By Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian, 9/9/23

About an hour after air raid sirens sounded in the early hours of 10 August, residents on Yaroslavska Street in the heart of Kyiv’s hip Podil district heard the crash of a building coming down.

Some looked out of their windows expecting to see the smoking remains of a Russian missile. Instead, in the dawn light, two excavators were tearing apart an elegant 200-year-old mansion.

Within hours, the house, built in 1811, was a pile of rubble. Protesters gathered outside with placards attacking developers and the city’s government. “What hasn’t been destroyed by the Russian rockets is being destroyed by our officials and builders,” read one placard.

The war, perhaps surprisingly, has not diminished the appetite for prime property in Kyiv, or halted the scramble to get hold of empty plots for construction. Property prices dipped only briefly when Russian forces besieged the city last spring, then rebounded as its streets returned to life. Kyiv has extensive air defences and the frontlines are far away, so some residents have returned, and it has become a new home for people fleeing the fighting further east.

Ksenia Semenova, a city council member who focuses on protecting historic Kyiv, said she got her first post-invasion call about an illegal demolition on 25 February 2022, the day after Russia launched missiles at the capital and sent its troops across the border.

“The developers told me: ‘We thought it was a good idea – lots of people had left Kyiv so we wouldn’t disturb anyone’s work or sleep’,” she said.

But while developers seek to take advantage of Russia’s invasion, it has also spurred opposition to their plans. Vladimir Putin’s ahistorical attempt at justifying the war by denying Ukraine’s national identity has bolstered support for activists fighting to protect the city’s built heritage.

“After the full-scale invasion, when Russia said we are not a real country and don’t have any history, cultural heritage became more important to people,” said Semenova.

Perhaps because of that heightened appreciation for Ukrainian history, the August destruction of the building in Podil caused an outcry. Mayor Vitali Klitschko has pledged to investigate and the property’s owner uploaded a defiant video to YouTube.

Relaxing on a sofa and waving documents that he claimed backed his position, Serhiy Boyarchukov said he plans to build four storeys of apartment hotels and a “clubhouse” where the elegant single-storey house – a rare example of residential wooden construction in the city – had stood.

“There was no complete demolition, there was a partial dismantling, and the basement and one wall stayed in place,” he said, adding that the work was authorised under a “reconstruction permit” issued by the culture ministry in March.

He did not address questions about why the demolition began at 5am during an air raid alert.

Activists are sceptical the mayor’s investigation will really hold anyone to account. They say that for years, city authorities have allowed Kyiv’s historic fabric to be sold off, torn down or decay beyond the point of repair.

Oleh Symoroz was a veteran of that peaceful struggle before he volunteered to fight for Kyiv, then went east when the city had been saved and lost his legs on the frontline in the east of Ukraine.

Now back home for rehab care, he was furious to find the city being destroyed from the inside while many of the people who campaigned to protect it are serving on the frontlines.

“I feel terrible this destruction is happening now. Worse than I did about it before the full-scale invasion,” he said, in an interview at the hospital where he is learning to walk again with prosthetic limbs. “We are away fighting for Ukraine, and they use this chance to destroy the city.

“There are not so many construction bosses on the frontline, but a lot of activists have been killed or injured or badly traumatised.” He added: “They have an advantage now.”

Another resident, Tetiana, expected city authorities would help when a Russian drone hit flats in her building on Zhylyanska Street, a few blocks from Kyiv’s main railway station. It killed four of her neighbours, including a woman who was six months pregnant, and demolished the hall and staircase leading to her door.skip past newsletter promotion

She was traumatised and frightened by the attack, but was not worried about being made homeless. She had seen politicians on the news visiting other buildings hit by Russian attacks and promising to help, and the reconstruction that rapidly followed.

So Tetiana was stunned to get a message just three days later announcing that her building had been declared structurally unsound and would have to be demolished. The attached survey was dated 17 October, the day of the attack.

“When could the person responsible for that report have done it?” she said. “The sun set just after six, which is around when the firefighters finished putting out flames, and curfew was at 9pm then.”

The surviving residents were urged to sign away the rights to their historic flats in the city centre. In return, they would be put on a waiting list for new homes on the outskirts of Kyiv about 12 miles away.

