Youve all seen it now. The small, mean, vicious yet weirdly blank eyes. The stubby stabbing fingers that jab as he humiliates his underlings, making them shake with fear. The joy he takes in sadism. Its almost comedy villain stuff. But cliches exist for a reason. And we need to stop kidding ourselves about Putin and start taking steps to deal with him.

For decades weve wanted to avoid the challenge. Not so much appease as just hope he goes away. Its a headache having to face up to the blunt fact that Putin is trying to utterly change the world. His aims are impossible to ignore now. The Kremlins foreign policy thinktanks are already churning out articles about how his invasion of Ukraine means the start of a multipolar world. Ignore the geopolitical PR. All multipolar means here is emboldened fascism. Before the political scientists among you get all carried away debating endlessly what fascism means let me explain my terms.

I mean Orwells boot stamping endlessly on peoples faces. I mean the underlying psychology that shines through in the violence that suffuses all of Putins language. Just last week, to give one small example, as Putin spoke with Macron, the Russian president casually invoked a Russian rape joke about Sleeping Beauty to explain what he would soon do to Ukraine. Conflating Ukraine and Sleeping Beauty, he gleefully put himself in the role of the rapist: Whether you like it or not my beauty, you will need to put up with all I do to you. (It rhymes in Russian.)

I mean the way he uses grievance narratives, always complaining how the world has put him down. There are many people minorities, the economically disadvantaged who bear righteous grievance. But when the worlds richest man, a blatant bully, does it, it means something else.

The German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, in his great study of the Nazi mind, described how for the Nazis claiming they were victims was really a way to excuse how they would victimise others. Its the same for Putin. His regime is, on the surface, nothing like the Nazis. Russia has its own totalitarian traditions to tap into. But the underlying mindset is the same.

Even his claims to Russias spheres of influence are more about his state of mind than international relations. The issue here is not about rational security demands which can be defined in negotiations and balanced with the security concerns of others not least Ukraine.

Putins sphere of influence waxes and wanes. It can mean the Russosphere, the 100 million or so Russian speakers who live beyond Russias borders, many in the EU. It can mean the mystical idea of a single people that encompasses Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It can denote much of central Europe, the countries which, according to Russias foreign affairs ministry, were orphaned by the end of the USSR and now, its implied, need to return to the suffocating embrace of Moscow.

Henry Dicks, the psychoanalyst who studied Nazi soldiers during the second world war, came to the conclusion that Hitlers idea of Lebensraum, the land (much of it in Ukraine) Germans claimed belonged to them, was not just a geopolitical idea but a sign of a psychology that was so steeped in humiliation it grabbed things outside itself to sate its sense of endless inadequacy. Like an angry infant that doesnt understand its own borders, grabbing things beyond it and screaming mine! This is the endless cycle in these regimes: a culture of humiliation; a sense of inadequacy; aggression.

But lets not over-focus on the Nazis that always makes us feel good because we fought them. Putin reminds us of the worst about ourselves as well. The day the invasion launched, at the UN, it was the representatives from Kenya and Ghana who grasped the meaning of what was going on the quickest, comparing Ukraine to their own colonial legacy. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression, said Kenyas permanent representative.

It might be comforting to think of Putin as merely a throwback to the past but his ambition is for his worldview to dominate the future, and his mindset to be normalised.

He does not think parochially. He is already threatening Finland and Sweden. His theory is to attack his great adversaries the EU, Britain and America in any way he can to keep us weak and clear his way. He has been doing it for years by making Europe addicted to his energy, Britain to his corruption, everyone intimidated by his assassinations.

For decades we tried to tell ourselves this was just an inconvenience, that ultimately he just wanted a stake in a world, or at least a transatlantic space, where wars were over. He didnt see it that way. His political and economic warfare will now increase to pave the way for more kinetic wars.

Today this is all focused on one place: Ukraine. Which Putin is invading, bombing, murdering with impunity. He claims Ukrainians dont exist as an independent people so its OK to murder them. His plan is to install a puppet government and then execute any dissidents. But Ukrainians arent puppets. Ukrainians very much exist. This is the great achilles heel in Putins worldview. He is the arch conspiracy theorist: and for conspiracy theorists people are all puppets, moved around great chess boards. He doesnt understand that people have volition.

Sean Penn, the actor turned film-maker who is in the capital Kyiv shooting a documentary, summed it up thus: Ukraine is at the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.

