Latest news with #SecondChechenWar
Mint
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Trump isn't the first president Putin has played
Donald Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine. The problem is that Mr. Trump sees Vladimir Putin for who he wishes Mr. Putin to be, a hardened but practical interlocutor, rather than for who he is, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who revels in the dark art of ruthless manipulation. Mr. Trump was shaped by the wheeler-dealer New York City real-estate scene. Mr. Putin was shaped by the brutal maximalism of the KGB's Red Banner Institute. But Mr. Trump isn't the first U.S. president to take an unrealistic view of his Russian counterpart. Consider his predecessors' experiences. The first American president to deal with Mr. Putin, Bill Clinton, chose to remain largely silent on human-rights concerns in Russia, including Mr. Putin's wanton disregard for civilian casualties during the Second Chechen War. Mr. Clinton instead focused on wooing Mr. Putin to join the post-Cold War democratic international order. Mr. Putin did nothing of the sort. He intimidated the Russian media, cultivated an inner circle of oligarchs who traded vast wealth for political loyalty, and embedded politically vested corruption into the Russian economy—all while Mr. Clinton stood idly by. Next came George W. Bush. Meeting Mr. Putin in June 2001, Mr. Bush said he 'looked the man in the eye" and 'found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," adding that he gained 'a sense of his soul." Mr. Bush had been duped by Mr. Putin's KGB mind games. Mr Putin appealed to Mr. Bush, a born-again Christian, with a story about his mother's Orthodox cross being rescued from a fire in her dacha. Mr. Putin adopted a similar tactic with Mr. Trump's chief foreign-affairs negotiator, Steve Witkoff, telling Mr. Witkoff that he had prayed for Mr. Trump when he learned of the assassination attempt against him last July. Mr. Putin was never the pro-modernization leader Mr. Bush hoped he might be. By the end of the Bush presidency, Mr. Putin had launched a vicious cyberattack on North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Estonia, heavily supported Iran's nuclear program, and invaded Georgia. Then there was Barack Obama. Soon after taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama essentially excused Russia's invasion of Georgia five months prior, publicly seeking a 'reset" in relations. That July Mr. Obama traveled to Moscow to meet with Mr. Putin. Obama adviser Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia from 2012 through 2014, recounts in his 2018 book how Mr. Putin quickly asserted dominance over the American president: 'Putin spoke uninterrupted for nearly the entire time scheduled for the meeting, documenting the injustices of the Bush administration. This was a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Obama listened patiently, maybe too patiently. . . . It was my assignment to read out this meeting to our press corps later that day. I couldn't tell them that Obama had merely listened the entire time!" Mr. Putin reveled in Mr. Obama's policy of appeasement. Beginning around 2008, Russia persistently breached the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (The U.S. didn't withdraw from the treaty until 2019, under Mr. Trump.) In 2016 members of Russia's Federal Security Service attacked and harassed U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Moscow. During the intervening years, Russia seized Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, militarily intervened to save Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from defeat in his country's civil war, and downed a civilian passenger plane flying over eastern Ukraine. Mr. Obama was so fearful of standing against Mr. Putin's aggression that he refused to provide Ukraine with lethal military support. Even when Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and leaked its emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, all Mr. Obama did was unsuccessfully request that Mr. Putin 'cut it out." Finally there was Joe Biden. In June 2021 Mr. Biden met with Mr. Putin in Geneva. At the end of the summit, Mr. Biden said, 'All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It's the way human nature functions. The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive." Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine eight months later. Mr. Biden helped facilitate robust international sanctions on Russia after the invasion. But he repeatedly hesitated before providing Ukraine with antitank weapons, long-range artillery rockets and F-16 fighter jets. He also limited the paths that U.S. drones could take over the Black Sea to avoid confrontations with Russia. By contrast, even after Russia fired a missile near a British spy plane in 2022, Britain continued to send planes into the region with fighter escorts. Mr. Biden gave too much credence to Mr. Putin's nuclear threats and didn't do enough to help Ukraine defend itself. Mr. Trump may be doing even worse in this regard—though he has returned manned U.S. spy planes to the Black Sea—but Mr. Biden set the tone for excessive deference toward Mr. Putin's rhetoric. Perhaps the best example of the consequences of tolerating Mr. Putin's manipulation games comes not from an American president but from Britain's Tony Blair. During a 2001 trip to Moscow that included a celebration of Mr. Putin's birthday, Prime Minister Blair said, 'From my very first meeting I recognized that President Putin is a man who had the imagination and courage to set relations on a new course." In return, Mr. Putin had his oligarchs buy up assets in London and use this financial power to influence the media, intimidate and silence British journalists, and provide political cover for Mr. Putin's nerve-agent-wielding assassination squads—who have poisoned several Russian dissidents in Britain. Mr. Trump should consider Mr. Putin's history. The American president may like deals, but Mr. Putin is more cutthroat even than the New York real-estate market. Mr. Rogan is a national-security writer for the Washington Examiner.