Tetiana refused, marking the start of a bureaucratic nightmare that has left her homeless – staying with friends and relatives – for nearly a year.

When her fellow survivors tried to register a residents’ association – a key step to getting their own survey and protecting the site of their building – they were rejected 15 times by city authorities on technicalities.

Tetiana, who asked to be identified only by her first name because of the stress of the long battle with city authorities, now believes officials want to use the damage caused on 17 October as an excuse to demolish her building and seize the land.

“What the Russians began, the city council is trying to finish off,” she said. “Even if our building isn’t sound, I don’t understand why they can’t use the money to rebuild. Why do they want to move us away and what do they plan to do with the land?”

Asked about the building, Kyiv’s city authorities only said: “The house cannot be reconstructed.” They declined to answer questions about why the building was not on the register of damaged objects, how they had been able to carry out the survey in a single day and why residents were being asked to move to the city’s outskirts.

Tetiana is determined to reclaim her flat and protect the historic property, but is braced for a long battle.

“There are a lot of old people in this building – maybe the Kyiv authorities thought: ‘Let’s wait and maybe they will die and the problem will be resolved.’ They didn’t take into account that there are still young people who decided to fight for their rights.”

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 9/21/23

Both parties are in a dilemma whereby each believes that they have more to gain at the level of national and political interests by escalating tensions than by being the first to de-escalate them. A self-sustaining cycle is thus in the process of forming, which risks leading to such a drastic deterioration of their ties that the presently dismal state thereof might soon be looked fondly upon.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s revelation to local media on Wednesday that his country had stopped supplying arms to Ukraine in favor of arming itself showed just how far bilateral ties have plunged over the past week. Warsaw unilaterally extended restrictions on its eastern neighbor’s agricultural imports upon the expiry of the European Commission’s deal on 15 September in order to protect its farmers, which prompted Kiev to complain to the WTO about it on Monday.

Later that same day, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller suggested that Warsaw might let its aid to Ukrainian refugees lapse next spring instead of extending it, thus hinting at a willingness to expand their trade dispute into other dimensions. If that happens, then the over one and a half million Ukrainians temporarily residing in Poland would either have to return home or go to elsewhere to Germany for instance. Everything then snowballed into a full-blown political crisis on Tuesday.

Polish Minister of European Affairs Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek ominously warned that:

“Ukraine’s actions make no impression on us… but they do make a certain impression on Polish public opinion. This can be seen in the polls, in the level of public support for continued support for Ukraine. And this harms Ukraine itself. We would like to continue supporting Ukraine, but, for this to be possible, we must have the support of Poles in this matter. If we don’t have it, it will be difficult for us to continue supporting Ukraine in the same way as we have been doing so far.”

Zelensky then exploited his global pulpit at the UNGA to fearmonger about the following:

“We are working to ensure food stability. And I hope that many of you will join us in these efforts. We launched a temporary sea export corridor from our ports. And we are working hard to preserve the land routes for grain exports. And it is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater – making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda’s response that he shared with reporters showed how offended he was:

“Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to everything he can… but we have the right to defend ourselves against harm being done to us. A drowning person is extremely dangerous, he can pull you down to the depths… simply drown the rescuer. We must act to protect ourselves from the harm being done to us, because if the drowning person… drowns us, he will not get help. So we have to take care of our interests and we will do it effectively and decisively.”

It was against this backdrop that Poland urgently summoned the Ukrainian Ambassador on Wednesday, after which Morawiecki revealed later that day that Poland is no longer sending weapons to Kiev. Prior to Ukraine complaining to the WTO about Poland, which is what set this fast-moving sequence of events into motion, tensions were already boiling for some time as a result of the failed counteroffensive sobering them up from the mutual delusion of seemingly inevitable victory over Russia.

These neighboring nations then naturally began to fall out with one another as the full range of their preexisting differences were exacerbated and quickly reshaped bilateral relations. Their trade dispute was just the tip of the iceberg but it showed that each side was starting to prioritize their contradictory national interests at the expense of shared political ones. This signaled to their societies that it was now once again acceptable target the other with nationalist rage instead of focusing solely on Russia.  