Democracy; dreams; soul: these are big words. So overused in political speech I sometimes struggle to know what they signify.

Ukrainians are giving them meaning again. They are fighting and dying for a new democracy to make people in rich, old democracies remember what democracy is all about. Many of these Ukrainians are my friends, relatives, colleagues, loved ones.

I was born in Kyiv though from childhood I grew up in London and much of my work is there. Theyve all chosen to remain and take up arms. Over the last years weve all been researching Ukrainian identity together. Weve found that what unites Ukrainians is the resilience and resourcefulness to survive endless hardships: a people who have got through the oppressions of Russian tsars; Stalins enforced famine; the second world war (where most of the fighting was in Ukraine); Nazi occupation; Chernobyl; the revolution of dignity and now this.

My friends are taking up arms, and when I message them are miles more calm, resolute and focused than I am, typing away in a Nato country and praying for the best.

Watching Putins invasion on television can make one feel quite powerless. Putin wants the whole world to witness his aggression, to grind in the point theres nothing that can stop him. What can we, sitting in Britain, do to join the fight? Plenty.

For starters, we can all help to support now by pressuring our governments, and raising funds ourselves, to do the following smattering of urgent causes.

First: Ukraine has a right to zones safe from bombing and missile attack. According to the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine the international community has a duty to provide appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and if necessary military means to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Creating such safe zones would be a start, though what every Ukrainian is pleading for is to protect their skies with no fly zones, and help them against one of the largest air forces in the world.

Meanwhile people need water, blankets, food, fuel and helmets. The army needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

Though sanctions are starting, we need to hit the money behind Putins war machine much harder. Sanction the central bank and state-owned banks, the wallets Putin uses to finance his imperial adventures. Freeze the western assets and visas of Putins oligarchs and their families who help finance his war.

But these tiny moves are just the start of what is needed. For the EU it will mean weaning itself quickly off Russian energy. For the UK it will mean reforming our rotten financial sector and stop being, in the journalist Oliver Bulloughs killer phrase, butlers to the world: that would be real sovereignty. And for Nato members beyond America it will mean getting ready to spend much more on arms.

Putin thinks we wont go through with any changes because all our talk of democracy and values are just bunk. As he announced the invasion of Ukraine, his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, scoffed that the west would soon give up on sanctions because we are dependent upon Russia. We may have taken Putin for a comedy villain hes betting that were the joke.

Peter Pomerantsev is the author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia

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Vladimir Putin: Whats going on inside his head? - The Guardian

Russias brutal invasion of Ukraine should be a wake-up call for western politicians, corporate leaders and economists who advocate a green and equitable future but lack any practical or strategic sense of how to get there. Regardless of what short-term tactics Europe and the US use in responding to the current crisis, their long-run strategy needs to put energy security on a par with environmental sustainability, and funding essential military deterrence on a par with financing social priorities.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 in no small part because Russias leaders, most of all President Boris Yeltsin and his economic advisers, recognised that the Soviet communist military-industrial complex could not afford to keep up with the wests superior economic might and technological prowess. Today, with Russias economy less than a twentieth the combined size of the US and EU economies, the same strategy of vastly outspending Russia on defence should be much easier to execute. Unfortunately, there is a hesitancy in many western societies, particularly on the left, to admit that defence spending is sometimes a necessity, not a luxury.

For many decades, western living standards have been boosted by a massive peace dividend. For example, US defence spending fell from 11.1% of GDP in 1967, during the Vietnam war, to 6.9% of GDP in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, to just over 3.5% of GDP today. If US defence spending as a share of GDP was still at the Vietnam-era level, defence outlays in 2021 would have been $1.5tn (1.1tn) higher more than the government spent on social security last year, and almost triple government spending on non-defence consumption and investment. Even at the level of the late 1980s, defence spending would be more than $600bn higher than today. The extra cost would have to be funded by higher taxes, greater borrowing or lower government spending in other areas.

Europes defence spending has long been far lower than that of the US. Today, the UK and France spend just over 2% of their national income on defence, and Germany and Italy only about 1.5%. Moreover, national interests and domestic lobbying mean that European defence spending is highly inefficient, with the whole being considerably less than the sum of its parts. I am amazed by how many of my otherwise well-informed friends have been asking why Europe does not mount a stronger military response to Russias attack on Ukraine and looming threats to the Baltic states. Part of the answer, of course, is Europes dependence on Russian gas but the larger reason is its egregious lack of preparedness.

