Antonio Guterres: 'Our world is in big trouble' - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'Our world is in big trouble'

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks on Tuesday (UNTV)

The international order that the United Nations enshrined is splintering. “Our world is in big trouble,” is how Secretary-General António Guterres put it in opening the annual General Assembly on Tuesday. The UN has rarely lived up to its loftier goals. But it’s hard to remember a time when its fundamental principles of forging common solutions for peace, supporting human rights and promoting international law have been so threatened.    Member state Russia has trampled the UN charter with its invasion of Ukraine. Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping will bother to show up for the meeting of leaders in the Big Apple — though they did get together last week separately. And recent floods in Pakistan suggest the UN's efforts to broker deals curbing carbon emissions are already too late for some nations. Once, the UN was a hotbed of diplomacy in times of war. But those days are gone as Beijing and Moscow wield their Security Council vetoes to hobble  efforts to mediate in places like Syria and Ukraine. Following its invasion earlier this year, Russia turned council meetings into a theater of the absurd. US President Joe Biden will extend his streak of frank talk when he calls on the world Wednesday to stand up against “naked aggression” from Moscow, national security advisor Jake Sullivan said. Biden's warnings that the world is dividing into a duel between despots and democrats look on the money. Of course, America’s critics point out that it has often appeared to infringe the principles of the United Nations itself, with its wars in Vietnam and Iraq, for example. And any return to power by former President Donald Trump, who spun US diplomacy on its head by dissing Western allies and coddling tyrants, could obliterate Biden’s efforts to save international law.  All this explains the extraordinarily bleak tone of the UN Secretary-General’s speech, as he lamented that there was “no cooperation, no dialogue, no collective problem solving” while warning, “the reality is that we live in a world where the logic of dialogue and cooperation is the only path forward."

Guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia: relatório sobre cinco semanas da carnificina - Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

April 1, 2022     Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

The war in Ukraine — a status report  It's been five weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, unleashing a shocking and brutal war that has already fundamentally changed European security, US politics, the global economy and made Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, an international pariah.    The Kremlin has targeted civilians in atrocities that are already being labeled war crimes, and a staggering 4 million people have fled across Ukraine's borders into Eastern Europe.    Now, there are signs that the war is reaching a turning point — but not one that will bring peace any time soon. US officials believe that after encountering heroic Ukrainian resistance and failing in his objective to capture Kyiv and topple the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin is now pivoting to concentrate military power in eastern Ukrainian regions.    The Russian leader says it's not time for a ceasefire, a position that means the conflict could drag into a war of attrition.    Here is a look back at where the world has come in the war, the state of battle now, and what is likely to happen next.

Putin speaks with other Russian government officials about Western sanctions on Thursday.

Russia insisted for weeks as it massed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders that it had no plans to invade. But then it did. In a speech dripping with historical fantasies and conspiracy theories, Putin ominously announced that he was unleashing the war to "demilitarize and de-Nazify" the country. He argued that Ukraine had no right to exist as an independent entity.    And he warned outside nations who might be tempted to intervene that they would "face consequences that you never have had before in your history." His words were interpreted in the West as a threat to use nuclear weapons. More than 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the specter of Armageddon was again stalking the world.

A massive accumulation of Russian tanks and howitzers in the Novooskolsky district in Belgorod oblast on February 23. (Twitter/@marqs_)

Soon, Russian tanks were rolling into Ukraine — some from Belarus, another nation that is now back in Putin's greater Russia orbit. Most outside military analysts expected that the outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian armed forces would soon be steamrollered by the larger Russian army. Zelensky told foreign leaders that he fully expected to be killed.   But something unexpected happened. Ukrainians, fighting for independence, freedom and their hopes of one day moving toward the West, put up massive resistance. Regular people took up arms to defend their cities. It soon became clear that the Russian army was not as mighty as had been assumed. Supply and logistical issues emerged, which, along with fierce battles against Ukrainian forces, slowed the advance of the invading army.

Kyiv is bombed at night on February 27.

