Excellent discussion.

By Leif Reigstad, The Nation, 5/24/22

ODESA, UKRAINE—On a hot and sunny summer day along the Black Sea beachfront, Igor cast his fishing line over the edge of a long pier. Wearing nothing but a blue Speedo and the faded red beach towel wrapped around his neck, the leathery-skinned Odessan was at a different spot from his preferred place for finding Gobi fish and mussels, where he’d been fishing for 10 years. His usual place had been wrecked by a recent rocket attack.

An engineer by trade, Igor was out of work because of the war, and he’d been coming here to fish all day to keep busy. He didn’t seem to care that Russian ships were just out of sight somewhere off the coast, training their armaments on this picturesque and historic city. The evidence of their destructive might was visible just a short walk down the shoreline, where the charred remains of a ritzy waterfront hotel sat in a massive pile of rubble a week after being struck by a Russian missile. As Igor fished, the soft booms of defensive artillery sounded in the background. “I don’t even consider going to a shelter,” he told me. “If it hits, it hits.”

Odesa had been considered an early target of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose efforts on the southern front were stalled at Mariupol and, so far, have been largely stopped at Mykolaiv, preventing ground forces from reaching this crown jewel on the Black Sea. Odesa has since become a symbol of Ukraine’s stubborn resistance. It was roughly 75 miles along the coast from here that Russia’s warship Moskva was famously sunk, and while a curfew remains in effect and city officials still warn that Russian attempts at a marine landing remain possible, it seems extremely improbable that the war will reach Odesa anytime soon in the way that it’s reached the Donbas region or the villages surrounding Kyiv.

Still, rockets continue to strike, and every so often mines wash in with the tide. A few days after I met Igor, a beach bathroom was destroyed by rocket. But none of this seemed to bother beachgoers bathing on the white sands. Their easy-going enjoyment of the waterfront seemed emblematic of the Odessan spirit.

As in most of the cities that sit far from the front lines, life here has continued amid the war. At the city’s Privoz Market, a maze of shops selling everything from seafood to showerheads, shoppers bought cheese and fresh bread from Georgians, dried fruit and nuts from Uzbeks, and fresh fruit and wine from Moldovans, including bushels of the brightest-red strawberries I’ve ever seen. One woman selling hunks of salty cheese told me the market never closed, not even on February 24, when the recent invasion began.

While the market remained open, it wasn’t quite as busy as usual, according to my fixer, Olga Pariieva. The streets of Odesa were similarly busy, yet missing the hordes of tourists and cars typical for this time of year. It felt peaceful, particularly given the surrounding context of a country at war. Locals were out enjoying the green parks and cobblestone streets, lined by ornate buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, crumbling masterpieces in shades of pastel pink and sea-green. At the Odesa City Garden, the proverbial heart of the city, a street violinist played Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” over the distant sounds of air raid sirens. “Odesa never gives up,” Pariieva told me. “You cannot do this to Odesa.”

But much of the historic downtown is blocked by checkpoints, and some landmarks, like the National Opera, are completely shut off from the public. And while Odesa traditionally moves at a more relaxed pace than the typical big city, civilians here have been mobilizing to support the war effort in parts of Ukraine that have been more directly impacted.

In a four-star hotel in the city’s equivalent of Miami’s South Beach—a cluster of glass skyscrapers and night clubs—volunteers were unpacking and sorting packages of combat medical kits, thermal tactical optics, and camo uniforms. The hotel’s restaurant was converted into a donation center at the beginning of the war, and since then volunteers have been sorting donations and cooking meals for soldiers in the kitchen. Piles of potatoes and onions lay atop red velvet couches where once wealthy socialites sat popping bottles of champagne.

In an atrium beneath a gold chandelier, lead organizer Victoria Krotova showed me a photo on her phone of a brand-new silver pickup truck that they’d arranged to be delivered to the front. Swiping to the next image on her phone, she showed me the same truck, several days after it reached the front, turned into a useless piece of scrap by Russian artillery.

“The day the war began, I woke up and immediately understood that part of my life before the war was finished,” she said, wearing a white sweatshirt that read “There’s always hope,” and standing near a table on which sat a package of Pampers next to a pair of thermal vision goggles. “People will never be the same. It will never be the same as it used to be.”

Right now, Krotova said they desperately need uniforms—specifically, MARPAT camo, the pattern type used by the US Marines—and more cars.

