28 February 22
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But Vladimir Putin, a far smarter despot with grand imperial dreams, adds Machiavelli to the mix. We face far more than barnyard animal behavior.
Pondering Russia’s cruel assault on Ukraine, I found a few YouTube clips of bears attempting to lunch on a porcupine. Even if the links somehow managed to reach the Kremlin, no one is left inside Vladimir Putin’s bubble with enough stones to show them to him.
A determined bruin can eventually get to a porcupine’s soft underbelly, but the snootful of quills left behind to fester drives it crazy. And your average bear does not have 4,477 nuclear warheads that risk accidental Armageddon.
I’m now in Arizona, left to guess about outcomes on the Russian frontier from 7,000 miles away. But my extensive reporting in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that Putin wants to remake into a fascist-capitalist empire, eviler than ever, suggests terrifying possibilities.
My grandmother is from Odessa, not far from where 16 border guards just committed suicide by bombardment. They told a Russian warship captain who demanded they surrender to go fuck himself.
On my last trip to Kyiv, for a global gathering of investigative journalists, I met courageous Ukrainian reporters who dig deep to expose faithless leaders. Like many of their countrymen, their resolve to resist, no matter what, is no empty boast.
In an unhinged appeal for Russians’ support, Putin declared Ukraine a non-state run by neo-Nazis and druggies. President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, like his prime minister, and he lost family in the Holocaust. If he is on drugs, I’d like a supply of whatever he is taking.
Likely marked for death, Zelensky is in Kyiv streets rallying Ukrainians ready to face tanks with Molotov cocktails and small arms. He declined an American offer of asylum: “I need ammunition,” he said, “not a ride.”
And, clearly, Ukraine is only a first step in whatever a delusional despot has in mind.
Defusing this showdown will take Joe Biden’s seasoned statecraft, NATO solidarity and, against all odds, a truce among warring factions in America. With the blowback of sanctions, including rising fuel prices, and Russian cyberattacks, lingering pain at home seems inevitable.
Putin is increasingly paranoid. Apart from visiting Xi Jinping at the Olympics, he has cloistered among hardline cronies for two years. Emmanuel Macron declined conditions for a handshake: a Russian PCR test, with no French aides present, seven hours prior to their meeting.
Insiders report Putin’s humiliating tirade at Sergei Naryshkin, the hardline anti-West spy chief and his long-time close confidant. For some clarity, I called Andrei Soldatov, among Russia’s best-informed investigative journalists, who now runs his Agentura.ru news agency from London.
“No one knows what to expect,” Soldatov said, but he expects a lot, perhaps even a move in the three Baltic states, all NATO members, which would trigger a response from 27 other members of the alliance. He doubts Putin would resort to nuclear weapons. But shit happens.
Soldatov said Putin will likely weather reaction at home. Harsh repression muzzles political opponents and the press. He thinks draconian sanctions will push Putin to find some face-saving accommodation with the West – but not without a bitter fight.
Despite Russia’s closer ties with China, Soldatov said, Xi Jinping made it plain in Beijing who is top dog. Goaded by Trump’s erratic path from fulsome praise to scapegoating China for his own mishandling of Covid-19, Xi is on a tear to dominate the planet from the sea floor to space.
For now, the focus is on Ukraine, and the main challenge is overcoming America’s obsession for “breaking news” and punditry. Too many people make snap judgments based on headlines and social media snippets, then comfort their prejudices by cherry picking analysis from long-retired generals, assorted politicos and “influencers” who populate non-stop cable news.
Ukraine, 233,133 square miles, is nearly the size of Texas. Putin amassed about 150,000 troops around Ukraine, more than half his active standing army, and sent armored columns to seize the capital. It hasn’t worked out that way, as today’s wars seldom do.
After that shock-and-awe onslaught lit up the skies over Baghdad in March 2003, George W. Bush declared victory under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Nearly nine years later, America declared victory and left, yet the shattered Pandora’s Box still spews its serial evils.
Americans will need to use basic reportorial skills as events unfold. If ill-informed voters elect a still divided and clueless Congress later this year and undercut a seasoned president who is skillfully marshaling allies, this is likely to go from bad to catastrophic.
Recent history and actual expertise matter now as never before. A remark on MSNBC stunned me. Joy Reid told a guest that she was old enough to remember Trump’s attempt to blackmail Zelensky to slime Biden. That was less than three years ago, and it is central to the story.
Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia, explains again and again how Trump’s self-interested, slavish sucking up to Putin undermined decades of sensitive diplomacy. Friends and foes watched Republicans condone treachery bordering on treason, and so much else.
If Trump were in office and Putin asked him to block NATO from defending Ukraine, McFaul said the other day, “he would have done it in a heartbeat.”
Every day now, TV cameras show how badly Zelensky needed that $400 million in aid, and an Oval Office handshake, to fend off Putin.
For an overall sense, it is best to rely on experienced correspondents on the ground who value their own credibility, with sources they’ve learned to trust and a firm grasp of how shit happens in war. This seems obvious, but it’s not. Good reporting depends on interviews and anecdotes — pointillist dots of humanity that form big pictures set in a framework of overall context.
For instance, Andrew Higgins wrote a piece tucked under the main story on the New York Times’ frontpage Saturday: “Among those fleeing into Poland…were ethnic Russians like Oxana Aleksova, who were as appalled by the Kremlin’s lies, unprovoked violence and crude propaganda as were their Ukrainian counterparts.”
Individuals matter more than their organizations, especially for TV coverage. Some reporters instinctively head into the thick of it, consistently “lucky” because they know where luck happens. Look for those who know the territory, with local contacts, rather than familiar faces who flit from crisis to crisis, parachuting in, then moving on.
A few simple clues help. If, say, a Sam Kylie on CNN pronounces Kyiv with a slight two-syllable inflection, rather than “Keev,” you know he has been there before, and he knows whereof he speaks. When a guy in crisp new safari gear says, “Our security guard told us to turn back…,” change channels. Reporters sharpen their own instincts to stay safe. Hired guns too often increase their risk.
Staying informed takes time, thought and a lot of background reading. My favorite weekly is The New Yorker, particularly now. Its editor, David Remnick, knows Russia well and writes with skill and wisdom. Masha Gessen, among others, writes from the inside.
But mostly, Americans’ challenge now is to pick leaders whose interest is an imperiled nation’s interest, not their own. Because of the wrong choice in the past, we have strayed way behind Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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