I published a podcast episode on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 26. I noted the farcical way a manifestly paranoid Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to assassin proof his life. More to the point, though, I pleaded for Western leaders to sanction Putin and the oligarchs. Because they are the enemy, not the Russian people. Unfortunately, they ignored my plea.
Sanctions
In fact, the front pages of Western newspapers spoke volumes yesterday. They blared headlines about Russia facing economic meltdown. Among other things, this meltdown includes
- Russian banks being expelled from the SWIFT global payment system, forcing them to freeze assets and foreign reserves;
- the Russian ruble plunging over 30% and inflation rising over 20%;
- Russian airplanes being banned from European airspace;
- the Russian stock market closing; and
- Russians making a run on banks, fearing their credits cards will no longer work.
Here is how EU and US officials made clear the intent of these unprecedented sanctions:
We wanted to put these actions in place before our markets open because we learned that the Russian Central Bank was attempting to move assets and there would be a great deal of asset flight starting on Monday morning from institutions around the world…
The aim of these sanctions is to ban all transactions of Russia’s central bank and freeze all of its assets to prevent it from financing Putin’s war … to make sure that the Russian economy goes backward as long as President Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine.
(CNN, February 28, 2022)
Then there’s the battery of sanctions the US, UK, EU, Japan, Singapore, Monaco, Canada, Taiwan, Australia, and other countries are imposing on Putin and the oligarchs personally. Most notably, they feature a travel ban and asset freeze that have some oligarchs already jumping ship. Hell, even Putin’s most loyal European leader, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, abandoned him by signing on to all EU sanctions.
Top Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska openly denounced Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while businessman Anatoly Chubays [popularly known as the Father of the Oligarchs] posted a photo of a murdered Vladimir Putin critic [Boris Nemtsov] without any caption.
The billionaires called the invasion a ‘tragedy’ and asked for the “bloodshed” to end.
(The Telegraph, February 28, 2022)
But equally noteworthy is that even “Hitler’s Swiss bankers” have abandoned their vaunted neutrality to freeze the bank accounts of over 360 Russians, including Putin himself. In doing so, they vindicated my commentary “The Belated Conversion of Hitler’s Swiss Bankers,” April 25, 2005. In a similar vein, Germany has abandoned its “special duty” to avoid arming countries in conflict zones to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine.
Of course, Russia and Russians have also been banned from participation in FIFA World Cup soccer, UEFA European soccer, Formula One car racing, Euroleague Basketball, and International Ski Federation competition. But, no doubt all too belated and perhaps most ominously, even China’s handmaiden International Olympic Committee has called on all international sports federations to ban them from participation.
I’m on record observing long before his invasion triggered these sanctions that Putin seems hell-bent on making Russia even more of a pariah state than North Korea. Well the sanctions now arrayed against it suggest that he has succeeded.
Ukrainian Heroes
That said, I suspect this battle for Ukraine will be remembered more for the heroics humans performed than the sanctions nations imposed. Top among the former will be the story of the 82 Ukrainians on Snake Island in the Black Sea who refused to surrender. Instead they responded to radio commands from a Russian military ship to do so or face bombardment by famously saying, “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself!’ They were finally captured after running out of ammunition – a foreboding fate their president will soon make famous, unwittingly.
Another is the story of the Georgian captain of an oil tanker who refused to refuel a Russian ship. A viral video shows him interrogating the captain of the Russian ship to establish that he is in fact Russian, at which point he intones the fateful words of those Ukrainians who refused to surrender to Russians on Snake Island. The captain famously said, “Russian Ship, go f*ck yourself, Glory to Ukraine.” Adding insult to misery, when the hapless Russian pleaded to leave politics aside and asked how he’s supposed to move without fuel, the captain’s first mate chimed in, “use your oars”.
Of course, no story can be more heroic than the way Ukrainians are continually repelling the Russians’ three-pronged advances. In fact, reports are that Putin is finding the casualties they are inflicting on his forces humiliating and bedeviling in equal measure. For a truly alarming perspective, the Taliban killed nearly 2,500 American soldiers over 20 years in Afghanistan. The Ukrainians have killed 2000-4,500 Russian soldiers (depending on your source) in just 4 days in Ukraine.
Frankly, not since The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 has a David vs. Goliath battle been so heroically fought – no matter the outcome of Putin’s war. And yes, Ukrainians abroad will think themselves accursed that they were not there, and hold their national pride cheap while others speak who fought to defend Ukraine and democracy itself from this Russian aggression.
