Ucrania (Continuación)

Putting out a fire after a Russian drone attack in Kyiv, October 2022. Gleb Garanich / Reuters

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U.S. President Joe Biden has said that the United States is committed to a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. But his administration has taken few, if any, steps to create a diplomatic process that could produce such an outcome. Buoyed by Ukrainian battlefield successes and horrified by Russian atrocities, the United States seems committed to continuing its current approach of helping Ukraine recapture as much territory as possible without provoking a wider war. The mantra in Washington is to support Kyiv “for as long it takes” and to rule out, at least for now, practical steps toward diplomacy. That message was reinforced this week when 30 Democrats in the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman looks out her window during a power outage in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, on October 20. Airstrikes cut power and water supplies to thousands of Ukrainians earlier in the week.

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With evenings drawing in fast as winter approaches, the lights are going out across Ukraine.

This week, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk went as far as to warn citizens who fled the country when Russia invaded, not to return home this winter amid rolling blackouts caused by strikes on the power grid.

“We need to survive this winter”, she said, adding that “[If people come back] the electrical grid might fail”.

Electricity rationing has become the new grim reality of war, as Russia tries to destroy Ukraine’s economic capacity and force its leaders to the negotiating table.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with a barrage of missile and drone attacks in recent weeks – 30% of the country’s power plants have been destroyed, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The need for more diplomacy between Russia and the United States is screamingly obvious. But it should focus on preventing a catastrophic conflict between the two countries, rather than a fruitless effort to halt the Ukraine war.

The Ukraine conflict, for all its horror, simply isn’t ripe for a diplomatic settlement. Ukraine is advancing on the battlefield, and Russia, for all its nuclear saber-rattling, is in disarray. A defiant Ukraine wants to regain all its territory, while Russia refuses to withdraw. So, there’s no middle ground, for now.

When you have an insoluble problem, enlarge it. That’s a familiar management formula, and it has some validity here.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Finnish woman and Russian man meet on the Trans-Siberian Express in Compartment No 6 (Hytti Nro 6), directed by Juho Kuosmanen, based on Rosa Liksom’s novel. Photograph: © 2021 Sami Kuokkanen Aamu Film Company

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I was born and raised in the western part of Finnish Lapland. Living in proximity to the Swedish border gave me a liberal culture and outlook. As a teenager in the 1970s, I walked across the bridge into wealthier Sweden to buy trendy clothes, pop LPs and American fashion magazines.

I was 15 when I travelled for the first time across Finland’s eastern border, to Murmansk on Russia’s Arctic coast. I was excited by the city, the Russian language, and the people, who seemed at the same time foreign and familiar. Since then, events happening in the Soviet Union and in Russia have been a part of my life.…  Seguir leyendo »

Taisiia Kovaliova, 15, stands Sunday amid the rubble of a playground in front of her house hit by a Russian missile in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

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To mark its 100th anniversary, Foreign Affairs has put together  a collection of the most influential essays it published over the century. The most eerily relevant first appeared 75 years ago — on the subject of Russia.

Writing under a pseudonym, “X”, State Department official George F. Kennan  analyzed the Soviet Union’s foreign policy in terms of not only communist ideology but also geopolitical “precepts” inherited from Russian imperial history.

Long “centuries of obscure battles between nomadic forces over the stretches of a vast unfortified plain”, Kennan argued, had taught the Kremlin to have “no compunction about retreating in the face of superior force.…  Seguir leyendo »

Voting at the United Nations General Assembly, New York, October 2022 David 'Dee' Delgado / Reuters

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Pariah status is a powerful motivator in foreign affairs. Being expelled by an international community of peers can irreversibly damage the reputation of countries and individuals alike. Yet the impact of stigma remains underappreciated by policymakers and scholars. Many Western commentators have been skeptical about the individual sanctions imposed on Russia’s oligarchs following the invasion of Ukraine, which included freezing assets, blocking transactions, and banning travel. Early in the war, the economist Robert Reich wrote that it was “proving difficult to use sanctions on specific oligarchs to get Putin to stop”, arguing that such figures don’t wield enough influence over the Kremlin to directly affect policy.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iranian soldiers stand next to Iranian Shahab-3 and Kheibar missiles during a rally marking Jerusalem day in Tehran, on April 29. -/AFP via Getty Images

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For the first time, Iran is involved in a major war on the European continent. Iranian military advisors, most likely members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are on the ground in occupied Ukraine—and possibly Belarus—to help Russia rain down deadly Iranian kamikaze drones on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. According to an Israeli news report citing a Ukrainian official, 10 Iranians have already been killed in a Ukrainian attack on Russian positions. Tehran is now preparing to up the ante by providing Russia not only with potentially thousands of additional drones but also, for the first time, with two types of Iranian-made ballistic missiles to supplement Russia’s own dwindling stocks.…  Seguir leyendo »

Thousands of Russians fled into neighboring Georgia after President Vladimir Putin announced partial mobilization in September. CNN

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“Tbilisi is filled with Russian refugees”, read the 18-year-old woman’s diary entry. Soon after it was posted on social media in Georgia, it went viral, summing up the popular mood.

