv only once Ukrainian troops laid down their arms. Mr. Putin later urged the Ukrainian army to stage a coup against the country’s democratically elected president. The fact Moscow now seeks unconditional talks was celebrated by Ukrainian officials as an achievement for Ukraine and its armed forces.
Russia sent a delegation to the southern Belarusian city of Gomel on Sunday, but Mr. Zelensky initially said he refused to meet in a country that has become a launchpad for Russia’s attacks.
Mr. Zelensky did, however, speak by phone to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko later on Sunday, and said that he agreed to have his envoys meet with the Russian delegation on the river Prypiat along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border. Mr. Lukashenko pledged during the conversation, the two men’s first in two years, that no Russian military activity would be carried out from Belarus in the meantime, Mr. Zelensky said.
Ukrainians lined up Monday at the gate of a supermarket in Kyiv.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Kyiv residents on Monday were allowed to move around the city, which was under a curfew over the weekend.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
The talks, held on the Belarusian side of the border with Ukraine, began shortly before 2 p.m. local time. “You can feel totally safe, this is our sacred duty,” Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei told the Russian and Ukrainian delegations seated across from each other. “President Lukashenko earnestly hopes that ways for solving the crisis issues can be found during today’s talks, and all Belarusians pray for this.”
Because of continued fighting, the team sent by Mr. Zelensky had to travel to the talks on a circuitous route via Poland. The group includes the Ukrainian minister of defense, Oleksii Reznikov, and the majority leader in the Ukrainian parliament, David Arakhamia.
The Russian delegation includes presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky; Russia’s deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs; Leonid Slutsky, the head of the International Committee of Russia’s State Duma; and Russia’s ambassador to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
A mother and her daughters reached the Polish border crossing of Medyka after a two-day, 300-mile journey from central Ukraine.
Photo: Dawid Zielinski for The Wall Street Journal
A group of medical students waited in Medyka on Sunday for a bus to the nearby Polish city of Przemysl.
Photo: Dawid Zielinski for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Medinsky told Russian state news agency RIA that Russia’s representatives were ready for negotiations at any time. “Every hour for us is a saved life,” the agency cited him as saying.
In the five days of the offensive, Russia so far hasn’t seized any big Ukrainian city, and dozens if not hundreds of Russian troops have been taken prisoner, videos of them posted on social media so that their families in Russia could find out about their fate. Russia’s military on Sunday acknowledged for the first time that its forces suffered fatal casualties in Ukraine.
Moscow on Monday repeated its assertion that it has gone to war in Ukraine because Kyiv threatens Russia’s own security and accused it of attacking the residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which has been under Russian control since 2014. Ukrainian and Western officials say these claims have no basis in reality.
“Russia did not start these hostilities, Russia is putting an end to them,” Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a video statement. “Hostilities by the regime in Kyiv and the systematic destruction of the inhabitants of Donbas lasted eight years. This needed to end. It was necessary to put an end to the endless threats from the Kyiv regime against Russia. And Russia will do that.”
In the Azov Sea town of Berdyansk, one of the handful that the Russian military currently controls, video footage broadcast by Ukrainian media showed dozens of residents protesting outside the city hall that now houses Russian occupation authorities. Waving Ukrainian flags, they chanted an obscene epithet to describe Mr. Putin, and “Glory to Ukraine.”
—Evan Gershkovich in Minsk contributed to this article.
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The British oil giant BP said on Sunday that it would “exit” its nearly 20 percent stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. BP also said that both its chief executive, Bernard Looney, and his predecessor, Bob Dudley, would resign their seats on the Rosneft board.
BP, which is based in London, has worked in Russia for over 30 years, but the invasion of Ukraine “represents a fundamental change,” the company’s chairman, Helge Lund, said in a statement on Sunday. “It has led the BP board to conclude, after a thorough process, that our involvement with Rosneft, a state-owned enterprise, simply cannot continue.”
BP came under pressure in recent days from both the British government and opposition lawmakers over the Rosneft stake. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken a hard line against the Russian invasion ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin, arguing strongly that Europe needs to rapidly reduce its dependence on imports of natural gas from Russia.
In these circumstances, BP’s large holding in Rosneft looked increasingly untenable. The government’s concerns were expressed during a video call between Mr. Looney and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday afternoon. A BP spokesman, David Nicholas, said the decision was made by the BP board “after careful and due consideration.”
Mr. Kwarteng praised the decision on Sunday. “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine must be a wake up call for British businesses with commercial interests in Putin’s Russia,” he said on Twitter.
It was not clear how BP would accomplish its exit from Rosneft. A BP spokesman said the company would begin to dispose of its stake, valued by BP at $14 billion at the end of last year, but did not yet know how it would accomplish that. Rosneft shares have plummeted in recent days, and the only buyers might be Russian state entities. The opportunity to buy a substantial slice of one of the world’s largest oil producers might also appeal to other state-owned companies like those from China willing to bargain-shop in Russia.
