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We have a formula that we put on the negotiating table the Ukrainian model of security guarantees. It assumes that there will be no bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine. There will be a multilateral agreement, a package agreement in which a number of countries will take part their number is still being discussed. Five or seven countries, Podolyak said in the detailed interview.

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NATO overestimates Russias military abilities, he said, about the security alliances reluctance to close the air space over Ukraine. Close the sky, let civilians stop dying, let [Russia] prove that it knows how to fight, not bomb peaceful cities. Thats all we want. Close the sky let the guys come down to earth in the end!

Asked if nuclear powers UK and France would be part of this proposed new union, he said: Unfortunately, today it is impossible to predict how Russian political elites make decisions. Therefore, if Ukraine manages to form this new union, we want it to accurately respond to all modern risks. After all, we will be in its centre as a country that has come under attack.

He said several countries were interested in this alternative union, including the United States.

Polodyak said Ukraine was optimistic that Russia was ready to work towards a compromise after 21 days of its special operation that had, against its military planners expectations, come up against Ukraines resistance.

We really see a desire to come up with some kind of compromise draft of agreements I dont say peace agreement yet. They, of course, did not expect the reputation that Russia will acquire in the world, that negative assessment, that single package [of sanctions] that is being introduced against them. All this brings them back to real politics, he said.

So, the main thing is that for us it is fundamentally not just a peace agreement, this does not suit us.

He said Ukraine was negotiating key basic points that would be included in any agreement with Russia: a ceasefire, an immediate withdrawal of troops and the signing of an agreement in which there will be security guarantees and where a number of countries will act as guarantors. And within the framework of this package there will be an agreement with the Russian Federation that it also undertakes to guarantee Ukraine that there will be no next wars. And Russia will have to understand the risks it will face next. Without this, it is pointless to end the war.

Asked if Ukraine was prepared to let go of Luhansk and Donetsk, and Crimea, Polodyak said:

This is the [Russian] negotiating position. For us, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is unshakable. For us, de jure, these territories are the ARC [Autonomous Republic of Crimea] and ORDLO [Separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions]; we dont know what LDNR is. For us, these territories legally remain part of Ukraine. But we temporarily lost effective control over them, and now the Russian administration is there. This is the status quo, I am ready to name it, but we cannot yet voice our positions at the negotiations, I repeat once again. Unlike the Russians, we stick to the agreements.

Civilians are continuing to bear the brunt of the war.

People sheltered at the Drama Theatre in Ukraines southern port city of Mariupol are being rescued alive from the rubble. The Kyiv Independent reported that 130 survivors had been rescued alive until late on Thursday.

Ukrainian authorities had said Russia bombed the theatre to ruins on Wednesday. They said upto 1,000 civilians, including women and children, were in the theatres bomb shelter when the Russian air strike took place. Reports suggest that the shelter might have withstood the attack.

Russian forces are bombarding Mariupol relentlessly. Briefing the Security Council on Thursday, Rosemary DiCarlo, the Under-Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said many residents of the city who have been unable to evacuate from the southeastern port city lack food, water, electricity, and medical care.

There will be no winners to this senseless conflict, she said, noting that the situation in the city was so bad that uncollected corpses lie on city streets.

Raouf Mazou, UNHCRs Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, said that in less than three weeks, the number of those fleeing Ukraine into neighbouring countries has risen from 520,000 to over 3.1 million.

Poland has become one of the largest refugee-hosting countries in the world, with close to 2 million refugees from Ukraine. Another 490,000 people have fled to Romania; 350,000 to Moldova; 280,000 to Hungary; and 228,000 to Slovakia, while others have moved to Russia or Belarus.

With the current pace of refugee outflows, the capacities of the neighbouring countries are being tested and stretched, he said, calling for more support.

Poland warned last week that its systems were near collapse and that it could not take anymore refugees.

Neither the city nor the government can now cope with the wave of refugees from Ukraine, said Warsaws mayor, Rafa Trzaskowski, after a meeting of the Union of Polish Cities. It is necessary to implement a system of European and international aid.