All this have been prevented, however, if only Ukraine showed some gratefulness to Poland for everything that Warsaw did for it these past 19 months and didn’t complain to the WTO about the grain issue. Even worse was Zelensky breaking the taboo of accusing his Polish counterpart of all people, who leads one of the world’s most Russophobic states in history, of supposedly doing Russia’s geopolitical bidding. He crossed a red line and there’s now no going back to their previously illusory mutual trust.

Polish-Ukrainian ties are expected to plunge even further in the coming weeks as the first approaches its next elections on 15 October, which the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party hopes to win by making everything about national security. This explains why they cut off arms shipments to Ukraine in response to Zelensky’s ridiculous innuendo about Poland being a Russian puppet, and it’s possible that more such meaningful moves might soon follow to remind Ukraine that it’s indebted to Poland for its survival.

With these calculations in mind, it can confidently be predicted that Polish-Ukrainian ties will likely continue plunging till mid-October at the earliest, after which they might rebound if the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition’s latest media campaign succeeds in turning enough rural voters against PiS. It’ll be an uphill battle for them, and PiS could possibly form a coalition government with the anti-establishment Confederation party if they aren’t totally trounced, so PO’s return to power isn’t guaranteed.  

That being the case, there’s a credible chance that Polish-Ukrainian ties could plunge even further across the coming year, especially if PiS is forced into a coalition government with Confederation. The first has come to resent Zelensky in recent months while the latter was consistently against Poland’s leading role in waging NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, which could lead to a devastating combination for Kiev. In such a situation, everything might get much worse, and at an even faster pace at that.

Absent PO’s victory at the polls next month, the only other variable that could realistically offset this scenario is if Kiev backtracks on its threatened WTO lawsuit and Zelensky finally shows sincere gratitude in public for everything that Poland has done for Ukraine. Nobody should get their hopes up about that, however, since he’s expected to seek re-election next spring and might worry that walking back on his newly assertive policy towards Poland could lose him the nationalist vote.

Both parties are therefore in a dilemma whereby each believes that they have more to gain at the level of national and political interests by escalating tensions than by being the first to de-escalate them. A self-sustaining cycle is thus in the process of forming, which risks leading to such a drastic deterioration of their ties that the presently dismal state thereof might soon be looked fondly upon. This is especially so if Poland moves to more openly exert its creeping hegemony over Western Ukraine in the near future.  

To be clear, the aforementioned sequence of events is the absolute worst-case scenario and accordingly isn’t all that likely, but it also can’t be ruled out either since few foresaw how far their ties would plunge just a few short months ago. It’s undeniable that Polish-Ukrainian relations have entered a period of uncertainty that might last for a while so both would do well to prepare their societies for the possibility of continued tensions so that they can most effectively adapt to this emerging geostrategic reality.  

Russia Matters, 9/15/23

The majority of Russians view their country and China as “great,” but would not say the same of the U.S. or its allies, according to Levada Center polling. The share of Russians who view their own country as great has almost doubled over the past two decades, from 43% in 2002 to 80% in 2023. The same period has seen the share of Levada respondents who view China as great triple from 19% in 2002 to 63% in 2023. By comparison, the share of Russians who view the U.S. as great halved from 62% in 2002 to 30% in 2023. The same period saw the share of Russians who view Japan, the U.K., Germany and France as great shrink at an even faster rate, ending at 9%, 9%, 8% and 3%, respectively, in 2023. Interestingly, while the share of Russians who admire Western greatness has shrunk dramatically over the past two decades, shorter-term measurements reveal certain improvements in Russians’ views toward some of these countries. For instance, the share of Russians who say they have a good attitude toward the U.S. was 22% in August 2023, which is higher than at any other point since February 2022.

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 9/23/23

Latest news on the war: these past two days we have advanced considerably to a full-blown Russia-NATO war

This past week most Western media discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war has focused on developments in New York, where Zelensky and Biden gave their propaganda speeches about Russian imperialism threatening the world order, and then in Washington, where Zelensky met with Congressional leaders and with the President in his pursuit of further deliveries of arms. The focus was on air defense systems, on F-16 fighter jets and on the ATACMS ground to ground missiles.

