March 03 2022 Edition
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Really the only story this week is the Russian invasion of the Ukraine – which I must point out I totally condemn.
I fear the
world as we know it after WWII is being fundamentally changed for the worse. Sadly this seems to be the way it is working out. F... Putin.
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Major Issues.
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PM’s playing of China card trashes the national interest
Last week’s rhetorical pyrotechnics reveal the dissolution of any prudent, rational, bipartisan dimension in the Morrison government’s China policy.
James Curran Columnist
Feb 20, 2022 – 2.33pm
We are witnessing the dissolution of any prudent, rational dimension in the Morrison government’s China policy.
Until mid-2021, Morrison refused to echo his “wolverine” backbenchers, cabinet colleagues and various advisers in and out of government.
He said he would not indulge the “loud atmospherics” of the China debate.
Now, he invites criticism from Beijing to prove his tough-on-China credentials. He deploys the very epithets of a Cold War mindset he once eschewed.
But witness the contradictions in Morrison’s tactics.
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Morrison, Albanese condemn China’s ‘act of intimidation’
Jacob Greber Senior correspondent
Feb 20, 2022 – 1.17pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese have both slammed Beijing over the “lasering” of a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft last week by a Chinese warship in the Arafura Sea.
As tensions between the two sides over national security continue to escalate, Mr Morrison said China had engaged in an unprovoked and unwarranted “act of intimidation” that put the Australian craft and crew in danger.
Australia has demanded answers from Chinese diplomatic and defence officials over an incident on Thursday night when a People’s Liberation Army Navy ship targeted an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft with a laser.
China needs to provide an explanation “as to why a military vessel in Australia’s exclusive economic zone would undertake such an act – such a dangerous act”, Mr Morrison said in Melbourne on Sunday.
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‘The prices are insane’: international students are just trickling in
Julie Hare Education editor
Feb 20, 2022 – 6.18pm
The flow of international students back into Australia is being hampered by lack of seat availability on flights so universities, companies and state governments are working together on creative solutions.
Since December 15, when fully vaccinated student visa holders were allowed back into the country, 66,000 have entered the country. Of those 19,466 have gone to NSW.
While promising, the numbers are modest compared with arrivals in a normal January or February ahead of the start of the academic year. Universities say that is because students have been hampered by changing rules and lack of available flights.
On board China Southern flight CZ325, which landed at Sydney airport on Sunday morning, were 68 students who had been included in an international arrivals program involving NSW universities, the state government and FCM, Flight Centre’s corporate travel arm.
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The night God, sex and the backbench humbled a prime minister
The untold story of a pivotal event in the history of the Morrison government: a bitter struggle between Liberals over religious and gay rights.
Feb 20, 2022 – 5.59pm
On Wednesday, February 9, around 6pm, five wary Liberal Party MPs – each intimately and sadly familiar with homophobic prejudice – gathered in the Parliament House office of psychologist-turned-politician Fiona Martin for a moment of collective solace.
Twelve exhausting hours later, three of them would be shattered, emotionally and physically, after taking one of the most consequential decision of their lives. They would inflict upon the Morrison government the greatest parliamentary defeat in its 1265 days of existence, a loss they were warned, repeatedly, could decide the federal election.
Three of the MPs present in Martin’s office suite – Angie Bell, Trevor Evans and Trent Zimmerman – are gay. (Assistant Minister Tim Wilson, who is married to a male primary school teacher, had been present earlier.) The other two, Martin and paediatrician Katie Allen, are medical professionals with a history of treating children.
A television in the room, turned to silent, showed Labor leader Anthony Albanese giving a speech in the House of Representatives about a bill to prohibit discrimination against students on religious grounds, but not against children uncertain of their sexuality, or doubting their biological sex, by schools entrusted with their care.
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Quality stocks have nothing to fear from inflation
The correction in highly priced stocks has ‘nothing to do with the outlook for the domestic economy’, says Tim Carleton, who maintains the outlook is bright.
Vesna Poljak Markets editor
Feb 21, 2022 – 5.00am
The return of inflation has given the sharemarket a lot to worry about this earnings season, but the correction in stocks with excessive valuations is almost completely detached from the upbeat economic reality.
The jobless rate of 4.2 per cent is the equal-fourth lowest on record, a 13-year low, and “there are more people employed today than ever before”, says Tim Carleton, pointing to the participation rate of 66.2 per cent, a fraction off its record high. “And yet, we’ve got 396,000 jobs available.”
The Auscap Asset Management principal adds, “we’ve got a very strong labour market and over time that will result in higher wage growth. Savings have been off the charts”.
Carleton knows of a farmer in Western New South Wales in his 80s who says he’s never seen conditions this good in his lifetime. The same could be said for other commodities in the green metals space such as lithium, nickel and copper.
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Clive Palmer spends 100 times more than major parties on advertising
By Zoe Samios and Lisa Visentin
February 20, 2022 — 7.43pm
Clive Palmer has spent more than $31 million since August on political attack advertising for his United Australia Party, dwarfing the outlay of the major parties and putting him on track to fulfil his promise to run the most expensive election campaign in the nation’s history.
The advertising blitz in the lead-up to an expected May election has been described as “obscene” and “dangerous for democracy” by former Appeal Court judge and chair of the Centre for Public Integrity, Anthony Whealy, QC.
Television ads urging viewers to back the UAP have been running in most capital cities for months, but Mr Palmer is also spending big in metro and national newspapers such as The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and in online publications.
Figures obtained from Nielsen Ad Intel, which tracks ad spending across metro TV, print, radio and digital, show Labor has spent just $266,494 on party ads since August and the Liberal Party $246,133.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/investments-to-avoid-in-2022-20220216-p59wtr
Investments to avoid in 2022
Rising rates make the “boring” profits of companies like Amcor, Ampol and Transurban look more attractive than tech companies promising “blue sky” cash flow in 20 years.
Mark Draper Contributor
Feb 22, 2022 – 5.00am
This investment environment feels a lot like 1999 just before the dotcom bubble burst, with a hint of 1994.
Investors would probably need to be over 40 to remember the fallen angels of 1999 when the dotcom bubble popped. Back then the new paradigm was that price to earnings ratios were irrelevant and it was price to revenue that mattered. Sound familiar?
One of the most high-profile busts in 1999 was One.Tel. At its peak, One.Tel had a market capitalisation of $5.3 billion in November 1999, making it one of Australia’s largest companies at the time. It reported a record operating loss in August 2000 of $291 million, before entering receivership in May 2001.
In 1994 the Australian 10-year bond rate rose from around 6.3 per cent in January to more than 10 per cent by the end of that year. Long-term interest rates are important, as valuations of shares and property are anchored to them – generally speaking, as rates rise, property and share valuations fall.
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A moment in which our world could all change
11:00PM February 21, 2022
Few things have been more telling than the reaction of key countries to the Russian army poised on Ukraine’s borders. Britain and the US have sent antitank and anti-aircraft missiles but no troops. Germany has been reluctant even to threaten sanctions should Russia invade. In shades of Munich, France has championed a peace deal based on changing the Ukrainian constitution to meet Russia’s demands. The only ones to emerge with much credit are Ukrainians, who’ve manned their defences and insisted on their right to conduct an independent foreign policy, including to join NATO and the EU.
But regardless of how this episode plays out, let’s be under no illusion. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the new tsar, a ruler for life, determined to restore greater Russia. To that end he has invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea, occupied the Donbas, killed without compunction opponents at home and abroad, and restored Russia as a military superpower despite an economy smaller than Italy’s.
Ukraine is but his present target because it persists in looking West, not East; and because the 1994 Anglo-American security assurance, in return for the surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons, failed to replicate the one-in, all-in provision of article five of the NATO charter. However the stand-off ends, we can be confident Putin’s campaign will continue, remorseless, relentless, by all means up to and including all-out war, until Ukraine becomes a Russian colony. Then his attention will turn to the Baltic States, then to Poland, then to the other former Soviet satellites, until Russia is again the overlord of eastern Europe.
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Time to look beyond US to Europe and Japan
With the case for S&P500 domination no longer clear-cut, macro factors favour European and Japanese equities.
Giselle Roux Contributor
Feb 22, 2022 – 5.00am
The S&P500 has dominated equity returns for 15 years. This unsurprising fact is a recognised derivative of the dominance of tech and related stocks, a fragment of which are in other developed equity market regions.
It would be a mistake to ring the bell on this pattern based on the performance in the past few weeks. Dominant stocks in the US such as Meta and Netflix have suffered by falling on the sword of excess expectations that they were impervious to competition.
There is, however, an overall sense that life will not be quite as generous to this cohort in the coming decade. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is hardly what most would have thought a good fit to a staid platform company, albeit a recognition of societal trends.
The European index (Stoxx 600) has been diminished as a laggard in IT, weak in restructuring businesses to release value, notable governance failures and reflective of past industries. Yet, there may be a window of happenstance that works for the European equity mix. Rising rates are associated with better returns for financials which remains the largest subsector in the index. The second largest is industrials. As the world focuses on supply chains and energy transitions, engineering companies play a bigger role.
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National security needs unity, not partisanship, in a world on the brink
The national interest demands a security debate based on vision, not viciousness and claims of disloyalty.
Rory Medcalf Contributor
Feb 22, 2022 – 5.46pm
Europe is on the brink of major war. Here in the Indo-Pacific, China’s coercion is part of a wider bid for dominance.
The authoritarian pairing of an aggressive Russia and a bullying China confirm a world in systemic struggle, with Australia’s values, interests and partners on the defensive.