Czech Republic Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Thursday that 270,000 refugees from Ukraine had crossed the border over the last three weeks, and that his country is at the very limit of the number of refugees it is able to absorb without major problems.

Sweden announced earlier this week that it would reintroduce border controls due to the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. In a press release on March 15, the Minister for Infrastructure Tomas Eneroth said the government assesses that the situation may become so serious that it might be necessary to take immediate measures to maintain law and order and safeguard national security.

I will be back on Monday with the next update.

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Ukraine war update, March 18: Biden and Xi will speak, Ukraine moots new security union - The Indian Express

LONDON Diplomatic activity quickened on multiple fronts Monday as Russias war on Ukraine entered an uncertain new phase, with President Vladimir V. Putins forces widening their bombardment of Kyiv and other cities, hundreds of civilians escaping the devastated port of Mariupol, and the United States warning China over its deepening alignment with an isolated Russia.

There were no breakthroughs, either at the negotiating tables or on the battlefield. But as the human cost of the war continued to mount, the flurry of developments suggested that people were groping for a way out of the crisis or, failing that, for ways to prevent it from mutating into a wider proxy war.

In Rome, President Bidens top national security aide, Jake Sullivan, met with a top Chinese foreign affairs official, Yang Jiechi, to try to peel away one of Mr. Putins few potential allies, after reports denied by Moscow and Beijing that Russia had sought military aid from China, and that Chinese leaders were open to such a request. Mr. Sullivan, a Biden administration official said, had expressed deep concerns about Chinas alignment at this time.

Ukrainian and Russian officials held another round of direct negotiations, adjourning without signs of progress, though they agreed to meet again on Tuesday. The negotiations unfolded against a backdrop of thunderous Russian artillery strikes that led the secretary general of the United Nations, Antnio Guterres, to declare Ukraine was being decimated before the eyes of the world.

An uncharacteristically angry Mr. Guterres accused Russia of attacking 24 health facilities and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without water or electricity. Having once predicted there would be no war in Ukraine, he now warned there could be a calamitous cascade of world hunger and food inflation because Ukraine is one of the worlds foremost grain producers.

The impact on civilians, Mr. Guterres said, was reaching terrifying proportions.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine plans to address the U.S. Congress on Wednesday in a virtual speech that could increase pressure on the Biden administration to send fighter jets to Kyiv.

In one of dozens of episodes of violence in Ukraine, a missile slammed into an apartment block in a once-tranquil Kyiv neighborhood just after dawn on Monday, when many residents were asleep. They had become accustomed to the percussive noise of shelling after more than two weeks of Russian bombardment, but never thought their building would be hit.

We do not have a military target near us, said Yuriy Yurchik, 30. We did not think we ourselves would be a target.

Yet amid the drumbeat of horror, there were also glimpses of resilience. Hundreds escaped Mariupol by car, according to the local government, even as a convoy of vehicles carrying food, water and medicine tried to find a safe path through the battle that has been raging around that southeast port city almost since the war began. Relatives of those still living in Mariupol said fleeing seemed to offer the best, perhaps only, chance for survival.

I do not believe the humanitarian convoy will be a big help, said Oleksandr Kryvoshapro, a humanitarian activist whose parents were in Mariupol. Too many people are still there. And this once beautiful, big and constantly developing city is now completely destroyed. It is not possible to live there anymore.

An estimated 400,000 people are trapped in Mariupol, which is entering its second week without heat, food or clean water. Attempts to reach the city and evacuate people have failed day after day amid heavy fighting. The convoy en route Monday was carrying 100 tons of relief supplies, officials said.

Russia has been laying siege to the city, a major industrial hub on the Azov Sea, creating a humanitarian catastrophe that led the International Committee of the Red Cross to issue an urgent appeal for a cease-fire to assist the hundreds of thousands of people with no access to clean water, food or heat.

Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell, the I.C.R.C. said.

