Ukraine
EU slaps sanctions on top Russia officials, banks, trade
The European Union agreed Saturday to impose new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine targeting more officials and organizations accused of supporting the war, spreading propaganda or supplying drones, as well as restricting trade on products that could be used by the armed forces.
The EU’s Swedish presidency said the sanctions "are directed at military and political decision-makers, companies supporting or working within the Russian military industry, and commanders in the Wagner Group. Transactions with some of Russia’s largest banks are also prohibited.”
Asset freezes were slapped on three more Russian banks and seven Iranian “entities” — companies, agencies, political parties or other organizations — that manufacture military drones, which the EU suspects have been used by Russia during the war.
The new measures, proposed by the EU’s executive branch three weeks ago, were only adopted after much internal wrangling over their exact make-up, and made public one day after the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the intended target date.
The delay, which was minor but symbolically important, is yet more evidence of how difficult it has become for the 27-nation bloc to identify new targets for restrictive measures that are acceptable to all member nations.
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The sanctions are meant to undermine Russia’s economy and drain funds for its war effort, but they are also increasingly inflicting pain on European economies already hit by high inflation and energy prices and still suffering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before this latest round of measures, the EU had already targeted almost 1,400 Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, government ministers, lawmakers and oligarchs believed loyal to the Kremlin, but also officers believed responsible for war crimes or targeting civilian infrastructure.
The bloc had also frozen the assets of more than 170 organizations, ranging from political parties and paramilitary groups to banks, private companies and media outlets accused of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Russia’s energy sector was hit, too — notably oil and coal — and the bloc, through its own measures and political decisions combined with retaliation from Moscow, was rapidly weaned off its dependence on Russian natural gas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the new package in his nightly address on Saturday.
“Sanctions will continue to be introduced so that nothing remains of the potential of Russian aggression,” he said.
“There are new sanctions steps in the 10th package, powerful ones, against the defense industry and the financial sector of the terrorist state and against the propagandists who drowned Russian society in lies and are trying to spread their lies onto the whole world,” Zelenskyy said.
Russians mark Ukraine war anniversary with flowers, arrests
Russians in Moscow and other cities brought flowers to Ukrainian poets and held one-person pickets with antiwar slogans Friday to mark the first anniversary of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian media and civil rights groups reported at least a dozen detentions, part of the Kremlin's sweeping crackdown on dissent that has spiked to unprecedented levels since the start of the war.
At least eight people were detained in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, according to OVD-Info, a legal aid group that tracks political arrests. They all had brought flowers to the city’s monument to victims of political repression, the group said.
Online news outlet Sota filmed at least seven people getting detained in St. Petersburg after they brought flowers to a monument for the renowned Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. Footage posted by the outlet showed a police officer explaining to a couple that they had violated coronavirus restrictions.
Sota also reported a person detained in Moscow, where people flocked to the monument of Lesya Ukrainka, another renowned Ukrainian poet, to lay flowers. A contingent of police officers monitored the group but left mostly didn't interrupt.
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Five people were detained in the Siberian city of Barnaul, according to the Sibir.Realii news outlet, including a man who picketed a central square with a placard reading “Stop being silent.” In another Siberian city, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a woman was detained for protesting with a banner that read, “We’re mourning. Forgive us, we screwed up our country,” the outlet reported.
Russians all across the country actively protested against the war in Ukraine during the first week of the invasion. Large rallies quickly fizzled after thousands were detained, but solo pickets -- and detentions -- have persisted throughout the year.
Russian authorities have enforced a law enacted soon after the invasion that effectively criminalizes any public expression against what the Kremlin refers to as a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Russian parliament rubber-stamped a bill that outlawed discrediting the Russian military or spreading false information a week after Moscow's troops rolled into Ukraine.
OVD-Info said in a statement Friday that “for 305 out of 365 days of the war, security forces detained people for their anti-war position in various cities of Russia and the annexed Crimea.”
As of mid-December, the group had counted 378 people facing criminal prosecution for their antiwar positions in 69 Russian regions and the Crimean Peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. The group also counted more than 5,500 administrative cases on the charge of discrediting the Russian army.
Biden unveils new Ukraine weapons package, Russia sanctions
The Biden administration declared its Ukraine solidarity with fresh action as well as strong words on Friday, piling sweeping new sanctions on Moscow and approving a new $2 billion weapons package to re-arm Kyiv a year after Russia’s invasion.
Despite the U.S. and allies’ continued ambitious efforts to bolster the Ukrainians, there are no signs of an endgame in the war, which seems destined to enter an even more complicated phase in the months ahead.
On the somber anniversary, Biden and fellow leaders from the Group of Seven allies that have been at the forefront of backing Ukraine stayed focused on a unified front.
“Our solidarity will never waver in standing with Ukraine, in supporting countries and people in need, and in upholding the international order based on the rule of law," the G-7 leaders said in a joint statement after a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As Ukraine mourned its war dead and vowed it would ultimately emerge victorious, the Pentagon unveiled its latest weapons package. It includes more ammunition, electronic warfare detection equipment and other weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems, and several types of drones, including the upgraded Switchblade 600 Kamikaze attack drone.
The latest aid package uses the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to provide funding for longer-term contracts to buy weapons and equipment. Unlike the presidential drawdown authority that the Pentagon has used repeatedly over the past year to pull weapons from its own stocks and quickly ship them to Ukraine, the USAI-funded equipment could take a year or two to get to the battlefront. As a result, it will do little to help Ukraine prepare for an expected new offensive in the spring.
“Difficult times may lie ahead, but let us remain clear-eyed about what is at stake in Ukraine,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, “to ensure that a world of rules and rights is not replaced by one of tyranny and turmoil.”
Biden said in an ABC News interview on Friday that he's not ready to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Zelenskyy has been pressing the U.S. and allies for jets, but White House officials have pushed back that they are not the weaponry that Ukrainians need in the near term.
“There is no basis on which there is a rationale, according to our military now to provide F-16s,” Biden said. “I am ruling it out for now.”