We face layers of danger: violent extremism, terrorist plots, disinformation, foreign interference, crossborder crime, the fragility of supply chains and cyber-reliant infrastructure holding economies together.
Two years of pandemic have taken millions of lives and shaken billions more. And everywhere the climate crisis rolls on.
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How to choose the right financial adviser
By Brendan Tully
February 22, 2022 — 10.00pm
When it comes to choosing a good financial adviser, it is important to find someone that you trust, shares your investment ethos and who has experience investing for someone at your stage in life.
Whether you are nearing retirement or just starting your investing journey, asking these five questions will help you find the right adviser with whom you can build a good partnership.
Who is the adviser’s ideal client?
It is important to understand who their ideal client is, the market in which they operate and if that is for you. For example, if you are in pre-retirement, you want an adviser that has experience in this area as they will be more familiar with your needs.
Choosing someone who has experience with your life stage will also guide how they interact with you. For example, advisers dealing with younger clients are more likely to embrace video and other digital platforms.
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Putin’s move: what it means for Australia
11:00AM February 23, 2022
Those who think the Ukraine crisis is a distant conflict with limited relevance to Australia should think again.
Australia will face a daunting array of strategic, financial and security challenges if Russian leader Vladimir Putin proceeds with a full scale invasion, as looks increasingly likely.
Some of these may be immediate, such as tumbling world markets, soaring oil prices and a potential refugee crisis, but the larger and more dangerous challenges for Australia lie in the medium to long term.
A successful Russian invasion of Ukraine would gravely weaken the Biden administration, undermine NATO’s prestige and potentially embolden China. It will deliver a historic black-eye to the West and it would up-end the post-Cold war order which Australia has been such an integral part of.
While no-one is suggesting that US or NATO forces should militarily defend Ukraine, it will be a hugely unedifying and damaging spectacle to watch Russian forces take over the Ukraine as NATO and US forces sit idle in neighbouring countries.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/small-target-albo-needs-a-bigger-vision-20220222-p59yqz
Small target Albo needs a bigger vision
With his compelling personal story, Anthony Albanese could be the prime minister Australia needs. But there is no policy evidence of a Hawke-Keating style reform agenda.
Feb 23, 2022 – 6.22pm
Jacob Greber’s profile of Anthony Albanese in The Australian Financial Review Magazine this week does not get satisfactory answers to the key questions asked of Australia’s alternative prime minister.
Mr Albanese is unashamedly candid about his small-target strategy that consciously shuns the history of Labor governments arriving in office with sweeping “It’s Time”-style visions of the nation’s future. Instead, Labor is promising “safe change” to voters wearied by fires, floods and the pandemic.
This is to avoid Labor presenting the big targets that launched the scare campaigns that defeated Bill Shorten at the 2019 election, while seeking to make the 2022 election a referendum instead on Scott Morrison’s character and competence.
Just like the lack of substance in the character attacks on a so-called “Manchurian candidate” – a politicisation of national security that should be beneath Mr Morrison – the Australian people deserve an election campaign that is about more than the wedges and sledges thrown about by both sides of politics.
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Strain shows as PM seeks to make it clear who is in charge
Award-winning political commentator and author
February 24, 2022 — 5.00am
Previous Liberal leaders would not have dared ask the party’s federal executive to steamroll their home division so that they could install preferred candidates in key seats.
Yet, this was the situation reached last Thursday evening by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which has so infuriated senior Liberals in NSW they now privately threaten to “bring the show down” if there is intervention in the state branch, or if he attempts to impose his candidates without allowing members to vote in preselections, given his surrogates had purportedly stalled or stymied procedures to achieve their objectives.
Morrison’s political position is precarious enough without outright civil war in NSW, yet that is what is brewing in the state where he needs to win seats to win government. The strain, the frustration, showed in Morrison’s behaviour that night, according to those who later recounted events with a mixture of humour and dread.
In between yelling and thumping the table, they say, Morrison felt compelled to remind members of the executive who they were dealing with. “I am the Prime Minister,” he told them. As if they could possibly forget.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/europe-news/2022/02/24/ukraine-leader-plea-russia/
6:00am, Feb 24, 2022 Updated: 12:03pm, Feb 24
Alan Kohler: What the takeover bid for AGL is all about
opinion
Michael Cannon-Brookes has dug a pit in front of Scott Morrison, which the PM seems quite happy to step into.
Between them, AGL Energy and the Coalition have been among Australia’s biggest emitters of nonsense about climate change, and the biggest roadblocks to the energy transition.
To try to have it both ways and win the election, the Morrison government has made a cardboard cutout of a plan for net zero by 2050, but instead of celebrating the early closure of AGL’s coal-fired power stations offered by Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield Asset Management, the government is talking about preventing it.
And the Minister for Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor said he was “bitterly disappointed” about Origin’s decision to reduce emissions by closing the Eraring power station early.
With urban seats under siege from climate change independents, these may not be great career moves.
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Curb the phoney rhetorical war as a real conflict explodes
The plight of Ukraine should make domestic politicians stop to contemplate the messy realities of armed conflict.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Feb 25, 2022 – 4.17pm
It took less than 24 hours from the time Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine to the emergence of predictions that the country’s fall, and its rapid fall, was a fait accompli.
But – after weeks of theorising about Putin’s strategic objective: whether it was just about stopping Ukraine joining NATO or something more, about his military capability, and assessments of whether Ukraine’s capabilities had improved in the last decade – it was not just the speed of Russia’s attack but its widespread nature that came as a shock.
This was no assault confined to a couple of eastern regions but a comprehensive attack from all directions designed to wipe out any military resistance quickly and, presumably, overthrow the government.
There was talk of that within the first 24 hours of resistance. And there was more talk after that of resistance in western Ukraine that might make Putin’s occupation more costly or contested, particularly if it was supported by “the West”.
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As the free world shrinks, Australia dithers on a critical project: resilience
Political and international editor
February 26, 2022 — 5.30am
Australia’s government grandly announced on Thursday that it was prepared to open its strategic oil reserves as a buffer to any supply shock from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Which only sounds reassuring until you check the detail. The amount of oil in the national strategic reserve is 1.7 million barrels. This is about 1.5 days’ worth of Australia’s consumption. Not much of a reserve, not very strategic.
The other important detail is it’s not actually in Australia. The oil is held on the other side of the world, stored in the US strategic oil reserves on Australia’s behalf.
Believe it or not, even this sad attempt at a stockpile is a big improvement. Two years ago, Australia didn’t even have this token effort at emergency back-up.
“The events of 2020 have reminded us that we cannot be complacent,” Scott Morrison said as COVID contingencies disrupted all sorts of global supply chains. “We need a sovereign fuel supply to shield us from potential shocks in the future,” he said in 2020 as he allocated $211 million to start building fuel storage tanks in Australia, as yet unfinished.
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‘Dearer today, dearer tomorrow’: Gerry Harvey warns of 30pc price hikes
February 25, 2022 — 9.47am
Harvey Norman boss Gerry Harvey has warned prices on furniture and consumer electronics are rising by as much as 30 per cent across the board, as inflationary pressures ramp up at the country’s major retailers.
Mr Harvey, the retailer’s executive chairman, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald products sold at his stores were getting increasingly expensive due to the soaring costs of shipping and logistics - a trend he expects to continue.
“Shipping containers used to cost $2,000, now it’s $12,000 and the prices on your lounge go up by 10 per cent to 20 per cent,” he said.
“You name it, no matter what product you come in to buy today, it’s dearer than yesterday, and it will be dearer again tomorrow. Prices are going up by 5, 10, 30 per cent.”
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‘Shortages left, right and centre’: Kogan hit by supply chain woes
Updated February 25, 2022 — 1.05pmfirst published at 11.40am
The chief executive of online retailer Kogan has warned the current macroeconomic environment is shaping up to be incredibly challenging for businesses as the Ukraine crisis and continued supply chain disruptions weigh.
“We are operating in a very challenging environment with shortages left, right and centre, inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions, pallet shortages and various conflicts around the world,” Ruslan Kogan, the company’s chief executive told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
“It hasn’t been smooth sailing. We’ll just have to roll with the punches.”
Kogan is a major digital retailer of electronics, furniture and home appliances, areas that have been popular during the pandemic as locked-down customers shifted their shopping online.
However, on Friday, the company reported a downbeat set of financial results which shocked analysts, sending the company’s share price down 17 per cent to $4.50, its lowest price in the last year.
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COVID 19 Information
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Inside a long COVID clinic, a chronic condition is revealed
By Timna Jacks
February 27, 2022 — 5.00am
It was mid-2020, and Melbourne was locking down for a second time, when Giovanna Romano showed up at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, desperate.
One month after contracting COVID-19, the typically fit and healthy medical scientist and mother of two had lost the ability to walk.
The 36-year-old was using a wheelchair to get around due to extreme fatigue and a heaviness in her legs that rendered them powerless.
Bedridden for months, movement would often see her heart rate shoot to 150 beats a minute. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. She felt her skin vibrating.
“If we were living in the 17th century, I would have believed that my body was possessed,” Romano says. “I didn’t think I would live past it.”
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Climate Change.
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No entries in this section.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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Baby boomer aged-care crisis looms as vote changer
11:00PM February 25, 2022
On Tuesday it will be 12 months since the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety final report was handed down. The crisis is real, systemic and won’t go away when the pandemic dissipates. The sector was in crisis long before the pandemic struck.
Problems in aged care were always going to get worse as a growing number of baby boomers entered the system. They started hitting retirement age about a decade ago, which means now they are beginning to encounter the aged-care system also.