Casualty figures are difficult to confirm in the conflict. The United Nations has estimated that at least 596 civilians have been killed, but that figure is considered low because of the organizations inability to gain access to all areas of fighting. Ukrainian officials have said more than 2,500 people have died in Mariupol alone.

Particularly striking was the death of a pregnant woman who had been photographed clutching her belly as she was carried on a stretcher from a blasted-out maternity hospital that had been attacked.

The split-screen images of slow-moving diplomacy and sudden, brutal attacks on many civilian targets underscored the challenges of finding an acceptable off-ramp for Mr. Putin, even after a campaign that, by nearly all accounts, has gone far worse for Russia than expected.

The Kremlin, confronting a remarkably determined Ukrainian resistance and heavy losses on the battlefield, vowed to carry out its subjugation of the country in full and on its original schedule. (It is unclear what that schedule is, though Russia denied, until just before the invasion, that it had any plan to send troops into Ukraine.) Russian officials have tried to portray their militarys failure to capture most major cities in Ukraine as an act of restraint.

Responding to Western claims that Russian forces were making slow progress in large cities, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Mr. Putin had ordered Russian troops to refrain from storming large cities including Kyiv before the Feb. 24 invasion. The reason, he said, was that armed clashes in urban areas would inevitably lead to big losses among civilians. But he added that the cities are already practically encircled anyway.

Interpreting Mr. Peskovs statements was difficult, but they did not appear to foreclose the possibility of a negotiated settlement.

On Monday, Mr. Putin spoke again with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, continuing Israels efforts to mediate. The 90-minute call focused on the possibility of a cease-fire, a senior Israeli official said, and followed a call between Mr. Bennett and President Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday evening.

The prospect of Chinas involvement in support of Russia, however, raises the risks of a conflict that has already threatened to pull in the West. It would blunt the impact of a trans-Atlantic campaign to isolate Russia, relieving some of the economic pressure on Mr. Putin and giving him a potential supplier of weapons to counteract those flowing in to Ukrainian troops from the United States and other NATO countries.

It really risks making Ukraine a proxy conflict in what could be a broader geopolitical competition between China and Russia on the one side with the U.S. and its allies on the other, said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and former China policymaker in the Obama administration.

Mr. Sullivans seven-hour meeting with Mr. Yang had been scheduled long before the invasion, but it came one day after American officials told reporters about the request from Moscow for assistance from Beijing a test of a new commitment to work together pledged by Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping at the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics last month. American intelligence agencies learned of the Russian request in recent days.

It appears the request may include drones, secure communications and financial support, American officials said, though the details are unclear. The United States told allies in diplomatic cables that China had given a positive signal to Russia, a European official said on Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the exchanges, which were first reported by the Financial Times.

Mr. Sullivan was direct about those concerns and the potential implications and consequences of certain actions, an administration official said. But the official refused to give specifics about the exchange with Mr. Yang, a former Chinese ambassador to the United States.

China, which has urged a peaceful resolution to the conflict and has maintained good relations with Ukraine, has denied receiving any request for help from Moscow. But with much of the rest of the world cutting off trade, financial transactions and other economic interactions with Russia, which threatens to plunge the country into default, Mr. Putin is clearly counting on his relationship with Mr. Xi to help him resist the overwhelming economic pressure and to perhaps emerge as a critical military ally.

Clearly, the leak of the intelligence that Russia sought Chinas help was designed to pressure both sides. It was humiliating for Mr. Putin, who is enormously sensitive to suggestions that he is the junior partner in the relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

But it also places China in a hard spot. Just before Russias invasion, Chinas foreign minister, Wang Yi, left no doubt that Beijing opposed military action. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of any country should be respected and safeguarded, he said. Ukraine is no exception.

If China provided military or economic support, it would be violating that principle and risk being associated with the carnage now underway. The White House has made clear it would respond to any effort to bail out Russia.

Support of any kind, said Mr. Bidens spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, there would be consequences for that.