Meanwhile, the White House said that new sanctions hitting over 200 people and entities will “further degrade Russia’s economy and diminish its ability to wage war against Ukraine.” The Biden administration will also further restrict exports to Russia and raise tariffs on some Russian products imported to the U.S.
Read more: White House announces $270M military package for Ukraine
"Now, not only does Ukraine stand, but the global coalition in support of Ukraine is stronger than ever, with the G7 as its anchor," Biden said on Twitter following Friday's virtual meeting with Zelenskyy.
Still, as the conflict enters a second year, there are no indications that President Vladimir Putin will retreat from the conflict. And the avalanche of international sanctions that have been steadily hoisted on Moscow over the past year have yet to deliver the sort of knockout blow to the Russian economy that the White House — and independent economists — predicted at the outset of the war.
The Russian economy has weathered sanctions better than expected in 2022, in part due to “the slow introduction of commodities sanctions," according to a Moody’s Investors Service report on Friday.
The Russian economy is expected to weaken in 2023, with GDP shrinking by 3% this year, according to the Moody's projection. The economy shrank 2.2% in 2022, far short of predictions of 15% or more that Biden administration officials had showcased at the start of the war. Export controls and financial sanctions are gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, but oil and other energy exports last year enabled Putin to keep funding the war.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Russia's economy was “showing some resilience” but he also said it's not clear that it “can be sustained for the long haul.”
Of Putin, he said, “He has had to take some drastic measures to prop up his economy, to prop up his currency, including playing pretty aggressively with interest rates for instance."
The new sanctions introduced by U.S. Treasury on Friday hit Russian firms, banks, manufacturers and individuals, taking aim at entities that helped Russia evade earlier rounds. Russia’s metals and mining sector are among those targeted in what Treasury called one of the “most significant sanctions actions to date.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, attending meetings in India on Friday with fellow financial chiefs of the Group of 20 leading economies, called out Russian officials in attendance and insisted the world's biggest economies must do more to support Ukraine.
Read more: Biden says US sending medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine
“I urge the Russian officials here at the G-20 to understand that their continued work for the Kremlin makes them complicit in Putin’s atrocities,” Yellen said. “They bear responsibility for the lives and livelihoods being taken in Ukraine and the harm caused globally.”
The U.S. State and Commerce departments as well as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative also issued plans Friday to increase pressure on Russia. These steps impose visa restrictions on 1,219 members of the Russian military, increase tariffs on Russian products such as metal, worth roughly $2.8 billion, and add nearly 90 Russian and third-country companies, including from China, to a list of identified sanctions evaders.
More than 30 countries representing more than half the world’s economy have already imposed sanctions on Russia, making it the most sanctioned nation in the world.
The sanctions have imposed price caps on Russian oil and diesel, frozen Russian Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
The U.S. and allies have directly sanctioned roughly 2,500 Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions are depriving them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, preventing them from doing business with Americans, traveling to the U.S. and more.
By Friday afternoon, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, an international standard-setting body on illicit finance, suspended Russia from its membership. The removal occurred for the first time in the body's 34-year history.
Britain also announced new sanctions Friday on firms that supply Russia’s battlefield equipment and says it will bar export to Russia of all items it has used in the war, such as aircraft parts, radio equipment and electronic components of weapons.
“We don’t think the job is by any means done," Britain’s Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt said.
Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world
War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.
One year on, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.
Here are five ways the war has changed the world:
THE RETURN OF EUROPEAN WAR
Three months before the invasion, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at suggestions that the British army needed more heavy weapons. “The old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass,” he said, “are over.”
Johnson is now urging the U.K. to send more battle tanks to help Ukraine repel Russian forces.
Despite the role played by new technology such as satellites and drones, this 21st-century conflict in many ways resembles one from the 20th. Fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is a brutal slog, with mud, trenches and bloody infantry assaults reminiscent of World War I.
Read more: Biden to meet eastern flank NATO leaders amid Russia worries
The conflict has sparked a new arms race that reminds some analysts of the 1930s buildup to World War II. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of conscripts and aims to expand its military from 1 million to 1.5 million troops. The U.S. has ramped up weapons production to replace the stockpiles shipped to Ukraine. France plans to boost military spending by a third by 2030, while Germany has abandoned its longstanding ban on sending weapons to conflict zones and shipped missiles and tanks to Ukraine.
Before the war, many observers assumed that military forces would move toward more advanced technology and cyber warfare and become less reliant on tanks or artillery, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.
But in Ukraine, guns and ammunition are the most important weapons.
“It is, for the moment at least, being shown that in Ukraine, conventional warfare — state-on-state — is back,” Bury said.
ALLIANCES TESTED AND TOUGHENED
Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped the invasion would split the West and weaken NATO. Instead, the military alliance has been reinvigorated. A group set up to counter the Soviet Union has a renewed sense of purpose and two new aspiring members in Finland and Sweden, which ditched decades of nonalignment and asked to join NATO as protection against Russia.
The 27-nation European Union has hit Russia with tough sanctions and sent Ukraine billions in support. The war put Brexit squabbles into perspective, thawing diplomatic relations between the bloc and awkward former member Britain.
“The EU is taking sanctions, quite serious sanctions, in the way that it should. The U.S. is back in Europe with a vengeance in a way we never thought it would be again,” said defense analyst Michael Clarke, former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
NATO member states have poured weapons and equipment worth billions of dollars into Ukraine. The alliance has buttressed its eastern flank, and the countries nearest to Ukraine and Russia, including Poland and the Baltic states, have persuaded more hesitant NATO and European Union allies, potentially shifting Europe’s center of power eastwards.
There are some cracks in the unity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has lobbied against sanctions on Moscow, refused to send weapons to Ukraine and held up an aid package from the bloc for Kyiv.
Western unity will come under more and more pressure the longer the conflict grinds on.
“Russia is planning for a long war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of 2022, but the alliance was also ready for the “long haul.”