Developed country populations are ageing as modern medicine helps us live longer. While this presents policy challenges, it’s certainly better than the alternative.
The baby boomers are a generational bubble, with a spike in births in the aftermath of World War II. They have long been an important voting cohort because of their relative size compared with other generations. These twin particulars of ageing and baby boomer retirements are putting added strain on a sector already under immense pressure.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/02/21/alan-kohler-business-leaders-empowerment-women/
6:00am, Feb 21, 2022 Updated: 6:23pm, Feb 20
Alan Kohler: Business leaders must lead in the empowerment of women
All business leaders should conduct a workplace culture review, Alan Kohler writes. Photo: TND
The case of former Victorian judge Peter Vickery last week is a warning to the leaders of every organisation that they should either commission a report into their workplace culture like Rio Tinto did, or act as if they had and got the same, shocking result … because they probably would.
An independent inquiry appointed by the Victorian Supreme Court upheld complaints of sexual harassment against Vickery by two female associates, and on Thursday he issued a 900-word statement protesting his innocence and apologising at the same time.
He clearly had no idea what he had done, or is in denial about it.
“I am a kind, tolerant and fair-minded person, but have been painted in the Investigation otherwise,” he wrote. “I never for a second believed that anything I did may have hurt two of them.”
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High-priced pets, petrol and prams could deliver political pain
By Shane Wright
February 23, 2022 — 5.07pm
No amount of political spin can hide the financial reality being felt by Australians every day they rock up to the supermarket, pay an insurance bill or buy that must-have Kate Bush shirt on Etsy.
Prices are going up. And their wages aren’t keeping up with those higher prices.
Wednesday’s wage price index was another piece of official evidence backing up what people are feeling every day.
Wages have grown by 2.3 per cent over the past 12 months. Inflation is up by 3.5 per cent. The gap, 1.2 per cent, is estimated by the ACTU to be the equivalent of an $832 pay cut on the average wage.
While the Reserve Bank and some econocrats may wish to dwell on underlying inflation (which excludes one-off increases), people filling up their car with $2-a-litre petrol or facing a 20 per cent jump in their annual home and contents insurance bill have a closer grasp on reality.
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Health Issues.
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NIB profit soars as Australians turn to private health amid lengthy public wait times
February 21, 2022
Elective surgery bans and “code brown” redeployment of hospital staff are steering more people into private health care as they seek to dodge a pandemic-fuelled blowout in waiting times across the public sector, NIB says.
The Newcastle private health insurer’s half year net profit has surged 25 per cent to $81.4m, thanks to a 2.8 per cent lift in policyholders across its Australian business.
Meanwhile, revenue jumped 8.3 per cent to $1.4bn in the six months to December 31.
The shift was more pronounced in New Zealand, with NIB’s recording a 4.1 per cent lift in members across the Tasman, pushing its NZ private health insurance business revenue up 13.8 per cent.
Chief executive Mark Fitzgibbon said the pandemic had made people more health conscious, despite restrictions in accessing hospital and extras – such as dental and optical – care.
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Medibank says COVID-19 spurs young people to get cover
Ayesha de Kretser Senior Reporter
Feb 25, 2022 – 8.44am
Health insurer Medibank has reported a 2.7 per cent decline in interim net profit to $220.2 million after a strong performance in investment markets in the previous corresponding half-year, with underlying profit up 4.4 per cent adjusted for the market impact.
Chief executive David Koczkar said COVID-19 is changing the way Australians think about health, resulting in strong growth in the under 30 segment.
“As attitudes towards the value of private health insurance shift significantly, we’ve recently seen the strongest industry-wide growth in people under 30 with hospital cover in almost 7 years,” Mr Koczkar said.
Medibank’s health insurance business recorded a 10.3 per cent increase in operating profit to $280.9 million, with growth in policyholders and “a benign claims environment” helping drive the result.
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Medibank calls for review of elective surgery restrictions
By Emma Koehn
February 25, 2022 — 8.46am
Medibank boss David Koczkar says governments should minimise future COVID restrictions on elective surgery because they put pressure on patients and the health system.
The $8.7 billion health insurer saw revenues up 4 per cent for the six months to December to $3.4 billion, but net profits dropped 2.7 per cent to $226.4 million.
The fund told investors on Friday morning it had delayed its 2022 premium increases by an additional month so that they kick in at the start of October this year, a move that will mean customers see a ‘give back’ worth $163 million to help support them through the COVID period.
Medibank said its financial support to Australian policyholders reduced revenues by $136.6 million for the half, but this was largely offset by permanent claims savings that came about because of reduced services during COVID shutdowns.
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Medibank set to invest in third hospital to slash out-of-pocket costs
February 25, 2022
Medibank chief executive David Koczkar says the group — Australia’s biggest health insurer — is close to finalising an investment in a third short-stay hospital as it progresses its plan to slash out-of-pocket costs.
In a move that is set to inflame tensions between private hospital and doctor groups – who have criticised Medibank’s plan as a step towards US-style managed care in which health insurers have a greater say on treatment – Mr Koczkar flagged further hospital investments as he sets out to modernise Australia’s health system.
He said investing in short-stay hospitals was part of Medibank’s strategy to make private health more affordable by diverting money normally spent on lengthy and costly hospital stays into surgery fees.
“We’re close to being able to announce another investment. But we don‘t have any more details to share today,” Mr Koczkar said.
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International Issues.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-ukraine-crisis-plays-out-in-putins-head-l79vms55j
How the Ukraine crisis plays out in Putin’s head
Russia’s leader has long been determined to rebuild the old empire and the West is so weak that now is the time to strike
Monday February 14 2022, 4.00pm GMT, The Times
Since I wrote last month about my encounters with Vladimir Putin, many people have asked me for reassurance about what he will do: that surely, he is rational, that he understands the cost — in Russian lives and severe sanctions — of starting a war. Yes, he is rational. But this is what he may be thinking:
No one should be surprised. I wrote everything down in July last year for the whole world to read. Why do they think I wrote a 5,000-word essay titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians — that I am becoming an academic or training in journalism? It is what I think about every waking hour, and I spelt it out: “Russians and Ukrainians are one people — a single whole.” The situation in Ukraine today, I argued “involves a forced change of identity” comparable to “the use of weapons of mass destruction against us”.
Historians might dispute my view that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, back in the 10th century. But these people can only write about history; I am about to make history. The Bolsheviks robbed Russia when they handed Crimea to Ukraine. I have already corrected that. Now I have the chance to complete the task of forging one people.
Why now? I could not do it earlier. I need the West in retreat, and China watching my back. Both have now obliged. And I cannot leave it until later. I am nearly 70, and I am not embarking on this at 80. Any successor — although I’m not choosing one for a long time — will lack my ability to outmanoeuvre the West.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-the-west-can-defeat-the-xi-putin-axis-9jcs7kccs
How the West can defeat the Xi-Putin axis
In this deadly battle of democracies versus autocracies, the West must collaborate on tech and spend more on defence
James Forsyth
Thursday February 17 2022, 5.00pm GMT, The Times
A new phase of history has begun. The liberal world order faces its greatest challenge since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989: not just with Russia’s actions on the border with Ukraine but China’s manoeuvrings in Asia. The burgeoning friendship between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping might be based on the idea that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But it is no less of a threat for that.
Moscow and Beijing are united by a desire to end the US-led world order. Both want their spheres of influence acknowledged and respected. Both fear the spread of democracy and want to make the world safe for autocratic regimes.
One immediate benefit for Russia and China of their closer links is that they can force the US to split its attention between two theatres. Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan to better focus on competition with China but now finds himself warning Americans about the economic consequences of a land war in Europe. US troops are heading to Nato’s eastern flank, the Pentagon is working out how to resupply Ukraine over land in the event of a conflict, and the State Department and the White House are involved in frantic diplomacy. It’s a win for Russia, which craves attention, and a win for China, which doesn’t. Tellingly, the Russian troop build-up has been made possible in part by the fact that, according to experts, there are fewer forces on Russia’s border with China and Mongolia than at any point in the past 100 years.
Their ability to force their common enemy to operate on two fronts will incline Moscow and Beijing to co-ordinate their actions more. One obvious worry is what happens if Russia pressures Ukraine at the same time as China moves on Taiwan? Even Washington does not have the diplomatic and military bandwidth to respond to both crises simultaneously. Dividing America’s attention and resources is another box ticked for the fledgling Putin-Xi alliance.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/will-the-bells-toll-for-ukraine-20220220-p59y09
Will the bells toll for Ukraine?
Misha Zelinsky
Feb 20, 2022 – 3.23pm
Kyiv, Ukraine | Watching teenage skateboarders, decked in New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers hats, performing kick flips in Mikhailivska Square as European badged cars zoom by — you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Sydney’s Martin Place.
It’s only when you look up at the majestic beauty of St Michael’s Cathedral and its ornate, golden domes that reality strikes. Walk a little closer to its towering walls to see a tribute to the fallen soldiers of the Ukraine-Russia war and you will know exactly where you are.
Is Ukraine a part of Putin’s ancient tsarist Russia or is it a vibrant European democracy? This question is once again pulling apart an ancient civilisation’s young democracy. The history of St Michael’s – and whose history that is – is central to understanding the struggle.
In Kyiv, the renewed shelling in eastern Donbas and the reports of Russian evacuations as a pretext for war feel a world away. But they cannot be ignored. Though stoically determined, Ukrainians intimately understand the pressure they’re under.
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‘Mass evacuation’ story brewed by Russian-backed leaders falls apart
By Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina
February 20, 2022 — 3.57pm
Moscow: The manufactured war scare mounted by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine – using potentially 700,000 people as props – unravelled quickly.
