🌍👀 Global Eyes, Western Edition
News and notes from Claire's hemisphere
🇫🇷 Claire—tonight at 9:00 pm Paris time (about 90 minutes from now), Emmanuel Macron will debate Marine Le Pen ahead of the election on Sunday. All of Europe rides on his performance.
If you’d like to watch the debate with the French Election Twitter Summit crew, I’ll start a thread at 8:45 linking to the debate (and the crew) on Twitter, and we’ll add our comments as we go along. Tune in on France24, here. (Or any other French news site: It will be on TF1, France 2, BFMTV, Franceinfo, LCI and CNEWS.)
Here’s a backgrounder (in French) from Internaute:
A few hours before the debate between the two rounds of the 2022 presidential election, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are putting the finishing touches on their preparations. For both candidates, the confrontation is much more important than in 2017.
For this 2022 version debate, the scenario of the confrontation between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen is not the same as five years ago. Since then, the former minister has become President of the Republic, and the candidate of the National Rally has changed her mind on many central and historical subjects of her party.
What kind of debate will Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen offer viewers? Both candidates want good one-off exchanges, but in this exercise, it is a gaffe or an uncontrolled sequence that constitutes the biggest risk, despite the calibration of strategies before the start of the verbal jousts.
Moreover, polls indicate a closer contest than in 2017 between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. Could the debate tip the balance to one side or the other?
Statements, preparations, behind the scenes ... Before the start of this unique debate on the presidential election, discover all the news related to this unmissable event. The debate can be followed in video on this page at 9 p.m.
The 2017 debate was disastrous for Le Pen, so everyone will be curious to see whether she has, as she’s promised, prepared better for this one. This time, too, she has Macron’s record to attack.
France’s election will affect us all, writes Chris Patten:
French voters have all the information and evidence required to comprehend the evil that Russian President Vladimir Putin represents. If they make the wrong choice on April 24, they will not be able to use ignorance as a defense.
Macron versus Le Pen: Five things to watch out for in tonight’s live TV debate, plus your debate bingo card.
Navalny calls on France to vote for Macron:
🇺🇦 Ukraine
🧵A small story of Russian slave raids on Ukraine—my cousin’s wife’s family, from Mariupol, have been “evacuated” to Russia. First they were sent to Taganrog, then Rostov, now Khabarovsk in the far east. No one tells them why they’re being sent, for what reason, or what they’ll do once there. Just an endless, inhuman bureaucratic system forcefully shipping slaves wherever it desires. We don’t know how to get them back to Ukraine or how to help them in Russia—just waiting and waiting to hear a scrap of news off a borrowed phone call.
It is inconceivable to me that this is happening in the 21st century, in the civilized world. What will they made to do? Shipped off to a kolkhoz as free slave labor? Loyalty camp? GULAG? How will they ever get home? … And then smug motherf*ckers sit thousands of miles away and smirk and say “Why don’t you surrender???” You piece of sh*t. You f*cking human debris. Nothing matters more, in the world, than the defeat of the fascist Reich. F*cking nothing else. Don’t believe me? Come to Ukraine.
🗞 In a glance: Ukraine War, Day 56. Russia’s offensive faltering in the East:
0905 GMT: Ukraine’s nuclear regulators have restored direct communications with the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant, said the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ukraine’s nuclear regulators lost contact with the plant on March 10 after Russian forces occupied the area. The Russians withdrew at the end of March, amid Moscow’s retreat from northern Ukraine.
Russia’s “Plan B” offensive in eastern Ukraine is faltering less than 48 hours after the ground assault escalated, according to intelligence officials.
Russian forces occupied the town of Kreminna, with almost 20,000 people, in eastern Luhansk. But elsewhere they were repeatedly repelled by Ukrainian defenders, said Ukraine’s officials and the UK Ministry of Defense.
British intelligence assesses that while Russian shelling and strikes continue to increase on the frontline in the Donbas, Moscow’s troops are again hampered by logistical and technological problems.
Those problems were a major reason for the failure of Vladimir Putin’s “Plan A,” the quick occupation of Ukrainian cities such as the capital Kyiv with the capture and possible killing of Ukraine’s leaders such as President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The UK officials also cited Russia’s “inability to stamp out resistance” in Mariupol in southern Ukraine, despite an eight-week siege and bombardment that has levelled the port city, reportedly killing more than 20,000 people.
