Tag: vlaidmir putin
Danziger Draws

Danziger Draws

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.

Putin Orders Nuclear Alert As Ukraine Fiercely Resists Russian Invasion

Putin Orders Nuclear Alert As Ukraine Fiercely Resists Russian Invasion

Kyiv (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin's announcement that his nuclear forces were on alert sparked outcry in the West as the invading Russian troops faced stiff resistance in Ukraine on Monday.

The UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency session Monday to discuss the conflict, which has claimed dozens of lives and raised fears that it will displace millions of people.

Ukraine has also said it had agreed to send a delegation to meet Russian representatives on the border with Belarus, which would be the two sides' first public contact since war erupted.

Russia invaded on Thursday and quickly announced it had neutralized key Ukrainian military facilities, but fierce fighting has since raged.

Ukraine forces, backed by Western arms, are stymieing the advance of Russian troops, according to the United States, which has led Western condemnation and a campaign of sanctions.

On Sunday Putin ordered Russia's nuclear forces onto high alert in response to what he called "unfriendly" steps by the West. Russia has the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles.

The United States, the world's second largest nuclear power, slammed Putin's order as "totally unacceptable".

Germany said Putin's nuclear order was because his offensive had "halted" and was not going to plan.

Ahead of the planned talks with Russia and as Ukrainian forces defended key cities, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba voiced defiance.

"We will not capitulate, we will not give up a single inch of our territory," Kuleba said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was sceptical about the talks.

"As always: I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try," he said.

'Brutal' Night

On day four of an invasion that stunned the world, Ukrainian forces said Sunday they had defeated a Russian incursion into Ukraine's second city Kharkiv, 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Kyiv.

A regional official, Oleg Sinegubov, said Kharkiv had been brought under Ukrainian control and the army was expelling Russian forces.

Moscow has made better progress in the south, however, and said it was besieging the cities of Kherson and Berdyansk.

Both are located close to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and from which it launched one of several invasion forces.

Ukrainian officials said they were fighting off Russian forces in several other areas, and claimed that 4,300 Russian troops had been killed.

In Kyiv, many residents spent another night in shelters or cellars as Ukrainian forces said they were fighting off Russian "sabotage groups".

But Sunday was relatively calm compared to the first days of fighting and the city was under a blanket curfew until Monday morning.

Ukraine has called on its own civilians to fight Russia, with a brewery in Lviv in the country's west switching its production line from beers to bombs, making Molotov cocktails for the volunteer fighters.

Western sources said the intensity of the resistance had apparently caught Moscow by surprise.

Ukraine has reported 198 civilian deaths, including three children, since the invasion began and Russia has acknowledged for the first time that a number of its forces had been killed or injured.

The UN has put the civilian toll at 64 while the EU said more than seven million people could be displaced by the conflict.

"We are witnessing what could become the largest humanitarian crisis on our European continent in many, many years," the EU commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic said.

At the Medyka border crossing with Poland, volunteer Jasinska said the long line of arrivals, mostly women and children, need warm clothes.

Crossing Medyka with his family, Ajmal Rahmani, an Afghan who fled Afghanistan for Ukraine four months before the US withdrawal, told AFP: "I run from one war, come to another country and another war starts. Very bad luck".

'Stand Together'

The United States and its allies continued to try and build economic and military pressure.

The US and Europe "need to really stand together... to both the aggressive actions of Russia against Ukraine but also the threatening rhetoric coming from Moscow," said NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

NATO will deploy its rapid response force for the first time to bolster its eastern flank.

EU member states also closed their airspace to Russian planes and many pledged arms for Ukraine -- but stressed they would not themselves intervene militarily.

Brussels also announced it would provide 450 million euros ($500 million) for Ukraine to buy weapons and ban Russian central bank transactions, as well as restricting two Moscow-run media outlets.

The West said it would remove some Russian banks from the SWIFT bank messaging system, and freeze central bank assets.

The Kremlin has brushed off sanctions, including those targeting Putin personally, as a sign of Western impotence.

However the European Central Bank warned Monday that the European subsidiary of the Russian state-owned Sberbank was facing bankruptcy.

The Russian ruble fell almost 30 percent on Monday morning.

British energy giant BP announced Sunday it was pulling its 19.75-percent stake in Rosneft, a blow to Russia's key oil and gas sector, which is partly reliant on Western technology.

Also in response to hostilities, FIFA ordered Russia to play its home international fixtures in neutral venues and warned it was considering banning it from the 2022 World Cup.

Oil prices have also surged in response to the crisis, with West Texas Intermediate crude up more than five percent in early trade Monday.

Putin has said Russia's actions are justified because it is defending Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The rebels have been fighting Ukrainian government forces for eight years in a conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people.


How The Right-Wing Media Helped Trump Voters Warm Up To Putin

How The Right-Wing Media Helped Trump Voters Warm Up To Putin

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

A new YouGov/Economist poll found that among registered Republicans and Trump voters, more than a third now hold a “favorable” view of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though a majority still view Putin negatively, right-wing media — which spent years holding Putin up as a “better leader” than President Barack Obama — set the stage for Republican opinions to shift in the autocrat’s favor, leading to a nearly 50-point swing in support from conservatives in just over two years. And after the United States intelligence community publicly disclosed that its members believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election, many right-wing media figures doubled down on their support for Putin and are downplaying Russia’s involvement in the election.

