The Full Belmonte, 3/5/2022
“MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials accused Russia of breaching a cease-fire meant to allow civilians to flee Saturday, less than three hours after both sides announced the temporary truce in the southern cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha.
The city council in Mariupol — one of the key ports on Ukraine’s southern coast that Russian troops are pushing to conquer — had advised residents to evacuate, telling drivers to ‘fill the vehicles as much as possible.’ Then the officials sharply pivoted, urging people to hunker down because Russia continued to shell the city and what was supposed to be a peaceful exit route, they said.
Volnovakha, a city of roughly 21,000, also endured ‘heavy artillery’ assaults during the cease-fire, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said. Russia denied breaking the truce, accusing Ukraine of using civilians as ‘human shields.’
Besieged areas needed the cease-fire to restore basic services such as electricity and tap water, Ukrainian officials said, and to bring in medical supplies that Russia’s blockades have cut off. The lack of necessities during nonstop bombardment is compounding what localleaders have called a humanitarian ‘catastrophe.’
Here’s what to know
Four Ukrainian cities — Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Mariupol and Sumy — are ‘highly likely’ to have been encircled by Russian forces, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.
The United States and Western allies have grown tight-lipped about how they are delivering military aid to Ukraine, as the country’s airspace has become part of a war zone that no Western nation wants to enter.
A video published Friday shows a team of Sky News journalists coming under gunfire from ‘a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad.’ The incident highlights the increasing violence in an invasion that has killed hundreds of civilians.
Following a new Russian law that would imprison those who spread what the Kremlin considers ‘fake’ news about the country’s invasion of Ukraine, independent media outlets are shuttering their operations and Western news organizations are limiting their newsgathering activity.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations denied that his country shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant and said his Russian troops were actually offering ‘protection’ for the facility — a claim that Western ambassadors dismissed.” Read more at Washington Post
A shop in Moscow on Monday displayed the plunging exchange rate for the ruble.Credit...The New York Times
“WASHINGTON — As they impose historic sanctions on Russia, the Biden administration and European governments have set new goals: devastate the Russian economy as punishment for the world to witness, and create domestic pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin to halt his war in Ukraine, current and former U.S. officials say.
The harsh penalties — which have hammered the ruble, shut down Russia’s stock market and prompted bank runs — contradict previous declarations by U.S. officials that they would refrain from inflicting pain on ordinary Russians. ‘We target them carefully to avoid even the appearance of targeting the average Russian civilian,’ Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, said at a White House briefing last month.
The escalation in sanctions this week has occurred much faster than many officials had anticipated, largely because European leaders have embraced the most aggressive measures proposed by Washington, U.S. officials said.
With Russia’s economy crumbling, major companies — Apple, Boeing and Shell among them — are suspending or exiting operations in the country. The Biden administration said on Thursday that it would not offer sanctions relief amid Mr. Putin’s increasingly brutal offensive.
The thinking among some U.S. and European officials is that Mr. Putin might stop the war if enough Russians protest in the streetsand enough tycoons turn on him. Other U.S. officials emphasize the goals of punishment and future deterrence, saying that the carcass of the Russian economy will serve as a visible consequence of Mr. Putin’s actions and a warning for other aggressors.
But Russia’s $1.5 trillion economy is the world’s 11th largest. No countries have tried pushing an economy of that size to the brink of collapse, with unknown consequences for the world. And the actions of the United States and Europe could pave the way for a new type of great-power conflict in the future.
The moves have also ignited questions in Washington and in European capitals over whether cascading events in Russia could lead to “regime change,” or rulership collapse, which President Biden and European leaders are careful to avoid mentioning.
‘This isn’t the Russian people’s war,’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a news conference on Wednesday. But, he added, ‘the Russian people will suffer the consequences of their leaders’ choices.’
‘The economic costs that we’ve been forced to impose on Russia are not aimed at you,’ he said. ‘They are aimed at compelling your government to stop its actions, to stop its aggression.’