Its centrepiece was a staged mass evacuation of women, children and elderly residents of breakaway regions, touching off long lines at ATMs and gas stations on Friday (Ukraine time). Russian state TV went all out on the fake war, airing film of buses leaving, arrests of alleged spies and grainy video of “saboteurs,” playing off President Vladimir Putin’s claim on Tuesday that “genocide” was unfolding.
So far, however, the false-flag effort appeared neither particularly sophisticated – nor very convincing. Residents of the separatist republics were as sceptical as anyone about the claims that Ukrainian forces were ready to attack and try to reclaim the territory in the eight-year war with Russian-backed separatist fighters.
“Everything is fine,” said one woman from the Donetsk separatist region, which calls itself the Donetsk People’s Republic, who crossed via a checkpoint into Russia on Saturday. “There were not many people at the checkpoint,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid possible repercussions from separatist officials.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-issues-go-order-for-war-in-ukraine-9rkfthm6h
Putin ‘issues go-order’ for war in Ukraine
Tim Shipman, Chief Political Commentator | Peter Conradi, Europe Editor | Louise Callaghan, Kyiv
Saturday February 19 2022, 10.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
ARKADY BUDNITSKY/EPA
Boris Johnson predicted a “generation of bloodshed and misery” today as intelligence chiefs warned ministers that President Putin’s plan to seize control of Ukraine had already begun.
The stark assessment came as Russia shelled Ukrainian troops, killing at least two, and test-fired nuclear-capable missiles, an escalation of hostilities.
Last night four senior figures in government confirmed they expected a multi-pronged Russian assault to begin any day, possibly culminating in a “lightning war” against the capital, Kyiv. One said: “Our intelligence is consistent with the Americans’. Putin has a plan and it is under way.”
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, told a security conference in Munich to get ready for war. “This is the most dangerous moment for European security since the 1940s,” she said. “We need to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Russia has shown they aren’t serious about diplomacy.”
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‘Real possibility of war’: US claims Russia has ordered final preparations for invasion
By Polina Devitt and Polina Nikolskaya
Updated February 21, 2022 — 12.13pmfirst published at 3.30am
Talking points
· US says intelligence shows Russian front-line commanders have been given orders to begin final preparations for an attack.
· Satellite pictures show multiple new field deployments of armoured equipment and troops in Russia near the border with Ukraine.
· The US embassy in Moscow warns Americans of threats of attacks against shopping centres, railway and metro stations, and other public gathering places in major urban areas.
· The Belarusian government extends military drills with Russia near Ukraine’s northern border.
· Joe Biden met with the National Security Council on Sunday (Monday AEDT) to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
Moscow: After days of escalating tensions over an expected Russian invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed in principle to hold a summit on the crisis, the office of French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.
The summit will only occur if Russia does not invade Ukraine.
The prospect of a summit - if confirmed by the US and Russia - is the first major break in the increasing tensions over Ukraine in weeks.
Recently signs have pointed to an imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russia on Monday AEDT, escalating the worst security crisis for Europe since the end of World War II.
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Why the US can’t let Russia create a sphere of influence
American foreign policy since the 19th century has been geared to avoiding a world sliced and diced into blocks of great power control.
Hal Brands
Feb 21, 2022 – 1.22pm
The current showdown between Russia and the West is deeply perplexing to many critics of American foreign policy.
Why, they ask, doesn’t the United States simply accede to some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands – acknowledge that Ukraine will never join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and accept a Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union?
The answer is more deeply rooted in American history than many observers might realise. For better or worse, US policy has long been characterised by opposition to hostile spheres of influence. That project reached triumphant heights during the post-Cold War era, but is being tested severely today.
For much of recorded history, spheres of influence have been a normal part of global affairs. Great powers typically try to carve out privileged domains as a way of controlling events near their borders and keeping threats at bay.
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Beware cronies whispering war into Putin’s ear
Mark Galeotti
Feb 21, 2022 – 10.46am
London | Common sense would suggest that Vladimir Putin is carrying out one of the most intricate and expansive bluffs ever. However, as Western leaders warn of imminent escalation, the alarming possibility is that what looks disastrously self-destructive to outsiders may seem logical, even necessary, to him.
If Moscow launches the full-scale invasion that the West claims is imminent, it is hard to understand the logic. The capacity of the Russian military to shatter Ukraine’s is not in doubt, but this would not be without casualties. More to the point, that would be the easy part. Taking Ukraine’s cities and holding and controlling territory would lock Moscow into a vicious, open-ended counterinsurgency against a population that has been prepared for resistance. The West will support and arm them - and Ukraine’s long western borders are impossible to seal.
The inevitable economic sanctions would seriously damage the Russian economy. The burden would fall on a population unenthused by a war against a people they consider cousins. The toll of dead and wounded would be impossible to conceal, and contribute to already high levels of disenchantment.
Of course, Mr Putin still has control of the security apparatus - even though there are signs of quiet dissatisfaction there, too - and it is unlikely that he would be toppled by public unrest or elite conspiracy. However, the last vestiges of constitutionalism would have to be jettisoned, and this would increasingly become an ugly, clumsy, old-fashioned police state, with a stagnant economy, disillusioned population, and nowhere to go but down - much like the old Soviet Union.
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Putin moves troops into breakaway Ukraine regions
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Feb 22, 2022 – 9.34am, first published at 2.11am
Paris | Russia has begun moving troops into the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, after President Vladimir Putin backed the independence of its two breakaway provinces, described it as “Russian land” and sought to frame Ukraine as the aggressor.
Mr Putin ordered the Russian military to enter the Luhansk and Donetsk regions for “peacekeeping functions” on Monday night (Tuesday AEDT), after signing a decree recognising their independence.
His move tears up the 2015 Minsk accords that Russia negotiated with Ukraine, Germany and France, which recognise Ukrainian sovereignty over the Donbas territories. A violent conflict, encouraged by Moscow, has rumbled there for seven years.
Russian president Vladimir Putinto make a formal announcement on pro-Kremlin regions of Ukraine.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/how-putin-took-europe-to-the-brink-of-war-20220222-p59yj4
How Putin took Europe to the brink of war
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Feb 22, 2022 – 9.23am
Angela Merkel once described Vladimir Putin as a leader using 19th-century methods in the 21st century. What the former German chancellor meant was that Russia’s leader is a man of war and nationalism in an era supposedly defined by laws and globalisation.
Ms Merkel was talking after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Now the US and British governments are warning that Mr Putin is poised to start “the biggest war in Europe since 1945” by launching a much more extensive invasion of Ukraine, involving a direct assault on its capital, Kyiv.
This weekend, much of the western security and political elite was gathered in Germany for the Munich Security Conference. Alongside the tension and foreboding, one of the dominant emotions on display was simple incredulity.
Many diplomats and politicians, predominantly Europeans, still refused to believe the intelligence-based briefings pouring out of the Anglosphere. The sceptics’ view was broadly that fighting would remain confined to eastern Ukraine. They speculate that Mr Putin’s goal is to build political, economic and psychological pressure to the point where the Ukrainian government collapses: or the west makes massive diplomatic concessions.
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America will not defend Ukraine, for fear of China
Political and international editor
February 22, 2022 — 5.00am
The US President, Joe Biden, has made it clear. If Russia launches a new military attack on Ukraine, America will not defend it.
Why not? Why will the US not defend a newish democracy of some 40 million people on the edge of Europe against an aggressive dictator and traditional US rival?
There’s the obvious political reason. America is war-weary. After two decades of wasting blood and treasure on a faked war against Iraq and a failed war in Afghanistan, Americans are disillusioned and exhausted.
Fifty-five per cent of Americans oppose the idea of sending US troops to stop Russia, according to a YouGov poll last week. Only 13 per cent of Americans agree that it’d be a good idea.
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https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/markets-will-learn-to-love-new-cold-war-20220221-p59yam.html
Markets will learn to love new Cold War
By Matthew Lynn
February 22, 2022 — 8.30am
Equities are tumbling. Bond markets are jittery. And investors are selling off their assets as they grow increasingly nervous about the rising level of geopolitical chaos. Russia and Ukraine remain in a tense stand-off. And a new Cold War is very clearly emerging between Russia, its far larger ally China, and the West.
But hold on. Sure, that might be making the markets nervous right now. And yet, while no one wants a conflict, whether hot or cold, the truth is that they can be perfectly OK for the economy, and often quite good. Rearmament kickstarts a wave of spending, creates jobs, and often spurs new technologies.
Investment increases as supply chains have to be reconfigured. And over the medium term, there is always the prospect of victory, leading to the reconstruction of the Russian economy. Investors will be anxious this week, and no doubt next as well. But very soon they will have figured out that actually a new Cold War will be just fine for the global economy - and perhaps even to be celebrated.
It remains to be seen what happens on the Ukrainian border. We will find out over the next couple of weeks whether the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, risks a full-scale invasion, or simply wants to threaten and bully his smaller neighbour into submission. And yet whether the tanks start to roll across the frozen steppes or not, it is now surely clear that Russia, and far more importantly China, will be confronting the US and Europe for a decade or more to come. A new Cold War has started.
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Russia kills 5 ‘Ukrainian saboteurs’ as Vladimir Putin recognises rebel regions
In an alarming escalation, Moscow has ordered troops to two key breakaway Ukrainian territories, sparking fears war is imminent.
February 22, 2022 - 9:45AM
Tensions in Europe have skyrocketed after Russian President Vladimir Putin made a provocative, unexpected move insiders believe has escalated the threat of all-out war.