Ukrainian fighters in the Azovstal iron and steel works are still defying Russian attacks and demands for surrender. About 1,000 civilians, many of them women with children and the elderly, are hiding in underground shelters beneath the steel plant, according to the city council.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it will set yet another “surrender or die” deadline on Wednesday.
While clinging to the fight, the commander of the the 36th Marine Brigade said the defenders are “maybe facing our last days, if not hours” as “the enemy is outnumbering us 10 to one.”
Serhiy Volyna said in a video, “We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state.”
Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted:
President Zelensky said in his late-night video to the nation on Tuesday:
The Russian army will forever inscribe itself in world history as perhaps the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world. Deliberately killing civilians, destroying residential quarters and civilian infrastructure, and using all kinds of weapons, including those prohibited by international conventions, is already the brand signature of the Russian army.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said about 100,000 civilians remain in the city. The aim is to evacuate 6,000 in 90 buses today.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram that a humanitarian corridor has been agreed to evacuate women, children and the elderly. Civilians are to gather at 2 pm (11am GMT) and travel to Zaporizhzhia, 132 miles to the northwest, via Berdyansk.
But Deputy Mariupol Mayor Sergei Orlov is cautious, “Do not believe in any words from Russia. It would be good if they allowed civilians to leave the Azovstal, but they didn’t allow this for 50 days, why should they allow this now?”
Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.
The UNHCR says 550,000 refugees have gone from Ukraine to Russia. Ukraine says they are abductees who were deported against their will.
The US, Britain, and Canada have promised to send more artillery to Ukraine.
The US will be providing Ukraine with long-range howitzers. Seven planeloads of equipment, part of the US$800 million tranche approved last week, will begin arriving in the next 24 hours. The Pentagon also said that Ukraine had received aircraft recently, but not from the US. Washington has supplied aircraft spare parts to help get more of Ukraine’s planes in the air.
Analysts believe Russia still has 75 percent of the armed forces with which it began the war: 76 battalion tactical groups, about 60,000 troops in total. But it still has the problems that led to its defeat in the fight for Kyiv and the north. Supply lines to the Donbas are shorter, but a lot depends on the condition of the roads and railways, and the Ukrainians keep successfully targeting both. What’s more, Russian morale is low. “They don’t like this war because they don’t like the idea of killing people who speak Russian. They have lost many comrades in the north and they have lost the navy cruiser Moskva.” Finally, they still don’t have air superiority, and still can’t guarantee close air support to their troops.
⚠️ A tip: Check out Monique Camarra’s new Eurofile newsletter. Today she’s monitoring Russian legacy media and telegram chats.
Who are the fighters remaining in Mariupol?
The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works—a massive, four square-mile plant—has become the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.
A marine commander in the stronghold issued a video message in the early hours of Wednesday morning saying his men might have only hours left.
Maj Serhiy Volyna said his troops would not surrender, but he pleaded for international assistance for the 500 wounded soldiers and hundreds of women and children he said were hiding with them at the steel plant.
Major Volyna is a commander of the 36th Marine Brigade.
Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who had been defending Mariupol and were captured by Russian forces last week, were members of the brigade.
The other unit in the steelworks in the Azov Brigade, named after the Sea of Azov which links Mariupol to the rest of the Black Sea.
The marines teamed up with the Azov in Mariupol last week. It's unclear how many Ukrainian troops are left in the plant.
On Tuesday, Azov posted on Telegram: “We will fight, we will use every cartridge we have left, but we call on the homeland to save civilians, the wounded and take away the bodies.”
🕵🏻♀️ Monique: “Aiden Aslin is also known as “Cossackgundi.” He’s a British national who has been serving in the Ukrainian Marines since 2018. He has never served in the Azov Battalion. This was his last post:
“Reminiscent of prisoner video confessions from the Chinese and Lukashenko regimes, Cossackgundi was forced to make this declaration. It was posted on the Russian propaganda vector ‘Intel Slava.’”
