FAZ:

Ein EU-Land nach dem nächsten schloss sich der Forderung an, Russland vom internationalen Zahlungsdienst SWIFT auszuschließen. Am Ende änderte auch Deutschland seinen Kurs.

Als Reaktion auf die fortgesetzten Angriffe Russlands in der Ukraine haben die westlichen Verbündeten den Ausschluss russischer Banken aus dem internationalen Zahlungssystem SWIFT beschlossen. Das teilte der Sprecher der Bundesregierung, Steffen Hebestreit, am Samstagabend in Berlin mit. Der Beschluss wurde von den USA, Frankreich, Kanada, Italien, Großbritannien, der EU-Kommission und Deutschland getroffen.

This conceit of The Allies against The Evil Madman seems an easy one for mass media consumers to adopt. Ukraine is A Western Democracy defending The West against Tyranny.

At a high tech company in San Francisco a few short years ago a Ukrainian coworker recognized the portrait on the cover of the Zhukov biography I was reading. He was quite interested, thought it curious, but then it was curious that an engineer anywhere on the floor would be 1) reading a book, 2) reading non-fiction, 3) reading non-fiction that was not Malcolm Gladwell-type popular scrap, 4) reading history, 5) reading history that was not US history. This man was regularly condescended to by young engineers because of his accent and imperfect English. For his work colleagues he was someone who had fled the economic collapse of the ex-USSR, period. Where was Ukraine? Somewhere „over there“. Trying to talk to anyone about 2014 got me absolutely nowhere.

In 2018 when the Odessa police insisted on US dollars to hand me my driver’s license back after a traffic stop several Ukrainian-American coworkers gently explained to me I should  never have rolled down my car window, then should have bargained harder to reduce the extortion. „Everyone knew“ the Ukrainian police were hopelessly corrupt – what was I doing turning off my car engine and rolling down my window?

So now Silicon Valley worker drones are changing their social media profile picture frames to include Ukrainian colors, and laud brave Ukrainian citizens for defending the democratic rights of freedom-loving San Franciscans. The Allies: you know, it’s one of the sides you can choose on the drop-down menu in that new Playstation 5 game.

FAZ:

Allerdings war zu erfahren, dass zumindest im Verteidigungs­ministerium Ministerin Christine Lambrecht (SPD) versucht habe, die Blockadehaltung von Kanzleramt und Auswärtigem Amt gegen die Unterstützung der Ukraine zu durchbrechen. Hinter vorgehaltener Hand hatte es dort stets geheißen, es sei im Falle eines Krieges sinnlos, einen ohnehin aussichtslosen Kampf mit Waffenlieferungen zu verlängern. Diese Haltung hatte vor Scholz auch schon Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) viele Jahre lang eingenommen.

Schon bevor Bundeskanzler Scholz seine Erklärung abgab, hatten Baerbock und Vizekanzler Robert Habeck (beide Grüne) den Kurswechsel der Bundesregierung erläutert: „Nach dem schamlosen Angriff Russlands muss sich die Ukraine verteidigen können. Sie hat ein unabdingbares Recht auf Selbstverteidigung.“

Die Zeit:

Deutschland hat die angekündigte Lieferung von 5.000 Helmen für das ukrainische Militär auf den Weg gebracht. Die Schutzausstattung war in zwei Lastwagen unterwegs, wie die Nachrichtenagentur dpa berichtete. Wegen der laufenden Kämpfe solle sie außerhalb der Ukraine übergeben werden.

Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy:

As international affairs researcher Matthew Waldman noted in 2014, “strategic empathy” isn’t about agreeing with an adversary’s position. It is about understanding it so you can fashion an appropriate response. Whatever your views on NATO enlargement might be, there is overwhelming evidence that Russian leaders were alarmed by it from the start and expressed their concerns repeatedly. Moscow grew increasingly opposed as its power recovered and as NATO crept ever eastward. Given the United States’ own tendency to indulge in worst-case analysis and view minor security problems in distant lands as if they were existential dangers (not to mention its willingness to use force to try to solve such problems), you’d think the U.S. foreign-policy community would be acutely aware of great powers’ tendency to exaggerate threats and be highly sensitive about their immediate vicinity’s security environment. Try to point this out, however, and you’re likely to be denounced as a naive apologist for Putin.

I’m less puzzled—but still disturbed—by the ease with which the Blob has fallen back on all the familiar tropes in the foreign-policy establishment’s playbook of greatest hits. Read the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Atlantic Council’s website, and yes, even Foreign Policy, in recent weeks and you’ll get a steady diet of hawkish posturing, with only occasional dissenting views on offer. Putin alone is said to be the source of the problem, neatly demonized along with dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, every member of Iran’s political elite, Xi Jinping, and anyone else we’ve ever been seriously at odds with. Although Washington has been on good terms with any number of bellicose but mostly pro-American despots, the West insists on viewing this crisis not as a complicated clash of interests between nuclear-armed states but as a morality play between good and evil. As usual, society is told that what is at stake is not Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment but the entire direction of human history. And right on cue: Here comes the well-worn Munich analogy, as if Putin was a genocidal maniac whose real aim was to conquer all of Europe the same way Hitler tried to do. One can despise everything he stands for and much of what he has done—as I do—and still reject from this sort of simplistic alarmism.

Ambassador Jack Matlock:

It seems to me that recognition of the two breakaway republics represent Putin’s current aim. That, plus negotiations that may induce the US to remove missile defense installations from EE. (This is his real sore point, and one that would be rational to meet.) …

I could not and cannot imagine that Putin would be so stupid as to invade Ukraine, bomb its cities, etc., though obviously Russia has the capability, even without any exercises on the border. The US also has the capability of attacking every country in the world without warning, so one must distinguish between capability and intent.

Since Putin is quite aware of our intelligence capabilities, he is quite aware that we will be watching and listening. I can imagine the hilarious laughter of Putin’s inner circle every time some useful idiot proclaimed that Russia would be attacking any time now and that we would do crushing sanctions if Russia did – but only if it did!

Zelensky’s steadfast refusal to implement Minsk II gives Putin a dandy excuse to say that this left him no alternative to recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk entities. He is a judo master, whatever else one might say.