Mark Landler reported from London, and David E. Sanger from New York. Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall from Kyiv, Ukraine, Marc Santora from Lviv, Ukraine, Eric Schmitt, Edward Wong and Julian Barnes from Washington, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, Anton Troianovski and Ivan Nechepurenko from Istanbul, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, and Richard Prez-Pea, Farnaz Fassihi and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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What Happened on Day 19 of Russias Invasion of Ukraine - The New York Times

At the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, two colossal pavilions faced each other down. One was Hitlers Germany, crowned with a Nazi eagle. The other was Stalins Soviet Union, crowned with a statue of a worker and a peasant holding hands. It was a symbolic clash at a moment when right and left were fighting to the death in Spain. But somewhere inside the Soviet pavilion, among all the socialist realism, were drawings of fabulous beasts and flowers filled with a raw folkloric magic. They subverted the age of the dictators with nothing less than a triumph of the human imagination over terror and mass death.

These sublime creations were the work of a Ukrainian artist, Maria Prymachenko, who has once again become a symbol of survival in the midst of a dictators war. Prymachenko, who died in 1997, is the best-loved artist of the besieged country, a national symbol whose work has appeared on its postage stamps, and her likeness on its money. Ukrainian astronomer Klim Churyumov even named a planet after her.

When the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv caught fire under Russian bombardment, a Ukrainian man risked his life to rescue 25 works by her. But Prymachenkos entire lifes work is now under much greater threat. As Kyiv endures heavy attacks, 650 paintings and drawings by the artist held in the National Folk Decorative Art Museum are at risk, along with everything and everyone in the capital.

Its said that, when some of Prymachenkos paintings were shown in Paris in 1937, her brilliance was hailed by Picasso, who said: I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian. It would make artistic sense. For this young peasant, who never had a lesson in her life, was unleashing monsters and collating fables that chimed with the work of Picasso, and his friends the surrealists. While the dictatorships duked it out architecturally at that International Exhibition, Picasso unveiled Guernica at the Spanish pavilion, using the imagery of the bullfight to capture wars horrors. Prymachenko, too, dredged up primal myths to tackle the terrifying experiences of Ukrainians.

Her pictures from the 1930s are savage slices of farmyard vitality. In one of them, a beautiful peacock-like bird with yellow body and blue wings perches on the back of a brown, crawling creature and regurgitates food into its mouth. Why is the glorious bird feeding this flightless monster? Is it an act of mercy or a product of grotesque delusion? In another drawing, an equally colourful bird appears to have its own young in its mouth. Carrying it tenderly, you might think, but only if you know nothing of the history of Ukraine.

At first sight, Prymachenko might seem just colourful, decorative and naive, a folkloric artist with a strong sense of pattern. Certainly, her later post-1945 works are brighter, more formal and relaxing. But there is a much darker undertow to her earlier creations. For Prymachenko became an artist in the decade when Stalin set out to destroy Ukraines peasants. Rural people starved to death in their millions in the famine he consciously inflicted on Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933.

Initially, food supplies failed because of the sudden, ruthless attempt to collectivise agriculture. Peasants were no longer allowed to farm for themselves but were made to join collectives in a draconian policy that was meant to provide food for a new urban proletariat. Ukraine was, and is, a great grain-growing country but the shock of collectivisation threw agriculture into chaos. The Holodomor, as this terror-famine is now called, is widely seen as genocide: Stalin knew what was happening and yet doubled down, denying relief, having peasants arrested or worse if they begged in cities or sought state aid. In a chilling presage of Putins own logic and arguments, this cruelty was driven by the ludicrous notion that the hungry were in fact Ukrainian nationalists trying to undermine Soviet rule.

It seems reasonable, writes historian Timothy Snyder in his indispensable book Bloodlands, to propose a figure of approximately 3.3 million deaths by starvation and hunger-related disease in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933. These were not pretty deaths and they took place all around Prymachenko in her village of Bolotnya. Some people were driven to cannibalism before they died. The corpses of the starved in turn became food.