The harshest sanctions by far are ones that prevent the Central Bank of Russia from tapping into much of its $643 billion in foreign currency reserves, which has led to a steep drop in the value of the ruble. Panic has set in across Russia. Citizens are scrambling to withdraw money from banks, preferably in dollars, and some are fleeing the country.
The United States and Europe also announced new sanctions this week against oligarchs with close ties to Mr. Putin. Officials are moving to seize their houses, yachts and private jets around the world. French officials on Thursday snatched the superyacht of Igor Sechin, the chief executive of Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant.
‘The sanctions have turned out to be quite unprecedented,’ said Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who has studied U.S. sanctions on Russia. ‘Everybody in Russia is horrified. They’re trying to think of the best way to preserve their money.’
The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has used some of the harshest language yet to articulate the mission, telling a radio program on Tuesday that Western nations were ‘waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia’ to ‘cause the collapse of the Russian economy.’ He later said he regretted his words.
Evidence of shock and anger among Russians — mostly anecdotal in a country with restricted speech and little public opinion polling — has raised the specter of mass political dissent, which, if strong enough, could threaten Mr. Putin’s grip on power.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on Fox News, ‘The best way for this to end is having Eliot Ness or Wyatt Earp in Russia, the Russian Spring, so to speak, where people rise up and take him down.’
Mr. Graham added: ‘So I’m hoping somebody in Russia will understand that he’s destroying Russia, and you need to take this guy out by any means possible,’ reiterating his Twitter post on Thursday calling for an assassination of Mr. Putin.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said on Monday that the sanctions were ‘intended to bring down the Putin regime.’ Mr. Johnson’s office quickly corrected the statement, saying that it did not reflect his government’s view and that the goal of the measures was to stop Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, called the talk of Mr. Putin’s overthrow unhelpful, emphasizing that the sanctions should be tailored and described as a means of stopping the invasion. ‘The objective should be to end the war,’ he said.
But while the Biden administration has said it is still open to diplomacy with Russia, it has not offered to reverse any of the sanctions in exchange for de-escalation.” Read more at New York Times
“The Justice Department is investigating whether chicken companies swapped information about employment practices that held down plant workers’ wages. The DOJ has looked into alleged antitrust issues in the U.S. meat industry for several years, ranging from charging chicken executives with price fixing to examining meatpackers’ activities in the beef market.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“On Saturday, Boston will become the latest major city to lift its indoor masking mandate in public spaces, such as gyms, bars and restaurants, museums, and entertainment venues. Public transportation and health care settings are still subject to state and federal mask orders. ‘The decision was made based on key COVID-19 metrics, which show continued improvement in the prevalence and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in Boston,’ a statement from the office of Mayor Michelle Wu this week read. The move comes as Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S., dropped its indoor mask mandate for restaurants, bars, gyms, shops and other businesses Friday. Late last month, the CDC announced guideline changes allowing most Americans to unmask indoors, which health experts said may be the first step in shifting the USA to an ‘endemic phase’ of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Read more at USA Today
“WASHINGTON – Russian President Vladimir Putin faces a critical juncture in the week-old war he started in Ukraine.
Bad choices, of his own making, are all he has left, experts say.
Unleash the full fury of firepower he's amassed on Ukrainian cities, and Putin risks killing thousands of civilians and destroying homes, buildings and roads. Surround the population centers, choke off water, food and electricity, and Putin assembles the ingredients for a humanitarian catastrophe. Send in ground forces to take control, and Putin will invites a blood bath that kills Ukrainians and sends troops in body bags back to Russia.
Putin's initial plan has unraveled, resting on the assumption that Ukrainian officials and troops would capitulate quickly. Instead, the spirited resistance from Ukrainians and poor performance by his own troops has left Putin and his military commanders frustrated and behind schedule, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The Pentagon and military experts expect Putin's forces to regroup, encircle cities and lay siege to them, shelling and bombing them until they surrender. The Russians will likely seize control of the cities. Deep, hardened resistance awaits them.
More:How Russian attack on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant unfolded
More:Mapping and tracking Russia's invasion of Ukraine
It won't be an easy fight, said Colin Smith, an expert on the Russian military at the RAND Corp. If Russia allows citizens to flee along the corridors they've agreed to establish, they'll leave behind well-armed fighters in cities like Kyiv.
