WAR IN UKRAINE: March 7, 2022
KEY DEVELOPMENTS - DAY 12 OF THE WAR
A new Russian ceasefire proposal to allow civilians to flee key cities has been branded "immoral" by Ukraine and has been rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. People in Kyiv will be offered safe passage to Russia's ally Belarus, while those in Kharkiv will have a corridor leading only to Russia itself. Corridors from besieged Mariupol and Sumy will lead to Ukrainian cities and to Russian ones.
In three-way talks brokered by Turkey, the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers will meet in Antalya on Thursday. It would mark the first time since hostilities commenced that the two are meeting. Reuters reported that Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, made the announcement on Monday and said he would attend the meeting in the resort city of Antalya. Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the plan.
But according to Christo Grozev, executive director of the journalistic investigation entity, Bellingcat, the Kremlin is demanding concessions from Kyiv that no Ukrainian President could ever agree to. This includes: accepting a prime minister approved by the Kremlin (reportedly former Viktor Yanukovych ally, Yuriy Boyko), recognising Crimea and the Russian-backed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Luhansk People’s Republic,’ and dropping plans to join NATO.
A senior US defence official quoted by the Financial Times said Russia had moved 95 per cent of the forces that had been positioned on the border before the invasion have moved into Ukraine. The Pentagon said Russia had fired 600 missiles during the invasion, an increase from 500 as of Friday, suggesting an acceleration from the roughly 20 launches a day that were detected at the end of last week.
A retired senior Canadian military official told CBC’s Cross Country Checkup that’s it’s becoming increasingly clear the Russian military strategy towards Ukraine is coming straight out of its playbook in Syria and elsewhere: lay siege to urban centres, choke them off from the outside world and, if necessary, bomb them into submission. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians used as a bargaining chip humanitarian access in return for easing of sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia is recruiting Syrians skilled in urban combat to be sent to Ukraine to help take Kyiv, according to U.S. officials. It is unclear how many fighters have been identified, but some are already in Russia preparing to enter the war, according to one official (Kyiv Independent).
A land bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea - illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014 following the Sochi Winter Olympics - appears to have been achieved by Russian forces. That, along the seizing of territory to the north of Crimea, would theoretically allow the Russians to open a Ukrainian water canal to feed the arid peninsula. The map below indicates Russian gains.
Above: activists in St. Petersburg, Russia decided to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by carving into the ice ‘No War.’ It was quickly removed by Russian officials. A crackdown on anti-war protesters in Russia is becoming increasingly intense. Police detained more than 4,300 people on Sunday at Russia-wide protests against President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an independent protest monitoring group.
The arrests on Sunday, Al Jazeera reported, brought the total number of people held in anti-war protests since the invasion began on February 24 to more than 10,000, OVD-Info said.
“The screws are being fully tightened – essentially we are witnessing military censorship,” Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info’s spokeswoman, told Reuters news agency by telephone from Tbilisi
BELOW: Heavy shelling - including on a church - in the town of Malyn in Zhytomyr region, being reported by LiveUAmap as well as according to a Facebook post by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. We have identified the church as Svyato-Pokrovska Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Ploscha Soborna in Malyn.
The shelling reportedly happened between 22:00 and 01:00 on March 6/7, resulting in deaths and injuries and heavy damage to other infrastructure.
In a statement on March 6, the head of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Epiphaniy, appealed to the Russian side to protect holy shrines, saying: “Do not aggravate your crimes with destroying the sanctuaries, especially as you hypocritically justify yourself with “defending the Church”.
He added: “I appeal to the international community and especially to the religious leaders: rise your voice in opposing this crime of Russia. With the word and the deed do all the possible to stop the shelling and bombardments.”
Separately, LiveUAmap reporting shelling on March 7 of the consulate of Azerbaijan in Kharkiv.
As I told CNN over the weekend, the flow of people heading towards western Ukraine and neighboring countries has reached unprecedented levels. An earlier estimate ceiling of 5-million migrants coming out of Ukraine has now been increased to potentially 10-million - almost a quarter of Ukraine’s population. The map below indicates where the flows are.
My friend and talented Ukrainian photographer Andrew Kravchenko posted his images on Facebook with the following text: “Ukraine. I want the whole world to see it. These children most likely do not have a home, because putin is shelling our Ukrainian cities with his rockets, of which he has a lot. He lost the war on earth. He failed all his plans. He did not expect that Ukrainians are able to fight. he did not expect the whole world to support Ukraine with weapons and sanctions against Russia. That is why I implore all friends, Gods, Galactic forces - TO CLOSE THE SKY OVER UKRAINE. #NoFlyZone #ukraine #war”
It’s worth checking into Russian state media from time to time to get a sense of the narrative being broadcast from that side of the conflict. With RT increasingly banned from western networks, it’s getting tougher for Kremlin spin doctors to log their propaganda.
Yet on YouTube, Google, Facebook and other channels the Kremlin narrative appears to have an easy time making its way across the globe - apparently leveraging fans living overseas. Here’s a classic example posted by a male motorcycle racing enthusiast in Kelowna, Canada (according to his Twitter account). The video, narrated by the familiar RT talking head Murad Gazdiev, portrays Russian forces as “liberating” the southern Ukrainian city of Maritopol, providing humanitarian aid, cleaning up a country run by “nationalists and neo Nazis.”
It was posted on a YouTube channel with 16,000 subscribers called IrnieRacing. Since being posted 24 hours ago, the video has registered almost 50,000 views.
Marcel Irnie identifies himself on his Twitter account (775 followers) as an “independent journalist who reports on the principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, fairness and public accountability.”
And for a great Columbia Journalism Review piece on how Putin is tightening the screws on independent media in Russia, click here