BP, in exiting Rosneft, might draw protests from investors over the resulting loss of dividends from the Russian stake as well as market value. On the other hand, some analysts welcomed BP’s move.
“While we’re surprised it happened so quickly, equity investors will now benefit from removal of Russian news flow volatility and much stronger” environmental credentials at BP, said Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.
The board resignations will lead to accounting changes at BP. The company will no longer book its share of Rosneft’s profits ($2.7 billion last year) and reserves (about 55 percent of BP’s holdings) as well as production (about one-third).
BP received $600 million in dividends from Rosneft last year, and would have been expected to receive more this year because of higher oil prices.
BP also said it would write off at least $11 billion in the first quarter of 2022, but potentially much more, related to the Rosneft holding.
While BP is the Western oil company with the most to lose in Russia, it will remain a relatively large player that under Mr. Looney has been aggressively investing in offshore wind and other clean energy businesses, although these remain small compared with oil and gas at the company.
Moving away from Rosneft fits with this new tack. Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said “the Rosneft stake is out of sync with BP’s longer-term strategic direction,” even though “walking away at this time is obviously not ideal from a shareholder value perspective.”
BP’s exit from Rosneft, once accomplished, will draw at least a temporary line on BP’s long experiment with Russia, which began early this century with the company investing $8 billion in a joint venture called TNK-BP with a group of Russian oligarchs headed by Mikhail Fridman.
After a decade of stormy relations among the partners, BP sold its share in the joint venture to Rosneft in 2013 for $12.5 billion in cash plus the 19.75 percent stake Rosneft.
Other large Western oil companies may also feel a chill over continued operating in Russia. TotalEnergies, the French giant, has a stake in Novatek, a Russian gas producer, and a share in a large liquefied natural gas facility in the Russian Arctic. Shell has a modest shareholding in an L.N.G. facility on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, where Exxon Mobil has been producing oil for a quarter of a century in a joint venture with Rosneft.
Analysts say that Russian operations have already lost relative importance in the portfolios of the Western oil industry. Russia may have vast troves of oil and gas, but the appetite for investing there has been curbed by the combination of climate change concerns and sanctions imposed on the Russian industry over Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Surging oil and gas prices and resulting higher profits may also help paper over whatever earnings hit the companies take in Russia this year, analysts say.
Voting among registered attendees has been underway since Thursday among the thousands of people taking part at the confab in Orlando, which is the oldest and largest gathering of conservative leaders and activists.
"CPAC is a good barometer of the most active grassroots of the party," veteran Republican pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz told Fox News. "I expect Trump to win the straw poll big, mirroring his front-runner position right now."
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) (AP)
While there is little drama over whether Trump will once again top the ballot, there is plenty of anticipation over how much of a winning margin he secures and the percentage of support likely second place finisher Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida receives.
Thirteen months removed from the White House, Trump remains by far the most popular and influential politician in the GOP, as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in the 2022 Republican Party primaries.
During his marathon speech Saturday night that went for over an hour in the jam-packed ballroom, the former president once again teased another White House run in 2024, repeating his pledge that the GOP would recapture the presidency.
"They're going to find out the hard way starting Nov. 8 and even more so starting November 2024," Trump predicted of the Democrats' chances in the next two elections.
And he charged that "we're going to kick the Biden crime family out of the White House in 2024."
Trump did not provide anything more specific than that in his speech, and the former president was mum about the next presidential race in an interview with Fox News just ahead of his address.
While Trump remains hands down the most powerful figure in the GOP, his flirtations are not preventing other potential 2024 contenders from making early moves, such as stopping in the early presidential primary and caucus states and parachuting into influential conservative confabs such as CPAC.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) (AP)
DeSantis came in second in both the CPAC Orlando straw poll last February and the Dallas straw poll last July, finishing each time at 21%. His standing in the straw polls was more proof of his soaring popularity among conservatives nationwide for his resistance to lockdowns and other COVID restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic the past two years. Of note, DeSantis did not mention Trump’s name during his well-received address on Thursday afternoon.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the runner-up to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination race, says he is in no rush to make a decision about another White House run, but along with former New Jersey governor and 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie, Cruz is one of the few who publicly discusses another bid.
Asked about his timetable in 2024, when he is also up for reelection to the Senate, Cruz told Fox News, "There'll be plenty of time for that. Everybody is waiting to see what Donald Trump decides to do. He gets to decide first, and we will find out. Nobody knows what Trump will do and everyone will react accordingly."
Ooffering a little taste of his national ambitions, he highlighted: "I am committed to this fight for the long term. I'm committed to fighting to save this country with every breath in my body, and I've never seen the threat so dire….I think the American people are ready for a change. It's coming in twenty-two and it's coming in twenty-four."
Cruz was one of the headliners on Thursday night, as was another conservative firebrand in the Senate – Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
Asked about a potential presidential run, Hawley pivoted to his own reelection race that year, saying that "hopefully in 2024 the good people of Missouri will have me for another term in the United States Senate … I’m focused on my home state of Missouri."
Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s upcoming travels schedule is raising eyebrows, with the Tennessee Republican's upcoming trips to Iowa and New Hampshire -- the states that for decades have kicked off the presidential nominating calendar. Asked about her upcoming stops, Blackburn did not shutdown speculation but instead said her trips were about helping Republicans running in this year’s elections.
"I'm working to make certain we take the majority back in 2022. And in Iowa, I will be there to help and support Sen. Grassley and the members of Congress," Blackburn explained.
"We've got great female members there. We're really proud of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who will give the Republican response to the State of the Union. And in New Hampshire, we're going in to help campaigns and the state party," the senator added.
Among the other potential 2024 contenders speaking at CPAC are Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and even the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Fox Nation is the Featuring Sponsor of CPAC 2022. Watch CPAC speeches live and on-demand on Fox Nation. Sign up using promo code CPAC to receive a 30-day free trial. Offer ends April 30, 2022.
Fox News' Kelly Laco and Brooke Singman contributed to this report
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union plans to close its airspace to Russian airlines, fund weapons purchase to Ukraine and ban some pro-Kremlin media outlets in its latest response to Russia’s invasion, European Commission officials said Sunday.
The measures, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she expected to be endorsed, would mark the first time the 27-nation bloc finances the purchase and delivery of weapons and equipment to a country under attack.
“Another taboo has fallen. The taboo that the European Union was not providing arms in a war,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
The Commission’s plans followed the announcement earlier in the day that Germany was committing 100 billion euros ($113 billion) to a special armed forces fund and would keep its defense spending above 2% of GDP from now on. The shift underscored how Russia’s war on Ukraine was rewriting Europe’s post-World War II security and defense policy in ways that were unthinkable only a few weeks ago.
Anti-war protesters, meanwhile, took to the streets in Berlin, Rome, Prague, Istanbul and other cities — even Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg and in a dozen Belarusian cities — to demand an end to the war, the largest ground offensive on the continent since WWII.
Human rights advocates reported that more than 170 people had been arrested in the Belarusian protests, even as the country’s authoritarian leader offered the country’s territory to his ally Russia. In Minsk, a large pile of flowers kept growing at the building of Ukraine’s embassy.
Tens of thousands of people massed Sunday in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, with some carrying posters with slogans such as “Hands off Ukraine,” “Tanks to Windmills” and “Putin, go to therapy and leave Ukraine and the world in peace.”
The EU’s plan to fund weapons purchases was unprecedented and would use millions of euros to help buy air defense systems, anti-tank weapons, ammunition and other military equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces. It would also supply things like fuel, protective gear, helmets and first aid kits.
The system might also use EU money to reimburse EU countries that have already sent lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine this year, giving an incentive for those countries to invest more in such assistance.
To bolster its military training and support missions around the world, the 27-nation bloc has set up a European Peace Facility, a fund with a ceiling of around 5.7 billion euros ($6.4 billion). Some of the money can be used to train and equip partner countries, including with lethal weapons.
Von der Leyen said beyond the weapons purchases, EU nations would shut down EU airspace for Russians — decisions that over a dozen EU members had already announced.
“We are proposing a prohibition on all Russian-owned, Russian registered or Russian-controlled aircraft. These aircraft will no more be able to land in, take off or overfly the territory of the EU,” she said.
She said the EU will also ban “the Kremlin’s media machine. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union.”
Von der Leyen added that the EU will also target Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for supporting Russia’s widespread military campaign in Ukraine.
“We will hit Lukashenko’s regime with a new package of sanctions,” she said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s announcement of new defense funding is hugely significant for Germany, which has come under criticism from the United States and other NATO allies for not investing adequately in its defense budget. NATO member states committed to spending 2% of their GDP on defense, but Germany has consistently spent much less.
“It’s clear we need to invest significantly more in the security of our country, in order to protect our freedom and our democracy,” Scholz told a special session of the Bundestag in Berlin.
Scholz said the 100 billion euro fund ($113 billion) was currently a one-time measure for 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear whether similar funding would be allocated in future years. But Scholz indicated Germany will exceed the 2% of GDP threshold going forward, signaling an overall future increase in defense spending.
A day earlier, Germany announced another major policy shift, saying it will send weapons and other supplies directly to Ukraine, including 500 Stinger missiles, which are used to shoot down helicopters and warplanes, and 1,000 anti-tank weapons.
Israel announced it was sending 100 tons of humanitarian aid — medical equipment and medicine, tents, sleeping bags and blankets — to help civilians in Ukraine. Israel also offered itself as a potential mediator during a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Putin, the Kremlin and Israel said. Bennett spoke also Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish.
As Greece sent more military aid, Turkish officials termed Russia’s invasion a “war,” a categorization that could lead Ankara to close down the Turkish straits to Russian warships, which Ukraine requested earlier this week. The 1936 Montreux Convention gives Turkey the right to bar “belligerent states” from using the Dardanelles and the Bosporus during wartime but provides an exception for Black Sea vessels to return to port.