Thanks to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, this may all change. The German chancellor Olaf Scholzs announcement on 27 February that Germany will increase its defence spending to more than 2% of GDP suggests that Europe may finally be getting its act together. But such commitments will have major fiscal implications and, after the large pandemic-era fiscal stimulus, these may be difficult to digest. As Europe rethinks its fiscal rules, policymakers must consider how to make enough space to deal with unexpected large-scale military buildups.

Many seem to have forgotten that wartime spikes in expenditures were once a big driver of government spending volatility. In a war, not only do government expenditures and budget deficits typically increase sharply but interest rates sometimes go up as well. Nowadays, policymakers (along with many well-intentioned economists) have become convinced that big global economic shocks such as pandemics or financial crises will invariably drive down interest rates, and make large debts easier to finance. But in wartime, the need to front-load massive temporary expenditures can easily push up borrowing costs.

True, in todays complex world of drones, cyberwar, and automated battlefields, how governments spend their defence budgets matters greatly. Still, it is magical thinking to assume that every time defence budgets are cut, military planners will make up the difference with increased efficiency.

It would also help if the west could avoid further strategic energy-policy blunders of the sort that led us to this point. In particular, Germany, which relies on Russia for more than half of its gas needs, appears to have made a historic mistake in decommissioning all its nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. By contrast, France, which meets 75% of its energy needs through nuclear power, is significantly less vulnerable to Russian threats.

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In the US, the cancellation of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline may have been based on sound environmental logic. But now the timing seems awkward. Measures intended to protect the environment do little good if they lead to strategic weakness that increases the possibility of conventional wars in Europe leaving aside the large-scale radioactive pollution that would result if neutron bombs or tactical nuclear weapons were deployed.

Stiff Ukrainian resistance, swift and severe economic and financial sanctions, and domestic dissent could yet force Putin to recognise that his decision to invade Ukraine was a spectacular miscalculation. But even if the current crisis subsides, the horrific attack on Ukraine ought to remind even the most committed peace advocate that the world can be harsh and unpredictable.

Everyone hopes for lasting peace. But hard-headed analyses of how countries can achieve sustainable and equitable growth requires leaving fiscal space including emergency borrowing capacity for the costs of guarding against external aggression.

Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University and was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003

Project Syndicate

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Putins invasion of Ukraine suggests the peace dividend is fading - The Guardian

Interpreters in the European parliament usually sound so monotonous and mechanical that even well-rested listeners have trouble staying awake. But when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed a parliamentary session via video link on Tuesday, something extraordinary happened: the person relaying his words into English was so moved that he audibly fought to hold back his tears. Were fighting just for our land and for our freedom, he said, then sniffed, his voice almost breaking as Zelenskiy, wearing a khaki T-shirt in what looked like a bunker, declared: Despite the fact that all our cities of our country are now blocked nobody is going to enter and intervene with the freedom and our country.

This is just one example among many, of how Vladimir Putins brutal war on Ukraine is shaking Europeans to the core. Having long believed that war was impossible on the continent, they are shocked and embarrassed that Ukrainians must not only defend their country against Russian aggression, but must also defend democracy, freedom and the right of sovereign states to determine their destiny the very principles that underpin the European Union.

This war reinforces, with a jolt, the very raison detre of the EU as a peace project. After 24 February, no one will again be able to say that the EUs founding credo, Never again, is outdated, and that the EU needs a new narrative to help younger generations who have no memory of war relate to European integration.

This is why the 27 member states, notoriously divided and slow when it comes to decision-making in Brussels, are showing such remarkable resolve today especially over foreign policy and defence, which they traditionally prefer to keep national. In the past week, they have cut off Russian banks from the Swift payment system, financed the procurement of weapons to send to Ukraine (ironically from a fund called the European Peace Facility), blocked the Russian propaganda channels RT and Sputnik, and closed European skies for aircraft to and from Russia. Parliament even applauded the idea of Ukrainian membership of the EU, although most member states remain sceptical, because this process takes years.

Fuelled by emotion, the European train is rolling so fast that some are cautioning restraint in the face of Putins threat of nuclear escalation emphasising that the US and European countries will not directly fight in Ukraine.