Apropos of which, President Volodymyr Zelensky is winning praise worthy of the likes of Henry V and Winston Churchill. And nothing warrants it quite like the way he emulated Churchill’s famous “we shall fight them on the beaches … we shall never surrender” speech with his now equally famous
The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.
This was his indignant reply when the United States reportedly offered to evacuate him from Kyiv.
Russian Protesters
The Ukrainian people and their comedian -cum- president deserve all the praise and admiration they’re getting, and then some. Except that not enough is being made of the Russians who are risking prison, and certain torture, to protest Putin’s war to redraw the map of Europe.
From Moscow to Siberia, Russian anti-war activists took to the streets again Sunday to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the arrests of hundreds of protesters each day by police.
Demonstrators held pickets and marched in city centers, chanting ‘No to war!’ as President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear deterrent to be put on high alert, upping the ante in the Kremlin’s standoff with the West and stoking fears of a nuclear war.
‘I have two sons and I don’t want to give them to that bloody monster. War is a tragedy for all of us,’ 48-year-old Dmitry Maltsev, who joined the rally in St. Petersburg, told The Associated Press.
(TIME, February 28, 2022)
Ukrainians are clearly fighting not just to defend their country, but to save their lives. But there’s no denying the courage of Russians protesting in the streets of St. Petersburg these days. Sadly, Putin has killed hundreds of Ukrainians. But we should not overlook that he has imprisoned thousands of Russians, and only God knows what will become of them in the gulag.
Perhaps you have to be familiar with the gallows humor of Mikhail Zoshchenko to appreciate some of them carrying placards and wearing T-Shirts that read
I’m Russian. Sorry for that.
But nothing betrays how unpopular and craven Putin’s war is quite like the transcript of an intercepted text exchange between a Russian conscript and his mother, which the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya read during his address to a special session of the General Assembly yesterday, courtesy of C-SPAN:
MOTHER: Why has it been so long since you responded? Are you really in training exercises?
SON: Mama, I’m no longer in Crimea. I’m not in training sessions.
MOTHER: Where are you then? Papa is asking whether I can send you a parcel.
SON: What kind of a parcel, Mama, can you send me?
MOTHER: What are you talking about? What happened?
SON: Mama, I’m in Ukraine. There is a real war raging here. I’m afraid. We are bombing all of the cities together, even targeting civilians. We were told that they would welcome us, and they are falling under our armored vehicles, throwing themselves under the wheels and not allowing us to pass. They call us fascists. Mama, this is so hard.
At that point the ambassador tossed the paper aside and announced to the hushed assembly that this poor, misguided conscript was killed in battle moments later. Say what you will about warmongering American leaders, at least they are not bloody monsters who have to dupe mothers into giving their sons to fight and die in their wars…
Given the prominence of Russian culture, I’d be remiss not to share how this invasion is affecting two very prominent Russian artists, namely Elena Kovalskaya, head of the state-run theater in Moscow, Valery Gergiev, superstar conductor and famous Putin BFF.
With respect to Kovalskay, here is the resignation letter she posted on Facebook on February 25, which went viral:
Friends, in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I’m leaving my post as director of the state theater – the National Theater of the National Center. It is impossible to work for a murderer and get a salary from him.
With respect to Gergiev, here is how he has suddenly become the proverbial skunk at the garden party – as reported in today’s edition of France24:
One of Germany’s top orchestras fired Russian maestro and Kremlin loyalist, Valery Gergiev, as its chief conductor on Tuesday after he failed to denounce Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, capping a stunning fall from grace for the classical music superstar. … Gergiev had in recent days already been dropped from upcoming concerts at the renowned Philharmonie concert hall in Paris and New York’s Carnegie Hall, where he was due to lead the Vienna Philharmonic.
The Edinburgh International Festival has also cut ties with him, as has Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, as well as his agent in Germany, Marcus Felsner. Gergiev was told last week he would be sacked from performances of Tchaikovsky’s opera “The Queen of Spades” in Milan’s Teatro alla Scala if he did not publicly condemn the war in Ukraine.
Russian Martyrs
But long before Putin decided to make sacrificial lambs of young Russians for this ill-fated cause, prominent Russians made martyrs of themselves for the noble cause Zelensky and the Ukrainians are now fighting for.