On the sanctions front, Japan joined the United States and European nations in cutting key Russian banks from the SWIFT international financial banking system. Japan will also freeze assets of Putin and other top Russian officials, while sending $100 million in emergency humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters.
Catholic and Orthodox religious leaders, meanwhile, prayed Sunday for peace, voiced solidarity with Ukrainians and denounced the Russian invasion.
At the Vatican, Ukrainian flags fluttered in St. Peter’s Square as Pope Francis delivered his weekly Sunday blessing and appealed for global solidarity for “the suffering people of Ukraine.”
“Those who make war forget humanity,” Francis said. He refrained from citing Russia by name, in apparent deference to his hopes of keeping dialogue open with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Also Sunday, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople described Russia’s invasion as “beyond every sense of law and morality” and pleaded for an end to the war.
Patriarch Bartholomew is considered the spiritual leader and first among equals of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide. He granted the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which severed it in 2019 from the Russian church to which it had been tied since 1686. The Russian Orthodox Church severed relations with him as result.
___
Schultheis contributed from Vienna, Austria. Nicole Winfield in Rome, Josef Federman in Kyiv, Ukraine contributed.
(CNN)The White House, along with France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada, announced Saturday evening that they would expel certain Russian banks from SWIFT, the high-security network that connects thousands of financial institutions around the world, pledging to "collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."
"This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally," they wrote in a joint statement released by the White House, also pledging "restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions," and restricting the sale of "golden passports" that allow Russian oligarchs to avoid the brunt of sanctions already levied.
US and European officials have also discussed targeting the Russian Central Bank with sanctions, according to two people familiar with the talks, a step without precedent for an economy of Russia's size.
No final decisions have been made, the people said, and the structure of the sanctions under discussion remains unclear.
But the moves made for a dramatic escalation of the West's attempts to isolate and punish Putin, and appeared to come together quickly over the past hours and days. At a press conference Thursday, Biden was pressed on why he had avoided removing Russia from SWIFT or sanctioning Putin personally. Less than 48 hours later, he'd done both.
Targeting the central bank would strike at the heart of Putin's yearslong efforts to insulate his economy from sanctions.
Russia has built up the fourth-largest foreign currency reserves in the world at more than $630 billion while shifting away from US dollar holdings. Both moves provide a buffer from US sanctions, even as the sweeping package unleashed this week has already created significant disruption across the Russian economy.
While discussions regarding Russia's central bank were described as still in their early stages, their consideration underscores the scale of the willingness to significantly escalate penalties in Washington and Brussels.
The US and its allies have already levied major sanctions targeting Russia's financial sector, including major sanctions on Russia's largest lenders.
Earlier Saturday, CNN reported that Biden was considering expelling Russia from SWIFT, but had yet to make a final decision. Fully expelling Russia from SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, had been presented as a financial "nuclear option," with the President and aides highlighting how complicated blocking it would be and noting that the US could not move unilaterally.
"That's not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take," Biden told reporters Thursday.
The US and other nations on Saturday also announced the launch next week of a "transatlantic task force" to "ensure the effective implementation of our financial sanctions by identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies that exist within our jurisdictions."
As part of the announcement, they also promised to step up efforts to combat misinformation.
"We stand with the Ukrainian people in this dark hour. Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine."
The statement still leaves the actual technical details -- and the specific Russian lenders that will be cut off from SWIFT -- unclear, with US and EU officials still in the midst of hammering out the final details of the action.
But the commitment to take action that just days ago appeared to be off the table due to European objections marks a targeted, but seismic escalation in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Biden and his aides have highlighted how complicated blocking Russia from SWIFT would be, noting the US cannot move unilaterally. "That's not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take," Biden told reporters Thursday.
But since Biden's press conference announcing new sanctions against Russia for its unprovoked attack, the administration appeared to be moving closer to this position as other European allies started giving it their backing.
The administration has discussed the matter with the Federal Reserve, which would have a stake in any decision, according to an official.
The White House had faced calls from Ukraine, and US lawmakers in Congress, for Russia to be removed from SWIFT after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Thursday. The United Kingdom, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were among the early countries to back Kyiv's calls to cut Russia off from the network.
On Saturday, Germany, which had earlier warned of the "massive impact" on German business if Russia were banned from SWIFT, indicated support for restrictions in some form.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and German economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a joint tweet that they were "under high pressure to avoid collateral damage when decoupling (Russia) from SWIFT so it will hit the right people. What we need is a targeted and functional constraint of SWIFT."
Earlier in the day, Italy signaled that it would also support taking measures to expel Russia from SWIFT after Prime Minister Mario Draghi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that "Italy fully supports the European Union's line on sanctions against Russia, including those regarding SWIFT, and shall continue to do so."
Draghi's comments were particularly notable given the Italian economy's exposure on energy.