A NEW IRON CURTAIN
The war has made Russia a pariah in the West. Its oligarchs have been sanctioned and its businesses blacklisted, and international brands including McDonald’s and Ikea have disappeared from the country’s streets.
Yet Moscow is not entirely friendless. Russia has strengthened economic ties with China, though Beijing is keeping its distance from the fighting and so far has not sent weapons. The U.S. has recently expressed concern that may change.
China is closely watching a conflict that may serve as either encouragement or warning to Beijing about any attempt to reclaim self-governing Taiwan by force.
Putin has reinforced military links with international outcasts North Korea and Iran, which supplies armed drones that Russia unleashes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow continues to build influence in Africa and the Middle East with its economic and military clout. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has grown more powerful in conflicts from the Donbas to the Sahel.
In an echo of the Cold War, the world is divided into two camps, with many countries, including densely populated India, hedging their bets to see who emerges on top.
Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King’s College London, said the conflict has widened a rift between the “U.S.-led liberal international order” on one side, and angry Russia and emboldened rising superpower China on the other.
A BATTERED AND RESHAPED ECONOMY
The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa.
Before the war, European Union nations imported almost half their natural gas and third of their oil from Russia. The invasion, and sanctions slapped on Russia in response, delivered an energy price shock on a scale not seen since the 1970s.
The war disrupted global trade that was still recovering from the pandemic. Food prices have soared, since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and sunflower oil, and Russia is the world’s top fertilizer producer.
Grain-carrying ships have continued to sail from Ukraine under a fragile U.N.-brokered deal, and prices have come down from record levels. But food remains a geopolitical football. Russia has sought to blame the West for high prices, while Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of cynically using hunger as a weapon.
The war “has really highlighted the fragility” of an interconnected world, just as the pandemic did, German said, and the full economic impact has yet to be felt.
The war also roiled attempts to fight climate change, driving an upsurge in Europe’s use of heavily polluting coal. Yet Europe’s rush away from Russian oil and gas may speed the transition to renewable energy sources faster than countless warnings about the dangers of global warming. The International Energy Agency says the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.
A NEW AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
The conflict is a stark reminder that individuals have little control over the course of history. No one knows that better than the 8 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee homes and country for new lives in communities across Europe and beyond.
For millions of people less directly affected, the sudden shattering of Europe’s peace has brought uncertainty and anxiety.
Putin’s veiled threats to use atomic weapons if the conflict escalates revived fears of nuclear war that had lain dormant since the Cold War. Fighting has raged around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the specter of a new Chernobyl.
But the conflict has also brought reminders that, sometimes, individual human actions make all the difference. Defense analyst Clarke said one such moment occurred a day after the invasion, when Zelenskyy filmed himself outside in Kyiv and vowed not to leave the city.
“That was critical in showing that Kyiv would fight,” Clarke said. “And with that, of course, the United States, Joe Biden fell in behind it. If those two things hadn’t happened — Zelenskyy and then Biden’s decision — the Russians would have won.
“That Zelenskyy moment will go down in history as very, very important.”
Putin raises tension on Ukraine, suspends START nuclear pact
Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, announcing the move Tuesday in a bitter speech in which he made clear he would not change his strategy in the war in Ukraine.
Putin emphasized, however, that Russia isn’t withdrawing from the pact yet, and hours after his address the Foreign Ministry said Moscow would respect the treaty's caps on nuclear weapons. It also said Russia would continue to exchange information about test launches of ballistic missiles per earlier agreements with the United States.
In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast his country — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its very existence.
“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said ahead of the war’s first anniversary Friday. “The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
The speech reiterated a litany of grievances he has frequently offered as justification for the widely condemned military campaign, while vowing no military letup.
Along with limits on the number of nuclear weapons, the 2010 New START envisages broad inspections of nuclear sites. Putin said Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on such tests in place since the Cold War era.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded by calling for Russia and the United States to return to dialogue immediately because “a world without nuclear arms control is a far more dangerous and unstable one.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Moscow’s decision to suspend participation in the treaty as “really unfortunate and very irresponsible."
Read more: Biden in Poland: US, allies 'will never waver' in Ukraine
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does,” he said while visiting Greece.
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun called on the U.S. and Russia to “continue to negotiate with each other in finding a good solution.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Poland a day after his surprise visit to Ukraine, did not mention the START suspension but blasted Putin for the invasion. He pledged continued support for Ukraine despite “hard and bitter days ahead.”
“Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow and forever,” Biden said at Warsaw's landmark Royal Castle before a cheering crowd of Poles and Ukrainian refugees.
Putin's announcement was the second time in recent days the Ukraine war showed it could spread into perilous new terrain, after Blinken told China over the weekend that it would be a “serious problem” if Beijing provided arms and ammunition to Russia.
China and Russia have aligned their foreign policies to oppose Washington. Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion or atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, while strongly criticizing Western economic sanctions on Moscow. Late last year, Russia and China held joint naval drills.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, Vadym Skibitskyi, told The Associated Press his agency hasn’t seen any signs so far that China is providing weapons to Moscow.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and made a dash toward Kyiv, apparently expecting to overrun the capital quickly. But stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces — supported by Western weapons — turned back Moscow's troops. While Ukraine has reclaimed many areas initially seized by Russia, the sides have become bogged down elsewhere.
The war has revived the divide between Russia and the West, reinvigorated the NATO alliance, and created the biggest threat to Putin's rule of more than two decades.
In Tuesday's speech, Putin again offered his own version of recent history, discounting Ukraine's arguments that it needed Western help to thwart a Russian military takeover. He has repeatedly depicted NATO’s expansion to include countries close to Russia as an existential threat to his country.
“It’s they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” he said before an audience of lawmakers, officials and soldiers, and broadcast on all state TV channels.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who was in Ukraine on Tuesday, said she wished Putin had taken a different approach.
“What we heard this morning was propaganda that we already know,” Meloni said in English. “He says (Russia) worked on diplomacy to avoid the conflict, but the truth is that there is somebody who is the invader and somebody who is defending itself.”
Also meeting with Zelenskyy was the newly appointed chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, who led a delegation for the first time since the start of the war and since Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.