Despite the hotel’s plush setting, the horrors of war were close. Another volunteer knew a woman who was killed, along with her mother and her 3-month-old baby, when a rocket struck an apartment complex on Easter weekend. When I visited the site in late May, there was still a gaping hole in the building, and a red toy airplane and two roses lay on a stairwell nearby. According to the City of Odesa’s Telegram channel, 30 apartments there were completely destroyed, and 62 more were damaged.

Abulfat Aliev, the owner of a Turkish imports business on the apartment complex’s ground floor, was on his way to work when the rocket struck. He got a security alert saying that his front door had been forced open, and arrived to see the smoldering remains of apartments and a line of charred cars piled on the street in front. “There were flames and smoke, everything was on fire,” he said. “It was horrible. People died, people lost their homes, their memories, things that can’t be replaced.”

At another apartment complex in Odesa, near a large mall that was struck by a rocket, broken windows peered out over an empty playground in the courtyard. Few people remained here. One resident, Lena Sukhotskaya, told me her daughter and grandson were playing here one day when they saw rockets whizzing overhead. They left shortly after that. When a rocket struck the mall nearby, another resident, Natalia, told me she was inside the hallway, clutching her elderly mother so tightly that she nearly suffocated her; they tried to run down to the basement, but the electricity went out and it was too dark; people were falling down. She told me that one small child was screaming so loudly that they thought he’d been hurt; but he was just terrified, and refused to let anyone touch him to look for injuries.

During my week in Odesa, several more rockets struck: a fertilizer plant was destroyed in one attack, and a 4-year-old girl lost her leg when a residential area was hit in Zatoka, a resort town just south of the city.

Amid the constant threat from above, some places in the city can feel like a ghost town. At an amusement park near the waterfront, attendants sat bored next to their rides. There was a tangled mass of stationary bumper cars, and carnival music echoed eerily throughout the nearly empty grounds. A double-decker carousel twirled around a few times for their painted horses’ only riders: a 2-year-boy and his mother, Katya.

“We come here for the distraction,” Katya told me. “I still haven’t gotten used to the rockets. I’m afraid it might come for us next time, hit our house.” She said she hasn’t left Odesa because her mother lives here, and she won’t leave her behind. Then she began to cry. In English, she said, “Stop the war. Stop killing children.”

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 5/20/22

Amid Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, the perennially neutral Nordic states of Finland and Sweden have reversed decades of policy and applied for membership in the NATO military alliance.

For Moscow this is, at least on the symbolic level, a disaster.

Not so long ago, Russian diplomacy aimed to revise European security architecture to make Ukraine look more like the Finnish example of a buffer zone between East and West. Now, with Finland ditching its neutrality to join NATO, even Kyiv has dropped talk it had earlier in the conflict of compromising on the issue of joining NATO. So profound is the geopolitical shift underway that Switzerland, which is often cited in dictionary definitions of “neutrality,” has indicated that it might revise its historical stance under the present circumstances.

Whatever the outcome of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, many analysts say Moscow faces decades of isolation in a Europe solidly united against it.

About these ads

“If in the past there were reasons to speculate about a divergence between the [European Union] and NATO, now it looks like they go hand in hand, at least for the foreseeable future,” says Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry. “If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s idea was to put an end to NATO expansion, it clearly wasn’t very effective.”

A long frontier with Russia

After talking with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö recently, Mr. Putin surprised many by arguing that things needn’t be that bad. Indeed, he said, there should be “no problem,” as long as the new members of NATO refrain from basing foreign military infrastructure on their soil, especially nuclear weapons. Both Finland and Sweden have long been very capable exemplars of “armed neutrality,” maintaining de facto cooperation with the West in security and intelligence matters, and the actual military balance needn’t change, he suggested.

“Putin said that Russia doesn’t see any fresh threats, but will monitor the appearance of any new infrastructure and react accordingly,” says Igor Korotchenko, editor of the Moscow-based National Defense journal. “My own view is that the situation is extremely unfavorable for Russia. Finland has a long frontier with Russia, and Russian forces in the western military district are currently insufficient to cover that. Sweden is a first-class military power, with a huge network of bases and airfields.”

Sweden has been mostly neutral for over 200 years, even navigating World War II and the Cold War without changing its status.