Washington Post
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Words of War' commemorates the courage of a Russian journalist
The fact that an infinitesimal fraction of people who line up for the latest Marvel superhero movie will bother to see a drama about an actual hero is enough to make a person sick to their soul, but I guess it's understandable. There's no dazzling CGI in 'Words of War' — no stalwart, spandexed action figures flying through the air to land nuclear uppercuts on the villain of the hour. There's just one woman: Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who went up against the villain of our age and paid the ultimate price for it. That's a warning and, in the movie's moral long view, a dare. Would you do what she did? Would you wait until there was no other choice? Would that be too late? The film's a British production directed by a veteran of British TV, James Strong, and it's meat-and-potatoes stuff as moviemaking goes, doughty and dutiful in following the career of Politkovskaya from the onset of her reporting on the Second Chechen War to her assassination on Oct. 7, 2006 — Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday. British stage and TV actress Maxine Peake plays Politkovskaya with an intense focus that earns the trust of Chechen fighters and their families while alienating her own husband (Jason Isaacs) and grown children (Harry Lawtey and Naomi Battrick). A movie about a crusading journalist needs a larger-than-life editor to support her, to shield her from the higher-ups and to deliver a big, shouty monologue about the pressures he faces, and that's Ciarán Hinds as Dmitry Muratov, head of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. When 'Words of War' opens in 1999 — after a teaser flash-forward to the 2004 poisoning that nearly killed Politkovskaya — the paper's early 1990s founding with financial help from Mikhail Gorbachev is receding into the past. Putin, a former KGB boss, has just become prime minister. As rebels in the Chechen Republic make their second bid for independence and the Russian response grows more punishing, Muratov sends Anna to the capital city of Grozny to write about what she finds, telling her: 'We don't need a war correspondent in Chechnya. We need a people correspondent.' The relationships the reporter subsequently builds with a wary Chechen rebel named Anzor (Fady Elsayed), a young woman named Fatima (Lujza Richter) and others allow her to journey further into the country and document the Russian armed forces' torture and massacres of Chechen civilians. 'This war is not being fought to rein in a rogue republic,' Politkovskaya reports back to her readers in Russia. 'This war is being waged to advance the interest of one person, a president intent on becoming the type of leader Russia thought it had left in the past: a vain, brutal, power-hungry authoritarian.' This is not the kind of journalism to please a dictator, and the warning signs come quickly enough to label Anna a bear-poker with a death wish. That she becomes a voice to be trusted and listened to not only in Chechnya but increasingly to the public in Moscow and beyond only ramps up the threat she represents. 'Words of War' — terrible title, that, and an earlier one, 'Anna,' isn't much better — doesn't cut corners to comfort an audience. Eric Poppen's screenplay is frank about the costs that come with being a reporter's source and frank, too, about the ways in which Politkovskaya's status as 'the one Russian the entire Chechen population trusts' allowed her to be used as a pawn for the government's own ends. The hostage dramas at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in 2002 and the Beslan school in 2004 testify to the rebels' desperation, Putin's disregard for human life, and Anna's growing distress, fury and stubbornness. Peake is perhaps best known to U.S. audiences for being chased by robot dogs in a 2017 'Black Mirror' episode, and 'Words of War' is only slightly less dystopian in its portrait of a society increasingly gripped by a macho paranoia that can find one determined woman journalist anathema to its very being. The film's a necessary downer that nonetheless inspires in a viewer an echo of its heroine's compassion and resolve — qualities to carry forward as the evil that Politkovskaya documented continues to spill past the borders of her country. 'Your children will not judge you on whether you made the world a better place,' Anna responds to her son's entirely understandable pleas that she back down from holding the powerful to account. 'They will judge you on how hard you tried.' R. At AMC Hoffman Center 22. Contains violence and language. 117 minutes. Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr's Watch List at
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Investigation names over 95,000 Russians killed in Ukraine
