POLITICO Nightly: José Andrés’ quest to feed Ukrainians

 

View in browser

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM

With help from Tyler Weyant

FEEDING THE WORLD, STARTING AT UKRAINE’S BORDER — Getting flour to local bakeries. Visiting local restaurants, feeding residents and refugees. Helping prepare a city in case Russian forces invade. It’s all in a day’s work for chef José Andrés while in Lviv, Ukraine.

“We don’t know if Lviv will be under attack or not,” Andrés, who founded World Central Kitchen to feed people during disasters, told Nightly today shortly after he arrived in Korczowa on the Polish side of the Ukrainian border. “And we are trying to make sure that they have enough food in case they become uncommunicative.”

Andrés headed to the border at the end of February as the Russian invasion got underway. He’s been helping his organization stand up an operation to feed refugees streaming across the border, as well as help Ukrainian restaurants and hotels feed local residents. The organization now has established meal sites at eight border checkpoints surrounding Ukraine and is even handing out food to people waiting in cars to cross.

Andrés plans to head home soon, but says food policy needs to become less of an afterthought, especially with climate change, natural disasters and conflicts precipitating massive food crises around the world. Andrés advocated for a U.S. food czar the last time he spoke with Nightly, but now he’s convinced that every country should have one. “Every government on planet Earth must have food-thinking people at the higher levels,” he said.

Watch Nightly’s full chat with Andrés.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.

 

SUBSCRIBE TO NATIONAL SECURITY DAILY : Keep up with the latest critical developments from Ukraine and across Europe in our daily newsletter, National Security Daily. The Russian invasion of Ukraine could disrupt the established world order and result in a refugee crisis, increased cyberattacks, rising energy costs and additional disruption to global supply chains. Go inside the top national security and foreign-policymaking shops for insight on the global threats faced by the U.S. and its allies and what actions world leaders are taking to address them. Subscribe today.

  

FROM THE DEFENSE DESK

A Ukrainian serviceman guards the entrance to an underpass in Independence Square in Kyiv. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON — Deputy Nightly editor Tyler Weyant writes:

This section of the newsletter was a little delayed by a tweet that threw POLITICO journalists covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a tizzy: A missive from an Israeli journalist reading “#BREAKING: Russia expels US ambassador from Russia.” I would link to the tweet, but it no longer exists.

Our colleagues with sources immediately did some digging. We warned people to be ready for the State Department briefing in the afternoon. We were ready. Then we learned: It wasn’t true.

The real story, the expulsion of an American as part of an ongoing crackdown on diplomats by both countries, was not as seismic. Our colleague Halley Toosi confirmed the ambassador wasn’t getting booted: “It’s not true right now. The way things are going, it could be true at some point.”

The episode speaks to a huge problem plaguing news media, governments, and the global public: There is a shocking amount of information on the Russia-Ukraine crisis on social media, and a lot of it is unconfirmable, deceptive or just plain wrong.

To talk about the newest frontier for sorting fact from fiction in wartime, we talked to defense reporter Paul McLeary. This conversation has been edited.

What has been the most difficult aspect of gleaning accurate information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? It seems like there are dozens of claims to confirm or clarify every hour.  

Without being on the ground in Ukraine, there’s a tendency to over-rely on the steady stream of videos posted to social media and frantically repeat (or retweet) what they’re telling you. As we’ve seen, some videos are actually from the fighting in 2014, or took place in Donbas several years ago, etc. There has also been a rush to post videos of Russian prisoners of war, a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions. The war is only a week old, but the steady stream of propaganda and video manipulation has been immense.

How do you manage that stream? A lot of it is basic journalism, checking with sources, confirming info, but it is a pretty powerful firehose.

It really is. Add to it a language and time/distance barrier, and it becomes more difficult. The trick is to bite things off in digestible pieces and be careful about drawing overly broad conclusions.

I covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both on the ground and from Washington. The two ways of covering conflict are almost completely opposite, but it’s also true that no one vantage point gives you a clearer picture. War is chaos and invention and improvisation at all levels and by all sides.

On the ground, you’re often seeing it through a soda straw, and you’re immersed in tactical, day-to-day information gathering. It’s personal, and at times emotional. From a distance, you’re focused more on the larger movements of governments.

Social media might lead some to believe that line has been blurred, but it hasn’t. Watching a video of Russian vehicles moving down the street doesn’t give you that granularity you have if you were there.

What do we know about the death count for the Russian military? The Russians came out today and said about 500 soldiers have died. The Ukrainians have put that figure at nearly 10 times that. 

The Ukrainians have been putting out big numbers since the start of the war as part of their overall messaging campaign, and it has been taken with a grain of salt as the product of the fog of war and an attempt to influence the narrative.