Putin is an authoritarian “strongman” who has cracked down in Russia on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, signed into law draconian anti-gay legislation, and invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine. Nevertheless, for years, right-wing media have praised Vladimir Putin as a great leader, comparing him favorably against Obama.

Fox figures have consistently lauded the Russian autocrat as “a real he-man” and have claimed that Putin has “come to the diplomatic rescue” of President Obama. One Fox host even went so far as to proclaim that she would like Putin to be president of the United States “for 48 hours,” so he could fight ISIS. In 2014, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan suggested that Putin is “one of us” and applauded him for “planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity” with his policies against reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights — evidence, Buchanan suggested, that God is on Putin’s side in his clash with the West. Even conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh once admitted that Putin was “saying things I agree with” when the Russian president announced that he “opposed the adoption of Russian orphans by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender foreign couples.”

Primed by right-wing media, Trump voters now hold a more positive view of Putin and Russia. Since July 2014, Republican voters’ opinions overall of Putin have improved by 56 points, and in 2016 they voted for a candidate in Trump who is openly sympathetic to the autocrat and even invited his government to hack personal emails from Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. According to the poll, 35 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of registered Republicans now hold a “favorable” view of Putin.

Now, even though the U.S. intelligence community has stated that its members are “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations,” some right-wing media are siding with Putin and downplaying the severity of the hacks. Security experts have characterized the Russian interference in the 2016 election as “Watergate 2.0” and “a concern to all those who share democratic values,” but the president-elect, who has consistently been enabled by those same conservative media figures, insists the claims of Russian interference are “just another excuse” and that he does not “believe it.” It seems, that right-wing media will follow Trump’s lead and continue to use Putin’s personality to advance partisan goals over the national security of the United States.

Why Trump Terrifies The Republicans Who Created Him And His Movement

Why Trump Terrifies The Republicans Who Created Him And His Movement

In the aftermath of the final presidential debate, Republican leaders and elected officials will no longer be able to shirk their responsibility to curb Donald Trump — who has become a clear and present danger not only to their party but to this country. He isn’t dangerous because he soiled the GOP brand once more, because he mocks and taunts other Republicans, or because he is so likely to lose and take some of them down with him.

No, Trump is dangerous because he refused to agree that he would accept the election’s outcome if he loses, inviting a violent reaction by his supporters — and because he sided with the Russian Federation against US intelligence and military leaders over their alleged interference in this election. Even his running mate Mike Pence has found these bizarre positions insupportable.

What Trump’s startling debate responses showed was not merely his vacuum of proper temperament and judgment — personality defects that are all too well known by now — but his casual lack of respect for basic American institutions and traditions. His casual dismissal of profound concerns over Russian incursions against US citizens, despite the briefings he has received from American intelligence officials, was stunning. He accepted the denials by Russian officials and implied that his own country’s services are lying.

Frantically as he waves the flag, spouting nationalism and xenophobia, Trump’s “patriotism” is now exposed as a ruse. Although he pretended to denounce interference in American elections “by any country,” at the urging of moderator Chris Wallace, he has encouraged the suspected Russian intrusions into this process all along — and reaffirmed that position last night.

No doubt many Republicans have been troubled by Trump’s shadowy and compromised relationship with the regime of Vladimir Putin. His strange pronouncements about Ukraine, Syria, and other foreign issues, seeming to justify or whitewash aggressive Russian policies, are far outside the American mainstream in either party.

But he went further still when he renewed his refusal to accept the election’s results. For all his obsequious blather about Putin, nothing could be more pleasing to the Russian boss than this grotesque attempt to discredit American democracy. Putin and the oligarchs who surround him often argue that the United States is “hypocritical” in advocating democracy, transparency, and human rights, because our own practices are imperfect. When a major party presidential candidate disparaged our system as “corrupt” and “rigged” before an audience of millions, he delivered an extraordinary propaganda victory to the Kremlin.

Even if Republican officials don’t fully grasp the foulness of Trump’s end game, they must have begun to realize that he poses an existential threat to them. For any individual GOP Senator or Representative, there is a strong possibility that he or she may win even if Trump loses. But when he seeks to discredit the validity of the election as fraudulent, where does that leave those victors? By definition, he and his alt-right supporters are undermining the legitimacy of every official elected on November 8.

The hard truth, as my friend @LOLGOP and other writers have previously explained, is that the Republicans only have themselves to blame for Trump. For year they have mundanely exploited the same racial divisions, fake issues, and intellectual dishonesty that he transformed into political performance art to take over their party.

The Republicans must also look inward to find the roots of the insurrectionary attitude now adopted by Trump’s supporters, and stoked by his comments about the election. Dating back to the militia movement during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and especially with the rise of the Tea Party in reaction to Barack Obama, too many Republicans have eagerly stirred up fanatics for their own partisan benefit. They colluded with the gun lobby and other extremist groups to foment conspiracy theories and dark rumors of government oppression, while promoting fantasies of armed rebellion.

Now that Trump has stepped forward to embody those apocalyptic ideas in his failing candidacy, the Republicans are suddenly frightened of their own creation. They will try to escape responsibility for whatever havoc he may wreak, although they hatched this movement long ago. The billionaire bully and his angry mob are their own shrieking chickens, finally coming home to roost.