Finland is a more complicated case. It was invaded by the USSR in 1939, and fought a bitter “Winter War,” which dealt severe damage to Soviet forces before Finland was compelled to cede territory. Defeated again in 1945, Finland adopted an official policy of non-alignment and spent the next several decades walking a careful foreign policy line between the USSR, later Russia, and the West.

In practice, however, Finland has integrated with European institutions, including the EU, and hence the actual situation on the ground may not be practically affected by its impending NATO accession.

Still, the geostrategic map is going to look radically different as Finland and Sweden move into NATO.

“The Baltic Sea will become, effectively, a NATO lake,” says Mr. Kortunov. “The border between Russia and NATO will basically double,” as Finland’s 800-mile frontier becomes, at least theoretically, a confrontation line. “In the Arctic Council, it will now be seven NATO members against Russia.”

It remains to be seen what model of NATO integration Finland and Sweden will adopt, Russian analysts say. Some northern European members of NATO, such as Norway and Iceland, eschew foreign bases on their territories, while others, like Poland and the Baltic states, enthusiastically embrace NATO deployments.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

In a May 14 telephone conversation between Mr. Putin and Mr. Niinistö, the Russians may have been assured that Finland will take the former route, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal.

“Finland probably won’t want to host foreign military bases, much less nuclear weapons. So it’s possible that not much will have to change in practical terms,” he says.

“This issue of Ukraine is special”

Russian analysts say that the threat of Ukraine joining NATO posed a qualitatively different challenge for Moscow, paving the path to conflict, due to the country’s proximity to the Russian heartland, its big Russian-speaking population, and historical ties. Perhaps most importantly, the Kremlin has seen an aggressive nationalist threat in Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan revolution overthrew a Russia-friendly government and replaced it with a pro-Western one in Kyiv. Russia’s failure to secure Ukrainian neutrality is just one of the causes of the current crisis, they say.

“This issue of Ukraine is special,” says Mr. Lukyanov. “After all, Russia has accepted the entry of many others into NATO over the years. We may not have liked the idea of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc., joining the alliance, but it did not provoke war. It’s a similar situation with Finland and Sweden. This [war] is about Ukraine specifically.”

But some Russian officials claim that there is a wider, long-term scheme to isolate and undermine Russia now being brought to fruition. Ukraine was inducted into that plan following the Maidan revolution, offered political and military support and seduced with promises of NATO membership and European integration, they say, adding that the inevitable confrontation with Russia is currently being manipulated by Washington to achieve long-held strategic goals in Europe.

“The U.S. is using this Ukraine situation to expand its influence,” says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament. “It’s about much larger things than Ukraine. The U.S. has long wanted Finland and Sweden to abandon neutrality in order to master the Arctic. This is about the bigger picture, and the confrontation in Ukraine is just an instrument that is being exploited to the hilt.”

The Bell, 5/22/22

Hello! This week our top story is on what recently released financial data reveals about Russia’s rapidly growing dependency on oil, as well as a collapse in VAT revenue and how China is coming to Moscow’s rescue. We also look at the new owner of McDonald’s in Russia after the U.S. fast food chain decided to leave the country.

Data exposes VAT collapse, oil dependency and rising military spending

It’s not easy to assess the effect of the “special military operation” in Ukraine on the Russian economy. But one thing is clear: Russia is more dependent than ever on revenue from oil exports. This was starkly visible in April’s budget figures: oil and gas revenues increased, while everything else fell sharply. Judging by the latest data on Chinese purchases of Russian oil, this is a trend that is likely to continue – but there are limits to the rewards of Russia’s much-vaunted “pivot to the East”.

What’s happening?

The Finance Ministry’s budget data (the stats for April were published on May 17) offer a window on to how the Russian economy has been affected by the fighting in Ukraine:

Revenues from non-oil and gas sources (VAT, personal income tax, etc) in April fell 18 percent year-on-year to 1.01 trillion rubles ($17 billion)
Oil and gas export revenue, however, continued to rise despite Western sanctions. Amid high oil prices, oil and gas revenues were 1.8 trillion rubles in April compared with 1.2 trillion the month before.
Russia is increasingly financially dependent on revenues from energy exports. When compared with April 2021, the share of oil and gas in state revenue has doubled. The share was 63 percent in April and 48 percent for the first four months of 2022. Last year, the share was equivalent to 36 percent of Russian revenue, and in 2020 it was 28 percent.
However, not even record oil profits could keep the budget in surplus. The budget saw its first monthly deficit of 2022 in April – 262.3 billion rubles. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has estimated there will be a deficit of 1.6 trillion rubles this year.
Collapse in VAT

One of the most striking details in the Finance Ministry figures (excluding a rise in military expenditure) was the collapse of VAT revenue. Together with the mineral extraction tax, it’s one of the two main tax contributors to Russia’s coffers, accounting for about a third of total revenues.

In April 2022, domestic VAT raised just 192 billion rubles – that’s less than half the equivalent figure from April 2021. VAT fees on imported goods in April 2022 were down about a third.

Domestic VAT payments have been impacted by the contraction in purchasing power that began in March, and the mass exodus of foreign businesses. “In April, the revenues of the overwhelming majority of companies in Russia took a hit. This didn’t merely affect those who ceased operations in Russia, but also those who continued to work but lost clients and profits,” said Andrei Grachev, head of tax practice at Birch Legal.

The fall in VAT fees on imported goods is due to a combination of fewer imports and the strengthening of the ruble, a Finance Ministry representative told The Bell.

Last week The Economist compiled trade statistics for Russia and eight of its biggest partners (the largest EU countries, China, Japan, U.S. and South Korea). These account for almost 60 percent of Russian imports and more than 40 percent of its exports. The data showed the value of Russian imports fell 44 percent, while exports increased by 8 percent.

Rising military expenses

Expenditure on “national defense” increased almost 130 percent last month to 630 billion. This includes the cost of the armed forces, mobilization, training, nuclear weapons and more. In April, Russia was spending 21 billion rubles a day on its military needs.

However, Russia’s true military expenditure is always higher than the official figures because it does not include funding for “peaceful items” like vehicles and defense industry subsidies.

China will help – at a price

Russia’s growing dependency on energy export revenues looks even more precarious as the European Union moves toward an embargo on Russian oil. If the EU does finally reach a deal on an embargo, Russia will become increasingly dependent on Chinese buyers – who understand the situation perfectly and are already dictating terms.

Since the start of the fighting in Ukraine, major Chinese companies have been cautious about purchasing Russian oil, preferring not to sign new contracts. All the growth in Russian sales to China came from small Chinese oil refineries – not big state companies. But this week brought several indications that China is ramping up its purchases of Russian oil.

Reuters last week wrote about “quiet” but record-breaking increases in Russian oil sales to Chinese companies. China is set to import an average of 1.1 million barrels per day of Russian seaborne oil in May (compared with 750,000 barrels per day in April and a daily average of 800,000 through 2021).
The leading customers are not small refineries but major Chinese state corporations — Unipec and Zhenhua Oil, a unit of China’s defense conglomerate Norinco.
Chinese imports began to rise in April, Bloomberg reported. And China is not only interested in oil. According to Chinese customs statistics, April saw purchases of Russian oil, LPG and coal increase by 75 percent to $6.4 billion.
China is also considering buying cheap Russian oil for its strategic reserves, according to Bloomberg. Officials are apparently discussing this issue – with little involvement from the oil companies. China does not disclose the size of its reserves, but Bloomberg estimated it has space for about 60 million barrels.
However, Chinese companies may not be willing to risk secondary sanctions from the U.S. forever. And, even now, Russia is being forced into big discounts. According to Reuters, “Chinese” spot prices for a barrel of Urals crude are currently less than $70 — significantly cheaper than the price at which Russian oil is being sold in Europe.

Why the world should care: Even if the EU oil embargo never happens, it’s clear Europe is planning to move away from Russian oil. And that means Russia finds itself in an awkward position: dependent on oil and gas revenues from a single customer that is not shy about exploiting its position.

A new owner for Russian McDonald’s

The new owner of McDonald’s – after the U.S. fast food company departed the Russian market amid the “special military operation” – is a Siberian businessman, Alexander Govor. The former co-owner of coal mining company Yuzhkuzbassugol, Govor was forced to sell-up in the mid-2000s after two accidents killed 148 miners. Now, Govor owns an oil refinery in his native Kemerovo region and his son, who has worked for his father’s other businesses for many years, is a deputy in the local parliament from the ruling United Russia party.

• McDonald’s announced its exit from Russia on Monday, confirming speculation that it would sell its 850 restaurants (which employ 62,000 people).  
• Four days later, McDonald’s said that its Russian restaurants would be purchased by Govor’s GiD company. The company already has experience operating the McDonald’s franchise (in March 2022 it was operating 25 McDonald’s branches in the Siberian cities of Novosibirsk, Berdsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul and Krasnoyarsk).
• Govor, 61, was born in the south-western Siberian city of Novokuznetsk in Kemerovo region, famous for its coal production. He started out as a miner and by 1997 had risen to the position of general director of one of the biggest local mines (operated by state-owned mining outfit Kuznetskugol). In 2000, Govor and two other managers transferred their shares to a new company, Yuzhkuzbassugol, in a murky deal typical of Russian business at that time. The state company was declared bankrupt and 50 percent of the shares in the new company went to the directors of Kuznetsugol (director Vladimir Lavrik, Govor, and banker Yuri Kushnerov). A further 50 percent was acquired by leading metals holding Evraz, of which billionaire Roman Abramovich later became a majority shareholder.
• In the mid-200s Evraz entered talks with Lavrik, Kushnerov and Govor to purchase their stake, but they did not reach an agreement. Then, in the spring of 2007, there were two serious accidents at Yuzhkuzbassugol mines in quick succession. On March 19, a methane explosion killed 110 people at the Ulyanovskaya mine, then, on May 24, 38 people died at the Yubileynaya mine. At Ulyanovskaya, the director of the mine and several senior managers were found guilty of safety violations. 
• After the explosions, veteran Kemerovo region governor Aman Tuleyev, announced he would insist on a change of ownership. On the same day, Evraz said it would buy out the 50 percent stake held by Lavrik, Govor and Kushnerov. The deal valued the partners’ shares at $871 million.
• The families of the miners killed at Ulyanovskaya were awarded 1 million rubles in compensation. But relatives later complained that they had received just 800,000 rubles and that the remaining money was deducted to buy “Italian coffins.” 
• Govor invested his pay-out in petrochemicals: together with Kushnerov he set up Neftekhimservis, which built a refinery in the Kemerovo region. In 2021, Neftekhimservis generated revenues in excess of $1.3 billion. It also owns the Park Inn by Radisson hotel and the Grand Medica chain of private clinics in Novokuznetsk.
• Govor’s son, Roman, worked at the Yubileynaya mine then took on various roles in his father’s companies. In 2018, he was elected a deputy of Kemerovo’s legislative assembly for United Russia. At the start of March, Govor Jnr published a video in support of the “special military operation” on Instagram, accompanied with the comment: “We’ve put up with it for too long… I call on all of us to come together and get through this difficult time! We have lived under sanctions for so long, and we will continue to survive!” 
• Govor senior also has links to United Russia. In 2007 he and Sergei Neverov, then a United Russia parliamentary deputy and later secretary to the party’s general council, established a charitable fund in support of mountaineering. In 2006, Govor and Neverov were part of a group of 16 climbers from Kemerovo region to travel to Tanzania to plant the region’s flag and leave a piece of coal on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

By John V. Walsh, Antiwar, 5/22/22

A week ago we noted that a May 11 New York Times news article, documented that all was not going well for the US in Ukraine and that a companion opinion piece hinted that a shift in direction might be in order.

Now on May 19, “THE EDITORIAL BOARD,” the full Magisterium of the Times, has moved from hints to a clarion call for a change in direction in an editorial uninformatively titled, “The War Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready.” From atop the Opinion page the Editorial board has declared that “total victory” over Russia is not possible and that Ukraine will have to negotiate a peace in a way that reflects a “realistic assessment” and the “limits” of US commitment. The Times serves as one the main shapers of public opinion for the Elite and so its pronouncements are not to be overlooked lightly.

Ukrainians will have to adjust to US “limits” and make sacrifices for newfound US realism

The Times May editorial dictum contain the following key passages:

“In March, this board argued that the message from the United States and its allies to Ukrainians and Russians alike must be: No matter how long it takes, Ukraine will be free. …”

“That goal cannot shift, but in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions (emphasis, jw).”

To ensure that there is no ambiguity, the editorial declares that:

“A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. … Russia remains too strong…”

To make cerain that President Biden and the Ukrainians understand what they should do, the EDITORIAL BOARD goes on to say:

“… Mr. Biden should also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go to confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster. It is imperative that the Ukrainian government’s decisions be based on a realistic assessment of its means and how much more destruction Ukraine can sustain (emphasis, jw).”

As Volodymyr Zelensky reads those words, he must surely begin to sweat. The voice of his masters is telling him that he and Ukraine will have to make some sacrifices for the US to save face. As he contemplates his options, his thoughts must surely run back to February, 2014, and the US backed Maidan coup that culminated in the hasty exit of President Yanukovych from his office, his country and almost from this earth.

Ukraine is a proxy war that is all too dangerous

In the eyes of the Times editorial writers, the war has become a US proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder – and it is careening out of control:

“The current moment is a messy one in this conflict, which may explain President Biden and his cabinet’s reluctance to put down clear goal posts.”

“The United States and NATO are already deeply involved, militarily and economically. Unrealistic expectations could draw them ever deeper into a costly, drawn-out war..”

“Recent bellicose statements from Washington – President Biden’s assertion that Mr. Putin ‘cannot remain in power,’ Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comment that Russia must be ‘weakened’ and the pledge by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that the United States would support Ukraine ‘until victory is won’ – may be rousing proclamations of support, but they do not bring negotiations any closer.”

While the Times dismisses these statements as “rousing proclamations,” it is all too clear that for the neocons in charge of US foreign policy, the goal has always been a proxy war to bring down Russia. This has not become a proxy war; it has always been a proxy war. The neocons operate by the Wolfowitz Doctrine, enunciated in 1992, soon after the end of Cold War 1.0, by the necoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense:

“We endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

“We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global power.”

Clearly if Russia is “too strong” to be defeated in Ukraine, it is too strong to be brought down as a superpower.

The Times has shifted Its opinion from March to May. What Has Changed?

First of all, Russia has handled the situation unexpectedly well compared to dire predictions from the West.

President Putin’s support exceeds 80%.

165 of 195 nations, including India and China with 35% of the world’s population, have refused to join the sanctions against Russia, leaving the US, not Russia, relatively isolated in the world.

The ruble, which Biden said would be “rubble” has not only returned to its pre-February levels but is valued at a 2 year high, today at 59 rubles to the dollar compared to 150 in March.

Russia is expecting a bumper harvest and the world is eager for its wheat and fertilizer, oil and gas all of which provide substantial revenue.

The EU has largely succumbed to Russia’s demand to be paid for gas in rubles. Treasury Secretary Yellin is warning the suicidal Europeans that an embargo of Russian oil will further damage the economies of the West.

Russian forces are making slow but steady progress across southern and eastern Ukraine after winning in Mariupol, the biggest battle of the war so far, and a demoralizing defeat for Ukraine.

In the US inflation, which was already high before the Ukraine crisis, has been driven even higher and reached over 8% with the Fed scrambling to control it with higher interest rates. Partly as a result of this, the stock market has come close to bear territory. As the war progresses, many have joined Ben Bernanke, former Fed Chair, in predicting a period of high unemployment, high inflation and low growth – the dread stagflation.

Domestically, there are signs of deterioration in support of the war. Most strikingly, 57 House Republicans and 11 Senate Republicans voted against the latest package of weaponry to Ukraine, bundled with considerable pork and hidden bonanzas for the war profiteers. (Strikingly no Democrat, not a single one, not even the most “progressive” voted against pouring fuel on the fire of war raging in Ukraine. But that is another story.)

And while US public opinion remains in favor of US involvement in Ukraine there are signs of slippage. For example, Pew reports that those feeling the US is not doing enough declined from March to May. As more stagflation takes hold with gas and food prices growing and voices like those of Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul pointing out the connection between the inflation and the war, discontent is certain to grow.

The NYT editorial signals alarm over the insane goal of the neoconservatives.

There is a note of panic in this appeal to Biden to find a negotiated solution now. The U.S. and Russia are the world’s major nuclear powers with thousands of nuclear missiles on Launch On Warning, aka Hair Trigger Alert. At moments of high tension, the possibilities of Accidental Nuclear Armageddon are all too real.

Alarm is warranted and panic is understandable.

But will the neocons in charge give up and move in a reasonable and peaceful direction as the Times editorial demands? This is a fantasy of the first order. As one commenter observed, the warhawks like Nuland, Blinken, and Sullivan have no reverse gear. They always double down. And they are now in control of the foreign policy of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party and most of the Republican Party. They do not serve the interests of humanity nor do they serve the interests of the American people. They are in reality traitors to this country. They must be exposed, discredited and pushed aside. Our survival depends on it.

John V. Walsh, until recently a professor of physiology and neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, has written on issues of peace and health care for Asia Times, San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch, and others.