Read more by Monique here, and if you haven’t been listening to the Kremlin File podcast, which Monique co-hosts with Olga Lautman, it’s excellent.
🇷🇺Russia
💣 Russia says it has tested new intercontinental ballistic missile. Putin was shown on television as the military briefed him that the missile had been launched from Plesetsk, in the northwest, at targets in the Kamchatka peninsula in the far Putin said the missile had no analogues elsewhere and “would provide food for thought” to those who threaten Russia.
A growing number of Russia’s elite fear that Vladimir Putin has made a catastrophic mistake:
The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in rnment and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten people with direct knowledge of the situation. …
So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.
Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by US intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission.
Russian tycoon Oleg Tinkov denounced the war on Instagram. He’s one of Russia’s best-known entrepreneurs. He’s also not in Russia anymore:
I don’t see ANY beneficiary of this crazy war! Innocent people and soldiers are dying. The generals, waking up with a hangover, realize that they have a shitty army. And how could the army be good if everything else in the country is shit and mired in nepotism and servility? Kremlin officials are shocked that not only they, but also their children will not go to the Mediterranean in the summer. Businessmen are trying to save the rest of the property .. of course there are morons who draw Z, but morons in any country are 10 percent. 90 percent of Russians are AGAINST this war! …
Russia has deployed as many as to 20,000 mercenaries from Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the Donbas region, sent into battle with no heavy equipment or armored vehicles.
In the death trap—why so many Russian tanks explode. (In German.) The Ukrainian army has inflicted severe losses on Putin’s tank brigades. For the Russian crews, the tanks often become a death trap owing to a technical peculiarity: they sit on a powder keg.
Yuri Deigin sent us this video. “It’s from an opposition-minded Youtube channel: a poll of Moscow residents done in a single five-hour take: By the end of it, you can see that contrary to the notion that “80 percent support the war,” only about a third support it, a third oppose, and another third either didn’t want to respond or were uncertain. It’s in Russian but with English subtitles.”
Europe
US and European Union officials are preparing a new meeting later this month in the hope of opening another trans-Atlantic channel on security to complement those taking place through NATO.
Having such a forum specifically for the trade-minded European Union would energize the bloc’s defense ambitions and signal Washington’s link to the continent on yet another level, the thinking goes.
It’s time to bring back Reforger:
Russia will rebuild its military. That force in coming years will incorporate lessons learned from the fighting in Ukraine. Its political and military elite will harbor the same fears and animosities as does Putin. NATO, therefore, has a choice: capitulate to Russia’s territorial demands or adequately guard its borders. …
… There is, fortunately, a solution. The Defense Department should reinstitute the Reforger—REturn of FORces to GERmany—deployment exercises, last conducted in 1993.
Finland’s parliament has begun a debate about seeking NATO membership. About half of Finland’s 200 MPs have already decided they support membership, according to their media statements. Only some 12 oppose.
The Kremlin has issued another warning to NATO about the consequences for the Baltics if it allows Sweden and Finland to join:
“Under the auspices of the US, Brussels has been pulling Sweden and Finland into its structures for a while, there have been various hybrid measures on the actual pulling in, under the guise of drills or training sessions,” Zakharova said.
“We made all our warnings—both publicly and via bilateral channels. They know about this, so there are no surprises. They were informed about everything, what it will lead to,” she added, without specifying the consequences.
NATO will need a transition plan if Finland, Sweden ask to join:
Putin will do whatever he can to threaten the applicant countries directly and derail the process more broadly. The Kremlin has already warned of a military response including the deployment of nuclear and hypersonic weapons to the Baltic Sea area if either nation should decide to apply. (Lithuania was quick to point out that Russia already stores nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad exclave.) Thus, if they decide to apply for membership, Finland and Sweden should work with Alliance countries to design a transition plan to protect them during the interim period.
Finland and Sweden brace for backlash.
Germany’s Social Democrats have again been embarrassed by their links to Moscow. Documents obtained by Die Welt show that regional leader Manuela Schwesig worked with Gazprom to undermine US sanctions and spread Russian propaganda.