Mr Putin has officially acknowledged two pro-Russian, rebel Ukrainian territories, recognising them as independent regions - and immediately sending in troops for “peacekeeping".
It comes as Russia claimed that five Ukrainian “saboteurs” have been killed while attempting to breach the border, and after US President Joe Biden and Mr Putin yesterday agreed in principle to participate in a summit over the Ukraine crisis – on the proviso Russia does not invade the nation.
However, today’s bombshell announcement could threaten that historic summit.
As the crisis rages on, US intelligence has this week revealed that Mr Putin has given the order for his troops to invade Ukraine, with the Russian army now poised to strike.
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The four men who changed our world
President Nixon’s famous meeting with Chairman Mao was a curious affair that decided nothing – but it still changed the course of world history.
By Alan Howe
February 18, 2022
The three leaders who gathered that day were among the most influential on the planet. But their time was running out, their years of power slipping beyond the twilight. At the Great Hall of the People, on the western edge of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, on February 21, 1972, sat US president Richard Nixon, Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Mao’s premier since 1949.
With them was Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. The seventh person to bear that title – and to become the most dominant – had worked towards this gathering for years.
Nixon had raised the relationship with China with Kissinger on his first day in the White House in January 1969. The president had written about it in The Economist and Foreign Affairs magazines in the lead-up to his November 1968 election victory: the US could not ignore a quarter of the world’s population even if it remained purposely in angry isolation.
Nixon hated communists. There were too many of them. Those in the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles aimed at American cities. Not as many as Nixon’s America had aimed at them, but the threat was real. And the communists were pulling strings in a costly proxy war between communism and the West over Vietnam.
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Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign
This was a supreme leader marshalling his minions for a decision that will change the security architecture in Europe and may well lead to horrific war
Tue 22 Feb 2022 07.30 AEDT
Last modified on Tue 22 Feb 2022 11.06 AEDT
Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion.
He was met with silence.
A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right to exist.
Putin’s double bill, which was immediately followed by the signing of an agreement on Russian recognition of the two proxy states in east Ukraine as independent entities, is likely to go down in history as one of the major turning points in his 22-years-and-counting rule over Russia.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/where-will-putin-draw-the-line-20220222-p59yjr
Where will Putin draw the line?
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Feb 22, 2022 – 2.18pm, first published at 11.31am
Paris | As Russian tanks begin rolling into the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine by cover of night, a deeper murkiness prevails. It’s unclear if we are witnessing a classic Putin ploy, or only a precursor to something new, darker and more dangerous.
If this is a normal page in the playbook of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his primary aim would be to create new facts on the ground, on a slice of Russian-speaking territory inside a former Soviet satellite.
In that case, the tanks might stop at the current line of control. This would leave some of the territory claimed by the Luhansk and Donetsk separatists still under Ukrainian auspices.
But if he tries to annex those Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas, Kyiv will have to respond. And so war begins, potentially ending in a full-scale Russian invasion.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/modern-ukraine-was-created-entirely-by-russia-20220222-p59ylc
‘Modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia’
Feb 22, 2022 – 12.31pm
On Monday night (Tuesday AEDT) Russia began moving troops into the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin backed the independence of the provinces in a televised address late on Monday that lasted nearly an hour. Here are some extracts from his speech:
On recognition of pro-Russian separatists:
“I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago – to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.”
On Ukraine and NATO:
“If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”
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What’s at stake for the global economy if Russia invades Ukraine
Patricia Cohen and Jack Ewing
Feb 22, 2022 – 1.03pm
New York | After getting battered by the pandemic, supply chain chokeholds and leaps in prices, the global economy is poised to be sent on yet another unpredictable course by an armed clash on Europe’s border.
The lead-up to a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine has already taken a toll. The promise of punishing sanctions in return by US President Joe Biden and the potential for Russian retaliation has pushed down stock returns and driven up gas prices.
An outright attack by Russian troops could cause dizzying spikes in energy and food prices, fuel inflation fears and spook investors, a combination that threatens investment and growth in economies around the world.
However harsh the effects, the immediate impact will be nowhere near as devastating as the sudden economic shutdowns first caused by the coronavirus in 2020.
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Australia’s China relationship enters dangerous new territory
The latest incident involving a laser used against an Australian spy plane has become a politically charged focal point for growing hostility between Canberra and Beijing.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Feb 22, 2022 – 5.58pm
Tokyo | China’s use of military-grade lasers to intimidate its rivals is not new.
Australian navy helicopter pilots were forced to land as a precaution after being targeted by lasers during an exercise in the South China Sea in 2019. Witnesses said that the lasers had been pointed from fishing vessels believed to be under China’s control.
In February 2020, the US Navy said a Chinese warship fired a military grade laser at a P-8 surveillance aircraft while it was flying over the Pacific Ocean. Even China’s Global Times newspaper this week noted that the United States had claimed China had “lasered” American military planes three times from 2018 to 2019.
Similar incidents have also been reported by Japan, although it rarely raises them publicly.
The difference between those incidents and the encounter between a Chinese warship and a Royal Australian Air Force surveillance aircraft in the Arafura Sea last week is that the latter has become the latest lightning rod for Sino-Australian hostilities.
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Putin lays claim to swathe of Ukrainian territory
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Feb 23, 2022 – 5.43am, first published at 1.55am
Paris | Russian President Vladimir Putin has laid a claim to a swathe of Ukraine-controlled territory in the country’s eastern Donbas region, pushing the crisis closer to the brink of war despite Europe’s hefty sanctions package.
Mr Putin told reporters on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) that Russia’s aim was to ensure the two Russian-speaking breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, gained control of all the land they were claiming.
The parliament had earlier on Tuesday given Mr Putin the power to deploy the military outside Russian territory. That followed a previous vote backing his recognition of the independence claims of separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Mr Putin’s latest remarks suggests he is ready to use his newly granted powers and send troops beyond the proxy-run areas into Ukraine-controlled territory - an act of war - although he said he might not do so “right now”.
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‘Will they help us?’: Fear and confusion in Kyiv
Misha Zelinsky Special correspondent
Updated Feb 23, 2022 – 9.55am, first published at 5.00am
Kyiv | In a restaurant in the Ukraine capital’s trendy Golden Gate neighbourhood, young people were hunched over their phones, watching Vladimir Putin deliver his fiery speech.
Many Ukrainians have patiently ignored the Russian president for months, even as the United States and its allies have warned of a possible Russian invasion. They are well aware of Mr Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea from the country in 2014 and backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region.
But now the strongman had their attention. Mr Putin, whose speech on Monday night (Tuesday AEDT) was packed with grievances against the West, said eastern Ukraine was ancient Russian land. He declared the two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east independent, and was deploying Russian troops.
“Have you seen this?” “What does this mean?” customers asked each other in the restaurant. There was confusion and mild panic, although no talk of rash action. After all, what could be done?
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-first-blood-of-great-power-politics-20220221-p59yea
The first blood of ‘great power’ politics
Political theorists have talked of the return of great power realpolitik for some time. Now the Russian President has gone to the brink, and maybe beyond.
Feb 22, 2022 – 6.27pm
The democratic world has been struggling to believe Vladimir Putin and his entourage would really heap blood and misery on Ukraine, and Russia’s own people, for a geopolitical fantasy. Yet now the Russian President has gone to the brink, and maybe beyond.
Mr Putin has sent troops to the Russian-backed rebel republics within two Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, claiming he is preventing a Ukrainian attack on them.
The next flashpoint will come when Russian troops reach the Ukrainian front lines across the two divided regions. There he might stop and demand more concessions from Kyiv, or press on to seize more of the country.
His action has ended the Minsk accord process, led by France and Germany, which might have delivered him a negotiated dismemberment of eastern Ukraine in Russia’s favour. Now Ukraine risks dismemberment, or worse, by force of arms.
Political theorists have talked of the return of great-power realpolitik for some time. This is the first bloody reality of it.
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Putin shatters any last pretence that ‘rules-based order’ will protect us
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
February 22, 2022 — 7.00pm
Borders don’t matter any more. Russia’s President says that Ukraine is part of Russia’s “spiritual space”. So it’s OK to send troops and tanks across the border to seize territory of a neighbouring country.
That is precisely what Vladimir Putin is now doing. It’s in brazen violation of the UN Charter, which forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”, as the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres immediately pointed out.
Oddly, the charter makes no reference to the supernatural right of nations to make claims on each other according to their imagined “spiritual spaces”. Whatever. No one is going to enforce the charter in any case.
Western governments, including Australia’s, are huffing and puffing and imposing sanctions on Russia. But no one is stopping it. Not the US. Not NATO. Certainly not the UN Security Council, over which Russia wields a veto as one of its five permanent members.
You hear politicians banging on about the “rules-based order”. There is no “rules-based order”. It’s dead.
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This is Putin’s war, but the US and NATO are far from blameless
By Thomas L. Friedman
February 22, 2022 — 4.56pm
When a major conflict like Ukraine breaks out, journalists always ask themselves: “Where should I station myself?” Kyiv? Moscow? Munich? Washington? In this case, my answer is none of these. The only place to be for understanding this war is inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s head. Putin is the most powerful, unchecked Russian leader since Stalin, and the timing of this war is a product of his ambitions, strategies and grievances.
But, with all of that said, America is not entirely innocent of fuelling his fires.
How so? Putin views Ukraine’s ambition to leave his sphere of influence as both a strategic loss and a personal and national humiliation. In his speech on Monday, Putin literally said Ukraine has no claim to independence, but is instead an integral part of Russia — its people are “connected with us by blood, family ties”. Which is why Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine’s freely elected government feels like the geopolitical equivalent of an honour killing.