‘Then it's kind of a giant Alamo,’ Smith said. ‘It's an Alamo they can sustain for quite a long time if they've got the ammunition. They have the deepest subways in the world. It's their backyard. They could fight for a very, very long time.’
There are also indications of poor morale among Russian troops, according to the Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence findings. Food and fuel shortages along with poor training have contributed to morale problems. The main Russian force arrayed against Kyiv remains stuck about 15 miles from the city's center.
‘There's enough evidence that there are Russian soldiers who do not want to fight and are not on board with killing Ukrainians,’ Smith said. ‘There's equipment that's been left behind, and they didn't just run out of gas. There's equipment that's been just left behind wholesale – perfectly working equipment – with no Russian soldiers in sight.’
Even if Russian forces overrun Ukraine's major cities, the invasion force invasion force of 190,000 troops in and around Ukraine is not large enough to control a largely hostile population of more than 40 million Ukrainians, said Seth Jones, senior vice president and director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
‘It will likely be difficult for the Russian army to hold territory for long with such a small ratio of soldiers to local inhabitants,’ Jones said. ‘High numbers of troops are critical for establishing law and order.’
Another problem for a Russian force spread too thin: Ukraine's open western border. U.S. and NATO allies have been funneling weapons, ammunition and supplies through western Ukraine. In the last week, as much as $240 million worth of arms, including anti-tank missiles, have crossed into western Ukraine, according to a second senior Defense Department official.
‘Russian forces are unable to interdict the growing flow of anti-tank missile systems, surface-to-air missile systems, fighters, artillery, small arms, ammunition, and other material flowing into Ukraine,’ Jones said. ‘There is virtually no case since World War II of an occupying army successfully pacifying a local population when the insurgency has support from a great power.’
Smith raised a darker possibility. Putin has no interest in occupying Ukraine. Instead, Smith said, he wants to crush its government and military, leaving behind a country incapable of aligning with or joining NATO, even though that is not an imminent possibility.” Read more at USA Today
“The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog met Saturday with Iranian officials as talks in Vienna over Tehran's tattered 2015 atomic deal with world powers appear to be reaching their end. Rafael Mariano Grossi described his visit to Tehran as a means ‘to address outstanding questions.’ The deal saw Iran agree to drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of crushing economic sanctions. But a 2018 decision by then-President Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement sparked years of Mideast tensions and attacks. Today, Tehran enriches uranium up to 60% purity – its highest level ever and a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90% and far greater than the nuclear deal's 3.67% cap. In Vienna, negotiators – including Russia's ambassador in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and French negotiator Philippe Errera – appear to be signaling a deal is near, even as Russia's war on Ukraine rages on.” Read more at USA Today
“3.8% — The U.S. jobless rate in February, the lowest since the Covid-19 pandemic began. The month before, it was 4.0%, according to the Labor Department, which also reported that employers added a seasonally adjusted 678,000 jobs in February.
1.13 million — The estimated number of Indigenous people who live in the Arctic, including the Inuit in Alaska, Canada and Greenland and the Sami in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Climate scientists have begun collaborating more with the region’s first residents on their research.
15% — The share of purchases Shake Shack will give back to customers in bitcoin, as a reward for using Cash App, a digital wallet offered by Block. Through mid-March, the burger chain is testing whether it can reach younger consumers on Cash App and whether they’re interested in more crypto options.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“After 42 seasons at the helm of the Duke men's basketball team, Mike Krzyzewski coaches in his final home game Saturday against against rival North Carolina in the arena where he earned 572 of his 1,997 career wins and has hung five national championship banners. Krzyzewski's farewell tour has included recent emotional stops at Virginia, Syracuse and Pitt, where his former player and assistant coach Jeff Capel presented him with a symbolic gift. Duke fans from across the country have made their way to Cameron to watch Coach K hold court in his final games. After Saturday, the No. 2 Blue Devils (26-4, 16-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) head to next week's ACC Tournament with an outside shot at a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.” Read more at USA Today