One administration official said earlier that additional sanctions were likely to come if Kyiv, the besieged Ukrainian capital, fell.
A White House official told CNN that "as the President and administration officials have made clear, we are focused on coordinating with allies and partners to impose further costs on Russian President Vladimir Putin for his war of choice" but declined to comment further.
Removing Russia from SWIFT would damage Russia but also big economies in Europe and impact energy exports to the continent.
It would make international financial transactions more difficult, delivering a shock to Russian companies and their foreign customers -- particularly buyers of oil and gas exports denominated in US dollars.
Meanwhile, the US has imposed other sanctions on Russia, targeting Moscow's banking, technology and aerospace sectors. On Friday, the US announced that it would impose sanctions on Putin directly and on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
This story has been updated with additional developments and background information.
CNN's Charles Riley, Veronica Stracqualursi and Inke Kappeler contributed to this report.
The Swedish FA have also announced that they will not participate in any potential match.
Poland are scheduled to travel to Russia on March 24, with either Sweden or Czech Republic then playing in Moscow on March 29, should Russia win.
Cezary Kulesza, the head of the Polish FA, told The Athletic: “No more words, time to act! Due to the escalation of the aggression of the Russian Federation towards Ukraine, the Polish national team does not intend to play the play-off match against Russia.
“This is the only right decision. We are in talks with the federations of Sweden and the Czech Republic to bring forward a common position to FIFA.”
Captain Robert Lewandowski was quick to back the decision to refuse to play Russia in their upcoming World Cup play-off.
Retweeting a post from Kulesza, the striker wrote: “It is the right decision! I can't imagine playing a match with the Russian National Team in a situation when armed aggression in Ukraine continues.
“Russian footballers and fans are not responsible for this, but we can't pretend that nothing is happening.”
Swedish Football Association chairman Karl-Erik Nilsson said: “The illegal and deeply unjust invasion of Ukraine currently makes all football exchanges with Russia impossible. We therefore urge FIFA to decide that the playoff matches in March in which Russia participates will be cancelled. But regardless of what FIFA chooses to do, we will not play against Russia in March.”
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Thursday evening that: “We continue to monitor the situation. We will update on the World Cup qualifiers soon. We can take decisions immediately as soon as it’s needed.”
The Athletic understands that, although there have been conversations between the bodies, they have provided no formal feedback since Thursday evening’s council meeting.
The national associations of Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic wrote an open letter to FIFA on Thursday afternoon asking for the games to be moved.
Their letter read: “Based on the current alarming development in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine including the security situation, the Football Associations of Poland, Sweden, and Czech Republic express their firm position that the play-off matches to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, scheduled for 24 and 29 March 2022, should not be played in the territory of the Russian Federation.
“The signatories do not consider travelling to Russia and playing football matches there. The military escalation that we are observing entails serious consequences and considerably lower safety for our national football teams and official delegations.
“Therefore, we expect FIFA and UEFA to react immediately and to present alternative solutions regarding places where these approaching play-off matches could be played.”
The Athletic has approached FIFA for comment.
(Photo: Eddie Keogh - The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson and former White House director of global engagement Brett Bruen weigh in on the Russian invasion underway in Ukraine on 'The Evening Edit.'
Facebook has banned all Russian state media from advertising on its platform, according to a company official.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Facebook, said that Russian state media is now prohibited from running advertisements or monetizing content on its platform, adding that the new restrictions apply around the world.
In a tweet, Gleicher said that Facebook would continue to apply labels to Russian state media.
"We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world. We also continue to apply labels to additional Russian state media. These changes have already begun rolling out and will continue into the weekend," Gleicher said.
Facebook has banned all Russian state media from advertising on their platform, according to a company official.(Reuters/Robert Galbraith)
He added that Facebook is continuing to closely monitor the situation in Ukraine.
Facebook's move to restrict Russian state media from advertising or monetizing on its platform comes just hours after Twitter announced it was halting all advertising in Russia and Ukraine.
"We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it," Twitter announced.
The debris of a privet house in the aftermath of Russian shelling outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022. Russia on Thursday unleashed a barrage of air and missile strikes on Ukrainian facilities across the country. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky / AP Newsroom)
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said early Thursday morning in Ukraine that Putin had launched a "full-scale invasion" of Ukraine.
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As the battle of wills and might between Russia and the west over the fate of Ukraine unfolds, there is one key fact to bear in mind: Vladimir Putin has never lost a war. During past conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Crimea over his two decades in power, Putin succeeded by giving his armed forces clear, achievable military objectives that would allow him to declare victory, credibly, in the eyes of the Russian people and a wary, watching world. His latest initiative in Ukraine is unlikely to be any different.