Yet the need for a strong territorial defence now tops the agenda not just in Germany, which just doubled its defence budget for 2022, but even in militarily neutral Finland and Sweden, which are sending weapons to Ukraine. Neither of these Nordic EU members is in Nato, although both are closely collaborating with it. Public support for Nato membership is markedly growing. In Austria, where anti-Americanism is rife, similar discussions are taking place. A former ambassador to Moscow told public radio that Austrians are suddenly discovering that Nato is our security, adding, Das sind neue Zeiten (This is a new era).

Putins war is now dominating EU debates on a range of other policies. After 15 years of talking, Brussels suddenly agreed to connect Ukraine and Moldova (feared to be next on Putins hitlist) to the European electricity grid. EU agriculture ministers have discussed extra supplies of wheat, food and fertiliser to countries that depend on shipments from Ukraine. Even eurozone monetary policies will change. No country will be punished for budget deficits and, with the increasing weaponisation of the worlds reserve currencies, eurozone membership will become more than a form of protection against exchange rate upheavals or a way to foster intra-EU trade it will be a geopolitical insurance policy. Under these circumstances, Dutch-German resistance to common borrowing (Eurobonds) could melt away.

Poland and Hungary, until now unwilling to welcome refugees, have suddenly opened border crossings to admittedly white, Christian ones. Polish workers in Belgium jump in their cars and drive east to help out as Ukrainians flee the fighting. A week of Russian bombardment has driven more than a million people from Ukraine into neighbouring countries of the EU. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, expects another 4 to 5 million to come In 2015, the arrival of a million Syrian refugees led to political turmoil across Europe; now there is no panic at all. Rather, according to Hugo Brady of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna: Eastern European countries are having their Wir schaffen das moment.

The German-French writer and political scientist Alfred Grosser wrote in Wie anders sind die Deutschen (How Different Are the Germans?) that Joseph Stalin deserved the first Charlemagne prize for services to European integration, for without the shared, transatlantic fear of communist totalitarianism, there would never have been a [European] community.

Fear of Putin now has a similar function. It brings the US and Europe closer together, mutes internal discord in the EU for now, and makes clear that Nato is not, as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, once suggested, brain-dead but Europes ultimate guarantor of peace.

Putins invasion appears to be pushing the EU to centralise more rapidly than before in its history, Kathleen McNamara and Daniel Kelemen, professors of Georgetown and Rutgers university respectively, argued in the Washington Post this week. For the moment, this is very much the dynamic. Undoubtedly, divisions between EU member states will reappear soon. They always do. And, as always, the EU will deal with them this is why it was set up in the first place.

But one thing is sure: because of Putins war, Europeans have discovered that Never again is here again.

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Putins war is a watershed moment for the EU the days of never again are back - The Guardian

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Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, calls on Russian President Vladimir Putin to step it up in Ukraine.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko warns of Ukraine becoming a "meat grinder" in a couple days time.

Putin himself asks his Defense Minister and Chief of General Staff on the occasion of "Special Forces Day" to put his "strategic forces" (read: nuclear weapons) in the status of "combat readiness."

RUSSIA INVASION OF UKRAINE LIVE UPDATES

Russian opposition figure in exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky via Instagram implores Russians against the background of these comments to take to the streets.

Police officers detain a demonstrator as people gather in front of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (AP Photo)

They are taking to the streets, but they get pushed back or arrested nearly as quickly as they come out. Protests are illegal. Police are out in numbers looking for rule breakers. According to reports, 1,500 had been arrested across Russia by sundown on Sunday.

One woman in Yekaterinburg said she had taken to the streets because she was so upset.

"And I am especially upset," she said, "because the aggressor is my country. In war, the one who starts it is guilty. And I am guilty. I voted for this government. I didn't actually vote for Putin but I couldn't do anything."

FOOTAGE APPEARS TO SHOW UKRAINIAN DRONE DESTROYING RUSSIAN MISSILE SYSTEM

Outbursts like that, from conversations and social media posts, are representative of how many Russians feel inside.

Vladimir President Vladimir Putin ordered Russias all-out invasion of Ukraine only eight months after TIME magazine billed President Biden as ready to take on the Russian leader. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

But many people are afraid to comment frankly, either way. Weighing in on one side or the other involves risk. A lot of others prefer to just put their heads in the sand. It is too much to bear.

Social media, for now, is the forum of choice for commentary.

