So what now?
So what now?
Yesterday's alternative reality Security Council meeting and Putin's rewriting history evening lesson were extremely frightening. It's only going to get worse.
I took this photo on Feb 8 within the Chernobyl exclusion zone. It is now closed to tourists by the Ukrainian government over fears of an invasion from just across the Belarus border. The giant Duga radar, known colloquially as the Russian woodpecker, could detect a nuclear attack with 30 minutes notice. Behind the radar is an abandoned control room, with hand painted images of American nuclear warheads and rockets, with handwritten statistics under each one, the American rocket names written out in Cyrillic. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside.
This is the world Putin and his closest advisors still live in. They are still living in the trauma in their heads of the Soviet Union, the greatest military expression of greater Russia, having fallen apart in 1991.
The siloviki won. For years early in Putin’s presidency, there was a hope that the economic liberals in his administration might have the president’s ear, and would be able to overpower those more inclined to be in permanent war against the west. Well, it is absolutely clear now the hard core, old KGB guys won.
For twenty years, Russia built economic ties with the west, more with Europe than with the U.S. — ExxonMobil learned years ago it would never be allowed into Russia, right around the time Khodorkovsky was thrown in jail. The seizure of Yukos was actually the very first warning sign. Since then, BP also lost a lot of money in Russia, but it still holds on, via Rosneft, to a tiny sliver of the action. Europe is completely on the Russian gas drip, and is far more economically dependent on trade with Russia. Clever cat Putin knows this, and senses this is his moment to pounce.
Actually, Putin speaks like a man possessed, completely unhinged. I listened to several hours of “live” (because the mens’ watches when zoomed in on by the cameras actually indicated the entire meeting was pre-recorded) streams of first the Security Council meeting, an unbearably frightening 90 minutes filled with fake news and fake tears, and then a few hours later, Putin’s evening rewriting history lesson, which was essentially a declaration of war on every part of the world in which Russian speakers live but are not in charge of their own destinies in the Russian language.
My live tweet translation thread here of the Security Council meeting.
I listened to about two-thirds of it before I had to pick up my kid from the dentist, and the last third in the car, so forgive if I don’t attribute who said what. The message was absolutely clear. Moscow argues Kyiv did nothing to actually implement the Minsk agreements, talks had come, in Putin’s words, to a “dead end”. Lavrov says he hasn’t gotten a proper response to Russia’s security concerns, namely, no more NATO expansion and a return of NATO membership to its 1997 borders. Matvienko was crying fake tears over a genocide that exists only in their imaginations.
A series of Putin’s top advisors and lawmakers gave speeches, each more emotional, like an opera designed to built tension to a climax.
By the end of the 90 minutes, phrases like “genocide” “Nazis” “Banderovtsi” “nukes” and “American puppets” were thrown around like candy.
The afternoon was, in essence, a full on declaration of war against any place where Russian speakers live. It was a scary and unbelievable show. It is Russia going full rogue and the regime elite, who used to love their summers in Sardinia, showing they know exactly to whom they must show loyalty to keep their wealth. I do think it’s the end of Sardinia, though. How can they show their faces in Europe? They can’t.
All the speakers recommended the Russian president recognize the independence of LNR and DNR. One suggested annexing them, and Putin corrected him. Another suggested extending the recognition of independence to the entire Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (at the moment the separatist regions are only about one third of the geographic Donestk and Luhansk regions). For now, it looks like — and there is confusion on this — it will only be recognition of the independence of the existing DNR and LNR borders behind the existing front lines.
Later that evening, as I was about to get dinner ready for the family, Putin went “live”. This time, with a history lesson. He rambled on for over an hour rewriting Russian imperial and Soviet history. It was basically an entire monologue about why, in his opinion, Ukraine doesn’t have the right to exist as an independent country and it’s actually very terrible that the idiots running the place let the USSR fall apart.
What is actually terrible is what happened in 1999: they let a KGB guy become president. I was in Moscow, turned on the TV, heard Yeltsin say he was resigning, called Mama Olya, my Moscow mom as I call her, made sure I understood correctly. She said to me “A KGB guy. That is bad. That is very bad.” She was not wrong.
I live tweet translated Putin’s rewriting history speech in this thread here.
At the end of his speech explaining why Ukraine isn’t a real country and it’s all run by American spies anyway (I paraphrase but you get the idea), Putin announced Russia’s recognition of the independence of DNR and LNR. The camera then pivoted to the same giant white call from the Security Council meeting that afternoon, and the two “leaders” were sitting at white tables ready to sign papers. Putin sat very far away from them at his own larger table, signing the documents. It was totally bizarre.