Despite months of military build-up along Ukraine's borders and repeated warnings from the Biden administration that an incursion could happen at any time, the February 24 pre-dawn bombing campaign that kicked off Europe's first land war in decades seemed to come as a surprise to many Ukrainians. In major cities across a country the size of the state of Texas, stunned citizens, lulled into complacency by their president's repeated reassurances that Russia would not invade, watched and listened to the sound of thunderous explosions targeting Ukrainian military bases, airports and command and control centers. Within 24 hours, the conflict spread rapidly, with Russian tanks and troops moving swiftly toward Kyiv, the capital, and fighting around Chernobyl, the site of the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown. Shock and awe, Russian style.
Despite repeated warnings that an invasion was imminent, many Ukrainians were shocked by the arrival of Russian troops. Here, members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces participate in a drill days before the bombings began.Ethan Swope/Bloomberg/Getty
In an instant, Russian President Putin's invasion of Ukraine destroyed the post Cold War security order in Europe—one centered, to Russia's fury, by an often-expanding NATO alliance. Analysts expect that, once Kyiv falls, the military aggression will give way to a political settlement that puts a Russia-friendly government in place. By February 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was considering an invitation from Moscow to hold "neutrality" talks in neighboring Belarus. If those talks happen, Putin will then be able to pull back troops and end the conflict—while having dealt the West a humiliating blow.
And that, military and Russia experts agree, may be the real point.
Ukraine, of course, is not a NATO member; the possibility that it might join the Alliance some day, as other countries that were once part of the old Soviet bloc have done, is a key issue in the current conflict. Putin's actions, a brazen defiance in the face of repeated warnings and threats of sanctions from U.S. President Joe Biden and western allies, now make it a certainty, if it wasn't before, that membership will never happen. Putin's aggression will also serve as a stark warning to countries formerly part of the Soviet Union of the possible repercussions of getting too cozy with the West.
The post Soviet status quo in Eastern Europe was one "that [Putin] never accepted," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal. "It ate at him. He believes Russia was treated [by the West] as a second class citizen after the Soviet Union fell."
Now, western diplomats and intelligence officials believe, Putin seeks to decapitate the western-leaning leadership in Kyiv headed by Zelensky and replace it with a government that will be loyal to "the new Tsar," as former Estonian President Toomas Ilves calls Putin. That could happen, U.S. intelligence officials tell Newsweek, within days. Putin does not want, nor does he need, to occupy the entire country to accomplish his greater goals, intelligence analysts and officials say. As Ilves puts it, "He wants a puppet state like Belarus," another former Soviet province just north of Ukraine, and from which troops poured into Ukraine as the Russian bombing ramped up. With a new reality on the ground in Eastern Europe, Ilves continues, "Putin then wants to rewrite the security rules of the road between him and NATO."
Ukraine itself appears to share at least part of that view. A statement from Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine's presidential chief of staff, and shared with Newsweek by Ukraine's embassy in Washington, outlined what Kyiv suspected were Moscow's goals. "The Office of the President of Ukraine believes the Russian federation has two tactical goals—to seize territories and attack the legitimate political leadership of Ukraine in order to spread chaos and [to] install a marionette government that would sign a peace deal on bilateral relations with Russia," Podolyak said.
A man clears debris at a damaged residential building at Koshytsa Street, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where a military shell allegedly hit, on February 25, 2022.Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty
A United States that thought it was pivoting to Asia, and focusing on China—a country that is its preeminent rival going forward—has now been dragged back to Eastern Europe, where for centuries so much blood has been spilled. Putin now has the world's full, undivided attention, in the same way that every Secretary General in the Soviet era did. In chilling televised remarks after the invasion had begun, Putin said, "whoever tries to interfere [in Ukraine] should know that Russia's response will be immediate, and will lead to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history."
Russia is now back in the limelight, a nation that is demonstrating, with a display of military might, that it remains a Great Power. Which is precisely where Putin wants his nation to be. He believes Russia should at all times command respect from the rest of the world, "and when it doesn't command respect, it should command fear," as Lukyanov of Russia in Global Affairs puts it.
Mission accomplished. As Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary general of NATO and a long time Russia watcher characterized it recently on the CBS podcast Intelligence Matters, "This is [Putin's] 'look at me' moment."
The West Responds
Within hours of the invasion, the United States and its allies responded by sharply ratcheting up economic sanctions but it's unclear whether the moves will deter the Russian leader. In a speech announcing the response, Biden said more than half of the West's high tech exports to Russia would be slashed, "degrading their industrial capacity," and hurting industries like aerospace and shipbuilding. He's also freezing the U.S. assets of four additional Russian banks, including VTB, the country's second largest financial institution, whose CEO is very close to Putin. "This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time," Biden said.
President Joe Biden takes questions after giving an update on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C.Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty
The following day, the White House announced it would join the European Union in implementing sanctions against Putin personally. The Russian President is widely thought to be one of the world's richest men, allegedly hiding much of his wealth in shell companies in various tax havens throughout the world.