Germany’s chancellor is under growing pressure for his tepid Ukraine policies, not just in Brussels, but Berlin. A revolt has begun in his own coalition, which wants Germany to supply Kyiv with heavy weapons:
Within the ranks of his coalition partners, the business-friendly Free Democrats and the Green Party, there is growing frustration with Scholz’s lack of elan when it comes to speaking or even making decisions. And the first are beginning to raise their voices. “The chancellor is the problem,” says a critical Anton Hofreiter, a member of the Greens and chair of the European Affairs Committee in the German parliament, the Bundestag.
Does Germany need the Bomb? The war in Ukraine has triggered a debate that had long been taboo in Berlin.
🧆 Middle East
Syria gas attack victims, awaiting justice, say impunity fuels war crimes:
Abdel Hamid al-Youssef said 25 members of his family, including his wife and infant twins, were killed when poison gas was dropped on their town in Syria in 2017, in an attack a UN-backed inquiry concluded was launched by the Syrian state. …
… The UN and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have found the Assad regime responsible for about 35 chemical attacks during Syria’s 11-year conflict, including the assault on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017. However, while individual former officials have been convicted of crimes against humanity, there is still no case against Assad, his inner circle, or his military commanders. …
… “There is no deterrent for Russia,” said Youssef, who wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to be held to account. “Until this day, the criminal is free.”
Syrian state media claims Israeli jets struck Assad regime territory twice this past week: “The Israeli enemy launched an aerial assault from the direction of northern Lebanon targeting a number of positions in the central region.” The target would seem to be the Scientific Studies and Research Center, which oversees the development of conventional and chemical weapons.
Stuck in Ukraine, Russia begins a tactical withdrawal from Syria in favor of Iran. (In French.)
Offended by the latest Israeli positions on the war in Ukraine, Moscow could put an end to the “open skies” policy in Syria that allowed the IDF to freely strike Iranian or pro-Tehran positions. At the same time, Moscow has begun to evacuate troops based in Syria to redeploy them to the Ukrainian front, allowing Damascus to replace them with Iranian forces and militias subservient to Tehran.
Israel Police will close the Temple Mount to Jewish visitors and tourists for the remaining days of Ramadan. Jerusalem has been extremely tense recently: Israeli police believe the hundreds of Palestinian youths who have been clashing with Israeli security forces are funded by the Palestinian Authority, locals, and Turkey, who want Hamas to join the fight for al Aqsa by firing rockets into Israel
Nearly 15,000 Israelis have bought tickets for the World Cup in Qatar, even though the countries don’t have diplomatic ties. The situation is causing “quite a headache” for Israel’s security establishment:
“Israel and Qatar do not hold official relations, and with the fact that Iran is participating in the World Cup—that can be an interesting and very unique stage for Israelis and Iranians … to meet.”
Africa
The inaugural trial of a court established to prosecute war crimes in the Central African Republic was postponed on its first day because the defendants’ lawyers didn’t appear:
The case is being heard in the Special Criminal Court, which was set up in 2015 to try crimes committed in wartime. It is seen as a milestone for Central African Republic where a decade-long conflict between government forces and rebels has forced more than one million people to flee.
Mass atrocities have led to interventions from United Nations peacekeepers and troops from Russia, France and Rwanda. But rights groups say crimes against civilians are common, often undocumented, and carried out with impunity.
Separately, Central Africa Republic militia leaders are on trial at The Hague. CAR has been ripped apart since 2013, when a coalition of mostly northern and Muslim rebels seized power in 2013. Their brutality gave rise to the growth of an opposing Christian militia. Former leaders of both factions face charges at the ICC.
Patrick Achi has been reappointed prime minister of Ivory Coast after resigning from the post last week.
The Russian invasion is killing children far away from Ukraine. Humanitarian aid has been diverted from other places, including Somalia, in the midst of a devastating drought:
Almost half of the food that the World Food Program distributes to drought victims in Somalia used to come from Ukraine. Such a delivery was supposed to have arrived on March 10—1,188 tons of peas for famine-struck regions in Ethiopia and Somalia. The delivery had been scheduled to depart from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which is, like the rest of the country, under attack from the Russians. A message was sent to World Food Program planners in Mogadishu that the arrival of the shipment had been delayed to March 15. But this deadline came and went as well, and the delivery never arrived. And the people of Somalia continue to suffer.
