RUSSIA NEWS & INFORMATION – Johnson’s Russia List contents & links :: JRL 2022-#48 :: Thursday, 3 March 2022

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2021-#48 :: Thursday, 3 March 2022
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DJ: I’m leaving tomorrow on a long-planned one week vacation. Bad timing. Perhaps I can do a few JRLs.

1. Sky News: Ukraine invasion: Kremlin policy adviser reveals his shock over Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade. Andrey Kortunov has been on the news defending the Kremlin’s actions in the past – but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left him wondering what his president was thinking.
2. Responsible Statecraft: Tom Pickering, A Russia-Ukraine exit strategy. Negotiations will be admittedly hard, but the alternative is truly too dangerous and difficult to contemplate.
3. Comment is Freed: Lawrence Freedman, Russia’s Plan C. And Plan D …
4. TASS: Lavrov expects solution to Ukraine issue to be found, West to get over hysteria.
5. Spiked: Mary Dejevsky, Do the Russian people want this war? Protests, resignations and small acts of sabotage suggest the public are far from united behind Putin.
6. Moscow Times: Russian Journalists Quit State Media. Not everyone is silent; not everyone will speak out.
7. rt.com: Russia to criminalize ‘disinformation’ about military. Moscow claims the legislation is designed to fight fake information.
8. rt.com: Russia restricts liberal media outlets. The move has been strongly criticized by the well-known Russian journalist Alexey Venediktov.
9. Washington Post editorial: In Russia, truth is criminal, war is not war and the last independent broadcasters go dark.
10. New York Times: Alexey Kovalev, Russia Has Suffered a Crushing Moral Defeat. And Russians Know It.
11. Moscow Times: Fitch, Moody’s Slash Russia’s Sovereign Debt to Junk.
12. Washington Post: Sharon Werning Rivera, Can Putin keep the oligarchs and Russian elites on his side? War with Ukraine may make that harder, my research finds.
13. New York Times: NATO Countries Pour Weapons Into Ukraine, Risking Conflict With Russia. Brussels is proud to be providing military aid, but Moscow may see it as a dangerous intervention.
14. Awful Avalanche: Ukraine War Day #8. – awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/ukraine-war-day-8/
15. Russia in Global Affairs: Matthew Crosston, Ukraine as Swiss Mongolia: Neutrality as an End to War.
16. Russia Matters: Expert Survey: Impacts of Russia’s War in Ukraine.
17. The National Interest: Alireza Ahmadi, How Russia Sanctions Could Affect U.S. Economic Power. A new era of great power competition means that such a concentration of economic power in Western hands will no longer be tolerable for many.
18. Unherd: Elle Whelan, Banning Russia Today sets a dangerous precedent. It’s rarely a good sign when Big Tech and Western leaders agree.
19. Spiked: Elle Whelan, The dangerous rise of Russophobia. Western politicians’ attacks on Russians play directly into Putin’s hands.
20. Responsible Statecraft: Ben Freeman, How Russia lost the war against Ukraine … on K Street. Putin’s decision to invade almost instantly evaporated Moscow’s enormous lobbying advantages over Kyiv’s. – responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/03/03/how-russia-lost-the-war-against-ukraine-on-k-street/
21. Financial Times: John Thornhill, Ukraine is winning the information war against Russia. Zelensky has mobilised civil society while Putin’s state monopolises communication channels to spread falsehoods.
22. Unherd: David Patrikarakos, Ukraine is winning the online war. Kyiv has succeeded in reordering reality.
23. Dissent: Gregory Afinogenov, The Seeds of War. Putin sees Russian statehood and Russian national and linguistic identity as inextricably connected, and he is willing to spill Russian and Ukrainian blood to protect this nationalist vision.
24. Financial Times: Samuel Charap, Western allies must respond to Putin without risking escalation. The only outcome worse than the invasion of Ukraine itself would be a hot war between Russia and Nato. – ft.com/content/b3d2bce8-11d7-4808-82fd-bd0417bd2ded
25. The New Yorker: Isaac Chotiner, Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine. For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events changed his mind?