Putin is basically saying to Ukrainians (more of whom want to join the European Union than NATO): “You fell in love with the wrong guy. You will not run off with either NATO or the EU. And if I have to club your government to death and drag you back home, I will.”
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Test of the West: what Biden must do now
February 23, 2022 — 10.38am
Washington: Having lost so much capital over America’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden’s response to Russia’s aggression has always been a precarious balancing act, designed to avert war in Europe and dodge the foreign policy mistakes that dogged his first year in office.
Today’s sanctions were another attempt to thread the needle. Hours after Russian troops moved into Ukraine’s two breakaway regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, the US President announced “the first tranche” of measures to counter what he branded as Putin’s “flagrant violation of international law and “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine”.
Boiled down, the US will impose “full blocking” on two large Russian financial institutions – including the country’s military bank. Russia’s government has also been cut off from Western finance, meaning it can no longer raise money from the West or trade its new debt on US or European markets.
The most significant response against Russia today came from Germany, which announced that it would halt certification of Nord Stream 2 – a gas pipeline that the US has often argued would increase Europe’s reliance on Russian energy supplies. Biden promised two weeks ago that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” if Russia sent troops into Ukraine. Today, however, it was not made clear if or how the President could stop the project altogether.
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How the US and Europe lost the post-Cold War
The Wall Street Journal
3:57PM February 22, 2022
In the 1970s, not much more than a quarter-century after the conflict in which Japan and Germany had been comprehensively vanquished, their economic performance — the growth in their productivity, output and living standards — eclipsed that of the principal victors in that war.
As the US and British economies slogged through a decade of stagflation, Americans and Brits rushed to buy Japanese and German cars, televisions, washing machines, semiconductors and billions of yen and marks of exports that were far superior to our own notoriously inefficient and malfunctioning machines, heightening the sense that global power had shifted decisively toward these emerging economic engines.
One activity in which the Anglo-Saxons will always prevail is self-deprecation, and a joke at the time typically captured the mood: “World War II is over, and Japan and Germany have won it.”
A half-century later, and not much more than a quarter-century after the Western powers comprehensively triumphed over another totalitarian ideology, it’s deja vu all over again. Today, an updated version of the joke might go: “The Cold War is over and Russia and China won it.”
As victory over the Axis powers was followed in short order by a renewed sense of crisis in the West, so it is now. Post-communist Russia and still-communist China seem to be inheriting the mantle of global leadership. Now as then, the apparent success of recently vanquished foes is fuelling grave doubts about the viability and value of our own system, and leading to a crackup in Western politics.
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The Wall Street Journal
Vladimir Putin’s endgame on Ukraine: unravel the post-cold war agreements that humiliated Russia
By Stephen Fidler
Dow Jones
5:17PM February 22, 2022
The world’s attention is on eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces circle. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions extend far beyond. He wants to renegotiate the end of the Cold War.
Whatever follows Russia’s large-scale military manoeuvres, and the announcement Monday of plans to recognise the independence of two breakaway Ukrainian regions and send troops there, Mr. Putin has made clear he wants to redraw the post-Cold War security map of Europe.
Mr. Putin spelled out a list of grievances Monday over the treatment of Russia by the U.S. and Europe in the past three decades. “Russia has every right to take retaliatory measures to ensure its own security,” he said. “This is exactly what we will do.” The hour-long speech, and the demands he has made of the U.S. in the prelude to the crisis, reveal how Mr. Putin’s vision for the future seeks in many ways to re-create the past.
The Russian leader is trying to stop further enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, whose expansion he sees as encroaching on Russia’s security and part of the West’s deception and broken promises. He wants NATO to scale back its military reach to the 1990s, before it expanded east of Germany. The demands would reverse many of the extraordinary changes in Europe that took place in that decade.
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Putin’s aim is to prove the West cannot win
The Times
February 23, 2022
The Ukrainian crisis has become an exercise in western hopelessness. We stood by when the Warsaw Pact put down the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, and the West was so grateful that Moscow didn’t send its heavy metal into Poland in 1981 that it did little more than shrug as a military junta jailed thousands of Solidarity activists.
Again we’re reaching for the smelling salts. There was a naive hope that Vladimir Putin’s troop build-up, supposedly training exercises along Ukraine’s long borders, was harmless. That Putin was a late convert to the teachings of the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu: “Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”
But day by day his mask slips a little more. That was clear when the military blood banks were erected for the troops, now at more than 200,000, most of them in full battle order, and clearer still at Monday’s cringeworthy spectacle of Putin pretending to seek advice from his security council.
The plainly pre-scripted session was supposed not only to legitimise Russian recognition of the enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine but to accept Moscow’s sacred duty of protecting the inhabitants. Putin’s televised comments made plain that he doesn’t accept Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign state and accepts diplomacy only if it wins him territory.
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Why Putin is outfoxing the West
6:49AM February 23, 2022
As Western leaders struggle to respond to Vladimir Putin’s unexpectedly dramatic challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe, the record so far is mixed. The West has assembled something approaching a united stance on the limits of the concessions it is prepared to make and on the nature of the sanctions it is willing to impose should Mr. Putin choose war. Neither hyperactive grandstanding in Paris nor phlegmatic passivity from Berlin has prevented the emergence of a common Western position. This is an accomplishment for which the Biden administration deserves credit.
Yet this is a defensive accomplishment, not a decisive one. As Mr Putin demonstrated in his speech Monday, the Russian president is still in the driver’s seat, and it is his decisions, not ours, that will shape the next stage of the confrontation. Russia, a power that Western leaders mocked and derided for decades (“a gas station masquerading as a country,” as Sen. John McCain once put it), has seized the diplomatic and military initiative in Europe, and the West is, so far, powerless to do anything about it. We wring our hands, offer Mr. Putin off-ramps, and hope that our carefully hedged descriptions of the sanctions we are prepared to impose will change his mind.
At best, we’ve improvised a quick and dirty response to a strategic surprise, but we are very far from having a serious Russia policy and it is all too likely at this point that Mr Putin will continue to outmanoeuvre his Western rivals and produce new surprises from his magician’s hat.
The West has two problems in countering Mr. Putin. The first is a problem of will. The West does not want a confrontation with Russia and in any crisis the goal remains to calm things down. That basic approach not only makes appeasement an attractive option whenever difficulties appear; it prevents us from thinking proactively. When Russia stops bothering us, we stop thinking about Russia.
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Warning shot: Russian sanctions are weak on purpose
Senior business columnist
February 23, 2022 — 1.30pm
If the sanctions unveiled by the US and its allies in response to Russia’s decision to send troops into eastern Ukraine are supposed to deter Vladimir Putin from escalating the hostilities with Ukraine by inflicting pain, they are going to be ineffective.
That is by design. They are a warning shot, a signal in the direction the US and Europe might take if Russia invades Ukraine.
Had the US and Europe deployed the full range of formidable sanctions available to them, their threat would cease to be a deterrent and, with nothing more for Russia to lose, would likely act as incitement for an escalation of hostilities.
The sanctions announced so far will have very little effect, partly because they are quite limited but also because they overlap existing sanctions, some of which date back to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.
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Striking back: Putin has his own card to play after being hit by sanctions
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
February 23, 2022 — 11.54am
The wishful thinking has begun. Core Europe is already persuading itself that Vladimir Putin will be sated with Donetsk and Luhansk, allowing European companies to keep selling Gucci bags and BMWs to Russia in exchange for commodities — after a stern lecture on international law, of course.
The US, UK, and Poland have reached the opposite conclusion, strongly suspecting that the military occupation of the Donbas is the springboard for a full invasion of Ukraine.
Bear in mind what Putin has lost by this action: he has killed the Minsk accord and therefore ended the possibility of controlling Kyiv’s foreign and security policy through the veto power of these two puppet regions.
If he left it there, he would emerge from this crisis in a weaker strategic position.
This stretches credulity, since two-thirds of the Russian army is coiled for a strike on the border, with little to stop them except Ukraine’s valiant but ill-armed reservists.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/invasion-likely-as-us-allies-impose-sanctions-20220223-p59z1y
Invasion likely as US, allies impose sanctions
Andrew Tillett, Matthew Cranston, Hans van Leeuwen and Tony Boyd
Feb 23, 2022 – 7.00pm
Russian forces have advanced in what the United States, Australia and other allies are now officially describing as an invasion of Ukraine, after western nations imposed sanctions targeting Russian officials, oligarchs, banks and gas revenue, against a seemingly inevitable march to a full-scale war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been emboldened and issued a fresh list of demands, including the de-militarisation of Ukraine, after the Russian parliament rubber-stamped his deployment of so-called peacekeepers into breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine.
The US and Canada responded to Russia’s mounting aggression by moving hundreds of troops, fighter jets and attack helicopters to the Baltic states to shore up NATO members’ eastern flank. US President Joe Biden promised further sanctions if Russia continued its push into Ukrainian controlled territory.
“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of the Ukraine,” Mr Biden said.
Announcing Australia’s sanctions against Russian “thugs and bullies”, Prime Minister Scott Morrison feared the worst.
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Reality check on sanctions: they can hurt Putin but the West must be willing to inflict enough pain
Contributor
February 24, 2022 — 5.30am
Sanctions only stand a chance of halting Russian aggression in Ukraine if they are harsh enough and imposed by the right countries, and if Russia cannot “sanctions-proof” its economy. Even then, everything depends on whether President Vladimir Putin responds rationally.