Born in 1908, Prymachenko was in her early 20s when she witnessed this vision of hell on Earth and survived it to become an artist. But the fear did not end when the famine did. Just as her work was sent to Paris in 1937, Stalins Great Terror was raging. It is often pictured as a butchery of urban intellectuals and politicians but it came to the Ukrainian countryside, too.

So it would take a very complacent eye not to see the disturbing side of Prymachenkos early art. The bird in its parents mouth, the peacock feeding a brute. Maybe there is also survivor guilt, and a feeling of alienation from a destroyed habitat, in such images of strange misbegotten creatures lost in a nature they cant work and dont comprehend. One of her fantastic beasts appears blind, its toothy mouth open in a sad lamentation, as it stumbles through a garden on four numbed clodhopping feet. A serpent and a many-headed hydra also appear among the flowers, like deceptively beautiful, yet murderous intruders in Eden. In another of these mid-1930s works, a glorious bird rears back in fear as a smaller one perches on its breast, beak open.

Theres nothing decorative or reassuring about the images that got this brave artist noticed. Far from innocently reviving traditional folk art, her lonely or murderous monsters exist in a nature poisoned by violence. Yet she got away with it and was even officially promoted right in the middle of Stalins Terror, when millions were being killed on the merest suspicion of independent thought. Perhaps this was because even paranoid Stalinists didnt think a peasant woman posed a threat.

Prymachenko remembered that, as a child, she was one day tending animals when she began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand. Its an image that recurs in folk art this was also how the great medieval painter Giotto started. But it was Prymachenkos embroidery, a skill passed on by her mother, that first got her noticed and invited to participate in an art workshop in Kyiv. Such origins would inevitably have meant being patronisingly classed by the Soviet system as a peasant artist. An intellectual who produced such work could have ended up in the gulag or worse.

Yet, to see the sheer miracle of her achievement, you must also set Prymachenko in her time as well as her place. The Soviet Union in the 1930s was relentlessly crushing imagination as Stalin imposed absolute conformity. The Ukrainian writer Mikhail Bulgakov couldnt get his surreal fantasies published, even though, in a tyrannical whim, Stalin read them himself and spared the writers life. But the apparent rustic naivety of Prymackenkos work let her create mysterious, insidiously macabre art that had more in common with surrealism than socialist realism.

Then, incredibly, life in Ukraine got worse. Prymachenko had found images to answer famine but she fell silent in the second world war, when Hitlers invasion of the Soviet Union made Ukraine one of the first places Jews were murdered en masse. In September 1941, 33,771 Kyiv Jews were shot and their bodies tossed into a ravine outside their city. Prymachenko was working on a collective farm and had no colours to paint.

In the 1960s, she was the subject of a liberating revival, her folk designs helping to seed a new Ukrainian consciousness. Theres an almost hippy quality to her 60s art. You can see how it appealed to a younger audience, keen to reconnect with their Ukrainian identity.

The country has other artists to be proud of, not least Kazimir Malevich, a titan of the avant garde famous for Black Square, the first time a painting wasnt a painting of something. Yet you can see why Prymachenko is so loved. Her art, with its rustic roots, expresses the hope and pride of a nation. But the past she evokes is no innocent age of happy rural harmony. What she would make of Putins terror one can only guess and fear.

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Ukraines best loved artist: Once again a symbol of survival in the midst of a dictators war - The Guardian

After two years of political divisions and economic disruptions bolstered by an unending pandemic, many Americans say they are coming together around a common cause: support for Ukraine, a country under daily siege by Russian forces.

The rare moment of solidarity is driven, in part, by the perception of America as a steadfast global defender of freedom and democracy. Many Americans say they see a lopsided fight pitting a great power against a weaker neighbor. They see relentless images of dead families and collapsed cities. They see Ukraines president pleading for help.

In polls and interviews since the attack, Americans across the political spectrum said the nation had a duty to respond to President Vladimir V. Putins brazen invasion even if that means feeling, at least in the short term, the pinch of high gas prices and inflation.