Chairman Mike McCaul and a handful of other GOP lawmakers said they had a productive meeting about what Zelenskyy needs for winning the war. He provided them with a list of weapons, including longer-range artillery and air-to-surface systems.
The meeting comes as some hard-right Republicans are vowing to block future U.S. aid to Ukraine. “We have seen time and again the majority of Republicans and Democrats support our assistance to Ukraine,” McCaul said in a statement. “But the Biden administration needs to lay out their long-term strategy.”
Putin denied any wrongdoing in Ukraine, even after Kremlin forces struck civilian targets, including hospitals, and are widely accused of war crimes.
Zelenskyy cited fresh attacks on Ukrainian civilians Tuesday, and downplayed Putin’s speech.
“I have not watched it, because during this time there were missile strikes on Kherson. Twenty-one people were wounded and six were killed,” he said.
Putin also accused the West of taking aim at Russian culture, religion and values. He fired another broadside at Western gender policies that he described as efforts to destroy “traditional” values.
And he said Western sanctions hadn’t “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.” He blasted Russian tycoons who kept their assets in the West and saw them confiscated or frozen as part of the sanctions.
“Believe me, ordinary people had no sympathy for those who lost their yachts, palaces and other assets abroad,” Putin said.
While Russia’s Constitution mandates that the president deliver the state-of-the-nation speech annually, Putin never gave one in 2022. Last year, the Kremlin also canceled two other big annual events — Putin’s news conference and a highly scripted phone-in marathon taking questions from the public.
Reflecting the Kremlin's clampdown on free speech and press, it barred in-person coverage of the address by media from “unfriendly” countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and those in the European Union.
Biden in Poland: US, allies 'will never waver' in Ukraine
President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned of “hard and bitter days ahead" as Russia's invasion of Ukraine nears the one-year mark, but vowed that no matter what, the United States and allies “will not waver” in supporting the Ukrainians.
A day after his surprise visit to Kyiv, Biden used a strongly worded address in neighboring Poland to praise allies in Europe for stepping up over the past year and to send a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that "NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden said before a crowd of thousands outside Warsaw’s Royal Castle. “I can report: Kyiv stands strong. Kyiv stands proud. It stands tall and, most important, it stands free."
With Russia and Ukraine each preparing spring offensives, Biden insisted there will be no backing down from what he’s portrayed as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy — though polling suggests American support for ongoing military assistance appears to be softening.
“Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow and forever," Biden declared. The U.S. and allies will “have Ukraine's back.”
Biden's speech came a day after his unannounced trip to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and walked the city streets as an air raid siren blared.
Last year, weeks after Russian forces began their attacks on Ukraine, Biden delivered a harsh condemnation of Putin from the gardens of the castle. Speaking Tuesday to a crowd that included Polish citizens and Ukrainian refugees — and millions more following in Ukraine, Russia and around the world — he made his case that Putin's war has been a failure.
“When President Putin ordered his tanks to roll into Ukraine, he thought we would roll over. He was wrong,” Biden said.
The president also declared “the democracies of the world have grown stronger" while the world's autocrats — including Putin — have become weaker.
“Autocrats only understand one word — no, no, no,” Biden said. “No, you will not take my country. No, you will not take my freedom. No, you will not take my future.”
Read more: Putin ups tensions over Ukraine, suspending START nuke pact
Biden was using the trip to prepare allies for an ever-more-complicated stage of the war and to reassure allies in the region that the U.S. was committed for the long haul. He met Tuesday with Moldovan President Maia Sandu — who last week claimed Moscow was behind a plot to overthrow her country’s government using external saboteurs — and with his host Polish President Andrzej Duda.
“We have to have security in Europe,” Biden said at the presidential palace. “It's that basic, that simple, that consequential.”
He described NATO as “maybe the most consequential alliance in history," and he said it's “stronger than it's ever been” despite the Russian leader's hopes that it would fracture over the war in Ukraine.
Duda praised the American president’s visit to Kyiv as “spectacular,” saying it “boosted morale of Ukraine’s defenders.”
He said the trip was “a sign that the free world, and its biggest leader, the president of the United States, stands by them.”
On Wednesday, Biden will meet again with Duda along with other leaders of the Bucharest Nine, the easternmost members of the NATO military alliance. Ukraine is not a member.
While Biden was in Poland, Putin announced that Moscow would suspend its participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States.
The New START Treaty caps the number of long-range nuclear warheads countries may deploy and limits the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.
Despite his criticisms of Putin, Biden did not mention the START suspension during his speech. And the Russian Foreign Ministry later said that, despite Putin's announcement, it would continue abiding by the treaty's caps.
The conflict in Ukraine — the most significant war in Europe since World War II — has already left tens of thousands of people dead, devastated Ukraine’s infrastructure system and damaged the global economy.
While Biden is looking to use his whirlwind trip to Europe as a moment of affirmation for Ukraine and allies, the White House has also acknowledged that there is no clear endgame to the war in the near term, and the situation on the ground has become increasingly complex.
The administration on Sunday said it has new intelligence suggesting that China, which has generally remained on the sidelines of the conflict, is now considering sending Moscow lethal aid. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it could become a “serious problem” if Beijing follows through.
Biden and Zelenskyy discussed capabilities that Ukraine needs “to be able to succeed on the battlefield” in the months ahead, said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. and European allies to provide fighter jets and long-range missile systems known as ATACMS — which Biden has declined to provide so far. Sullivan declined to comment on whether there was any movement on that during the leaders' talk.
With no quick end in sight for the war, the anniversary is a critical moment for Biden to try to bolster European unity and reiterate the West's position that Putin's invasion was a frontal attack on the post-World War II international order. The White House hopes the president's visit to Kyiv and Warsaw will help bolster American and global resolve.
In the U.S., a poll published last week by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that support for providing Ukraine with weapons and direct economic assistance is softening. And earlier this month, 11 House Republicans introduced what they called the “Ukraine fatigue” resolution urging Biden to end military and financial aid to Ukraine, while pushing Ukraine and Russia to come to a peace agreement.
