WAR IN UKRAINE: September 26, 2022
While the Kremlin posts billboards urging men to serve Russia in battle, most it seems are too busy finding way to avoid the draft - or flee the country
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 216
Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations of shelling in southern Ukraine as four Ukrainian territories partially occupied by Russian forces continued to vote in so-called referendums on joining the Russian Federation. On social media, residents of Odesa said that Russian drones had continued to attack the city for a second day-in-arrow, triggering air raid sirens and panic. Over the weekend an Iranian-made kamikaze drone has reportedly destroyed the administration building in the port area
Giorgia Meloni, set to lead a new Italian government with two parties once close to Moscow, will likely be watched closely in Kyiv and elsewhere. In early September, she warned of the risk posed to Western nations by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling it the "tip of the iceberg" in a struggle for influence. "If Ukraine falls and the West perishes, the big winner will not be (Vladimir) Putin's Russia, but Xi Jinping's China," Meloni, leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, told a business conference. "And those who are weakest in the West, namely Europe, risk finding themselves under Chinese influence. So we have to fight this battle," she added at the Ambrosetti Forum in northern Italy. Meloni leads the largest party in a centre-right alliance with the League Party and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. Both the League and Forza Italia had close ties to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy traces its roots back to a post-fascist party, has spoken out strongly in support of the Western line on Ukraine on a number of occasions. "The war in Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg of a conflict aimed at reshaping the world order," she said on Sunday.
Complimenting the resilience of the Ukrainian people, Canadian defense minister Anita Anand told the CBC on Sunday that “we will continue to be there for the Ukrainian people.” Previously, I’ve criticized Ottawa for bungling its overall response to the Ukrainian crisis. Also on Sunday, I told the Globe and Mail that now is the time for Canada to send everything it’s possibly can to Ukraine to defend itself amid an escalation in Russia’s full scale invasion.
Planned concerts in Poland by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters have been cancelled amid outrage over the musician's stance on the Ukraine war. The controversy was triggered by an open letter Waters wrote to Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska. In it, he said, "extreme nationalists" in Ukraine "have set your country on the path to this disastrous war". He accused her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, of failing to fulfil his election campaign promises to bring peace to the Donbas region and and made no mention of Russia's responsibility for the war - BBC
Russian soldiers who surrender to Ukraine will be treated in a "civilised manner", Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. In his nightly address, Mr Zelensky appealed to Russians to run away or surrender once at the front. It comes after Vladimir Putin signed a law doubling the punishment for Russian soldiers who desert or disobey orders - BBC
Separately, fresh protests have also broken out over Russia's partial mobilisation of 300,000 extra troops, the BBC reported. Russian human rights organisation OVD-Info reported that 700 people were arrested on Saturday, while more than 1,000 were detained earlier in the week. Unsanctioned rallies are banned under Russian law.
Required reading…
Ukraine Holds the Future - The War Between Democracy and Nihilism
Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete. Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change. A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.
Read the full analysis by Timothy Snyder in Foreign Affairs here