By very late evening, news was released that Russia was sending “peacekeepers” to the DNR and LNR. In terms of international law, this is already an invasion of Ukraine, although de facto, Ukraine hasn’t had control over these territories in eight years. But the world, and Ukraine, never accepted the existence of DNR and LNR as independent states, the world still views the map of Ukraine with those areas inside its borders, so Russian tanks rolling in is technically speaking, already an invasion. Technically speaking.
Russian propaganda filmed about ten guys celebrating in Donestk last night. The rest of the men have either been drafted into the local army by force or are hiding. The women of Donestk on TikTok were mostly in tears last night, scared for their husbands and sons.
This morning the Russian stock market opened down 8%, after having fallen 12% yesterday. It is also interesting that during all those speeches yesterday, sanctions were mentioned several times. Putin and his advisors fully expect to be hit with hard sanctions. They do not care, they think Russia will be able to cope just fine. They are seen as the cost of doing business, in this case, they argue they are rescuing Russian speakers from “genocide” (it is all a giant lie and has no factual basis but that is the word they use) in Ukraine. Therefore any hesitation on the part of the west to react to what is essentially, in legal terms, already an invasion of Ukraine via “peacekeepers”, will only be seen as weakness and an invitation to bite off more.
Meanwhile, Belarus has essentially already been swallowed by Russia, and no one even blinked. The Russian army isn’t going anywhere. A referendum will be held on February 27 to make some constitutional changes, but my guess is Lukashenko will never get to retire because Putin will never trust anyone else.
Meanwhile, watch the Balkans. Putin is sending Patrushev to Belgrade right now. It would not surprise me if Republika Srpska out of nowhere declares independence from Bosnia just as fighting heats up in Ukraine. Serbian tabloids are already spinning the fake news about Russians being persecuted in Ukraine.
As for Ukraine, well, Zelensky gave a speech very late last night. You can read it here:
I fear the worst. From the Security Council meeting and Putin’s history rant last night, it is absolutely crystal clear they do not see Ukraine (and frankly, Belarus too) as an independent nation with a right to sovereignty and self-determination. These are old wounds, from the disintegration of the USSR, from the US going around the world stirring up conflict as the so-called global policeman and a weak Russia couldn’t at the time do anything about it. Yes, they really are still pissed off about the 1999 NATO bombings of Belgrade. This is their revenge. They will hold Europe an economic hostage and they will take as much territory as they can, anywhere there are Russian speakers or Russian-sympathetic leaders. This means even places in the Balkans are theoretically up for grabs.
I don’t want to be alarmist for the sake of it, but I expect this can really spread into something we really haven’t seen the likes of for almost a century. There are several possible hotspots, and if I used to think they would leave western Ukraine and Lviv alone, knowing perfectly well it isn’t home to many Russian speakers, I no longer think that. I think Putin and his advisors are sitting in an insular, self-fulfilling prophecy bubble. They are angry old men. They have come unhinged. They will relish this moment until is starts to go downhill. In the end, this brazen behavior will only accelerate Putin’s own demise.
I wish I could be more optimistic. I see no grounds for optimism. You cannot negotiate with people who continually lie to your face. Who live in their own parallel, fake news reality. The west isn’t used to playing games on these terms, and it will fumble the ball. Over and over. Meanwhile, Russia has the head start.
My biggest concern at the moment is what can Ukraine do to ensure the least amount of lives lost. I don’t know. A proud people will want to fight and it will be a bloodbath. A horror in 2022.
I will try to keep an eye via social media on what people are saying on the ground in Donestk and Luhansk, the two areas where there are no independent journalists. For updates from Ukraine and Russia, there are plenty of great reporters on the ground who actually speak the languages and understand the nuances. For recommendations who to follow, please ask me, I try to retweet as much as possible great reporting when I see it.
One last thing — yesterday’s date, February 21, was predicted on the ground by a shopkeeper in a village in late January near the Russian border with the separatist republics. So if anyone tries to tell you they didn’t see it coming, ordinary people on the ground did.
Thanks for reading, and let me know please if you have questions, other topics you would like me to expand upon in the coming days.
Meanwhile, Navalny is still on trial, and that has conveniently been swept entirely aside by all this news of war. Just as the authorities hoped and his allies feared.