Biden dismissed the notion of waning American support during his visit to Kyiv.
“For all the disagreement we have in our Congress on some issues, there is significant agreement on support for Ukraine,” he said. He described the conflict as "about freedom of democracy at large.”
Biden had high praise for Poland's efforts to assist Ukraine. More than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees have settled in Poland since the start of the war, and millions more have crossed through Poland on their way to other countries. Poland has also provided Ukraine with $3.8 billion in military and humanitarian aid, according to the White House.
The Biden administration announced last summer that it was establishing a permanent U.S. garrison in Poland, creating an enduring American foothold on NATO's eastern flank.
“The truth of the matter is the United States needs Poland and NATO as much as NATO needs the United States,” Biden told Duda on Tuesday.
Why China's stand on Russia and Ukraine is raising concerns
Nearly one year after Russia invaded Ukraine, new questions are rising over China’s potential willingness to offer military aid to Moscow in the increasingly drawn-out conflict.
In an interview that aired Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said American intelligence suggests China is considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia, an involvement in the Kremlin’s war effort that he said would be a “serious problem.”
China has refused to criticize Russia for its actions or even to call it an invasion in deference to Moscow. At the same time, it insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations must be upheld. The question now is whether China is willing to convert that rhetorical backing into material support.
Here's a look at where China stands on the conflict.
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DOES CHINA BACK RUSSIA IN ITS WAR ON UKRAINE?
China has tried to walk a fine — and often contradictory — line on the Russian invasion.
China says Russia was provoked into taking action by NATO's westward expansion. Just weeks before the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics, at which time the sides issued a joint statement pledging their commitment to a “no limits" friendship. China has since ignored Western criticism and reaffirmed that pledge.
Also Read: Russia to test new hypersonic missile in drills with China and South Africa
But China has yet to confirm the visit Putin has said he expects from Xi this spring.
China is “trying to have it both ways," Blinken said Sunday on NBC. "Publicly, they present themselves as a country striving for peace in Ukraine, but privately, as I said, we’ve seen already over these past months the provision of non-lethal assistance that does go directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort.”
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HAS CHINA PROVIDED MATERIAL SUPPORT TO RUSSIA?
So far, China's support for Russia has been rhetorical and political, with Beijing helping prevent efforts to condemn Moscow at the United Nations.
Blinken, at a security conference in Munich, Germany, said the United States has long been concerned that China would provide weapons to Russia and that “we have information that gives us concern that they are considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine.” That came a day after Blinken held talks with Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, in a meeting that offered little sign of a reduction in tensions or progress on the Ukraine issue.
“It was important for me to share very clearly with Wang Yi that this would be a serious problem,” Blinken said, referring to potential military support for Russia.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, also expressed her concern about any effort by the Chinese to arm Russia, saying “that would be a red line.”
Also Read: Putin, Xi vow closer ties as Russia bombards Ukraine again
Russian and Chinese forces have held joint military drills since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, most recently sending ships to take part in exercises with the South African navy in a key shipping lane off the South African coast.
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WHAT HAS CHINA SAID ON THE MATTER?
Following the meeting between Wang and Blinken, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement that it has always played a constructive role in the Ukraine conflict by adhering to principles, encouraging peace and promoting talks.
The ministry said the China-Russia partnership “is established on the basis of non-alignment, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of third parties,” and that the U.S. was adding “fuel to the fire to take advantage of the opportunity to make profits.”
Beijing says it has continued a normal trade relationship with Russia, including purchases of oil and gas, as have other countries such as India. However, that trade is seen as throwing an economic lifeline to Moscow, but there have been no documented cases of China providing direct aid to the Russian military along the lines of the inexpensive military drones that Iran sells to Moscow.
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WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF CHINA AIDS RUSSIA?
“To the best of our knowledge, they haven’t crossed that line yet,” Blinken told NBC on Sunday.
Blinken did not specify what measures the U.S. could take in response to Chinese military support for Russia, but efforts to put a floor under ties that have deteriorated to their lowest level in decades have so far been unsuccessful. The U.S. has sought to limit Chinese access to the latest microprocessors and manufacturing equipment, and has continued to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.
For China, the most sensitive issue is U.S. support for Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that Beijing considers its own territory to be conquered by military force if deemed necessary. Taiwan is a major customer for U.S. defensive arms and has hosted a growing number of prominent American elected officials, enraging Beijing.
Meanwhile, U.S. Congress members have called for the banning of TikTok and other Chinese-owned social media platforms, as well as increased sanctions on Chinese firms backed by the Communist Party, which wields ultimate control over the Chinese economy and suppresses independent media and political opposition voices.
Biden’s test: Sustaining unity as Ukraine war enters Year 2
One year ago, President Joe Biden was bracing for the worst as Russia massed troops in preparation to invade Ukraine.
As many in the West and even in Ukraine doubted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, the White House was adamant: War was coming and Kyiv was woefully outgunned.
In Washington, Biden’s aides prepared contingency plans and even drafts of what the president would say should Ukraine’s capital quickly fall to Russian forces — a scenario deemed likely by most U.S. officials. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was offered help getting out of his country if he wanted it.
Yet as Russia’s invasion reaches the one-year mark, the city stands and Ukraine has beaten even its own expectations, buoyed by a U.S.-led alliance that has agreed to equip Ukrainian forces with tanks, advanced air defense systems, and more, while keeping the Kyiv government afloat with tens of billions of dollars in direct assistance.
For Biden, Ukraine was an unexpected crisis, but one that fits squarely into his larger foreign policy outlook that the United States and like-minded allies are in the midst of a generational conflict to demonstrate that liberal democracies such as the U.S. can out-deliver autocracies.
In the estimation of the White House, the war transformed what had been Biden’s rhetorical warnings — a staple of his 2020 campaign speeches — into an urgent call to action.
Also Read: Russia’s year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism
Now, as Biden prepares to travel to Poland to mark the anniversary of the war, he faces a legacy-defining moment.