How effective the sanctions will be is unclear. Putin, for his part, believes he has effectively made his country sanctions-proof. Russia has over $630 billion in hard currency reserves, and rakes in $14 billion per month in oil and gas exports. As Russia's ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet days before the invasion began, when the West ramped up threats of financial penalties in a futile effort to prevent military action, "Excuse my language, but we don't give a shit about your sanctions."
Biden, in his remarks the day the invasion began, said he believes Putin may have brought himself a world of trouble by invading Ukraine. "History has shown time and again how swift gains in territory give way to grinding occupation, acts of mass civil disobedience and strategic dead ends," he said. And in fact, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been training as part of newly formed "territorial defense organizations" set up in order to resist the Russians.
But U.S. intelligence officials privately do not share Biden's optimism about "mass disobedience." One official who spoke to Newsweek on background because he is not authorized to speak on the record said, "After the government in Kyiv is dismantled, there will be no opposition within Ukraine for us to support militarily."
His pessimism is rooted in Putin's past behavior, most notably when he presided over a scorched earth campaign to brutally put down an insurgency in Chechnya more than 20 years ago. He says, "It's not realistic to mount an opposition campaign. [Putin] does not value human life the same way that the free world does, hence [Russian troops] will eradicate any opposition en masse."
Indeed, Putin's history as a commander in chief of Russia's military shows that there may be reason to doubt Biden's optimism that Ukraine will turn into a quagmire for Moscow. Beyond the ruthless campaign to put down Muslim rebels in Chechnya, he hived off the two sections of the former Soviet state of Georgia that he wanted to control in 2008. Then in 2014 he took back Crimea in Ukraine, and set up separatist movements in two heavily Russian provinces in the east, Donetsk and Luhansk. (The day before the February 24th invasion, Putin declared those two provinces were now "independent republics." )
Ukrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Lugansk region of Ukraine on February 25, 2022.Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty
And on the complex battlefield in Syria, where the U.S. and Russians risked conflict, former President Barack Obama funded opposition rebel groups, including some tied to Al Qaeda, then failed to enforce his own red line after President Basar Al Assad used poison gas on his enemies. Putin sent Russian troops in with one goal: that Assad maintain his grip on power. He remains in office to this day.
The Ultimate Goal
What is Putin's endgame now? The Russian leader is fueled by rage and seeks revenge against the West for his homeland's perceived mistreatment, says Peter Rough, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington. The country Putin grew up in, and the one he served as a KGB officer, dissolved in 1991. In its stead came chaos at home, and, in Putin's view, betrayal from abroad.
The demise of the Soviet Union, he has famously said, "was the most catastrophic geopolitical event of the 20th century" (worse, even, than World War II, in which 20 million Soviet citizens were killed). His resentment over what happened to his country, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse, is more widely shared by Russians than many in the West appreciate.
As the Moscow bureau chief for this magazine in the early 2000s, I saw organized crime take over businesses large and small; the country's finances were in shambles. The government was unable to pay the salaries of a once proud military. I interviewed an Army colonel stationed on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia's far east, who wept as he confessed he wasn't able to buy his wife a birthday present a few weeks earlier because he had not been paid his wages in months.
Boris Yeltsin, once the democratic hero who helped bring down the Soviet Union, had turned into a drunken mess as the first freely elected president of Russia; his inner circle was corrupt, enriching themselves as ordinary citizens struggled amidst the post Soviet chaos. On New Year's Day, at the dawn of the new millennium, Yeltsin stepped down. He was replaced by the man he had named Prime Minister months earlier, Vladimir Putin.
Twenty-two years later, in an extraordinary 55-minute speech to his country on Monday February 21, Putin aired many of his grievances in a way he rarely had publicly before, as a prelude to war. In it, he said, "Ukraine is not a separate country," and that "Ukrainians and Russians were brethren, one and the same." Kyiv, in his view, had been ripped unceremoniously from Mother Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved. He then recounted the West's early promise not to expand NATO.
He recalled how coldly then President Bill Clinton responded to his query, not long after he became President of Russia in 2000, about whether Moscow could ever be a member of NATO. He recalled, bitterly, how he was assured that NATO's expansion eastward—to include countries that had been members of the Warsaw Pact, Moscow's former client states—would "only improve their relations with us, even create a belt of states friendly to Russia.
Everything," Putin said, "turned out exactly the opposite. They were just words."
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to chair a Security Council meeting via a video link in Moscow on February 25, 2022.AlexeyNikolsky/AFP/Getty
How does Putin seek revenge for this betrayal? To the extent he can, he wants to piece together a new Russian Empire. Not necessarily every province of the former Soviet Union, but those parts of the pre-Soviet empire, established by the Tsars, who were largely Russian speaking, orthodox Christian and who looked first to Kyiv, and then later to Moscow, as the political, cultural and spiritual center of the world.
Putin is a nationalist first and foremost. Ukraine, plainly, is central to this vision. But it also includes the countries—former Soviet provinces—that are now effectively Russian client states (Belarus), as well as those Moscow wishes to control yet again: the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (the latter three are now members of NATO, for whom the alliance is obligated to fight in the event one of them is attacked.) Putin in his pre-invasion speech said it was "madness" that the Baltics were ever allowed to leave the USSR. He has demanded—preposterously—that the Alliance pull back to its 1997 stance, when there were just 16 members, as opposed to 30 today.