What’s striking about these words is that they were written in 1920, by a writer whose diary is a record of an era of uncertainty and hope. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had finally given tiny Georgia a chance at independence from the Russian empire. It also turned it into a refuge for thousands of Russians.

“They are running from the Bolsheviks and they are all coming here”, wrote Maro Makashvili as the newly-born liberal Georgian democracy opened its doors to thousands of Russians fleeing the revolution and the civil war it triggered.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing his best to achieve two immediate objectives. The goal of the West must be to stop him.

First, he’s seeking to distract his nation from the blindingly obvious, namely that he is losing badly on the battlefield and utterly failing to achieve even the vastly scaled back objectives of his invasion.

Second and simultaneously, Putin is playing desperately for time – hoping the political clock and the onset of winter in Europe will sap the will and energies of the Western powers that have all but eviscerated his military-industrial machine and destroyed the armed might of Russia.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Thousands of us have taken to the streets in huge public demonstrations in support of Ukraine.’ Anti-Putin graffiti in Tbilisi, Georgia. Photograph: Stocksmart/Alamy

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When Russia’s modern tsar escalated his war by announcing the partial mobilisation of reservists on 21 September, another wave of anxiety swept over Georgia. With due acknowledgment that every word written from this region at the moment should be about, or in support of, the Ukrainian people and their struggle, this anxiety is why I’m diverting to focus briefly on how we see this brutal war from Georgia, which, thanks to historical and geopolitical misfortune, happens to be a southern neighbour of Russia.

The invasion of Ukraine has revived painful collective and personal memories of Russia’s 2008 war on Georgia. The trauma from this not-so-distant past rose to the surface again in February and has remained there.…  Seguir leyendo »

A mobilized Russian reservist firing a rocket-propelled grenade, Donetsk region, Ukraine, October 2022 Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters

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In the spring of 2018, four years before his second invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an unusual speech about the growing strength of the Russian military. “To those who in the past 15 years have tried to accelerate an arms race and seek unilateral advantage against Russia…”, he said, “I will say this: everything you have tried to prevent through such a policy has already happened. No one has managed to restrain Russia”.

At the time, the speech drew international attention primarily for Putin’s boasts about new hypersonic weapons designed to circumvent U.S. missile defense systems. But it also conveyed a more subtle message.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pictures of people killed by Serb forces in the Bosnian city of Prijedor displayed as part of a 2019 ‘white ribbon’ commemoration in Sarajevo. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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Stop a person on the street in Sarajevo and ask them what they think about the war in Ukraine, and they’ll tell you they think that almost everything that happened in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is happening in Ukraine.

In April, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. We consider early April 1992 the moment a new era began: we have the before, during and after the catastrophe.

A month into the war in Ukraine I saw Ukrainians starting to use the phrase “before the war”. We went through everything that’s happening to them, but no one asks us about it or wants us to help.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In early September Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, published an article that explored Russia’s war aims in Ukraine. It was a succinct assessment from the man who has led Ukraine’s defence since Russia’s invasion in February. “There is every reason to believe that [the war] is not going to end anywhere within 2022”, he wrote.

Within days of the article appearing, Ukrainian troops surged out of their assembly areas in north-eastern Ukraine and broke through thinly manned Russian defensive lines. For those who have observed the Ukrainians closely the timing may have been a surprise, but the method was not. From the start of this war, the Ukrainians have surprised the Russians consistently with their competence and tactical ingenuity, attacking their weak points and forcing them constantly to downgrade their strategic ambitions.…  Seguir leyendo »

Firefighters work after a drone attack on buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Roman Hrytsyna/AP)

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This month, human rights campaigners from Ukraine won the Nobel Peace Prize for the first time in our country’s history. The symbolism of the award was strengthened by the fact it came on Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday.

But for Ukraine, this event was significant for other reasons. Many of our people were upset that the prize was divided into three, with the other winners hailing from Russia and Belarus.