“President Biden’s task is to make the case for sustained free world support for Ukraine,” said Daniel Fried, a U.S. ambassador to Poland during the Clinton administration and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “This is an important trip. And really, Biden can define the role of the free world in turning back tyranny.”
Biden administration officials are quick to direct primary credit for Ukraine’s staying power to the courage of its armed forces, with a supporting role to the Russian military’s ineptitude. But they also believe that without their early warnings and the massive support they orchestrated, Ukraine would have been all but wiped off the map by now.
Sustaining Ukraine’s fight, while keeping the war from escalating into a potentially catastrophic wider conflict with NATO, will go down as one of Biden’s enduring foreign policy accomplishments, they argue.
In Poland, Biden is set to meet with allies to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to the region and to helping Ukraine “as long as it takes.” It’s a pledge that is met with skepticism both at home and abroad as the invasion enters its second year, and as Putin shows no signs of retreating from an invasion that has left more than 100,000 of his own forces killed or wounded, along with tens of thousands of Ukrainian service members and civilians — and millions of refugees.
Biden’s job now is, in part, to persuade Americans — and a worldwide audience — that it’s more important than ever to stay in the fight, while cautioning that an endgame is unlikely to come quickly.
His visit to Poland is an opportunity to make the case to “countries that repudiate archaic notions of imperial conquest and wars of aggression about the need to continue to support Ukraine and oppose Russia,” said John Sullivan, who stepped down as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in September. “We always preach, we are seeking to protect a rules-based international order. It’s completely done if Russia gets away with this.”
The U.S. resolve to stand up to Russia is also being tested by domestic concerns and economic uncertainty.
Forty-eight percent of the U.S. public say they favor the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favor nor opposed, according to a poll published this past week by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s evidence of slipping support since May 2022, less than three months into the war, when 60% of U.S. adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.
Further, Americans are about evenly divided on sending government funds directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favor and 38% opposed, with 23% saying neither, according to the AP-NORC poll.
This month, 11 House Republicans introduced what they called the “Ukraine fatigue” resolution urging Biden to end military and financial aid to Ukraine, while pushing Ukraine and Russia to come to a peace agreement. Meanwhile, the more traditionalist national security wing of the GOP, including just-announced 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a former U.N. envoy, has critiqued the pace of U.S. assistance, pressing for the quicker transfer of more advanced weaponry.
“Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Munich Security Conference on Friday. “We are committed to helping Ukraine.”
But Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said he wants the president and his administration to impress on allies the need to share the burden as Americans grow weary of current levels of U.S. spending to assist Ukraine and Baltic allies.
Sullivan said he hears from Alaskans, “Hey, senator, why are we spending all this? And how come the Europeans aren’t?”
The U.S. has provided more economic and military aid than any country since the start of the war, but European nations and other allies have collectively committed tens of billions of dollars to back Ukraine and have taken in millions of refugees fleeing the conflict.
From the beginning of his administration, Biden has argued the world is at a crucial moment pitting autocracies against democracies.
The argument was originally framed with China in mind as America’s greatest economic and military adversary, and with Biden looking to reorient U.S. foreign policy toward the Pacific. The pivot toward Asia is an effort that each of his recent predecessors tried and failed to complete as war and foreign policy crises elsewhere shifted their attention.
With that goal, Biden sought to quickly end the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan seven months into his term. The end to America’s longest war was darkened by a chaotic withdrawal as 13 U.S. troops and 169 Afghan civilians looking to flee the country were killed by a bombing near Kabul’s international airport carried out by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.
U.S. officials say the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has given the administration the bandwidth and resources to focus on assisting Ukraine in the first land war in Europe since World War II while putting increased focus on countering China’s assertive actions in the Indo-Pacific.
While the war in Ukraine caused large price increases in energy and food markets -– exacerbating rampant and persistent inflation — Biden aides saw domestic benefits to the president. The war, they argued, allowed Biden to showcase his ability to work across the aisle to maintain funding for Ukraine and showcase his leadership on the global stage.
However the months ahead unfold, it’s almost certain to be messy.
While Biden last year had to walk back a public call for regime change in Russia that he had delivered off the cuff from Poland just weeks after the war began, U.S. officials increasingly see internal discontent and domestic pressures on Putin as key to ending the conflict.
“So how does it end?” Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said at an event this past week in Washington to mark the coming anniversary. “It ends with a safe, viable Ukraine. It ends with Putin limping back off the battlefield. I hope it ends eventually with a Russian citizenry, who also says, ‘That was a bad deal for us and we want a better future.’”
When Biden hosted Zelenskyy in Washington in December, the U.S. president encouraged him to pursue a “just peace” — a framing that the Ukrainian leader chafed against.
“For me as a president, ‘just peace’ is no compromises,” Zelenskyy said. He said the war would end once Ukraine’s sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity were restored, and Russia had paid back Ukraine for all the damage inflicted by its forces.
“There can’t be any ‘just peace’ in the war that was imposed on us,” he added.
Ukrainian grain shipments drop as ship backups grow
The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has dropped even as a U.N.-brokered deal works to keep food flowing to developing nations, with inspections of ships falling to half what they were four months ago and a backlog of vessels growing as Russia's invasion nears the one-year mark.
Ukrainian and some U.S. officials are blaming Russia for slowing down inspections, which Moscow has denied. Less wheat, barley and other grain getting out of Ukraine, dubbed the “breadbasket of the world, ” raises concerns about the impact to those going hungry in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia — places that rely on affordable food supplies from the Black Sea region.
The hurdles come as separate agreements brokered last summer by Turkey and the U.N. to keep supplies moving from the warring nations and reduce soaring food prices are up for renewal next month. Russia is also a top global supplier of wheat, other grain, sunflower oil and fertilizer, and officials have complained about the holdup in shipping the nutrients critical to crops.