Point, Counterpoint
It is for that reason that Biden is moving more NATO troops and materiel into the Baltics. On February 25, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Alliance would for the first time dispatch troops from the Spearhead Unit of its so-called Response Force—formed in 2014—to member states along the eastern front. NATO describes the Response Force as ''highly ready and technologically advanced." It consists of 40,000 troops from a variety of NATO countries. Stoltenberg declined to say precisely how many troops would be deployed now.
More deployments are likely in the months ahead. President Biden vowed in no uncertain terms that an attack on a NATO member would trigger Article 5, the provision that maintains any armed attack against one country in the Alliance is considered an attack against all. If Putin moves on the Baltics, or on any NATO members who formerly were part of the Warsaw Pact—like Poland, Romania or Bulgaria, all of which border Ukraine—then Moscow will be at war with NATO.
With the invasion of Ukraine, analysts believe, Putin hoped to shake NATO. He wanted, says Douglas Wise, a former CIA officer and deputy director at the Defense Intelligence Agency, "to further divide our allies, and cement existing fissures and disunity within [the Alliance] and the EU. He also believes he can benefit by humiliating the Western leaders and institutions when they fail to develop credible and practical options to counter his aggression."
Whether Putin benefits at home for his audacious attack on Ukraine is not yet clear. (There were small protests in major Russian cities in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.) But if creating more stress on NATO was one of his goals, that failed.
Ukrainians hold a protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine outside Downing Street, central London.Stefan Rousseau/Getty
The Germans were widely viewed as the weakest link when it came to Russia, because of the two countries' significant trade ties. And at the outset of the crisis, that skepticism seemed justified. Early on, for example, Estonia wanted to send a batch of old howitizers in its possession to Kyiv. But NATO regulations say that any weaponry given or sold to a non-NATO member must be approved by the country of origin. In this case, that country did not exist: The howitzers had been in possession of the old East Germany. Upon unification, Germany took control of them and ultimately passed them on to Finland, who eventually gave them to Estonia. When Tallinn wanted to send them on to Ukraine, to do its bit to help shore up Kyiv's defenses, Germany—astonishingly—declined to approve the transfer.
That was followed by Berlin's deep reluctance to stop the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Germany and Russia, despite pressure to do so from its own ambassador to the U.S., Emily Haber. Following the refusal, Haber wrote a widely publicized cable to new Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saying that the country was gaining a reputation as a bad ally.
To Putin, this must have indicated that his gas-politik was paying huge dividends. But it didn't last long. Scholz visited Washington in early February and, in a post meeting press conference with Biden, stood by meekly as the president asserted that Nord Stream 2 was dead if Moscow took military action against Ukraine. On cue, hours after the invasion began last month, Germany halted certification of the $11 billion project.
In fact, far from deepening fissures within the alliance, Putin's Ukraine gambit has had the opposite effect. Former CIA Director and Army General David Petraeus, upon returning from the Munich Security Conference shortly before the invasion, said he had never seen the Alliance so unified since the days when he served at NATO headquarters during the Cold War.
The evident unity among the members of what Biden accurately called the most powerful military alliance in history, has only made the plight of Ukraine more poignant. As the invasion unfolded, a member of the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv, Alexey Goncharenko, begged NATO to impose a no-fly zone, to allow his countrymen to have a fairer fight on the ground. There was zero chance of that happening, because Kyiv wasn't in the club.
Ukrainians flock to the train station to leave capital Kyiv after Russian military intervention in the country in Kyiv, Ukraine on February 25, 2022.Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Soon now, its desire to be part of the West will be moot, as Putin's Russia takes control—little more than 24 hours after the invasion began, Russian forces were already entering the the capital and Kyiv was hit with Russian "cruise or ballistic missiles." Success is inevitable because Biden and the allies have made it clear that Moscow will not meet military resistance from the West. Over and over Biden has told the American people the U.S. will not fight on the ground in Ukraine. He knows the public has no stomach for it.
If events play out as military analysts now expect, the conflict will end relatively quickly with a negotiated settlement that may cede some territory to Russia, the installation of a new Russia-friendly regime in Kyiv and a partial withdrawal of troops that allows Putin to avoid the quagmire the West so badly wants him sucked into. In doing so, Putin will be able to claim that he dealt a devastating setback to NATO, the main goal of his aggression.
For Putin, the sack of Ukraine will likely mark the endgame in his desire to restore the empire. If it doesn't, it will mean at some point the world's two largest nuclear powers will be in a shooting war, with all the risk that entails. With his words and more importantly his actions, Biden is frantically signaling to Putin: this far, but no further. An anxious world hopes the Russian leader, satisfied with victory in Ukraine, will get the message.
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