On thin ice
Russia-Ukraine crisis: Scholz to Moscow, Ukrainian day of unity tomorrow, worrying movements on TikTok. Navalny prison trial, profile of Kurz's new boss Thiel, Olympics panda mascot, plus 3 podcasts.
The past 24h feel like a whirlwind of activity, each hour of news feels like the amount we normally read in a day. I’ll try to summarise where things are at the moment.
Yesterday, German chancellor Scholz visited Ukrainian president Zelensky in Kyiv, promising economic aid (a €150 million loan) but no lethal aid and dodged questions about Nord Stream 2. Today, Scholz will be flying to Moscow, having flown back to Berlin yesterday to sleep there. Other high profile politicians have plans to continue to visit Kyiv this week, including the foreign ministers of Italy and UK (let’s hope someone showed Liz Truss a map since her disastrous trip to Moscow).
Also today in Russia — Navalny is on trial, again, and this time they are bringing the courtroom to the prison, and unprecedented step. Journalists were told to sit in another room and watch the trial on TV (a TV that could, of course, malfunction every time Navalny is given the floor to speak). A handful were offered to be present in the “courtroom” but only without their devices, armed only with pen and paper. It’s all beyond dystopian at this point. Alexey’s wife Yulia is there. She was due to have a spousal visit tomorrow (they are only allowed four per year), but with the trial starting today, that too has been cancelled. Activists continue to worry about Navalny’s fate inside Russian prison should things heat up even further over Ukraine.
For about an hour yesterday, I too let out a sigh of relief, after reading two smart Russian-speaking people in Russia arguing they really don’t think Putin will actually invade Ukraine (here and here). I was relaxed for a few hours until I opened TikTok. It’s important to remember that everything we can see on TikTok is there because the Russian government wants us to see it. They know exactly how to censor content and do it when it suits them.
With that caveat in mind, I noticed the locations of tanks and equipment on the move (including a field hospital on railcars) had moved further south, to towns and cities near the Russia-Ukraine border. So why, if Putin said he is open to diplomacy, is his army and its equipment continuing to move into even more threatening positions? I don’t have a good answer to that question, and I keep thinking about how do you feed 100,000 troops for months on end in camps? If the soldiers are on contract (not fresh recruits through the draft), how long have they been told they have been deployed for?
Yesterday evening, Ukraine’s president Zelensky also announced February 16 (the date that DC first threw out as potential invasion and is now all over Russian propaganda TikTok as memes on the end of Ukraine as they know it) would be a day of national unity, and asked his citizens to come to their balconies at 10am and wave flags.
To be honest, perhaps a smart move when one superpower tells you another superpower is going to invade you on Wednesday, you don’t know who to believe anymore, and your most important mission is to keep your population safe and trusting you to make the right decisions for the country.
Another thing that got lost in a storm of news: Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Chizhov, said the following in an interview with the Guardian yesterday:
The headline was repeated this morning by RIA Novosti, Russian state media. This talk of provocation isn’t slowing down, and the Kremlin knows exactly how to stage things. It also doesn’t help that Washington has cried wolf several times now, so each time it cries, the world will be less likely to take the warnings seriously, even if they have merits based on real intelligence. In other words, it still feels like Russia is two steps ahead. I still really worry about the possibility of a war, although yesterday afternoon I had relaxed for a few hours. Everything still feels incredibly volatile.
For more on the mood in Kyiv, this by Joshua Yaffe is great.
The New York Times published yesterday a pretty damning profile of Peter Thiel, Sebastian Kurz’s new boss, who has resigned from the Meta board and is reportedly turning most of his focus to his political ambitions, funding several dozen very scary candidates. I tweeted out some of the key quotes from the article here (Austrians will be perhaps surprised to learn Kurz’s name doesn’t come up once in the entire profile!):
On a lighter note, this WSJ article on the Beijing Olympics panda mascot who is selling out everywhere is really a gem. You will savour every word:
One final link, if you read German, my January piece on Nord Stream 2 has been translated and expanded on Semiosis!
For what to listen to recommendations, I heard a fascinating podcast on Denmark’s covid experiment (dropping all restrictions and at what cost with what messaging; TL:DL — you have to tell people they will likely get covid twice each year even if vaccinated and explain a certain number of annual deaths will also occur with such a strategy). I also really recommend Kara Swisher’s interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, author of the excellent Empire of Pain on the Sackler (Oxycontin) family. Finally, an interesting podcast on the US dropping masks in schools (sound familiar?) and how that move is actually now being driven by Democrat governors, not the White House.
Thanks for reading and wishing you all a productive and peaceful Tuesday!