But the slowed Russian advance, while it might have saved Ukraine, prompted Putin's forces to change tactics. Russian rockets, artillery and missiles slammed into civilian areas. It was a kind of brutalist warfare that Putin had employed in the fight against separatists in Chechnya and in Syria. The bombardments — targeting hospitals, apartment blocks, and a theater where people were sheltering from air raids — prompted President Joe Biden to declare that the Russian leader was a "war criminal" and a "butcher."

Drone footage shot on March 13 captures fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.(Reuters/AZOV)

Some Ukrainian cities, like the southern port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, have endured days of Russian onslaughts that have destroyed street after street.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses MPs in the British House of Commons via videolink on March 2.

Before the war, many outsiders viewed Zelensky, a former comic actor, as out of his depth. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. The President emerged as a national hero, channeling the courage of his compatriots and shaming the rest of the world to come to Ukraine's aid. He launched a series of speeches from under-fire Kyiv to global legislatures. To British MPs, he made comparisons to their island nation's lonely stand against Nazism in 1940, invoking one of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill's most famous speeches. "We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost," Zelensky said. "We will fight in the forests, on the shores, in the streets." When he spoke to the US Congress, Zelensky argued that Ukraine was experiencing its own version of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

People wait in ATM lines in St. Petersburg on February 27, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Going into the war, Putin cannot have expected the kind of united Western front that emerged. Soon the most punishing regime of sanctions ever devised was sealing Russia's economy off from the rest of the world. The country lost the ability to raise funds on foreign markets. Oligarchs who have profited from Putin's rule saw their huge yachts and executive jets seized and their foreign properties confiscated.    One big gap remains, however, in the sanctions — much of Europe remains dependent on foreign oil and gas and so far has been reluctant to close the spigot on the most important part of the Russian economy.

Ukrainian officials claimed their military defeated a Russian tank regiment outside the capital of Kyiv. Videos released by Ukraine Defense Intelligence on March 10 appeared to show a number of tanks on fire or destroyed. (Ukrainian Defense Intelligence)

As well as the sanctions regime, the West resolved to send a stream of defensive weapons into Ukraine. Powerful anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles enabled Ukrainian forces to halt the Russian advance outside Kyiv and recalled the proxy war fought by the US in the 1980s, which helped force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left), US President Joe Biden (second from left) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (right) speak next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (center), European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (third from right) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (second from right) before a G7 leaders' photograph during a NATO summit at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels on March 24.

And the international front against Putin held — although the US is leaning on China, which made a "no limits" friendship pact with Russia just before the invasion, not to offer Moscow a way around the sanctions. In one of the most staggering moves, Germany, which, because of its militaristic past had long resisted building up its armed forces, announced a huge increase in defense spending under new Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Five weeks into the war, it is now clear that for as long as Putin is in power, the West and the Kremlin will be locked in a coda to the Cold War.

A view of damage after shelling in the pro-Russian separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine on March 30.

After failing to capture Kyiv, Russian forces now appear to be regrouping in order to concentrate the mission on eastern regions of Ukraine. The move could presage an attempt to split the county in two and to give Russia a route to Crimea, which it seized in 2014, and a path through Ukraine to the Black Sea. More civilian misery is certain. Ukraine and Russia could be locked in fighting for months if not years. And the relationship between Putin and the rest of the world is sure to remain deeply estranged.

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A Ucrânia será uma terra arrasada - Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

 

Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

CNN Meanwhile in America, March 14, 2022

Ukraine will be a 'wasteland'

Drone footage shot on Sunday captures fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.(Reuters/AZOV)

Russia is talking to Ukraine. Ukraine has an open line to the West. France and Germany chat with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and French President Emmanuel Macron then calls President Joe Biden with updates. Turkey and Israel are leaning on Russia to stop the onslaught in Ukraine. And the US made clear to China in talks in Rome on Monday that it wants China to cut loose its new “no limits” friend in the Kremlin.

But more than two weeks into the Russian invasion, two-way talks between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the broader international effort, are getting nowhere. For “off-ramps” — the diplomatic buzzword of this crisis — to work, leaders have to want to take them. And there’s no sign that Putin, despite turning his country into an economic, diplomatic, cultural and sporting pariah, is getting cold feet. 