This past week Western media broke ranks on the prospects for a Ukrainian victory. It appeared that there is growing consensus that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had failed and there was more talk of Ukraine-fatigue in American political circles. Speculation now turned both in major media and in dissident media on how the United States will respond to a looming defeat in Ukraine.  Many decided that Washington would just move on after ‘throwing Ukraine under the bus’ and raise the war cries against China so as to avoid getting bogged down in recriminations over ‘who lost Ukraine.’

However, that was two days ago. Today Washington’s Plan B is becoming clearer. And what I see does not look good for world peace and for our chances of surviving this conflict.

Plan B took the form of the Storm Shadow strike a couple of days ago directly on the General Staff building of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.  You have not seen or heard much about this in Western media and the Russians were dead silent until today. And even today what little information we have comes from the civilian administration in Sevastopol, not from the Russian Ministry of Defense, a fact which by itself raises the intrigue.

The Russian news tickers, by which I mean Dzen (formerly Yandex news) and mail.ru, tell us that one staff member of the general staff is unaccounted for. We are told by the Governor of Sevastopol that another strike may be expected and people were warned not to visit the downtown area. As for the building itself, the attack touched off a fire which took several hours to bring under control. There were reports that debris was scattered up to several hundred meters away. There was talk of back-up equipment being prepared to carry on the functions that were performed in the staff building. Finally, the attacking missile has been identified as a British-made Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missile. There may have been a cluster of these missiles incoming, because Russian air defense is said to have shot down five.

Judging by past experience when the Ukrainians have committed some sensational act, such as their bombing of the Crimean bridge or the destruction of the Kakhovka dam or their incursion across the border to the Belgorod region of Russia, there was some menacing response from the Russian Defense Ministry. Now there is silence. Why? Russian state television news yesterday and today has carried on as if there is nothing more important than the price of diesel fuel and whether the new ban on export will dampen the price and improve availability across the country.

The next troublesome straw in the wind is the reversal of the Biden administration on the question of sending the ATACMS to Kiev. The optimal moment to announce such a decision would have been during Zelensky’s day on Capitol Hill and meetings in the Oval Office. Instead Jake Sullivan told reporters that no decision had been taken as yet by the President.

I believe there is a clear connection between the successful Storm Shadow attack on the general staff building in Sevastopol and the decision to ship ATACMS to Ukraine now. I also note that the decision to supply the American missiles will surely be followed in a few days by the German decision to ship its long-range TAURUS missiles. Both decisions have till now been held back on grounds that they would lead to a Russian escalation of the war. Now it would appear that, facing imminent defeat, the Biden administration is throwing caution to the wind and is ready to risk outbreak of a direct, not proxy Russia-NATO war.

As a further straw in the wind, I point to another deeply troublesome bit of information that you will not find in The New York Times. The Russian news ticker today carries a report from a Russian commander in the field in Ukraine that his unit just destroyed a Leopard tank and found that the entire crew was Germans. Two of them were killed and one injured tank officer was taken prisoner. Those manning a Leopard surely were not soldiers of fortune but genuine Bundeswehr boys.  Put in other words, NATO is now directly on the battlefield and not as advisers or instructors.  We are headed into very dangerous territory.

Poscript: One reader has sent in a valuable further bit of information that is not in mainstream reporting:

See https://en.lentafeed.com/@infodefENGLAND/12520

This, coming from Turkish sources, says that the Russians retaliated to the Sevastopol destruction by staging their own cruise missile attack on the Kremenchug Airport, the launch site used by the Ukrainians. “Both SCALP and Storm Shadow missiles, which were stationed at the airbase, along with the SU24M/MR bombers responsible for today’s attack, have been detroyed. A substantial number of firefighters and ambulances have been dispatched to the airfield. There are significant casualties among pilots, ground personnel and even NATO personnel, ncluding Poles, who were involved in coordinating the operatoins and maintaining the missiles.”

This all suggests an additional reason for Biden to consent to shipment of the ATACMS missiles to Ukraine now: unlike the Storm Shadow, they are launched from the ground on mobile launchers similar to HIMARS. Therefore the loss of airfields and bombers and pilots does not constrain their use and holds the promise of more destuction of Russian assets in Crimea. I would also wager that US forces will be sent not just to maintain but to target and launch the ATACMS.