FORMER MISS GRAND UKRAINE JOINS UKRAINIAN MILITARY, WARNS RUSSIAN INVADERS WILL BE KILLED

The Gorbachev Foundation put out a statement that read, in part, "We declare the need for an early cessation of hostilities and the immediate start of peace negotiations. There is and cannot be anything more valuable in the world than human lives. Only negotiations and dialogue based on mutual respect and consideration of interests are the only possible way to resolve the most acute contradictions and problems."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks during a press conference at the Ukraine's embassy in Paris on April 16, 2021, theafter a working lunch with French president. (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images)

The language of the man who brought us "glasnost" must have a lot more to say than that. Even while inviting the Ukrainians to talk in Belarus, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko continued with harsh rhetoric.

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He said: "What's going on now is a bed of roses. If it continues like this it will bloom. And there will be no bunker (for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) to hide in--not with the Americans not with anyone else. I wouldn't call this a war yet, it's a conflict. In a day or two it will be a war."

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Russian citizens, growing frustrated with Putin, are taking to the streets - Fox News

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it is obvious Russian President Vladimir Putin has goals beyond Ukraine and may have other countries in his sights.

"When President Biden addressed the nation today, he said that Putin wants a new Soviet Union. Is there intelligence to suggest that President Putin will advance beyond Ukraine?" "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell asked Blinken in an interview on Thursday.

"You don't need intelligence to tell you that that's exactly what President Putin wants," the top U.S. diplomat said. "He's made clear that he'd like to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Short of that, he'd like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc. And short of that, he'd like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral."

But Putin would face intense resistance from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in doing so, he said.

"Now, when it comes to a threat beyond Ukraine's borders, there's something very powerful standing in his way," Blinken added. "That's Article 5 of NATO an attack on one is an attack on all. It's exactly why we've been reinforcing NATO's eastern flank."

The Biden administration has been adamant that it will not send U.S. troops into Ukraine, which is not part of NATO, though it is stationing troops in nearby countries. Instead, the U.S. is arming Ukraine with weapons and has unleashed a series of sanctions against Russia.

When asked what the U.S. was doing to lower the risk of an accidental escalation between U.S. troops in nearby countries and Russian forces, Blinken said the Biden administration wants to have "communication with Russia on a military basis to make very clear what it risks if it miscalculates."

As Russia launched an attack on Ukraine, Putin warned that countries that stood in its way would face severe consequences that have never been seen in history, raising concerns that he was threatening a nuclear attack.

"I can't begin to get into his head and to say exactly what he means by that," Blinken said. "We've prepared for whatever course that he chooses to take."

Blinken said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still in Ukraine.

"We're concerned for the safety of all of our friends in Ukraine, government officials and others," Blinken said. "And we're doing everything we can to stand with them to support them."

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Blinken says Putin has his sights on countries beyond Ukraine - CBS News

Barely a week into the war in Ukraine, world leaders and criminal lawyers are accusing Russia's President Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes, and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has announced he has launched an investigation into possible war crimes or crimes against humanity.

British Prime Minster Boris Johnson yesterday told the UK Parliament that the bombing of innocent civilians "already fully qualifies as a war crime".

The Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC this week argued that the case against Putin was clear.

"He's guilty of the crime of aggression," Robertsontold the ABC.

"Invading a country, causing innocent civilians to die in their hundreds and thousands, and by breaching the UN charter that protects the sovereignty of independent countries, there's no doubt that he's guilty of a crime against humanity."

Under the statute that established the ICC, an act of aggression means "the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state". That includes invasion, military occupation and annexation by the use of force or the blockade of ports.

Intentionally targeting civilians or civilian buildings is also considered a war crime under international humanitarian law. Russia denies it engages in illegal attacks but proof of any use of illegal weaponry such as cluster bombs and any targeting of civilians or civilian buildings like schools and hospitals is already being collated.

Conflicts in the 21st century and the crimes that are committed are documented closely and shared widely. This has been dubbed the world's first "TikTok War".Everything will be used to build a case and researchers will be collecting video from social media sites and phones, as well as footage from dash cams.

The ICC doesn't prosecute states, it goes after individuals. Putin would be held responsible for any crimes committed by Russia's military, security services and any other Russian state agencies. The court is also sure to turn its attention to the actions of other individuals - including Putin's generals and the Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

The case will be built methodically, but it will be a long time before Putin or his military leaders will be brought to justice, if they ever are.

As we saw with the Yugoslav trials, it took many years to bring to justice those responsible for the war crimes committed in those conflicts.

