Monday, March 21, 2022

Today's News: Slava Ukraini for Mariupol


In this photo, a mother at the Lviv train station embraces her son after he escaped Mariupol. (Photo by AP Bernat Armangue) The news today from Mariupol is terrible -- Ukraine has rejected Russia's demand that Mariupol surrender, so this brave proud city may be doomed.
At Balloon Juice, Adam Silverman describes why Putin wants to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Mariupol: 
Part of the reason that the Russians are so hell bent on taking Mariupol is that the Ukrainian forces defending it are the Azov Battalion. When the EuroMaidan revolt against Yanukovych began in 2014 one of the groups involved where a bunch of Ukrainian neo-fascists and neo-NAZIs who had their origins as a group in Soviet football hooliganism and ultimately evolved into a local self defense militia for lack of a better term. 
After Putin scarfed up the Donbas and Crimea these guys reorganized themselves into a battalion within Ukraine’s National Guard. While there have been attempts over the past several years to clean the neo-NAZIs and ultra-nationalists out of the battalion, with a 2015 estimate that only 10-20% of the members were neo-NAZIs, in order for them to receive training from the US, no one is sure how successful these efforts are. 
Regardless, the Azov Battalion is Putin’s prime evidence that Ukraine is full of NAZIs. And because they’ve been effective in fighting against his occupation of the Donbas, he wants them wiped out. 
Right now he has them, as well as over 300,000 civilians – not the 130,000 in the Russian ultimatum – trapped inside Mariupol. And he’s going to do whatever he can and whatever he thinks he can get away with to kill every last one of them. 
Most of this history is virtually unknown in the West, and it doesn't justify any of Putin's war crimes anyway. What people are seeing now is the horrendous, unwarranted destruction of a great city. 
The more death and destruction is endured by Ukraine, the angrier people around the world are getting. But what can we do? 
The Pope is speaking out too: At least in the rest of Ukraine, Russia is not advancing: Interesting analysis here, though its a little short on solutions -- as we all are these days: I continue to rely on Markos and Mark Sumner over at Daily Kos for their daily updates. 
I also appreciate the comments that Carlo Graziani is making over at Balloon Juice. Here's his comment tonight as everyone is waiting to see what happens to Mariupol:
 ... it seems likely that it’s going to get worse, and uglier, before it gets better. And the people who will be paying the price are Ukrainians, largely civilians. 
And we will be largely sitting on the sidelines, anxiously, raging, but limited in what we can do directly.
 It remains true that the Ukrainians are heroes, and tough, and show no sign of tiring of this fight despite the Russian’s appetite for brutality and terror. They are giving the Russian army a pitiless mauling, and there is no doubt that if the Russians were to occupy any part of Ukranian territory now, theit occupation would receive a worse treatment than the Yugoslavian partisans gave the Wermacht in the Second World War. 
We are going to have to remember where the guard rails are. There are thresholds we can’t pass, as enraging as that fact may be, because a NATO-Russia war can still burn down the world. 
But there is a lot that we can do that is useful below that threshold, such as massive weapons supply, intelligence support, and training. And keeping up, and increasing, sanctions pressure. None of this can alter current tactical situations, or — to put it less clinically — prevent the homicidal war-criminal toll of the Putinist offensive from climbing, for now. The truth is, nothing can. I hate writing this, but I believe that it is the truth. 
I wrote, a few weeks ago, that we’re in a slugging match, and that the main thing is to stay in it until the other guy falls down. That seems a bit glib to me now, because the people paying the price of staying in it are all Ukrainian. I am incredibly grateful for their willingness to fight on, and want to find every way to help them fight. But it’s going to be a long fight. 
Their fight is our fight. I really believe that. I don’t want this thing to end with Putin still hanging on to power. That son-of-a-bitch has been actively undermining our democratic institutions and dividing us from our allies for a decade. 
We need to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fuck him. Not find a compromise that lets up on the sanctions while letting Russia keep their Black Sea corridor because Great Powers Must Have their Interests Acknowledged. Fuck that realist noise. This is the real payback for January 6. Maximum pressure, until a can of cabbage costs $25 in Moscow. I want to see those Chekist assholes deal with food riots, and beg the Army to save them. 
The framework cannot be a compromise with Putin. It has to be a compromise with Russia, to move beyond Putinism. At this point, we should be prepared for a new Cold War, rather than tolerate that parasite sending us more Trumps. 
Finally, this is just heartwarming to see:
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