A lot of noise. I'm scared.
More Russia-Ukraine (I'm sorry). U.S. covid survey podcast. A true crime story from a tiny town in northern Russia.
I took this photo years ago while giving a radio interview in Moscow. It was live and scary! These must be antique Soviet radios. Yesterday I felt so overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the flow of information, and noise, and gossip, and predictions, and everyone on my feed suddenly being a full blown Russia-Ukraine expert despite not speaking the languages nor really knowing the history.
So what happened yesterday? Well, the U.S. finally delivered a written response to Russia. The U.S. did not give in to Russia’s demand that Ukraine never join NATO. The U.S. said NATO’s open door policy will not change. In fact, the U.S. is also now demanding Russia remove its troops from “Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova” which is interesting given I don’t believe any are there in official capacity, this seems to be more a request to remove little green men, which is dead on arrival.
Meanwhile, reports the UK and U.S. are to send thousands of their own troops to NATO countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. This feels like escalation. I keep thinking back to when it hit me a week or so ago that the U.S. actually might want a war. That multiple U.S. Senators apparently have nothing better to do than hang out in Kyiv. That Biden has on his team controversial people who muddled in Ukrainian domestic politics in the past like “Fuck the EU” Nuland (big mistake imho).
How can you convince Russia you want peace when you keep turning up the volume?
We are all judged not just on our words, but also our actions. The U.S. is now trying (and failing) to convince Europe we will be fine without Russian gas. Europe will not be find without Russian gas and every European leader knows this.
The situation now feels like that horrible waiting for a match to be lit and thrown into a fire that has been set and is only waiting for a spark. This morning a national guardsman opened fire in Dnipro, killing five of his fellow guardsmen and wounding another five. This smells exactly like the kind of sparks Russia might be looking to light in order to have things escalate and be able to point a finger that someone started something and now Russia has no choice but to intervene.
The reports I’ve found most useful right now are those from on the ground, such as this FT story from Mariupol, a port city near the front lines in eastern Ukraine, which saw heavy fighting in 2014 and would surely be an early target should Russia decide to attack, again.
”You’re asking us what we want for a future but the reality is that they’re all — the higher powers — deciding our fates for us…Russia, England, Germany, the US, everyone.”
That’s it. That’s the worst part. Ukraine doesn’t have much of a say in any of this at the moment, and the U.S., its supposed ally and protector, is only irritated by Ukrainian internal politics. The mayor of Kyiv slammed Germany for its offer to send 5000 helmets (“what next, pillows?”), and said the city’s metro network could serve as bomb shelters.
Meanwhile in Russia, FT reports Russian state media are trying to spread the message on Ukraine, but the public do not want to hear it. And that remains perhaps Putin’s biggest challenge in all of this. Real war will mean real economic pain and he will have to explain that at home. Blaming NATO aggression and positioning Russia as a victim isn’t a hard sell. But at a time when people are dealing with the Omicron wave, inflation, rising costs, falling salaries, a falling ruble — it will be difficult to convince them further economic sacrifice is necessary because of troubles over in Ukraine.
To better understand what might happen to Russia’s economy should it really invade and get slammed with painful sanctions, read this Sergey Guriev op-ed in the FT. It is excellent. Although I’m not sure how useful war comparisons from over a century ago are to today’s situation, he explains quite clearly the real risks of escalation for Putin to have to deal with inside Russia.
This Politico piece does a good job of explaining where we are, how we got here, and what might happen next. A line drawn right down Ukraine, from Kyiv down to Odessa and to the east also feels to me instinctively like the most plausible division of a map should a full-scale invasion occur. I don’t think they would push so far as to try and take Lviv, too. This is all of course pure speculation. Important to say that. No one really knows. I just instinctively think the willingness of ordinary people to shoot deadly weapons at actual Russian soldiers is higher in the west of Ukraine for a myriad of historical reasons.
I don’t want to dwell on the problem that is Germany, but I did find this Economist piece particularly good at explaining what is actually going on inside Europe’s largest and most confusing country at the moment.
Switching gears, I really enjoyed this NYT podcast explaining the partisan nature of America’s covid response using recent polling data.
This brought me to thinking about Austria, where the government has lifted the lockdown for the unvaccinated but kept all the 2G checks in shops and restaurants which basically means they haven’t changed anything. None of it makes any sense anymore. Why? Because being vaccinated doesn’t prevent you from having covid, not with Omicron. It doesn’t say anything about your infection status. The science doesn’t back up the 2G checks anymore. If there are supposed to increase uptake of vaccinations, we already have that carrot and stick in the form of the vaccine mandate taking effect on February 1.
On a final note, if you have time, read this bonkers very local crime story from northern Russia. It’s rare that such reporting (long form, Novaya Gazeta is usually extremely long form) is translated into English.
I am now flying out the door to an appointment with my daughter, but please, if you like, send me some feedback, let me know what topics you are enjoying (or not), which topics you would like to read more about. I know this has been terribly Russia-heavy recently, for example, and would like to diversify! Thanks so much for reading. Happy Thursday.
Thank you for bringing out real information as you see it from where you are. I think we only get tidbits of information on our media here.