ZEIT ONLINE: What’s it like for people who oppose the war and the government but have decided to stay in Russia?

Schulmann: One feels a kind of envy, perverse as it may seem, for people who are both able to be at home and also brave enough to speak up. Certainly, the large-scale emigration has made the situation at home worse. Fewer voices, just less presence. Even if you don’t say anything, but people know you are there, it’s something. I recently talked to a friend in St Petersburg and she said: „You are miserable and I am afraid.“ That’s the difference between staying and leaving.

ZEIT ONLINE: The repression, though, seems to be working. Early in the war, there were protests. Now, we hardly see any at all. Is there any anti-war movement left?

Ω Ω Ω

ZEIT ONLINE: Russian casualties have been very high thus far. To what degree has the Russian population noticed?

Schulmann: The situation is different from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Russia suffered losses in Chechnya. And it’s different from when the Soviet Union suffered losses in Afghanistan. Back then, people from all classes and all regions served in the army. Of course, Moscow residents and the privileged classes had more opportunities to get their sons out of conscription. But still, it was a universal duty. So when coffins started coming back into the country, it was known to large circles.

Today it’s different. For years, the army has provided a social lift for those with no other resources. To put it bluntly, poor people’s children serve in the army. There are also regional disparities: among the casualties, there’s a huge disproportion in favor of soldiers from national republics and poorer regions. We hear of relatively few casualties from Moscow and St. Petersburg, more from Dagestan, Buryatya and Tyva. This disparity has, for the moment, prevented the appearance of something like the Soldiers‘ Mothers movement we saw in the 1990s. The families of these people are very poor.

New York Times:

The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.

Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.

The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.

The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.

The intelligence sharing is part of a stepped-up flow in U.S. assistance that includes heavier weapons and tens of billions in aid, demonstrating how quickly the early American restraints on support for Ukraine have shifted as the war enters a new stage that could play out over months.

U.S. intelligence support to the Ukrainians has had a decisive effect on the battlefield, confirming targets identified by the Ukrainian military and pointing it to new targets. The flow of actionable intelligence on the movement of Russian troops that America has given Ukraine has few precedents.

Twitter:

I was impressed with CBS tweeting this, given Biden’s statement at 0:39. American media consumers have a difficult time gaining a perspective outside the very limited range possible within their echo chamber.

Guardian:

Joe Biden on Tuesday told assembly-line workers at an Alabama factory that the weapons they are crafting are going into “the hands of Ukrainian heroes” on the front lines of the effort to repel Russian forces.

The US president praised the employees of the Lockheed Martin plant that manufactures Javelin anti-tank missiles, saying their work was critical to the Ukrainian war effort and to the defense of democracy itself.

“You’re making a gigantic difference for these poor sons-of-guns who are under such enormous pressure and firepower,” Biden told the workers from a podium flanked by the Javelin missile launchers.

From a sprawling compound in Troy, Alabama, to the battlefields in Ukraine, the anti-tank missiles have helped equip the Ukrainian forces, the president said.

“You’re making it possible for the Ukrainian people to defend themselves, without us having to risk getting into a third world war by sending in American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers,” Biden said, adding of the Ukrainian military: “Quite frankly, they’re making fools of the Russian military in many instances.”

…

Biden said that funds spent on bolstering Ukrainian security so far was “a direct investment in defending freedom and democracy itself”.

He then added: “Because if you don’t stand up to dictators, history has shown us, they keep coming. Their appetite for power continues to grow.”

…

On the tour, Biden said he learned that each Javelin requires more than 200 semiconductors, the production of which have been strained by pandemic-era supply shortages.

Boosting American production of semiconductors, he said, was not only a vital step toward rebuilding domestic manufacturing and lowering the cost of goods, but critical for national security.

So shipping missiles to Ukraine is a vital step toward rebuilding domestic manufacturing and lowering the cost of goods as well as a direct investment in defending freedom and democracy itself — sounds like a win-win. What’s not to like?

lit again

Guardian:

Here is a little more detail surrounding US claims that Russia plans to “annex” Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe told reporters in Washington on Monday:

„According to the most recent reports, we believe that Russia will try to annex the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Lugansk People’s Republic’ to Russia.

The reports state that Russia plans to engineer referenda upon joining sometime in mid-May.”

“This is straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook,” he added.

Carpenter said that the United States also believed Russia was considering a similar plan in a third region, Kherson, where Moscow has recently solidified its control and imposed use of its ruble currency.

„We think the reports are highly credible. Unfortunately we have been more right than wrong in exposing what we believe may be coming next, and so that is part of what we’re trying to do here.

Such sham referenda – fabricated votes – will not be considered legitimate, nor will any attempts to annex additional Ukrainian territory.

But we have to act with a sense of urgency.”

Carpenter said it was also possible that Russia’s leaders would try to take over other parts of Ukraine, by imposing “puppets and proxies” in local governments and forcing out democratically elected officials. He said that this had appeared to be Moscow’s initial aim in Kyiv — a plan that included installing a new constitution in Ukraine — but that Russian forces had been forced to drop back to the country’s east and south after they were unable to take the capital.

Guardian:

Approval for Biden Ukraine aid request likely after Pelosi Kyiv visit, McCaul says

Bob Menendez, the Democratic New Jersey senator who chairs the upper chamber’s foreign relations committee, echoed Pelosi’s pledge that the US would continue to support Ukraine financially.

“We will do what it takes to see Ukraine win because it’s not just about Ukraine, it’s about the international order,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“If Ukraine does not win, if [Russia’s president Vladimir] Putin can ultimately not only succeed in the Donbas but then be emboldened to go further, if he strikes a country under our treaty obligations with Nato, then we would be directly engaged.

“So stopping Russia from getting to that point is of critical interest to us, as well as the world, so we don’t have to send our sons and daughters into battle. That ability not to have to send our sons and daughters into battle is priceless.”

…

“We need to keep our eye on the ball. And that is about helping Ukraine and Ukrainians ultimately being able to defeat the butcher of Moscow. If we do that, the world will be safer. The international order will be preserved, and others who are looking at what is happening in Ukraine will have to think twice.”

Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), laid out the urgent need for Congress to approve the package during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.

“There are vast swaths of Ukraine that have been newly liberated by Ukrainian forces, where there is desperate need, everything from demining to trauma kits to food assistance, since markets are not back up and running,” she said, noting that from previously approved drawdowns “assistance is flowing”.

Spiegel:

Für SPD-Fraktionschef Rolf Mützenich ist der weitere Umgang mit dem Kreml im Ukrainekrieg klar: Der Westen müsse dafür sorgen, dass sich strategische Partner wie Indien und China vom Kreml abwenden. Aber wie soll das gehen?

SPD-Fraktionschef Rolf Mützenich fordert, Russland diplomatisch zu isolieren.

»Ganz entscheidend ist, dass strategische Partner Russlands sich von Putin abwenden. 45 Staaten haben den russischen Angriff auf die Ukraine nicht verurteilt, darunter fünf Atommächte. Putins Regierung muss isoliert werden«, sagte der 62-Jährige der »Rheinischen Post«. »Das müssen wir durch Gespräche in den Ländern erreichen.«

Beispielsweise wolle Indien große Gasmengen aus Russland kaufen. Auch China sei ein wichtiger Unterstützer Russlands.