The fact that Russia would admit to even 498 soldiers killed in six days of fighting is surprising, as they have always held that information close. The number of dead is remarkable, however — Russia lost more soldiers in one week than the U.S. ever lost in any one month while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the 498 could be an undercount, the 6,000-plus number that Kyiv is reporting is also an overcount. Either way, Moscow is losing the narrative war in every dimension.

For people who aren’t reporters with sourcing and experience under their belts, how would you advise managing the barrage of information on their feeds?

You’ll never know the truth about any one skirmish, or battle, on the day it happens. War moves in waves, and it’s unpredictable and chaotic.

Even with video being tweeted around the world in seconds, there’s likely no answer to be found in the moment — things can and will change as soon as the camera turns off, and you don’t know what the camera CAN’T see.

Also, beware of sweeping conclusions. Propaganda and messaging is being practiced by all the parties involved in the fight, for a variety of reasons.

It’s frustrating not to have a solid hold on exactly what is happening, and why it’s happening. But conflicts aren’t static, and they’ll always resist easy answers and pat explanations.

WHAT'D I MISS?

—  Bipartisan push for ICC probe ‘should anything happen’ to Zelenskyy: More than three dozen House members have backed a resolution calling on the International Criminal Court to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin “should anything happen” to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to the lead sponsor. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told POLITICO he decided to spearhead the resolution after seeing reports that a Chechen hit squad had entered Ukraine to target Zelenskyy.

— Fed’s Powell on inflation, Ukraine: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered unusual clarity for lawmakers today about the prospects of higher interest rates this month , while warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a huge unknown for the economy. Powell, in particularly stark terms for the head of the U.S. central bank, said the Fed is likely to raise its benchmark federal funds rate a quarter percentage point when it meets March 15-16. He said it’s too soon to tell how geopolitical risks — including the potential for higher prices, financial market instability or cyber warfare — may complicate the path forward for policymakers beyond that.

— Gas pipelines pose a growing cyber risk for U.S. power supply: The threat of Russian cyberattacks is calling new attention to a crucial weakness in the United States’ electricity supply: the natural gas pipelines that keep many of the power plants running . Nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from plants burning natural gas, almost all of it arriving by pipelines whose systems offer a ripe target for sabotage. U.S. regulators have complained for years that the cybersecurity standards for pipelines are too weak, especially given the power supply’s growing dependence on gas.

— Manchin lays out a Dem bill he can back: Taxes, prescription drugs, climate cash: Hours after Biden laid out what he hopes to salvage from Democrats’ defunct “Build Back Better” social spending plan, Joe Manchin is quickly assembling his counteroffer. In an interview with POLITICO, the West Virginia centrist laid out a basic party-line package that could win his vote , lower the deficit and enact some new programs, provided they are permanently funded. It may be Democrats’ best and last chance to get at least some of their biggest domestic priorities done before the midterm elections, but would require everyone in the party — particularly liberals — to concede that what’s possible doesn’t come close to the $1.7 trillion package Manchin spurned in December.

— Jan. 6 probe points lawmakers more and more toward GOP colleagues: There’s only a few weeks left until the lawmakers investigating the Capitol attack intend to hold their first public hearing — and they’re redoubling their focus on how their own GOP colleagues may have helped Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Recent court filings, subpoenas and conversations with members of the Jan. 6 select committee show they’re homing in on interactions that Republican members had with Trump and his allies in the weeks preceding the riot.

 

DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.

  

NIGHTLY NUMBER

22 The number of counts Michael Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House and for decades one of the nation’s most powerful legislators, was charged with for racketeering and bribery today, becoming the most prominent politician swept up in the latest federal investigation of entrenched government corruption in the state.

PARTING WORDS

The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany. | Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

THE BIG NEW CULTURE WAR — Russian artists are being asked to speak out against Putin’s war on Ukraine or risk losing work across Europe, Laurenz Gehrke writes.

On Tuesday, Russian opera star Anna Netrebko canceled a number of performances, including a concert tonight at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall, saying it was “not the right time to perform and make music.”

Although Netrebko said in a social media post this weekend that she’s “opposed to this war,” she also expressed discomfort at artists being forced “to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland.” In that Facebook post, she didn’t mention Putin’s name. Netrebko supported Putin’s election campaign in 2014 and celebrated her 50th birthday last fall with a concert at the Kremlin.

The Bavarian State Opera scrapped Netrebko’s performances in Munich, citing “a lack of sufficient distancing” from Putin.

In a shift that mirrors a more general German shift in position toward Moscow, Russian conductor Valery Gergiev lost his job at the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra on Tuesday after he failed to respond to a letter from Mayor Dieter Reiter, who had demanded that Gergiev speak out against Putin.

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.

 

Follow us on Twitter

Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward

 

FOLLOW US

 

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA