First of four essays:

CAT BENEATH A BIRDLESS SKY By Ludmila Kheronsky, Orion Magazine, July 2022

NOW IT IS THERE. Harsh sound behind the window. Thth-th-th-sss-ss-bang! The cat jumps and hides under the bed, then under the sofa. My black cat is hiding in the shadows. My body is trembling.

I shy away from the thought that this will continue. I want to stay strong. And I want to sleep too. But how do I sleep after THAT? What if we are never to sleep anymore? I try to imagine our sleepless nights, heads up.

The explosion. Russia has finally decided we are too unimportant to let live or sleep. Or have happy, unscared pets.

Later I will learn cats hear the missile three or four minutes ahead of its actual appearance. If you want to know there is a missile approaching: look at your pet. The cats begin to run back and forth in dismay, bumping against the walls. I talked to a woman from Lebanon who said her cat behaved the same way before the rocket shelling—running about the room, restlessly beating up and down the walls and windows. That was back in 2008, she said. That is what I see in 2022.

First, I listen to my body, to my chattering teeth. This chatter, animal fear, so shameful. Should I hide under the sofa, too, and lie there flat as a pancake? A cat hides under the sofa, but where can a human creature hide when home is no longer safe? How soon do I disappear?

I go to the dining room.

I try to make coffee. My first war coffee, at four o’clock in the morning, right after the explosion.

These rockets, the heavy pieces of deadly metal, how much do they weigh? Later I will know they can weigh up to four thousand kilos.

Nothing I am aware of weighs that much.

Even the cupboard, that antique piece of furniture we had restored and repaired and brought back in with the help of three strong men, does not weigh that much. Besides, no sane person would shell cupboards…

I go outside. The sky brightens, the white-and-blue sky of the first war morning—so far and so close. Every tree in the garden witnesses us. I need reliable witnesses to tell the story of the early morning rocket explosions.

The war erodes your breathing. It becomes hard and cloddy, like damaged soil. I will find it hard to breathe later on. My breathing will become bumpy, I will pant and wait to breathe out. That’s how breathing resists pain and despair. Look at other people to see how they breathe and you can tell right away how troubled or untroubled they are. Some people develop unnoticeable breathing as if they are not there anymore. Wars are unfit for breath.

The war morning: everything has become grayish. Even the bright crocuses are not as bright anymore. The flowers look ashy.

I’ve always loved making a fire in the fireplace, the smell of burning wood and the dying ember in the end, the ashes. Will I love it as much as I did before?

I can’t say what I will appreciate most as life is broken in two parts—before the war and during the war. During the war I need your citizens walking along the streets. I need to talk to taxi drivers, to bank clerks and shop assistants. While talking to people, I regain the feeling of being alive, the pleasures of staying normal. Life strives to be sane and people get up and go to work. Someone bakes bread.

Get up, take a shower, do your work.

We don’t have a basement where we could hide in bombardment. Neither do we have a place that could protect us from the missiles. Of course, a missile may hit our home directly. The chances of survival are very low then—but what if it explodes nearby? Then a window glass shatters, pieces fly everywhere around us, at us.

So my first activity this morning is to build a barricade of our books on the windowsill. These are books written by me and by my husband—extra copies at home, they now serve to protect us if our street is shelled. This is the room where we hide from missiles.

How do I prepare my house for war? What else do I need? Blankets, sheets, shawls? Will my favorite cashmere shawl do? I need an elegant covering from this nightmare.

Quick glimpses around the rooms of my home: so many beautiful things around me seem useless now. Dolls, beads, pictures, figurines, books on the shelves. I need shelter. I wrap my cashmere shawl around my shoulders.

My mom lived through World War II. She understands.

“Don’t leave your home,” she says. “Do they shell around your house?”

Sasha Matveeva/Unsplash

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Okay, then,” she says, “don’t leave.”

After the war started, we had an “evacuee” in our place, a tall silent woman with two children. The children were skinny. They were very poor. People shared some plain food with them. Nobody knew her name. We called her “Evacuee.” People who have no home lose their names.

I still have a name. My name is Ludmila. I have my home, though there are missiles flying above it. I used to wake up and talk to birds in the sky. The birds are gone now. It’s too loud for them to stay on our rooftop. I fill a windowsill with books to protect my husband and our cat from the glass shower during the air raid. I booked it. I used words for protection and safety. I think it will help.

I need to find a flashlight. And a go-bag. It should be very small, but it should have all my life in it—everything I love and value and everything I might need—family photos, books, documents, food and water, medication, cell phone, chargers, money, and my necklace, and warm clothes, and our collections of art, and my pillow, and my cashmere shawl, and my lipstick, and my husband’s glasses, and my fear, and my grief, and my anger, and my hope.

***

Read the other 3 essays here.

Link to video available here.

“This debate took place in Toronto on Wednesday, November 30th, 2022. Journalist Matt Taibbi and author Douglas Murray took on New Yorker contributor Malcolm Gladwell and columnist Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times. Taibbi and Murray argued for the proposition (that mainstream media COULD NOT BE TRUSTED). They won with the largest swing in the event’s history, moving from a 48%-52% voter deficit to a 67%-33% win.”

Transcript of debate here.

From the Munk Debates website:

“Public trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low. Critics point to coverage of COVID-19, the 2020 election, and the Ottawa trucker protest as proof that legacy outlets like the New York Times, The Globe and Mail and CNN can no longer be relied upon to provide unbiased reporting. Activist journalists are using pen and paper to push political agendas while their bosses lean into the profitability of polarization. Mainstream media’s defenders argue that their institutions offer an invaluable public service that alternative outlets are either incapable or uninterested in providing: careful fact-based reporting on important issues and holding the powerful to account. In a brave new world of “fake news” and “drive by” journalism, traditional news organizations are essential to democracy and a bulwark against corruption, misinformation and the private interests of the powerful.”

By Moscow Times, 12/1/22

Russian manufacturing firms recorded their fastest rate of growth last month in almost six years due to new export orders and increased demand from domestic customers, according to a business survey published Thursday by S&P Global.

Despite Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, “firms expanded their input buying at the fastest pace since January 2017,” S&P Global said.

The seasonally adjusted S&P Global Russia Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index rose in November to 53.2 from 50.7 in October.

“Greater new sales spurred renewed increases in employment and inventories, with input buying expanding at a steep rate,” the report said.

According to the survey, firms also expanded their workforce numbers last month — in contrast with an October decline after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” to draft 300,000 reservists for the war in Ukraine.

Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over the war in Ukraine have helped tip Russia into a recession, with the economy shrinking 1.7% in the first nine months of the year.

By Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 12/6/22

Professor Boyd-Barrett’s summary of Alexander Mercouris’s analysis of the day.

Missile Strikes
The most recent strikes are routine, with 70+ cruise missiles launched, a large number for one day but, since the missile campaign started in October, this is about the norm. Occasionally there are bigger strikes. Some western publications have said the most recent strike was smaller than usual and less effective, probably an incorrect conclusion.

The NYT has examined, it claims, the debris from what were likely to have been earlier strikes. They conclude that Russian cruise missiles were made in Russia as recently as October: they are new missiles, thus showing that sanctions have not choked Russian ability to make cruise missiles or to keep production lines running. There is no reason to think that the Russians will feel obliged to cease these attacks any time soon, as they can likely continue producing them indefinitely. A knowledgable correspondent has told Mercouris that the kind of chips that these missiles require is not the most advanced of the kind that mainly Taiwan produces, and that Russia has a well established production line for chips of the caliber needed for subsonic cruise missiles, less than 60 microns.

Energy and Refugees
Russia has not sought to cripple all energy in Ukraine. It is careful not to attack the three nuclear power stations that Ukraine still controls. The only way to knock out all of Ukraine’s power would be to knock out the stations that transfer electric power to the nuclear plants or that transfer power from one place to another. At some point, Russia will probably come for these. But for the moment, John Helmer has argued, Russia is calibrating its attacks in order to learn what impact they have and how Ukraine responds. Most western journalists, by the way, are based in Kiev, and Kiev has not been the priority area for the most recent strikes even if Kiev too is affected.

Energy problems are accumulating and Ukrainian people are facing shortages of power and of water even as temperatures approach zero. And this is becoming a massive problem for Ukrainian citizens. The Ukrainian foregin ministry seems to have abandoned Ukrainian refugees in Europe, where they face local exasperation at the problems associated with the scale of the migration. The ministry has not said a word in support of these refugees, perhaps because it does not want to give the impression that it is supporting the refugee influx into Europe. But Ukraine’s policy of trying to keep people inside Ukraine, given the circumstances of energy shortage, seems to be fundamentally callous and cynical, an abdication of responsibility. If the government cannot help these people, then it should alert European governments of this fact.

There has been another Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian facility and another attack on Russian air bases in Crimea. The latter have been unsuccessful. As for the recentr Ukrainian attacks on Russian air bases in Russia, debris has damaged two bombers, but four people were caught in the open and they were killed, suggesting that Russia was not fully tracking the drones as they passed over Russia.

Nuclear Threats
Even if the damage was otherwise not very significant the bases are where the Russia’s strategic bomber force is maintained, the counterforce against the nuclear forces of the United States suggesting it is probable that nuclear weapons are located at the Engels base and quite possibly at the other base (which does not operate very long-range aircraft).

The nuclear weapons are likely in very hardened bunkers but the threat of missiles to nuclear weapons is a pretty serious business. Ukraine presumably knows that nuclear weapons are there, and yet it is prepared to launch cruise missiles towards them. This looks very reckless, as did the repeated Ukrainian shelling of ZPNN – which is continuing, despite reports of an upcoming truce there.

The US also presumably knows all this, which is possibly why it is reported that the US has modified its HIMARS missiles, which are pretty large, so as not to make it possible for Ukraine to use them for that kind of distance. This does not preclude the possibility that one of Ukraine’s allies mightr provide it with one or more of the long distance varieties.

Western mainstream media are ignoring this dimension of the story of Ukrainian strikes. This suggests that there are people in western governments who are concerned about all this and trying to keep a lid on public knowledge and concern. But just as part of the US government is likely trying to prevent Ukraine from being so reckless, there is another part of the government quietly greenlighting Ukraine’s recklessness, as indicated by the visit to Ukraine of Victoria Nuland, assistance secretary of state and a notorious hardliner. It is not possible that Ukraine would not have discussed its strikes with some of its friends in the USA, since Ukraine is totally dependent on US military support. Ukraine would not want that support to be compromised.

Ukraine had 152 of these kinds of attack drones before the war; will it convert more into cruise missiles, will it fire more of them, on Russia; and what will Washington do about this? The Russians will be ramping up their air defenses in the light of recent developments, and there will be warnings from Moscow to Washington about the corresponding dangers, and warnings from Washington to Kiev. A few weeks ago, Russia was warning the west that Ukraine was preparing a dirty bomb, a claim that was universally derided in the west, including by the IAEA. But the recent strike certainly shows a certain lack of Ukrainian responsibility. One cannot say that Ukraine would never do such a thing as prepare a dirty bomb.

Putin in Crimea, the Oil Price Cap and a Myth about Insurance.
Putin has visited the recently-attacked bridge to Crimea to examine repairs. The bridge was never totally out of commission and has now been totally repaired. Putin drove across the bridge, an indication that he himself has gone to the frontline, a common practice of Russian leaders.

Putin is now likely determining Russia’s response to the oil price cap. Western media have reported there are 19 Russian tankers waiting for Turkish permits to pass the Dardenelles because of Turkish concern as to whether the tankers have insurance coverage. In fact none of the tankers are Russian and all of these non-Russian tankers have taken out western insurance. None of the tankers that have Russian insurance have been stopped from passing on through the Dardanelles. These are tricky waters and the chance of accidents is high. But the Turkish authorities have been checking non-Russian ships with western coverage, not Russian ships with Russian insurance coverage.

Much of the oil actually going through the Dardenelles is oil from Kazakhstan which is not subject to US sanctions. Yet already the uncertainties created by the oil price cap are impacting transportation of oil that is not targeted by the sanctions war. This will have negative implications for oil prices in Europe. The Financial Times has conceded that the $60 cap is the price that Russian oil is already trading (it ihas been actually higher in the days leading up to the implementation of the cap policy).

Russia is now taking its own counter measures. It will not observe the cap. It will continue to supply countries that do not apply the cap, and it will prohibit Russian producers and shipping and insurance companies from having any dealings with entities that support the oil price cap. It is also slightly cutting down on oil production. If the import ban on Russian oil is lifted and Europe relies purely on the oil price cap, then the Russians have already killed that idea. They will not supply oil to Europe so long as there is a cap. One group that must be very worried must be the Greek ship owners who ship 50% of the oil that is transported. Greek ship owners, who have huge influence, will not be pleased, and one wonders about the stability of the Greek government going forward. No oil economist thinks the cap will be effective. Russian oil was trading at $70 a barrel in Far Eastern markets in the rush to buy oil before the cap was introduced.

Seizing Russian Money
Mercouris has seen some other problems with sanctions policies, namely western freezing of Russian central bank foreign assets, around $350 billion. A paper provided to NATO says that western powers have only been able to track down $100 billion and they dont know where the rest is. Much of that money may have found its way back to Russia by now. This does show how difficult it is to enforce sanctions against a super power. How much more difficult it will be to control the price of Russian oil.

Battlefronts
Russian defense minister, Shoigu, has just identified a string of settlements in the Donbass that Russia has taken in recent weeks. He claims that Ukraine lost 8,000 killed in action in November, and the number is likely comparable for December.

By Eric Horowitz, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 11/30/22

The New York Times has found another neo-Nazi militia to fawn over in Ukraine. The Bratstvo battalion “gave access to the New York Times to report on two recent riverine operations,” which culminated in a piece (11/21/22) headlined “On the River at Night, Ambushing Russians.”

Since the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014, establishment media have either minimized the far-right ideology that guides many Ukrainian nationalist detachments or ignored it  completely.

Anti-war outlets, including FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeatedly highlighted this dynamic—particularly regarding corporate media’s lionization of the Azov battalion, once widely recognized by Western media as a fascist militia, now sold to the public as a reformed far-right group that gallantly defends the sovereignty of a democratic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org,  10/6/22).

That is when Azov’s political orientation is discussed at all, which has become less and less common since Russia launched its invasion in February.

‘Christian Taliban’

The lesser-known Bratstvo battalion, within which the Times embedded its reporters, is driven by several far-right currents—none of which are mentioned in the article.

Bratstvo was founded as a political organization in 2004 by Dmytro Korchynsky, who previously led the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Korchynsky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s paramilitary wing, is a Holocaust denier who falsely blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and peddled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrmacht.” He has stated that he sees Bratstvo as a “Christian Taliban” (Intercept, 3/18/15).

In the 1980s, the Times portrayed the religious extremists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiving US training and arms—as a heroic bulwark against Soviet expansionism. We all know how that worked out.

In an echo of that propaganda campaign, the Times neglected to tell its readers about the neo-Nazi and theocratic politics of the Bratstvo battalion. Why should anyone care who else Bratstvo members would like to see dead, so long as they’re operating in furtherance of US policymakers’ stated aim of weakening Russia?

Modern-day crusade

The article’s author, Carlotta Gall, recounted Bratstvo’s Russian-fighting exploits in quasi-religious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hinted at the unit’s guiding ideology came in the form of mythologizing the unit’s Christian devotion.

Of Bratstvo fighters embarking on a mission, Gall wrote, “They recited a prayer together, then loaded up the narrow rubber dinghies and set out, hunched silent figures in the dark.” Referring to battalion commander Oleksiy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost mythical renown for surviving close combat with Russian troops.”

The piece even featured a photograph showing militia members gathered in prayer. Evoking the notion of pious soldiers rather than that of a “Christian Taliban,” the caption read, “Members of the Bratstvo battalion’s special forces unit prayed together before going on a night operation.”

The Times also gave voice to some of the loftier aims of Bratstvo’s crusade, quoting Serediuk’s musing that, “We all dream about going to Chechnya, and the Kremlin, and as far as the Ural Mountains.” Nazi racial ideologues have long been enamored by the prospect of reaching the Urals, which they view as the natural barrier separating European culture from the Asiatic hordes.

While plotting Operation Barbarossa, Hitler identified the Urals as the eastern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, referring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid European Russia of Asiatic “untermenschen” so the land could be settled by hundreds of millions of white Europeans, Himmler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way forward little by little to the Urals.”

‘Mindset of the 13th century’

The only two Bratstvo members named in the piece, meanwhile, are Serediuk and Vitaliy Chorny. While Chorny—who the Times identified as the battalion’s head of intelligence gathering—is quoted, his statements are limited to descriptions of the unit’s fighting strategy. Serediuk’s recorded utterances are similarly lacking in substance.

Far more illuminating is an Al Jazeera article (4/15/15) titled “‘Christian Taliban’s’ Crusade on Ukraine’s Front Lines,” which quotes both Serediuk and Chorny extensively. Serediuk, Al Jazeera reported, “revels in the Christian Taliban label.” In reference to his decision to leave the Azov battalion, the piece went on to say:

Serediuk didn’t leave the Azov because of the neo-Nazi connections, however—extreme-right ideology doesn’t bother him. What does irk him, however, is being around fighters who are not zealous in their religious convictions.

In the same piece, Chorny invoked the violently antisemitic Crusades of the Middle Ages to describe Bratstvo’s ideological foundation:

The enemy—the forces of darkness—they have all the weapons, they have greater numbers, they have money. But our soldiers are the bringers of European traditions and the Christian mindset of the 13th century.

To circumvent the Times’ exultant narrative, one has to do a certain amount of supplementary research and analysis. But even the most basic inquiry—searching “Bratstvo battalion” on Google—reveals the far-right underpinnings of the unit with which the Times embedded its reporters.

The seventh search result is a June 2022 study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which reported, “Another such far-right entity is the so-called Brotherhood (Bratstvo) ‘battalion,’ which includes Belarusian, Danish, Irish and Canadian members.”

The ninth result is an article from the Washington Free Beacon (4/6/22), which quoted a far-right Canadian volunteer as saying on Telegram that he was “fighting in the neo-Nazi ‘Bratstvo’ Battalion in Kyiv.”

SS memorabilia

The New York Times (11/21/22) captioned this photo, “Members of the Bratstvo battalion’s special forces unit prayed together before going on a night operation.”

In a world where journalists actually practiced what they preached, someone at the paper of record surely would have noticed the Nazi insignia appearing in two photos in the piece. In this world, however, the Times either forgot how to use the zoom function—though the paper made extensive use of this capability when reporting on China’s Communist Party Congress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they simply did not want to report on this ugly and inconvenient discovery.

Totenkopf insignia worn by Bratstvo member in photo above.

One soldier is seen wearing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a photo of Bratstvo’s prayer circle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in German, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfverbande—an SS unit that participated in Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, and guarded the concentration camps where Nazi Germany condemned millions of Jewish men, women and children to death.

Totenkopf emblem on eBay.

Individuals donning the Totenkopf also took part in the murder of millions of others in these camps, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, trade unionists, persons with disabilities, homosexuals and Romani people.

In September, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted—and then quietly deleted—a picture on social media of himself with a number of soldiers, one of whom was wearing a Totenkopf patch similar to that seen in the Times’ photo of Bratstvo’s prayer meeting. One can easily find this particular iteration on Amazon or eBay.

Later in the Times article, another photograph of a soldier wearing a slightly different version of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an interior room and staring out from the very center of the image, the Totenkopf is even harder to miss. Amazon’s product description for this specific variant reads, “This gorgeous replica piece takes you back to World War II.”

If the Times simply failed to identify the Totenkopf in two separate photos—both of which were taken by a Times photographer while he was embedded with Bratstvo, and were then featured prominently in the article—that would certainly amount to a journalistic failure.

The alternative scenario is that the Times did recognize the SS memorabilia worn by the soldiers they chose to embed with, and decided to publish the images anyway without commenting on the matter.

FAIR ACTION ALERT:

Please remind the New York Times to clearly identify neo-Nazi forces when they appear in coverage, and to refrain from depicting such movements as heroes.

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