Sanctions can be one of the most powerful tools short of war for changing a country’s behaviour, but their effectiveness depends on three main factors. The first is how vulnerable the Russian economy is to sanctions. Limited sanctions were imposed after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, including restrictions on loans and technology, and on the assets and travel of individuals. Those sanctions helped to slow the growth of the Russian economy by up to 3 per cent, or $US50 billion, per year, leaving annual growth at a paltry 0.3 per cent.
But Russia still holds Crimea. It continued supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine, and now menaces the whole country.
Since 2014, Russia has sought to sanctions-proof its economy. It amassed huge currency reserves, cut spending and debt, reduced its exposure to the US dollar, diversified exports away from the West, pursued self-sufficiency in more products, and has moved closer to China. Oligarchs affected by sanctions were compensated by Putin with new opportunities at home.
While all of this does not immunise Russia from sanctions, it means they must become much harsher to seriously damage Russia. The second factor then is whether other countries are willing to impose tough enough sanctions.
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Russia may be paranoid but we are complacent
The world has been focused on the impressive Russian troop build-up on the borders of Ukraine, with up to 190,000 well-equipped combat-ready personnel on standby to cross the border into the non-rebel-held areas of Ukraine.
When it comes to military capability, Russia punches well above its weight while Australia clearly doesn’t.
To compare the two countries from monetary, population and geography perspectives:
Russia has a gross domestic product of $US1.5 trillion ($2 trillion) and a population of 146 million. Australia has a GDP of $US1.3 trillion and a population of 26 million.
Russia devotes 4.3 per cent of its GDP to defence. Australia devotes 2.1 per cent. The defence budget of Russia is estimated to be about $US62bn while Australia’s is about $US32bn. The land area of Russia is 17.13 million square kilometres while the land area of Australia is 7.69 million square kilometres.
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First day of battle offers pointers to what could happen next
Kyiv is clearly in Putin’s sights, the south is giving way, and he should prevail in Donbas. But can he and his prospective puppet regime pacify the whole country?
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Feb 25, 2022 – 7.13am
Paris | It’s said you should never take Vladimir Putin’s utterances at face value. But on the first day of his invasion of Ukraine, he seems to have been as good as his word.
As the air strikes began and the tanks moved in, Putin’s televised declaration of war described his two aims as “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification”.
Demilitarisation presumably means destroying Ukraine’s military capability and threat potential. De-Nazification means purging the government of West-leaning liberals and setting up a puppet regime in their place.
So far, his military manoeuvres look designed to do exactly that. The air strikes took out 70 to 80 military assets, reportedly including command centres, radar stations, airfields and anti-aircraft defences. Demilitarisation.
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Johnson wants Russia kicked off SWIFT. Germany, US said no
George Parker, Stephen Morris, Sam Fleming and Demetri Sevastopulo
Feb 25, 2022 – 8.07am
London/Brussels/Washington | Western leaders are split on whether Russia should be ejected from the SWIFT international payments system, a move that would deliver a heavy blow to the country’s banks and its ability to trade beyond its borders.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday (Friday AEDT) pushed “very hard” to remove Russia, according to officials, but he admitted to MPs that it was “vital that we have unity” on the issue among western allies.
Russia launches a large-scale attack on Ukraine, surrounding the country on three sides.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz warned his country had reservations about such a dramatic move and so did the EU, according to officials close to sanctions negotiations. A German official declined to comment, saying only that “all options are still on the table”.
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As inflation rises, the monetarist dog is having its day
Martin Wolf Columnist
Feb 24, 2022 – 2.56pm
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Milton Friedman made this remark in 1963. At that time, few macroeconomists agreed with him. Twenty years later, a high proportion did. Twenty years after that, again most did not. Today, almost another two decades later, economists have to take money seriously again.
If money is ignored, it will take revenge. As Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio recently asked: “Where is the understanding of history and the common sense about the quantity of money and credit and the amount of inflation?”
The idea that there is a link between the money supply and inflation is very old. When people are holding more money than they desire, they will want to get rid of it. With any other asset, this would lower its price. But the nominal price of money is fixed: a dollar is a dollar. The adjustment comes via higher prices for everything else – or inflation.
After an exceptional monetary expansion in 2020, we are surely seeing this. I noted the possibility in May that year. Tim Congdon, a well-known monetarist, had argued this before me. According to the Center for Financial Stability, “Divisia M4” (an index that weights the components by their role in transactions) grew by 30 per cent in the year to July 2020, almost three times as fast as in any similar period since 1967.
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Russia attacks Ukraine with strikes in major cities
Andrew Tillett and Matthew Cranston
Updated Feb 24, 2022 – 7.13pm, first published at 3.27pm
Europe is embroiled in its gravest security crisis since World War II after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and threatened “horrible consequences” including the spectre of nuclear weapons if the international community tries to stop him.
Missiles rained down on several cities, including the capital Kyiv and second largest city Kharkiv, sending residents scrambling to subway stations as temporary bomb shelters while air-raid sirens blared. Gunfire was also reportedly heard at Kyiv’s airport, as roads clogged up with traffic from people fleeing.
After weeks of pleas for diplomacy, Russia has invaded Ukraine with troops entering the country and explosions rocking the capital Kyiv.
Initial reports of casualties said seven people had been killed and nine wounded.
Ukrainian officials said soldiers and border posts were being heavily shelled, while there were reports of ground forces entering the country on multiple fronts, including from the disputed eastern provinces, annexed Crimea, and northern neighbour Belarus.
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Putin ‘declares war’ on Ukraine
Hans van Leeuwen and Matthew Cranston
Updated Feb 24, 2022 – 2.53pm, first published at 3.20am
Paris, Washington | Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced a military operation in Ukraine, claiming it is intended to protect civilians.
In a televised address, Mr Putin said the action was in response to threats coming from Ukraine. He added that Russia does not have a goal to occupy Ukraine. The president said the responsibility for bloodshed lies with the Ukrainian “regime.”
Mr Putin warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to “consequences they have never seen,” Russian news agencies reported.
“I have taken the decision to carry out a special military operation,” Putin said. “Its goal will be to defend people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.
“For this we will aim for demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, as well as taking to court those who carried out multiple bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation. Our plans do not include occupying Ukrainian territory.”
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/putin-calls-the-west-s-bluff-in-ukraine-20220224-p59zgm
Putin calls the West’s bluff in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin knows he can act with military impunity in Ukraine because the West will stay out of any confrontation.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Feb 24, 2022 – 4.39pm
Joe Biden concedes “defending freedom” will have costs for the US as well as Russia.
“We need to be honest about that,” he declared. “But as we do this, I’m going to take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours.”
The precision of that targeting – and the cost to the US as well as other Western countries – will be far more difficult to manage than such “honesty” suggests.
Putin announces Russia will ‘conduct a special military operation' in Ukraine.
US gasoline prices were already up 40 per cent for the year to January, and natural gas prices up 24 per cent, with inflation now running at 7.5 per cent. That ensured difficult domestic politics for Biden could only increase.
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The West is not prepared for the financial pain coming its way
By Jeremy Warner
February 25, 2022 — 9.00am
We seem to stand impotent in the midst of another watershed moment in world affairs. The tectonic plates are shifting in a way not seen in more than 30 years. But unlike the spirit of hope and optimism that characterised the last such moment - the fall of the Berlin Wall - a much darker prospect now looms.
Either we just accept whatever Putin plans for Ukraine, and after much huffing and puffing simply learn to live with it, as we have with all his other land grabs. Or we make the deep sacrifices needed properly to address the threat that Russia now poses to the Western order of things.
Are Western electorates even remotely prepared for the economic deprivations that this latter course of action - a war with Russia in all but name - is likely to entail? The already near hysterical political reaction to the current cost of living squeeze, with real incomes forecast by the Bank of England to fall by 2 per cent this year, suggests strongly that they are not. Without wishing to trivialise today’s hardships, they are as nothing compared with what would come.
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Repression at home and aggression abroad: There’s no humanity in Putin’s cause
Political and international editor
February 25, 2022 — 5.45am
It was unthinkable. Until the moment it happened. Until the first Russian missiles slammed into Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv in the country’s north.
Even as civilians jammed the highways and flooded the subways to escape the violence, many Ukrainians distrusted the evidence of their eyes. “No-one here can quite believe it’s actually happening,” according to the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford. People were “shocked and horrified to imagine what might be coming”.
That will be the next phase of the unthinkable. As the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said: “The tidal waves of suffering this war will cause are unthinkable.” US analysis anticipated five million people displaced, she said. She chose not to disclose US predictions of the numbers of civilian and military deaths to come.
As Western companies market an exciting future of a virtual reality “metaverse”, revisionist dictators return the world to a past of violent conquest as its present reality. Industrial scale, kinetic warfare carefully planned and executed by one country against its neighbour. In Europe. In 2022.
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‘I will work out how to use a gun’: Kyiv is a city on edge
By Misha Zelinsky
Updated February 25, 2022 — 9.55amfirst published at 8.55am
Kyiv: With martial law declared from 10pm and an expectation of overnight bombing raids, Kyiv is a city on edge.
As Putin attempts a tactical decapitation of the Ukrainian government, it is simply impossible to keep up with the reports. And that’s if you want to. The capital is surrounded by the advancing Russians from the north, south and east while exits west are increasingly perilous.
Reality has finally set in for local Ukrainians – and foreign journalists – who have refused to believe the invasion could happen. “I watched Putin speak on Monday night. When he talked about ‘de-communising’ us, I knew then he was coming.” Victor Timonov, 33 tells me.