Americas
Peruvians have taken to the streets to protest the highest inflation Peru has seen in two decades. The strikes have shut down transport, blocked roads, and stranded tourists. Rising fertilizer and fuel costs, triggered by the war in Ukraine, of course disproportionately affect the poorest—who were already hammered by the pandemic. Protesters are demanding that President Pedro Castillo lower water, electricity and gas prices, “as well as rewrite the country’s market-friendly constitution.” This government is already shaky: Castillo just narrowly survived a second attempt to impeach him on charges of graft.
Peru’s social conflicts, regulatory risks and low business confidence are constraining investment and curbing its growth:
Peru’s constitution prevents price controls, but anti-inflation protests as well as support from Vladimir Cerron of the Free Peru party, which supported President Castillo’s candidacy and holds 33 out of 130 parliamentary seats, may create momentum for constitutional changes. … These events led to business confidence erosion in 1Q22, with the Central Bank’s survey index reading at 39 in March, the lowest in the past six months. Readings below 50 indicate anticipated lower investment levels in the next two or three quarters.
A judge in Lima has ordered the preventative detention of two of Castillo’s nephews and a top aide on charges of corruption. The nephews are now on the lam.
A Chilean man has immolated himself by blowing up a car outside the Palacio de la Moneda, the seat of the President of Chile. (In Spanish.) “The event occurred in the midst of a serious economic and political crisis, which has left Chilean society afflicted by poor mental health.”
In a major setback for US efforts to combat organized crime, Mexico has disbanded an elite anti-narcotics unit that long worked hand-in-glove with the US Drug Enforcement Administration. “They strangled it,” said a DEA agent. “It shatters the bridges we spent decades putting together.”
The closure could prove costly on US streets, where authorities are battling to reduce a surge in overdoses that last year led to more than 100,000 deaths mostly linked to a new wave of synthetic drugs produced by Mexican cartels. …
… The SIU’s closure is the latest example of the breakdown in cooperation between the DEA and Mexico since Lopez Obrador assumed power in 2018 and vowed to overhaul the country's security policy. …
… Privately, US officials say Mexico’s vital role in blocking the flow of migrants from Latin America—a priority for Washington—leaves them with limited leverage to pressure Lopez Obrador on other issues, such as security cooperation. …
… with more than 33,000 homicides recorded in Mexico last year … closing an elite unit that goes after organized crime groups responsible for most of the murders doesn’t make sense. “Mexico is shooting itself in the foot.”
More than two dozen women and girls have disappeared this year in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, leaving relatives frantic. Since Mexico declared war on the cartels in 2006, more than 85,000 people have disappeared.
A list of Latin American unicorns: Venture capitalists poured US$14.8 billion into the region in 2021, up 174 percent from 2020. Startups have been booming in the region, but growth is perennially hampered by the lack of logistics infrastructure:
One example: over 70 percent of truck drivers in Colombia and Mexico work independently … They also predominantly rely on third-party apps to connect with brokers and customers, opening security gaps as sensitive information is exchanged across a number of platforms. The logistics information also becomes harder to track and streamline.
The divide between the different links in the chain is why logistics prices in Latin America often fluctuate for the same routes, and is, in part, why nearly half of all containers in the region are either delayed or lost. [My emphasis.]
American and Cuban officials will meet tomorrow in Washington to discuss migration, the highest-level talks since Biden took office.
Secretary of State Blinken is in Panama to meet with his counterparts and sign an agreement on migration control. The Biden administration is trying to forge a regional migration plan so that no single country is overburdened.
🔖 Mark your calendar
We’ll be discussing chapters one through six.
Rachel says: “This book is incredible. There’s so much about Stalin that I never learned in college. I was taught about the Holocaust, but I had no idea that most of the Jews who perished weren’t killed in Germany. I can’t put this book down.”
“It’s a damned good book.”—Vivek.
The Russian Army's battalion tactical groups (BTGs) are mentioned so frequently that I thought it worthwhile to write up a short description of their size and composition, which is available here:
https://unwokeindianaag.substack.com/p/quick-take-the-battalion-tactical?s=w&sort=new