In fact, it’s arguable that Boris Nemtsov is the MLK and RFK of Russia, such was his pioneering fight for democratic freedoms before Putin had him assassinated, allegedly. Coincidentally, I duly hailed him seven years ago today in “Fated Assassination of Russian Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov,” March 1, 2015.
But, when it comes to standing up to Putin and his cronies, surely nobody can deny that Russian Alexei Navalny is every bit as heroic as Ukrainian Vladimir Zelensky. Navalny of course has been the bane of Putin’s existence for longer than Zelensky has been in public life. More to the point, even after surviving several notorious assassination attempts and having a chance to live free in Germany, he voluntarily returned to continue his Nemtsovian fight.
Just as everyone expected, Putin had him summarily arrested on trumped-up charges. And then had him tried, convicted, and thrown in jail, where Putin seems hell-bent on seeing Navalny rot for the rest of his life. I bemoaned his fate in many commentaries, including “Navalny Withers as Putin Summits,” May 29, 2021.
Even so, here’s the kind of influence Navalny still wields with the Russian people even from behind bars:
‘Putin declared war on Ukraine and is trying to make everyone think that Ukraine was attacked by Russia, that is, by all of us. But that’s not right,’ the Navalny team wrote on its Twitter account. ‘We must show that we do not support the war. We call on Russians to show civil disobedience. Do not be silent.’
(Reuters, February 28, 2022)
Apropos of which, Putin seems only interested in revisionist history. But it behooves him to appreciate that just, given the way the Russian people got rid of a real czar, they will have no problem getting rid of a pretend one like him …
Closing Remarks
Sending lethal weapons will help, but the fighting, daring spirit of ordinary Ukrainians is why Russia will never win this war.
I called Putin out 17 years ago for harboring the imperial delusions that misled him to invade Ukraine. In fact, I coined the term putinization for his neo-Stalinist master plan to turn Russia into a police state and reclaim a sphere of influence over all satellite states of the former Soviet Union.
He gave me cause to use that term continually by, among other things, doing in Georgia and Crimea what he’s now attempting to do in Ukraine. I refer you in this respect to commentaries like “Putinization: President Putin Reforming Russia in Own Neo-Stalinist Image,” on March 25, 2005.
At least most Germans could credibly say they did not know the extent of Hitler’s genocidal crimes; most Russians cannot. Which is why they have to ask if this one madman is worthy all the sacrifices he’s forcing them to pay for his delusional vainglory.
In “The Plot to Kill Vladimir Putin,” February 19, 2022, and “Putin Humiliates Spy Chief,” February 23, 2022, I implored the members of his inner circle to do to Putin what the members of Hitler’s inner circle attempted to do to him in Operation Valkyrie. Because it is self-evident that the only way to deal with a thoroughly humiliated megalomaniac like Putin with the power to destroy the world is to kill him.
After all, having the whole world treat Russia like a leper colony is enough to put Putin and the oligarchs in a cataclysmic, end-of-times frame of mind. But, given the “red notice” the International Criminal Court issued yesterday, they must surely fear ending up in the Hague for war crimes committed in Ukraine the way their Serbian brothers did for war crimes committed in Kosovo.
An equally damning cause for Armageddon-suicide, is that Putin and his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov know that everyone, including fellow Russians, now consider them even less honorable and credible than Saddam Hussein and his infamous sidekick, Baghdad Bob. And they know people everywhere will hold them in utter contempt for the rest of their lives.
Not that Putin, the putative master military strategist will want, or have the nerve, to ever show his face outside any of gilded cages he has built for himself inside Russia. This, after being so thoroughly upstaged on the world stage by Zelensky, a former two-bit comedian.
But Lavrov got a taste of this foreboding fate just this morning. That’s when over 100 UN diplomats walked out as he began his patently disingenuous “Dear Colleagues” speech, leaving him to deliver it to a nearly empty assembly. Just a week ago, the mere thought of that was unthinkable.
Finally, though, with all the warranted praise being heaped on fighting Ukrainians and warranted sanctions being imposed on complicit Russians, please save a little praise for protesting Russians and spare a little sympathy for the Russian people – who want and have nothing to do with Putin’s war.
Related commentaries:
Podcast invasion of Ukraine… Hitler’s Swiss bankers…
Boris Nemtsov… Alexei Navalny… kill Putin…