 

Outsiders see the crawling Russian advance and reported heavy losses of Putin’s troops as a humiliation. But that's not prompting the Kremlin strongman to pull back; his psychology and contempt for Ukraine’s independence is likely to only unleash more mayhem. Brutal assaults on Ukrainian cities and an air raid on a military base near the border of NATO member Poland over the weekend are proof of that. Devastation in the city of Mariupol, including the horrific bombing of a maternity hospital, may well preview what is in store for the capital of Kyiv. While Putin may not be able to suppress all of Ukraine in a full occupation, he has the firepower to slowly destroy it and to send an exodus of refugees into Western Europe, which could upset the political equilibrium of the continent — another of his strategic goals.  

An additional impediment to a swift diplomatic breakthrough is the fact that while strangling economic sanctions piled on Russia may create deep pain for Russians, they do not yet seem to be creating political turmoil that might threaten Putin’s authoritarian rule. And so far, the Russian leader appears more than willing to pay the price in Ukrainian and Russian blood to pummel Ukraine into submission. That means there’s little diplomatic leverage that can be brought to bear on Putin.

As Heather Conley, a former senior US national security official who now heads the German Marshall Fund of the United States, put it: “If Ukraine will not bend the knee for Russia, (Putin) will make sure that Ukraine is going to be a wasteland.”

Mensagem de Natal de F. D. Roosevelt, 24/12/1943, EUA em meio à guerra mais terrível da história -

 

 

Meanwhile in America, CNN

Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

'Today, I express a certainty'

Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his national radio address on December 24, 1943, at his home in Hyde Park, New York.

Two years in, the pandemic seems to have dragged on forever. And the end seems dispiritingly distant as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus rages and much of the world, outside of the richest nations, waits in vain for vaccines. 

 

The worst public health emergency in 100 years is an outlier among other crises that have stalked developed countries in modern times, including economic recessions, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, civil unrest, endemic poverty and national disasters. That’s because there’s probably not one human being who has not seen their freedom curtailed, health compromised, prospects dimmed or family ties interrupted owing to Covid-19. The closest equivalent of shared suffering may be World War II, when the dangers and deprivations of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen abroad were mirrored at home, with air raids in Europe and a mass civilian mobilization in the name of the war effort in the United States. Then, as now, memories of pre-crisis life were fading, and the end was over a horizon clouded by fear and tragedy. 

 

President Franklin Roosevelt set out in his Christmas address in 1943 to instill optimism and determination among his compatriots and to steel them for losses to come with a vision of life as it had once been known returning better than before. Predicting ultimate victory, he promised education, jobs and economic security to the millions of Americans fighting abroad when they came home. An early version, if you like, of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better. Six months before the D-Day Normandy invasion, FDR drew the line under past reversals in the fight against “international gangsterism and brutal aggression in Europe and in Asia.” 

 

Recalling the previous two wartime festive seasons, he remarked, “We have said, ‘Merry Christmas—Happy New Year,’ but we have known in our hearts that the clouds which have hung over our world have prevented us from saying it with full sincerity and conviction.” From his home in Hyde Park, New York, he went on: “On Christmas Eve this year—I can say to you that at last we may look forward into the future with real, substantial confidence that, however great the cost, ‘peace on earth, good will toward men’ can be and will be realized and insured. This year I can say that. Last year I could not do more than express a hope. Today I express a certainty—though the cost may be high and the time may be long.” 

 

Roosevelt had spent a decade forging a relationship with Americans he addressed as “my friends” through his Fireside Chats on the radio. His tone was one of a benevolent but firm leader taking his fellow citizens into his confidence. On this occasion, he offered a sweeping survey of the war in the Pacific and Europe, after recently returning from strategy talks with leaders of Russia, China and Britain.  

 

Listening to FDR decades on, it’s hard to imagine an American leader ever again being able to co-opt such a sense of national unity in the face of a common crisis. The pandemic has shattered any such illusions that the national good could surmount the politics of a bitter, divided era. But his words are a reminder that however dark the present seems, hopes for the future can never be truly extinguished, and they underscore the power of strong, yet often elusive, political leadership. This is as welcome now, as America contemplates its third pandemic year, as it was after two years of an earlier national crisis, on Christmas Eve 78 years ago.