As we stand in line for a morning coffee – the one Ukrainian custom that appears truly unbreakable – Victor talks about his life as a mechanic and of his dream to start a business. He shows me photos of his gorgeous daughter, aged 5. Victor will answer President Zelensky’s call to provide weapons to anyone who will stay and fight. He says he learned how to shoot in school and will brush up a newly bought pump-action rifle. His friends will do the same.
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New world order: Russia has just turned itself into a commodity superpower
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
February 25, 2022 — 11.00am
In a matter of hours, the world order has turned drastically less favourable for the Western democracies.
Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Ukraine elevates Russia into a full-spectrum commodity superpower, adding critical market leverage over global grain supply to existing strategic depth in energy and metals.
We wake up to the sobering reality that Russia is too pivotal for the international trading system to punish in any meaningful way. It influences or determines everything from bread in the shops, to petrol for Europe’s homes and power plants, to supply chains for aerospace and car plants, or soon will do if Kyiv falls.
Who knew that almost 90 per cent of Europe’s imports of rapeseed oil comes from Ukraine, or Spain’s jamon iberico depends on grain feed from the black earth belt of the Ukrainian steppe? Ukraine turns Putin’s neo-Tsarist empire into the Saudi Arabia of food, controlling 30 per cent of global wheat exports and 20 per cent of corn exports.
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What the Russian invasion means for the global economy - and why the EU should welcome Ukraine
By Tim Harcourt
February 25, 2022 — 11.00am
Within hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we were confronting the human tragedy: the loss of life and the destruction or seizure of infrastructure. The following economic devastation will also have a great human toll. Yet the economic damage will not be confined to Ukraine and Russia. What is the likely impact on the global economy and how will it affect Australia?
First, the Russian economy matters – mainly because, like Australia, it is a big global supplier of commodities in terms of oil and gas, but also nickel, palladium, coal, copper and wheat.
Europe is particularly vulnerable to a supply shock as it is especially reliant on Russian oil and gas. More than 20 per cent of Germany’s gas emanates from Russia, hence why German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a pretty gutsy call to call a halt production of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Previous chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel had been cosying up to Russia, motivated by its gas resources, for years. (Schroder has been nominated to be on the board of Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom).
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The world that Vladimir Putin wants to see
The Russian President would rather have a global disorder where Russia is central, than an order where it is peripheral.
Bobo Lo
Updated Feb 25, 2022 – 12.33pm, first published at 11.40am
It is time to call things by their proper names. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was never about Moscow’s fears of NATO enlargement, much less Ukrainian membership of the alliance.
Nor was it the action of an insecure president, concerned about a stagnating economy and his political legitimacy, and therefore anxious to secure a foreign policy victory.
With Russia's military attacking across Ukraine, President Joe Biden is expected to roll out at least some of the toughest sanctions and financial penalties that the U.S. can muster in response.
No, the decision to invade was that of a confident leader who believes he is smarter, stronger and tougher than anyone else.
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Putin’s war is a brutal blow to a complacent West
Russia’s assault on the Ukrainians is a mugging by strategic reality for the governments and peoples of the Western world. They must respond to the challenge.
Feb 25, 2022 – 6.47pm
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Boxer Mike Tyson summed up volumes of geopolitical and military theorising in one terse statement.
Not long ago, few would have bet on the reality of a hot war in Europe by February, no matter how obvious it is in retrospect that this blow was coming.
For more than a decade there has been high-level debate about the return of great power contests – putting an end to talk about “the end of history” and the inevitable triumph of peaceful liberal democracies. But it’s still a shock when an old-fashioned territorial invasion by one of the traditional great powers of Europe becomes a bloody reality, and signals the return of a world most had thought gone.
Western democracies and their voters never like confronting the worst. Defence has become grudge spending in the West, slumping heavily after the end of the Cold War.
Australia has only just dumped its rule of thumb in defence planning that no threat would emerge for 10 years. Though spending is accelerating now, a decade ago it was at the lowest levels since 1938.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/march-on-kyiv-hides-putin-s-real-aim-bolton-20220225-p59zoe
March on Kyiv hides Putin’s real aim: Bolton
Misha Zelinsky Special correspondent
Feb 25, 2022 – 12.01pm
Kyiv, Ukraine | Donald Trump’s former national security adviser and leading neoconservative John Bolton says the Russian troop advance on Ukraine’s capital may conceal Vladimir Putin’ real plan, which is to annex the east and cut the country off from the sea.
Mr Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and long-time foreign policy hawk, also warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping will be watching closely the world’s response to Russia’s aggression in the former Soviet region.
“Putin wants the eastern and southern parts – the Russian parts of Ukraine,” Mr Bolton said.
He said sending troops towards Kyiv is probably a feint to distract from his real plan, which is taking an L-shaped bite out of Ukraine’s east and south to essentially landlock the nation.
“Controlling the east means Putin can expel trouble-making Ukrainians back to their homeland. It solves a potential guerilla problem and means he can keep the Russian-speaking areas,” Mr Bolton said.
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Putin the cruel: A reborn Tsar hell-bent on restoring empire
By Tony Wright
February 26, 2022 — 5.00am
You needed only look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes as he publicly ridiculed his own international spy chief this week to know all we might wish to know about this President of Russia.
The eyes were at once cruelly amused, threatening and impatient. They were those of a fox at the open door of a hen house.
Here was a man taking pleasure in the humiliation of an old comrade, reducing him to a vassal, and seeking personal gratification by displaying to the world - on live television - his superiority over all around him.
It was the behaviour of a sociopath.
That was Monday. By Thursday, Putin the cruel had met all the world’s worst fears about him.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/laundered-money-could-be-putin-s-achilles-heel-20220226-p59zwo
Laundered money could be Putin’s achilles’ heel
Taking effective action against Putin’s greatest vulnerability will require facing up to and overcoming the West’s own corruption.
Paul Krugman
Feb 26, 2022 – 10.54am
The United States and its allies aren’t going to intervene with their own forces against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
I’ll leave it to others with relevant expertise to speculate about whether we’ll send more arms to the Ukrainian government or, if the Russian attack achieves quick success, help arm the Ukrainian resistance.
For the most part, however, the West’s response to Putin’s naked aggression will involve financial and economic sanctions. How effective can such sanctions be?
It’s telling, and not in a good way, that Italy wants luxury goods — a favourite purchase of the Russian elite — excluded from any sanctions package.
The answer is that they can be very effective, if the West shows the will — and is willing to take on its own corruption.
By conventional measures the Putin regime doesn’t look very vulnerable, at least in the short run.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/ukraine-s-tv-comedian-president-finds-his-role-20220226-p59zza
Ukraine’s TV comedian president finds his role
Marc Champion and Daryna Krasnolutska
Updated Feb 26, 2022 – 8.30pm, first published at 8.29pm
Volodymyr Zelenskiy may be among the least likely wartime leaders the world has known, yet he’s winning praise in the role just when his political fortunes had been dwindling.
A Russian-speaking former television comic of Jewish background, Zelenskiy was elected as Ukraine’s president just under three years ago on a promise to bring peace.
On Friday, he was at war in the capital Kyiv, accused by President Vladimir Putin of leading a fascist regime guilty of “genocide” in the east of the country.
Western leaders dismiss those claims as fabrications — “ridiculous,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — but with Russian troops attempting to fight their way into Kyiv on Saturday, there was little sugar-coating the desperate situation for Zelenskiy and an independent Ukraine. Putin has declared he wants Zelenskiy gone.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/what-is-swift-and-what-if-russia-was-banned-from-it-20220225-p59zm9
What is SWIFT and what if Russia was banned from it?
Tom Bergin
Feb 25, 2022 – 10.32am
LONDON – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stepped up pressure for tougher economic sanctions on Moscow, including potentially shutting the country out of SWIFT – the world’s main international payments network – hitting Russian trade and making it harder for Russian companies to do business.
What is SWIFT?
SWIFT, or the “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication”, is a secure messaging system that facilitates rapid cross-border payments, making international trade flow smoothly.
Banks which connect to the SWIFT system and establish relationships with other banks can use SWIFT messages to make payments.
The messages are secure so that payment instructions are typically honoured without question. This allows banks to process high volumes of transactions at speed.
It has become the principal mechanism for financing international trade. In 2020, around 38 million SWIFT ‘FIN messages’ were sent each day over the SWIFT platform, according to its 2020 Annual Review. Each year, trillions of dollars are transferred using the system.
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A war correspondent’s nightmare: deciphering Putin
Broadcast journalist
February 27, 2022 — 5.30am
By coincidence, or by design, nothing seems to inspire Vladimir Putin towards an act of military aggression quite like an Olympic Games.
In 2008, as the Beijing Olympics got under way, I was deployed to Tblisi, Georgia, to cover the short-lived war with Russia. Then, in early 2014, I was in Russia for ABC America during the Sochi Winter Games when our team was sent to Kyiv to cover what began as a popular revolution against a Russian-backed president. And now, in the afterlight of the Beijing Winter Olympics, here we are again, with Putin launching a wholesale invasion of Ukraine.
A hallmark of covering any of these Russian conflicts as a foreign correspondent is that, unlike an Olympic Games, where there are generally clear rules and distinguishable results, these conflicts are near-impossible to explain to an audience. Even being on the ground to observe and interpret events first-hand as they unfold doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to decipher.
For reporters, even in instances where strategy, politics or shadow-play remain unclear, you can normally rely on your ability to describe with reasonable accuracy what you’re seeing in front of you. In Vladmir Putin’s wars it isn’t so simple.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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