The other two groups are undoubtedly worthy winners; both have fought against tyranny and in support of human rights in their own lands. But they also come from the two aggressor states waging war against Ukraine.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, with Gen. Sergei Surovikin in December 2017. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have committed countless war crimes over the past decade in Syria. Now, he is putting the very same people, weapons and tactics implicated in those atrocities to fresh use in Ukraine. But that could well turn out to be a huge mistake. Syrians and Ukrainians are teaming up to seek justice for Russia’s victims and force accountability on Russian war criminals — and Putin is at the top of their list.

As Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian occupiers out of towns such as Bucha and Izyum, the horrifying scenes they’ve uncovered there are eerily reminiscent of Putin’s past atrocities in cities such as Grozny and Aleppo.…  Seguir leyendo »

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, left, walks with President John F. Kennedy at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Vienna on June 3, 1961. The invasion of Ukraine has returned echoes of a Cold War mentality to the United States, with a familiar foe in Russia. (AP) (AP)

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Sixty years after the Cuban missile crisis, it’s striking to contrast how two Russian leaders — Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin — have spoken about nuclear weapons. Simply put, one has shown a moral compass, and the other hasn’t.

Khrushchev spoke vividly of the “catastrophe” of nuclear war in his private messages to President John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and sought to de-escalate the standoff. Putin, in contrast, has talked about his willingness to use “all weapon systems available to us”, adding a bit of gangster talk in his Sept. 21 mobilization announcement: “This is not a bluff”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Varias unidades de bomberos trabajan en los edificios de un barrio de Kiev tras el impacto de un dron, este lunes.Aleksandr Gusev / Zuma Press / ContactoPhoto (Aleksandr Gusev / Zuma Press / C)

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Señala el profesor de Yale, Timothy D. Snyder, experto en Historia de Europa central y oriental, la dificultad para muchos aún de creer o de vislumbrar cómo Ucrania podría lograr la victoria en la guerra de Vladímir Putin. Prueba es que algunos siguen en la idea de una Rusia imperial, que ya no existe, o se deleitan recreando la Guerra Fría, que tampoco. Y es cierto que los marcos mentales a veces son tan fuertes, que emborronan el poder de los hechos, o impiden ver una salida que no sea el desastre. Los palmeros de Putin son hábiles jugando con los tiempos y los marcos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Debris from a Russian drone strike, Kyiv, October 17, 2022. Vladyslav Musiienko / Reuters

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Beginning in early October, facing huge territorial loses and other reversals in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin reached for a military strategy in which Russia should have a decisive advantage: airpower. In the most widespread such campaign to date, he ordered a blistering series of missile attacks against a dozen cities and electrical infrastructure across the country. Ukrainians were forced into basements and bomb shelters and some 30 percent of the country’s power generation capacity was knocked out, causing rolling blackouts that affected homes, hospitals, and even the basic functioning of the economy. In the weeks since, Russia has been sending waves of drones to attack residential buildings and offices in Kyiv and other cities.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Tema

¿Qué representan la guerra en Ucrania y los conflictos recientes en el espacio post soviético?

Resumen

La reanudación de las hostilidades en Nagorno-Karabaj entre Armenia y Azerbaiyán y en la frontera de Kirguistán y Tayikistán, así como las tensiones continuas en los conflictos congelados de Transnistria (en Moldavia) y Osetia del Sur y Abjasia (en Georgia), han puesto de nuevo el foco sobre el espacio post soviético, planteando la cuestión de si la guerra en Ucrania es la causa de las hostilidades recientes y si podría tener un efecto dominó y crear más inestabilidad en la región.

La guerra en Ucrania no es la causa de las hostilidades, porque estas datan de mucho antes de aquella.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Le conflit en Ukraine replace le nucléaire militaire en première ligne. La question a été relancée avec le discours de Vladimir Poutine du 28 septembre et des différentes interventions publiques. Comment devons-nous interpréter ces échanges ? Un tir nucléaire serait-il plausible ? En réalité, la différence reste considérable entre les paroles et les actes. La situation reste tendue, mais contrôlée.

Selon la doctrine russe, certaines conditions autorisent l’emploi de l’arme nucléaire. Elles ont été détaillées par le décret présidentiel du 2 juin 2020 : « La Fédération de Russie se réserve le droit d’utiliser la force nucléaire en cas d’attaque à l’arme de destruction massive contre elle et ses alliés, de même qu’en cas d’agression contre la Fédération de Russie avec des armements conventionnels, lorsque l’existence de l’Etat est menacée ».…  Seguir leyendo »