The trial of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was the most important war crimes case since the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Milosevic was charged with crimes relating to the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s. He was arrested in 2001, the trial began in 2002 and he died in custody in 2006.

It took even longer to convict other political and military leaders for crimes committed in those wars. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, was arrested in 2008 and found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2016. His General, Ratko Mladic, evaded justice and remained on the run for many years until he was captured and extradited to the Hague in 2011. He was convicted in 2017.

In 2022, the problem the court would have in bringing any case against Putin is that Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016. If the Russian President was charged, he would have to be arrested in a country that accepts the court's jurisdiction.

No one believes Putin will be put on trial in the near future, but international criminal lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson say it is important to start the process now. Justice, he says, did eventually come for Milosevic.

"It may be 20 or 30 years hence in which an old, crippled-in-a-wheelchair Putin will be wheeled in and prosecuted and given up by a new Russia that wants to unblock its copybook," Roberston says. But,"it's always possible and it's important that [any] evidence of his guilt should be amassed and be available if and when that happens."

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Putin has been accused of committing war crimes. But could the International Criminal Court bring him to justice? - ABC News

I felt sick when I read about Vladimir Putin announcing the start of a special military operation in Ukraine.

Images of bloodied civilians and bombed-out residential buildings flood my phone and TV. I still feel shaky. And angry.

It hit me, physically, how Mr. Putin abuses my language. Steals it to pretend he is defending the rights of Russian speakers. Russian is my mother tongue. It is the language I speak with my children. And I do not want it to be the language of war. Unfortunately, that is what it has become.

These words will offer no comfort for those under fire in Ukraine but the least Russian citizens like me can do is not remain silent, even from afar. I only regret not speaking up when it all began in 2014.

It has been a long eight years since Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatists started a war in the Donbas region. Now, the 1.5 million people who fled from there to more peaceful areas of Ukraine are again at risk of losing their lives and their homes. It feels as if all hope for peace is gone.

I know many Ukrainians who are ready to fight and defend their freedom. What is going on now, it is very scary, but Ukrainians will fight for independence until victory, one wrote to me. Another said, It is the last chance to stop the dictator. Theyre saying it all over social media, too. Those who can are joining the army. Others are building shelters, offering first aid and food. Ukrainians abroad are posting on social media, calling for sanctions and air support, and fund-raising for humanitarian efforts.

But I cant see anyone eager to be on the frontline for the opposite side. Maybe its because the term brotherly nation, which the Kremlin has abused for years, means something real to Russians with parents, siblings and friends on the other side of the border.

Or maybe its because of the fear and sadness over what comes next fewer freedoms and more pain. My elderly parents in Russia are stocking up on essentials like flour and rice. Theyve lived through several economic crises and seen the consequences of prior rounds of sanctions. People are lining up at banks to take out their cash, fearful that the ruble will crash. The war will almost certainly hit the economy, deepening already extreme inequality in a country where the average government pension last January was less than $200 a month.

Ive gotten messages from fellow Russians saying not to worry, this war is politics between Russia and the West and might end soon. Or that the news is tiring, especially since the West has its own propaganda. Others have suggested that this war was the only option, given that Russians have been dying in the Donbas region for eight years echoing a billboard in St. Petersburg showing a photo of Putin with the words they left us no option. Its not that all of these Russians are necessarily big supporters of Mr. Putin. Many are simply exhausted, scared or have been subjected to a steady stream of propaganda.

So yes, we can see how the Russian language is the language of war. Mr. Putin made it so.

Russian has also become the language of a lie. Mr. Putin claims Russia is defending traditional values, but that is false. What kind of values are being defended by traumatizing tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and families? Forcing them to hide from bombs in the subway? For many, fleeing the war zone is not an option.

Is Putins rabid desire to redraw the map of Russia and recreate an empire meant to give them comfort? The so-called history he cites to justify this aggression is riddled with lies.

The line between facts and disinformation has been blurred in Russia for a long time. My family and I are not alone in remembering the horrors of the past century that were carried out in the name of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has denied key facts around Holodomor, the famine that claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians. It has whitewashed massacres in Chechnya and the Beslan school attack. Yet we have not forgotten. And we see what has been happening in recent years political persecutions, expanding repression. Silencing dissent, shuttering Memorial, Russias most prominent human rights organization. Step by step, we have seen the denial and attempted erasure of historical truth.

Russian has become the language of fear. My parents avoid discussing politics over the phone; theyre not alone. Since the Kremlin has strangled freedom of speech, most Russians I know are afraid to publicly express their opinions. Theyve gone back to Soviet-era kitchen conversations to share their views on politics.

We have seen the Kremlin crack down violently on protests about elections and political prisoners like Aleksei A. Navalny. On the day Putin launched his full-scale assault on Ukraine, the government issued a statement warning that Russians who protest could face prosecution.

I was heartened, and scared, to see that the warning did not stop Russians from turning out in force that same day. Protests took place across Russia, from Moscow to St. Petersburg to Khabarovsk. Signs bore messages like No War and Do you see evil and keep silent? Partner in crime! Nearly 1,800 people were arrested.

And its not just that: Some Russian journalists have openly condemned the invasion of Ukraine. Russian celebrities, too. Tennis star Andrey Rublev used a marker to write no war please on a camera lens at an international tournament, while the actress Katerina Shpitsa wrote that for the first time in her life she thought it might be better that her grandmother wasnt alive to see this day.

This is nearly unprecedented.

They all know that their words will not stop the war machine. But as Yury Dud, one of the most popular independent journalists in Russia, said, at least their children will know they did not support this governments imperial frenzy. They use our language for peace, not war.

I left Russia in 2014, and it has taken me years to learn how to breathe and speak freely. I still get goose bumps when I have to show my passport at Russian border control.

It will be even scarier after Ive written this. But I have to say it: Russian should not be a language of war. This war is not in my name.

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Opinion | Mr. Putin, the War in Ukraine Is Not in My Name - The New York Times

Still, even the most successful scenario for his invasion of Ukraine easy victory, no real insurgency, a pliant government installed seems likely to undercut some of the interests hes supposedly fighting to defend. NATO will still nearly encircle western Russia, more countries may join the alliance, European military spending will rise, more troops and material will end up in Eastern Europe. There will be a push for European energy independence, some attempt at long-term delinking from Russian pipelines and production. A reforged Russian empire will be poorer than it otherwise might be, more isolated from the global economy, facing a more united West. And again, all this assumes no grinding occupation, no percolating antiwar sentiment at home.

Its possible Putin just assumes the West is so decadent, so easily bought off, that the spasms of outrage will pass and business as usual resume without any enduring consequences. But lets assume that he expects some of those consequences, expects a more isolated future. What might be his reasoning for choosing it?

Here is one speculation: He may believe that the age of American-led globalization is ending no matter what, that after the pandemic certain walls will stay up everywhere, and that the goal for the next 50 years is to consolidate what you can resources, talent, people, territory inside your own civilizational walls.

In this vision the future is neither liberal world-empire nor a renewed Cold War between competing universalisms. Rather its a world divided into some version of what Bruno Maes has called civilization-states, culturally cohesive great powers that aspire, not to world domination, but to become universes unto themselves each, perhaps, under its own nuclear umbrella.

This idea, redolent of Samuel P. Huntingtons arguments in The Clash of Civilizations a generation ago, clearly influences many of the worlds rising powers from the Hindutva ideology of Indias Narendra Modi to the turn against cultural exchange and Western influence in Xi Jinpings China. Maes himself hopes a version of civilizationism will reanimate Europe, perhaps with Putins adventurism as a catalyst for stronger continental cohesion. And even within the United States you can see the resurgence of economic nationalism and the wars over national identity as a turn toward these kinds of civilizational concerns.

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Opinion | Vladimir Putins Clash of Civilizations - The New York Times

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)Vladimir Putin has become deeply worried about his strategy after learning that Donald J. Trump called him smart, Kremlin sources have revealed.

After Trump praised Putin Saturday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Orlando, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, reluctantly shared a video of the disturbing moment with the Russian President.

As Putin watched Trump call him smart, all the blood drained from his face, a source said. He was clearly shaken.

After watching the video of Trump, Putin spent a sleepless night in consultation with Russian military and intelligence officials to determine where and how he had gone wrong.

Hes rethinking everything now, and hes in a very fragile state of mind, the source said. If it comes out that Don, Jr., or Eric thinks hes smart, that could break him.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump doubled down on his support for the Russian President, offering Putin advice on declaring Russia bankrupt.

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Putin Starting to Worry About His Strategy After Trump Calls Him Smart - The New Yorker