Under the deal, food exports from three Ukrainian ports have dropped from 3.7 million metric tons in December to 3 million in January, according to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul. That's where inspection teams from Russia, Ukraine, the U.N. and Turkey ensure ships carry only agricultural products and no weapons.
The drop in supply equates to about a month of food consumption for Kenya and Somalia combined. It follows average inspections per day slowing to 5.7 last month and 6 so far this month, down from the peak of 10.6 in October.
Also Read: Russia’s year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism
That has helped lead to backups in the number of vessels waiting in the waters off Turkey to either be checked or join the Black Sea Grain Initiative. There are 152 ships in line, the JCC said, a 50% increase from January.
This month, vessels are waiting an average of 28 days between applying to participate and being inspected, said Ruslan Sakhautdinov, head of Ukraine's delegation to the JCC. That's a week longer than in January.
Factors like poor weather hindering inspectors’ work, demand from shippers to join the initiative, port activity and capacity of vessels also affect shipments.
“I think it will grow to be a problem if the inspections continue to be this slow,” said William Osnato, a senior research analyst at agriculture data and analytics firm Gro Intelligence. “In a month or two, you’ll realize that’s a couple a million tons that didn’t come out because it’s just going too slowly.”
“By creating the bottleneck, you’re creating sort of this gap of the flow, but as long as they’re getting some out, it’s not a total disaster,” he added.
U.S. officials such as USAID Administrator Samantha Power and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield have blamed Russia for the slowdown, saying food supplies to vulnerable nations are being delayed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in statement Wednesday on Facebook that Russian inspectors have been “systematically delaying the inspection of vessels” for months.
They accused Moscow of obstructing work under the deal and then “taking advantage of the opportunity of uninterrupted trade shipping from Russian Black Sea ports.”
Osnato also raised the possibility that Russia might be slowing inspections “in order to pick up more business” after harvesting a large wheat crop. Figures from financial data provider Refinitiv show that Russian wheat exports more than doubled to 3.8 million tons last month from January 2022, before the invasion.
Russian wheat shipments were at or near record highs in November, December and January, increasing 24% over the same three months a year earlier, according to Refinitiv. It estimated Russia would export 44 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023.
Alexander Pchelyakov, a spokesman for the Russian diplomatic mission to U.N. institutions in Geneva, said last month that the allegations of deliberate slowdowns are “simply not true.”
Russian officials also have complained that the country's fertilizer is not being exported under the agreement, leaving renewal of the four-month deal that expires March 18 in question.
Without tangible results, extending the deal is “unreasonable,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin on Monday told RTVI, a privately owned Russian-language TV channel.
U.N. officials say they have been working to unstick Russian fertilizer and expressed hope that the deal will be extended.
“I think we are in slightly more difficult territory at the moment, but the fact is, I think this will be conclusive and persuasive,” Martin Griffiths, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told reporters Wednesday. “The global south and international food security needs that operation to continue.”
Tolulope Phillips, a bakery manager in Lagos, Nigeria, has seen the impact firsthand. He says the cost of flour has exploded 136% since the war in Ukraine began. Nigeria, a top importer of Russian wheat, has seen costs for bread and other food surge.
“This is usually unstable for any business to survive,” Phillips said. “You have to fix your prices to accommodate this increase, and this doesn’t only affect flour — it affects sugar, it affects flavors, it affects the price of diesel, it affects the price of electricity. So, the cost of production has generally gone up.”
Global food prices, including for wheat, have dropped back to levels seen before the war in Ukraine after reaching record highs in 2022. In emerging economies that rely on imported food, like Nigeria, weakening currencies are keeping prices high because they are paying in dollars, Osnato said.
Plus, droughts that have affected crops from the Americas to the Middle East meant food was already expensive before Russia invaded Ukraine and exacerbated the food crisis, Osnato said.
Prices will likely stay high for more than a year, he said. What's needed now is “good weather and a couple of crop seasons to become more comfortable with global supplies across a number of different grains” and “see a significant decline in food prices globally.”
Russia’s year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism
Moscow’s nights display few signs of a nation at war.
Cheerful crowds packed restaurants and bars in the Sretenka neighborhood on a recent Saturday night, watched by officers marked as “tourist police.” Nearby, a top-hatted guide led about 40 sightseers to a 300-year-old church.
There’s only an occasional “Z” — the symbol of Russia’s “special military operation,” as the Ukraine invasion is officially known — seen on a building or a shuttered store abandoned by a Western retailer. A poster of a stern-faced soldier, with the slogan “Glory to the heroes of Russia,” is a reminder the conflict has dragged on for a year.
Western stores are gone, but customers can still buy their products — or knockoffs sold under a Russian name or branding.
The painful, bruising changes to Russian life require more effort to see.
A broad government crackdown has silenced dissent, with political opponents imprisoned or fleeing abroad. Families have been torn apart by the first mobilization of reservists since World War II. State TV spews hatred against the West and reassuring messages that much of the world still is with Russia.
And Russia’s battlefield deaths are in the thousands.
QUASHING THE CRITICS
“Indeed, the war has ruined many lives — including ours,” Sophia Subbotina of St. Petersburg told The Associated Press.
Twice a week, she visits a detention center to bring food and medicine to her partner, Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician with serious health issues. Skochilenko was arrested in April for replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans.
She is charged with spreading false information about the military, one of President Vladimir Putin’s new laws that effectively criminalize public expression against the war. The crackdown has been immediate, ruthless and unparalleled in post-Soviet Russia.
Also Read: Ukraine in mind, US frantic to avert Mideast showdown at UN
Media cannot call it a “war,” and protesters using that word on placards are hit with steep fines. Most who took to the streets were swiftly arrested. Rallies fizzled.
Independent news sites were blocked, as were Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. A prominent radio station was taken off the air. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, led by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, lost its license.
Skochilenko, who says she is not an activist but simply someone horrified by war, faces up to 10 years in prison.
Prominent Putin critics either left Russia or were arrested: Ilya Yashin got 8½ years, Vladimir Kara-Murza is jailed awaiting trial and Alexei Navalny remains in prison.