NOTE: I apologize for the flurry of posts sent last night. Something went haywire with my scheduling settings. The problem appears to be fixed now. – Natylie

by Brett Wilkins, Antiwar.com, 9/16/23

A report published Wednesday [9/13/23] by a U.S. nonprofit group recommends cooperation between the United States and Russia aimed at reducing the threat of a nuclear war sparked by cyberattacks on nuclear weapon systems.

“In the modern nuclear age, there is no more urgent task than understanding and mitigating the potential risks posed by the interaction of advancing cyber capabilities and nuclear weapons systems,” the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) asserted in the report, entitled Reducing Cyber Risks to Nuclear Weapons: Proposals From a U.S.-Russia Expert Dialogue.

The publication “highlights the critical need for a global diplomatic approach to address growing cyber risks, including, where possible, through cooperation between the United States and Russia.”

“Despite significant current geopolitical tensions, the United States and Russia have a mutual interest in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons and an obligation to work together to do so based on the understanding that a cyberattack on a nuclear weapons system could trigger catastrophic and unintended conflict and escalation,” the group said in an implied reference to strained relations amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

NTI drew from talks between U.S. and Russian nonproliferation experts that took place in 2020 and 2021 prior to last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

“While acknowledging the challenges posed by an already charged political environment, the dialogue emphasized the importance of maintaining cooperation between the United States and Russia on key nuclear security issues, the value of unilateral risk reduction actions, and the benefit of developing ideas for cooperative steps to be advanced when the political situation improves,” the organization noted.

The talks yielded six recommendations for the U.S. and Russia to reduce cyber risks:

• Refrain from cyber interference in nuclear weapons and related systems, including nuclear command, control, communications, delivery, and warning systems;
• Evaluate options to minimize entanglement and/or integration of conventional and nuclear assets;
• Continue to improve the cybersecurity of their respective nuclear systems, including through unilateral “fail-safe” reviews;
• Increase transparency and expand communications during periods of increased tension;
• Adopt procedures to ensure that any cyber, information, or other operation involving information and communications technologies emanating from the United States or Russia with the potential to disrupt another nation’s nuclear deterrence mission be approved at the same level as required for nuclear use; and
• Eliminate policies that threaten a nuclear weapons response to cyberattack.

“Today, the United States and Russia still possess roughly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons and are also among the most proficient and active developers and users of information and communications technology (ICT),” the report notes. “Nuclear weapons policies, however, have not kept up with these technological advancements.”

“Meanwhile,” the publication continues, “the ubiquity of advanced digital ICT tools, as well as their fulsome functional benefits, have led both countries’ nuclear weapons enterprises to incorporate digital technologies into their nuclear weapons, warning, command, control, and communications systems.”

“With that modernization come vulnerabilities and openness to cyberattacks that could prompt dangerous miscalculations or accidents, leading to nuclear use,” NTI stated, adding that “in the mid- to long-term, cybersecurity can be improved in the
context of ongoing nuclear weapons systems modernization.”

“Mutual commitments can be codified through various political or legal formats,” the report states. “Nuclear force modernization in each country presents an opportunity to clarify, isolate, and distinguish which systems are involved in nuclear deterrence missions from civilian infrastructure, critical national assets, and conventional warfighting systems.”

“Modernization also provides opportunities to improve system resiliency and upgrade cybersecurity measures and practices,” the publication adds. “Both the United States and Russia should prioritize cyber-nuclear weapons risk-reduction as they pursue future bilateral and multilateral arms control, confidence-building, and transparency initiatives.”

The new report came a day after the U.S. Department of Defense published an unclassified summary of its 2023 Cyber Strategy, the first update in five years, in which the Pentagon stated it would “use cyberspace operations for the purpose of campaigning, undertaking actions to limit, frustrate, or disrupt adversaries’ activities below the level of armed conflict and to achieve favorable security conditions.”

The Pentagon added that it would “remain closely attuned to adversary perceptions and will manage the risk of unintended escalation.”

Russia’s war and U.S. support for Ukrainian efforts to oust invaders have heightened international calls for disarmament, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warning that nuclear modernization and rising global mistrust is “a recipe for annihilation.”

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace.