Tangle - Ukraine and Russia on the brink.

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin announced that he was recognizing the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) as independent states. During his speech, Putin said "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood" and demanded that "those who captured and are holding on to power in Kyiv" immediately "cease military action."You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about Russia and Ukraine again. I know we have covered this a lot recently, but there's a lot going on and there were some major developments in the last 48 hours

that I thought was necessary for us to follow up. Before we jump in, though, I do want to issue a correction and a clarification of sorts. I think we're going to count this as two corrections. On Thursday, in the numbers section, I wrote that Russia expelled John Sullivan, the deputy U.S. ambassador to Russia. In fact, Russia had expelled Bart Gorman, who is the number two ranked diplomat in Russia and the actual deputy U.S. ambassador. Sullivan is the ambassador, the number one ranked envoy in Russia, and he remains in Moscow. I also wanted to follow up on a sentence in the podcast on Thursday. We referred to NATO as a post-Soviet alliance, which is both true

and also an odd and kind of misleading descriptor. NATO was formed after World War II in 1949, not after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. So it was specifically designed to rebut Soviet aggression and lasted through the collapse of the Soviet Union into the present day. So this is kind of an odd one because it's not totally factually incorrect in the sense that NATO is post-Soviet. It exists now and the Soviet Union doesn't. But it is incorrect that it was formed after the fall of the Soviet Union. It appears I somehow cut and pasted a line about post-Soviet world order

and left that qualifier in front of NATO. Either way, it was kind of a silly error that snuck into the newsletter, so I am going to tally it. These are the 54th and 55th Tangle Corrections in its 136-week history, and the first corrections since February 14th. I track corrections and place them at the top of our podcast and newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with our readers. All right, before we jump into today's main story, we'll hit you with some quick hits. First up, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California, endorsed Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed Liz Cheney challenger in Wyoming's congressional race. Number two, Nicholas Kristof, the former New York Times opinion writer, has

dropped out of Oregon's governor race after the state's Supreme Court ruled that he was ineligible by not meeting the state's three-year residency requirement. Number three, former police officer Kim Potter was sentenced to two years in prison for fatally shooting Daunte Wright during a traffic stop last year. 4. The National Archives said it found classified information in the box of documents that former President Trump took to Mar-a-Lago. 5. Former President Trump's new social media app, Truth Social, appeared in the App Store for the first time over the weekend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin now saying he intends to recognize two Russian-controlled separatist regions in eastern Ukraine as independent. This move seen as an escalation in a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. We begin with a developing story. Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the world to make his case for actions in Ukraine. And just within the past hour, he issued an order about what he calls peacekeeping operations, moving into action that somewhere it could mean his troops are closer to entering the country. moving into action that somewhere it could mean his troops are closer to entering the country. The prospect of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine has become even more realistic in the past few hours, following a televised address by President Putin. He said he'd signed a decree recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine and insisted that history was on his side

because Ukraine, in his view, was not a true nation. Yesterday, Vladimir Putin announced that he was recognizing the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, DNR and LNR, as independent states. The DNR and LNR sit inside the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, and it's unclear what borders Putin will recognize as legitimate. Together, the DNR and LNR are controlled by Russia-backed separatists and were created after Russia instigated a separatist war in eastern Ukraine in 2014. They represent about one-third of the total territory of Donetsk and Luhansk, and during his speech,

Putin said Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood and demanded that those who captured and are holding on to power in Kiev immediately cease military action. Ukraine has been an independent state for more than 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and has held democratic elections that ushered in its current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has aligned himself with the West. Ukraine has had five

different presidents during Putin's reign in Russia. Putin's proclamation of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states is considered both a naked violation of the Minsk Accords, his largest escalation yet, and his justification for war. He delivered the speech on Russian state television, insisting that he was sending peacekeepers into the region and that all responsibility for continued bloodshed lay solely with the Ukrainian leadership. Shortly after, European officials said Russian troops and military equipment began moving into eastern parts of Ukraine. Many fear this is an attempt to provoke a larger military escalation. U.S. officials began to address this development on Tuesday morning by describing the movement as an invasion. Now, President Biden and the Western alliances are faced with a difficult

choice. French President Emmanuel Macron had organized a summit between Biden and Putin's administrations that now may be on ice, though some are still hopeful for a diplomatic solution. Over the weekend, U.S. and European officials assured the world they were on the same page during the Munich Security Conference. If Biden follows through on his threat to institute the harshest sanctions he can, he'll have little leverage besides the threat of military intervention, which he's assured the American people and European allies he won't take. Congress is on recess this week, but President Biden responded to Putin's speech by barring U.S. investment or trade with Donetsk and Luhansk and said more sanctions were coming today. Early Tuesday morning, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Nord Stream 2 pipeline,

which was set to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, was canceled. The European Union and the United Kingdom promised to institute new sanctions on Tuesday as well. Ukraine's President Zelensky urged his citizens to remain calm and pointed to Ukraine's allies who are standing strong. Ukraine is within its internationally recognized borders and will remain so, despite any statements and actions of the Russian Federation, he said. We are not afraid of anything or anyone. Okay, so rather than our usual structure for the podcast, today we're going to look at a few takes from the U.S. and then a few takes from abroad.

First off, some agreement here. Most writers on the left and the right and from abroad agree that this is a major escalation. They have criticized Putin for his speech and urged Biden to take swift and decisive action to ensure there is a high price for the latest escalation, though there is some debate about how Biden should move forward. So we'll start with the U.S. writers. The Washington Post editorial board said this is the way the post-war and post-Cold War world ends. By the time he was done speaking, Mr. Putin had not only broadcast his intent to disrupt institutions that have kept the peace in Europe mostly after 1945, but also laid out the ideological basis for launching a war, even if he did not quite declare

it, the board said. The key point was to recognize two Russian-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, and thus to discard any pretense of respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity. More ominous, given his subsequent dispatch of peacekeeping troops over the border into the regions, was Mr. Putin's demand that those who seized and hold power in Kiev cease hostilities or else all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine. War looming, he had this warning to those who helped oust the Kremlin-backed regime in Ukraine in 2014. We know their names and we will find them and bring them

to justice. The truth is that Ukraine is a member state of the United Nations whose security Russia itself undertook to respect 28 years ago in exchange for Ukraine's nuclear disarmament. Ukraine has not been waging genocide against a Russian-speaking ethnic minority, as Mr. Putin alleged, but defending itself from a 2014-2015 Russian destabilization campaign that created the breakaway regions and engineered the seizure of Ukraine's strategic Crimean region on the Black Sea. Mr. Putin's pseudo-history about the kinship of Russians and Ukrainians ignores those facts. His true reason for targeting Ukraine is not Russian national security, but to preserve his own power in Moscow, which would be threatened

by a successful democratic experiment in a former Soviet republic of Ukraine's size and cultural importance. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called out cracks in the West's resolve, doubting the Biden-Putin summit organized by French President Emmanuel Macron would do much good. As for a Biden-Putin summit, the Russian dictator is in control of events as his forces are poised for a blitzkrieg, the board said. He wants to extort concessions that will make Kiev subordinate to the Kremlin and weaken NATO's defenses. Either would be humiliating acts of appeasement that would invite more aggression later. On Monday, the Kremlin casts doubt on plans for a summit as it continues its propaganda operations claiming Ukrainian aggression. A summit is beside the point after Mr. Putin's

decision Monday to formally recognize Ukraine's two breakaway regions as independent states. He also sent Russian troops across Ukraine border into Donetsk and Luhansk, which would trigger the massive consequences Mr. Biden has promised. Yet the White House seemed unsure in its response Monday evening, including whether this was an invasion and its initial sanctions were limited to blocking American trade and investment in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic. So Russia invades Ukraine and the U.S. decides to sanction part of Ukraine rather than Russia, the board said. That display of weakness won't deter Mr. Putin. Josh Rogin said the West celebrated its unity at the Munich security conference this weekend,

but one person wasn't buying it, Ukraine's president. This well-orchestrated chorus was interrupted abruptly Saturday afternoon when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took the stage and pointed out that this unity left his country largely alone to face down 150,000 Russian troops. In effect, Zelensky asked the assembled dignitaries a simple question. What is the point of a European security architecture that doesn't seem willing or able to do the one thing for which it was constructed, namely to prevent war, Rogin wrote. He accused the West of appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin by holding back support for Ukraine in the many years it has been under constant Russian attack. He reminded Europeans that a major war in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. He pointed out that no U.S. or European leader could actually name the swift and severe sanctions that are

supposed to scare Putin into backing down, or what exactly would trigger them. Zelensky laid out a long list of things the West should do to increase its support for Ukraine before, not after, a potential attack, Rogin wrote. They included imposing some sanctions on Russia, delivering more weapons, including more sophisticated ones, providing Ukraine with more economic and financial support as its economy suffers, and making affirmative statements about Ukraine's progress toward joining NATO and the EU. He accused the West of abandoning the security agreements it made to Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Kiev giving up its nuclear weapons. The New York Times editorial board made the case that it is wise to hold off on the most severe sanctions.

Though hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham are demanding crushing sanctions now, the potent punishment threatened by the United States and NATO, which is likely to include severely limiting financial transactions with major Russian banks, restricting the sale of technologies needed by Russian industries, closing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and personal sanctions on Mr. Putin and his lieutenants would become useless as a deterrent once ordered, making a full invasion more likely, the board wrote. Recognizing the separatists in the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk is not tantamount to that invasion. The separatists control only partial zones of the provinces they claim, and their enclaves have been under effective Russian control since the low-intensity conflict erupted in 2014.

Alright, that brings us to some opinions from abroad. Andriy Zagordonuk, the former Ukrainian defense minister, wrote that the West must leave Putin with little doubt about the cost of his moves. We believe, even with the very short time available, that it is still possible to stop Putin from starting a war, he said. But that largely depends on the steps made by world leaders in the next day or two. World leaders need to demonstrate to Putin that this will not be a quick victorious war, but a disaster that will lead to Russian political isolation, sanctions that will destroy its economy, and a humiliating military defeat. Ultimately, it could mark the end of Putin's political career, leaving his place in history as the architect of Russia's decline instead of a period of grandeur.

The steps the West could take to persuade him of this are clear. Sanctions must be imposed to stop Russia having an active role in the global economy. Russia makes a lot of money from the West. Its business people reside in the UK, US, and Europe. It is a member of Western capital markets, a major supplier of commodities, and enjoys the perks of that involvement. At the same time, it violently challenges the very principles upon which Western democracies are founded. Russian society needs to understand that the West time, it violently challenges the very principles upon which Western democracies are founded. Russian society needs to understand that the West will stop it.

The sanctions must not just be hard, they must be devastating. Ukraine has been fortunate to have partners, the US and the UK as well as several other supporting nations, supplying hundreds of tons of equipment to destroy Russian capabilities on the ground, he added. Ukraine has never requested and does not require Western troops to come to Ukraine to fight. It is hundreds of thousands of skilled service people. But it does need equipment. We are on the right path. I believe Ukraine already has more anti-tank weapons than Russia has tanks. A ground invasion would be a disaster for Russia, but Western leaders need to tell Putin that he is guaranteed to fail. That will be the greatest deterrent, and now is the crucial moment for him to be told.

Vladimir Karamurza, a Russian opposition politician, said it's not just the West that doesn't want a war. A lot of Russians don't either. Murza pointed to numerous statements, petitions, and criticisms of going to war signed by well-known Russian cultural figures like rock musicians, authors, tennis stars, and the last remaining opposition party in Russia. On Sunday, police brutally dispersed a group of demonstrators who came to Moscow's Pushkin Square, the traditional site of dissident rallies since the Soviet era, to denounce Vladimir Putin's presumptive attack on Ukraine, he wrote. The weekend protest was only the latest in the growing chorus of voices within Russia itself opposing Putin's threats to Ukraine, a trend that has been underreported by international media, leaving many Westerners with the impression that everyone in Russia supports the war. This is certainly not the case. in an authoritarian state where all television networks are controlled by the government and where many people are understandably hesitant to share their political views with pollsters or

other strangers, the available surveys point to the strong unpopularity of a military attack on Ukraine among Russian citizens at large, he said. Most Russians neither favor sending troops to Ukraine nor buy into the Kremlin's narrative of treating the West as an enemy. Whether domestic opposition to war in Russia can have any practical effect is far from certain. What is certain is that by raising their voices against yet another Kremlin aggression, members of Russia's cultural elite acting in the best traditions of Russian and Soviet intelligentsia are upholding the nation's honor in the same way the seven demonstrators who protested on Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia did in August 1968. All right, that is it for some takes from the American pundits and from abroad,

which brings us to my take. So I'll be straight with you. I have no idea what the best course of action is from the West. I just don't. The Wall Street Journal editorial board insists that Biden should empty the tank and bring the most crushing sanctions possible on Russia now, as President Zelensky has requested. The New York Times editorial board insists that keeping his powder dry is the only true deterrent. Putin, meanwhile, just marches on. Because the U.S. punditry has gotten so much wrong about war in the last 20

years, I'm inclined here to ignore many of them and focus on the voices from abroad. Ukraine's former defense minister, as quoted above, seems to believe strongly that acting against Putin now is the wisest move. Make him feel the financial hell that's coming and perhaps he backs off. The logic is easy to follow, and whatever your position, it seems pretty hard to argue that what we're doing now is serving as a deterrent. Vladimir Karamurza made the compelling case that many Russians don't want this war either, which is a stunningly obvious notion that we should all spend time reminding ourselves, and Putin, of. The whole thing is just deeply unsettling, and it feels as if there's no going back from where it is now. While there is broad agreement on what Putin is doing, see the commentary above,

the discourse in the U.S. has also become absurd in places, and I've almost started to tune it out. Our choices are not send our kids to war or do nothing. I watched Tucker Carlson absurdly equate Zelensky and Putin as tyrants over the weekend, insisting that Ukraine was little more than a corrupt autocracy that has bought off U.S. lobbyists and made the Biden family rich. As I've said before, there is no equating Ukraine and Russia here. Putin is a literal authoritarian who has murdered or poisoned most of his political opposition and disappeared critical journalist. He made clear his view that Ukraine belongs to Russia and his intent is to take it back by force, the will of the people

be damned. Zelensky is a former comedian who was best known for starring in a television show about accidentally becoming Ukraine's president and then won the support of his people in an actual election and actually became Ukraine's president. Putin and Zelensky are not both tyrants. Ukraine surely has had its issues with corruption, but unlike Russia, they attempt to deal with it openly. Yes, Hunter Biden did make hundreds of thousands of dollars quote-unquote working for a Ukrainian energy company, but neither of these are good enough reasons to stand by idly as Russia starts a war that could kill tens of thousands of civilians, create millions of refugees, and destabilize Europe. Nor do they make Zelensky the same as Putin or Ukraine's

government as corrupt as Russia's. The Ukrainian people stand ready. A recent poll shows that more than a third of Ukrainians are ready to volunteer themselves to fight if Russia invades. Ukrainian moms are discussing whether to put stickers on their children with their blood types as they send them off to school, fearful of an attack coming any day. The nation is bracing and Zelensky is demanding we follow through on our promise to support his country with weapons, sanctions against Russia, and a unified front. I certainly hope we follow through and sooner rather than later. All right, that is it for my take on today's story. That brings us to the reader question today.

This one is from somebody calling themselves Blue Texan from Dallas, Texas. The Blue Texan asks, How has the abortion ban in Texas increased services in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana? What is the resulting barometer to measure the law's success? This is a great question. In early February, news reports started breaking that abortions in Texas had dropped by 60% after its new restrictive law was implemented. I think for Texas' pro-life residents, politicians, and activists, this is seen as an unequivocal whim. However, to your point, the impact of this appears to be pretty widespread.

In New Mexico, abortion hotlines have changed their first question to inquire whether the caller is from Texas. abortion hotlines have changed their first question to inquire whether the caller is from Texas. Planned Parenthood said an average of 8.8 women from Texas got abortions in New Mexico every month before the law went into effect, and in the first week after it was enacted, they had 20 women from New Mexico in and 64 more scheduled. Abortion providers in Oklahoma said they are seeing a massive influx going from 12 Texas patients in August to 130 in September. Emily Wales, the interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood and Great Plains Votes, said they went from seeing about 50 patients from Texas at their clinics in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma in the fall of 2020 to more than 1,000 in the fall of 2021 after the law went into effect.

While the data are still a little murky. Similar news stories from Louisiana and Arkansas are widespread. So, of course, we have no idea how many abortions are being performed illegally in Texas, though history would suggest they are almost certainly happening. All that's to say, yes, there is definitely a big uptick in the surrounding states, and I don't really know how abortion rights activists would quantify that, whether it's a win or a loss or, you know, if that's worth the tradeoff of it not happening in their state. But it's there for sure. All right.

Next up is our story that matters today. This one is kind of about us a little bit. Americans are tuning out the news. A new poll from Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that Americans, especially young Democrats, are checking out on national news. In November of 2020, 70% of Democrats aged 18 to 34 said they were paying a great deal of attention to the national news. Today, that number is down to 24%. More broadly, just 34% of Democrats say they are paying a great deal of attention to the news, while 40% of Republicans and 29% of Independents say they are. All of those numbers are down significantly from 2020.

Axios has the story on this and some other numbers related to the poll. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. Thanks to a reader request, by the way. I am going to be reading the numbers section a little bit differently going forward. I think the reader gave me a good idea on giving the number at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning. That makes it a little bit easier to track on the podcast than the newsletter, so I hope this helps. First up, today's date is 2-22-22. It's also Tuesday. The percentage of Americans who are estimated to be immune from Omicron, according to the Associated Press, is now 73%. The estimated number of civilians the U.S. says could die because of a Russian invasion in Ukraine is 25,000 to 50,000. The estimated number of refugees the U.S. estimates could be created

because of a Russian invasion is 1 million to 5 million. And this morning, Britain imposed sanctions on five Russian banks. All right, last but not least, our have a nice day story. One of the greatest challenges in California's vineyards is how to control pests. Keeping rodents like gophers and mice away from their grapes can be a challenge, and some vineyards have taken to using rodenticides to keep the pests away. But at Humboldt State University, researchers are now giving a more natural approach. Owls. The researchers have placed 300 owl nest boxes throughout the vineyards in Napa Valley and are documenting the impact the owls have on the pests.

So far, the barn owls appear to be keeping gophers out, but are having a little bit more trouble with mice. Still, they're reducing the rodenticides in Napa Valley, which is seen as a huge win for public health advocates who say the chemicals can kill birds and other animals that end up eating the rodents, never mind, of course, the potential impact on the vineyard. You can find a link to this story in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for our piece today. As always, if you're interested in supporting our work, please go check out the episode description for links to do that and keep this podcast running. We'll be back tomorrow with our story we had planned for today

on some of the crime arising in the United States. Stay tuned and we'll see you then. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by edited by bailey saul sean brady ari weitzman and produced in conjunction with tangle's social media manager magdalena bakova who also helped create our logo the podcast is edited by trevor eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by diet 75 by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com.