Entertainers opposing the war quickly lost work, with plays and concerts canceled.
“The fact that Putin has managed to intimidate a significant part of our society is hard to deny,” Yashin told AP from jail last year.
PUSHING THE GOVERNMENT LINE
The purge of critics was followed by a splurge of propaganda. State TV suspended some entertainment shows and expanded political and news programs to boost the narrative that Russia was ridding Ukraine of Nazis, a false claim Putin used as pretext for the invasion. Or that NATO is acting via puppets in Kyiv but that Moscow will prevail.
“A new structure of the world is emerging in front of our eyes,” proclaimed anchor Dmitry Kiselev in a December rant on his weekly show. “The planet is getting rid of Western leadership. Most of humanity is with us.”
These messages play well in Russia, says Denis Volkov, director of the country’s top independent pollster Levada Center: “The idea that NATO wants to ruin Russia or at least weaken … it has been сommonplace for three-fourths (of poll respondents) for many years.”
The Kremlin is pushing its narrative to the young. Schoolchildren were told to write letters to soldiers, and some schools designated “A Hero’s Desk” for graduates fighting in Ukraine.
In September, schools added a subject loosely translated as “Conversations about Important Things.” Lesson plans for eighth to 11th graders seen by AP describe Russia’s “special mission” of building a “multipolar world order.”
At least one teacher who refused to teach the lessons was fired. Although not mandatory, some parents whose children skip them face pressure from administrators or even police.
A fifth grader was accused of having a Ukraine-themed photo on social media and asking classmates about supporting the war, and she and her mother were detained briefly after administrators complained, said her lawyer, Nikolai Bobrinsky. When she skipped the new lessons, authorities apparently decided to make “an example” of her, he added.
SURVIVING SANCTIONS
The sanctions-hit economy outperformed expectations, thanks to record oil revenues of about $325 billion after the war sent energy prices soaring. The Central Bank stabilized the plummeting ruble by raising interest rates, and the currency is stronger against the dollar than before the invasion.
McDonald’s, Ikea, Apple and others left Russia. The golden arches were replaced by Vkusno — i Tochka (“Tasty — Period”), while Starbucks became Stars Coffee, with essentially the same menus.
Visa and Mastercard halted services, but banks switched to the local MIR system, so existing cards continued to work in the country; those traveling abroad use cash. After the European Union banned flights from Russia, airline ticket prices rose and destinations became harder to reach. Foreign travel is now available to a privileged minority.
Sociologists say these changes hardly bothered most Russians, whose average monthly salary in 2022 was about $900. Only about a third have an international passport.
Inflation spiked nearly 12%, but Putin announced new benefits for families with children and increased pensions and the minimum wage by 10%.
MacBooks and iPhones are still easily available, and Muscovites say restaurants have Japanese fish, Spanish cheese and French wine.
“Yes, it costs a bit more, but there’s no shortage,” said Vladimir, a resident who asked not to be fully identified for his own safety. “If you walk in the city center, you get the impression that nothing is happening. Lots of people are out and about on weekends. There are fewer people in cafes, but they are still there.”
Still, he admitted the capital seems emptier and people look sadder.
‘IN THE TRENCHES, OR WORSE’
Perhaps the biggest shock came in September, when the Kremlin mobilized 300,000 reservists. Although billed as a “partial” call-up, the announcement sent panic through the country since most men under 65 — and some women — are formally part of the reserve.
Flights abroad sold out in hours and long lines formed at Russia’s border crossings. Hundreds of thousands were estimated to have left the country in the following weeks.
Natalia, a medical worker, left Moscow with her boyfriend after a summons was delivered to his mother. Their income was cut in half and she misses home, but they’ve decided to try it for a year, said the woman, who asked that her last name and location not be revealed for their safety.
“Between ourselves, we’re saying that once things calm down, we will be able to come back. But it wouldn’t resolve the rest of it. That huge snowball is rolling downhill, and nothing will be back (as it was),” Natalia said.
Draftees complained of poor living conditions at bases and shortages of gear. Their wives and mothers claimed they were deployed to the front without proper training or equipment and were quickly wounded.
A woman who is contesting her husband being drafted said her family life fell apart after she suddenly had to care for her children and frail mother-in-law.
“It was hard. I thought I’d lose my mind,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his legal case is continuing. Her husband came home on leave — suffering from pneumonia — and needs psychological care because he jumps at every loud sound, she said.
Vasily, a 33-year-old Muscovite, learned authorities tried twice this month to deliver a summons to a former apartment where he is officially registered. Although not sure if the summons was to draft him or to clear up his enlistment records, especially after a September attempt to deliver call-up papers, he doesn’t intend to find out.
“All my friends who went (to the enlistment office) to figure it out are in the trenches now, or worse,” added Vasily, who withheld his last name for his own safety.
Volkov, the pollster, said the dominating sentiment among Russians is that the war is “somewhere far away, it is not affecting us directly.”
While anxiety over the invasion and mobilization came and went over the year, “people started feeling again that it indeed doesn’t affect everyone. ’We’re off the hook. Well, thank god, we’re moving on with our lives.’”
Some fear a new mobilization, which the Kremlin denies.
LIVES LOST
As the war became bogged down by defeats and setbacks, families got the worst news possible: a loved one was killed.
For one mother, it was too much to bear.
She told AP she became “hysterical” and “started shaking” when told her son was missing and presumed dead while serving on the Moskva, the missile cruiser that sank in April. The woman, who at the time spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisal, said she found it hard to believe he was killed.
The military has confirmed just over 6,000 deaths, but Western estimates are in the tens of thousands. Putin promised generous compensation to families of those listed as killed in action — 12 million rubles (about $160,000).
In November, he met with a dozen mothers, which Russian media said were hand-picked among Kremlin supporters and officials, and told one of them her son’s death wasn’t in vain.
“With some people ... it is unclear why they die -– because of vodka or something else. When they are gone, it is hard to say whether they lived or not -– their lives passed without notice,” he told her. “But your son did live – do you understand? He achieved his goal.”