The names of over 95,000 Russians who died fighting in Ukraine have been verified in a joint investigative project by the BBC's Russia service and the independent media outlet Mediazona, the BBC reported on Feb. 22. Over 5,000 names have been added to the list of Russian casualties since Jan. 24. The project has been collecting data on losses since February 2022. While the project confirmed over 95,000 deaths since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the true death toll is believed to be much highter. Military analysts consulted by researchers estimated that the list likely represents only 45% to 65% of Russia's total casualties. The current list includes 16,171 Russian convicts who were recruited from penal colonies to fight in Ukraine. The total number of convicts who have died on the front lines is likely much higher. Prisoners could account for a third of Russia's military losses since the full-scale invasion, researchers said. Russia has been recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine since the summer of 2022. Investigators verified the names of the dead using data from official reports, newspapers, social media, and graveyards. Russia has not released official figures on its military deaths in Ukraine since September 2022, when the Kremlin claimed only 5,937 personnel had been killed in the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Feb. 15 that nearly 250,000 soldiers fighting for Russia's armed forces have been killed in the war against Ukraine. Russian forces have suffered heavy losses in recent months amid Moscow's accelerating offensive in eastern Ukraine. Troop losses reached record levels in November and December, with casualties continuing to mount in 2025. According to Ukraine's Khortytsia group of forces, Russia lost more soldiers fighting in the direction of Pokrovsk, a small city in Donetsk Oblast, than its total losses in the Second Chechen War. Read also: Russia exceeded mobilization goals in occupied Ukrainian territories last year, official says We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
General Staff: Russia has lost 846,650 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022
Russia has lost 846,650 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on Feb. 7. This number includes 1,340 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day. According to the report, Russia has also lost 9,975 tanks, 20,755 armored fighting vehicles, 36,307 vehicles and fuel tanks, 22,785 artillery systems, 1,271 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,056 air defense systems, 369 airplanes, 331 helicopters, 24,301 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine. Read also: More Russian soldiers died near Pokrovsk in January than in entire Second Chechen War, military says We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
More Russian soldiers died near Pokrovsk in January than in entire Second Chechen War, military says
Russia lost more soldiers in the Pokrovsk sector in Ukraine during the month of January than its total losses in the Second Chechen War, Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine's Khortytsia group of forces, said during a television broadcast on Feb. 6. The embattled city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast is among the most hotly contested areas of the front. Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi previously claimed that 7,000 Russian soldiers were killed near Pokrovsk in January alone. Trehubov reiterated these numbers in his report, comparing the casualties to Russia's 10-year military campaign against Chechnya. "The Second Chechen War for the Russians for the entire period — 6,000 dead," he said. "That is, under Pokrovsk alone in January the Russians have more dead than in the entire Second Chechen War." Russia launched the Second Chechen War in August 1999, marking its second and ultimately successful attempt to suppress Chechen rebels in the North Caucasus republic. International human rights groups condemned the Russian military for purposely targeting civilians and committing war crimes throughout the decade-long conflict. The total losses incurred by Russian forces in the Second Chechen War are difficult to verify, though official government figures claim the number is around 6,000. Moscow is now seeing staggering losses in its ongoing assault against eastern Ukraine, with some reports indicating that over 1,000 soldiers are killed or wounded per day. Russian forces continue to sacrifice high numbers of personnel for limited territorial gains — a grim tactic that can push back significantly outnumbered Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian military, which has published daily estimates of Russian losses since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, has reported that 845,310 personnel have been killed or wounded since the start of the all-out war. According to a report from the monitoring group DeepState in late January, Russian forces have been concentrating nearly half of their attacks in the Pokrovsk direction. Trehubov said that Russia launched 24 assaults against Pokrovsk over the past day, but that Ukraine continues to hold the city. Read also: Ukraine's steel sector looks abroad after loss of critical Donbas coal mine We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
