March 16, 2022

Vol. 11, No. 63

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The War Room: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to address Congress by video link this morning and step up pressure for more military aid. He wants a no-fly zone over Ukraine but the West so far has declined to get that deeply involved in the war.

  Following the speech, President Joe Biden is expected to announce another $800  million in assistance, bringing to total to $1 billion. Included would be the shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets that have been so effective against the Russians.

  In a sign of hope, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there is “a certain hope that a compromise can be reached” in talks with Ukraine. He said the two sides are discussing Ukraine’s neutral status and “concrete formulas that are close to being agreed on.” 

  Zelensky said negotiations have become more “realistic,”

  But the war goes on. Ukrainian air defenses shot down a Russian missile over Kyiv today. Artillery fire rattled the city throughout the night and firefighters are busy rescuing residents from a 12-story apartment building badly hit.

  In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, civilian deaths have reached at least 500, authorities say. It’s hard to count for certain.

  The United Nations now says that almost three million Ukrainians have fled their country in the biggest refugees crisis since world War II.

Economic War: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law authorizing Russian airlines to seize a billion dollars’ worth of aircraft rented from foreign companies. Leasing airliners is common in the business.

  The airliners would be added to the fleets of Russian airlines for domestic flights. They won’t be flying indefinitely. The airliners are foreign built and there’s an embargo now on shipping spare parts to Russia.

POW: Ukrainian forces say they have captured as many as 600 Russians and CNN interviewed several. The network quotes Maxim,  a pilot, who said Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine was run by neo-Nazis “was invented as a pretext and is something that the world cannot understand.” 

  At a separate media briefing, a Russian reconnaissance officer named Vladimir told reporters, “Our government told us we need to liberate the civilian population. I want to tell Russian servicemen: lay down your arms and leave your stations, don’t come here. Everyone wants peace here.”

  Maxim said, “It’s not just about demilitarizing Ukraine or the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but now cities of peaceful civilians are being destroyed. Even, I don’t know, what can justify, fuck, the tears of a child, or even worse, the deaths of innocent people, children.”

Information War: Earlier this month as the Russians bombed Ukrainian cities, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media with a suggestion that they air more material from the American Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

  The memo provided to Mother Jones magazine says Carlson “sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally.” 

  Carlson has blamed the Biden administration for provoking the war. Prior to tge invasion, Carlson asked in one commentary, “Why do Democrats want you to hate Putin? Has Putin shipped every middle class job in your town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked your business? Is he teaching your kids to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Does he eat dogs?”

 Carlson has also said there’s no reason for the United States to assist Ukraine and that it is  “not treason, it is not un-American” to support Putin. 

  Looking for any reason to denounce the Biden administration for its economic sanctions on Russia while Ukraine is bombed to rubble, Carlson said on air that, “If you want to get to the bottom of it, just think about who will suffer the most from sanctions? The answer is not on the surface. Middle-income Americans will suffer. The very people who were crushed by Covid restrictions for two years. Now they will suffer from cuts to energy sources.”

Deadline: A Fox News cameraman and a Ukrainian journalist were killed on Monday in Ukraine when their vehicle came under fire outside Kyiv in the same attack in which Fox correspondent Benjamin Hall was wounded. 

  Killed were the Fox cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, well known to reporters in danger zones, and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova, who were riding in the same vehicle as Hall. Fox has not revealed information about Hall’s injuries. He’s in a hospital.

  Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, wrote of Zakrzewski in a memo to the staff that “Pierre was a war zone photographer who covered nearly every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us.” 

Criminal Conduct: Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who interrupted a live news broadcast with an anti-war message and was reported missing yesterday morning, appeared in court after a 14-hour interrogation and was fined the equivalent of  $280.

  The fine was for a separate video she released herself and it’s unknown at the moment whether she will face charges for what she did on the set of Channel 1. Ovsyannikova refused to retract her words in court. She told reporters as she left the courthouse yesterday: “It was my anti-war decision. I made this decision by myself because I don’t like Russia starting this said in English as she left the courthouse.”

The Spin Rack: Police in Washington have identified the man charged with shooting five homeless men, killing two of them, as 30-year-old Gerald Brevard III of DC.  His father told reporters that his son has been struggling with mental illness. — The Senate yesterday passed a law that would make Daylight Savings Time the official time year round. If the House passes it as well it would kick in during the fall of 2023. –

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