I understand we want to stay out of it, but whats happening is worse than anyone could imagine. We can do without gas when there are children there being killed, said Danna Bone, a 65-year-old retiree in McMinnville, Ore., and a Republican. Its horrific whats happening there, and we need to be doing our part. I would like to see them doing more. What that looks like, I really dont know.

Yet interviews with more than three dozen Americans from Georgia to California show that, beyond broad consensus that Ukraine deserves support, they are unsettled and even divided on essential questions: How far should America go to defend Ukraine without thrusting the nation into another Cold War? Does the war demand U.S. military involvement?

The Biden administration has imposed an array of painful economic sanctions on Russia and blocked its oil, gas and coal imports. The administration has already approved $1.2 billion in aid to Ukraine, and President Biden is expected to announce another $800 million in military assistance. Three weeks into the invasion, most Americans in both political parties support U.S. aid to Ukraine and overwhelmingly support economic sanctions, a new Pew Research Center survey found.

Already, the issue of Americas role in Ukraine is scrambling U.S. politics and reinvigorating the bond between the United States and its European allies.

About a third of Americans said the United States was providing the appropriate amount of support to Ukraine, but an even larger share, 42 percent, is in favor of the country doing even more, the Pew survey showed. The same poll found, however, that about two-thirds of Americans do not support military intervention.

In pockets across the country, how people saw Americas global might and obligations was often influenced by their individual circumstances and economic stability. They often drew a line, if a crooked one, between the war and the crises at home. Conversations about Russian strikes and shellshocked refugees fleeing Ukraine quickly gave way to discussion about the personal cost of gas and food, a sputtering economy and the enduring pain of the pandemic, the kind of grievances that might temper support for Ukraine over time.

North of Detroit, where Macomb and Oakland Counties sit side by side but have been moving in opposite political directions in recent years Macomb to the right, Oakland to the left liberals and conservatives are united in a belief that what is happening in Ukraine is wrong and that the United States could be doing more. But they offered divergent opinions on the causes of the war or whether Mr. Biden has been adept at handling the foreign policy crisis.

I call it Russias unfinished business, Roland Benberry Jr., 61, an artist and illustrator, said of the invasion. Mr. Benberry served in the Air Force in the early 1980s when Russia was considered an imminent threat. Thirty years later, he is experiencing those feelings again. We thought we were done with that, he said. We thought the Soviet Union was gone, and it basically just went underground for a while.

Mr. Benberry, a Democrat who lives in Oakland County, believes that sanctions could be the most powerful and effective tool against Russia, and that the U.S. military should only get involved directly if the Ukrainian military is forced to fall back. He saw Mr. Putin as a lone demagogue acting on his own, against the will of many of his own citizens.

Like Mr. Benberry, Natasha Jenkins, 34, a Democrat and a liberal arts student at a community college in Oakland County, said she was willing to tolerate higher gas prices to punish Mr. Putin. But she said she wished Mr. Biden would also push for higher wages so that people could have an easier time making ends meet. She sees firsthand the impact of Americas economic strains in the grocery store, where she works the night shift as a cashier. Parents complain to her about the expensive prices of produce or the burdens of teaching their children at home amid the pandemic. Some supplies shortages linger, and she cannot keep all the shelves stocked.

Ms. Jenkins said she was reluctant to see direct U.S. military involvement in Ukraine. She has several close friends still scarred from Americas wars in the Middle East, she said, and she does not want to see more American soldiers deployed to fight abroad.

March 18, 2022, 11:45 a.m. ET

Indeed, for many Americans, the support for Ukraine firmly ends at the doorstep of military intervention. History plays a role. The long-running war and pullout from Afghanistan, along with memories of the first Cold War, has dampened the tolerance for a direct confrontation with Russia.

On a suburban street in Macomb County, Kathleen Pate, 75, has helped to organize donated clothing and medication to be sent to Ukraine. Her son and her daughter-in-law, who is from Ukraine, converted their garage into a makeshift donation hub.

The support is overwhelming, said Ms. Pate, a Republican who has spent her recent days worrying about Ukrainian families. I cant sleep at night. I cant get it out of mind.

She said she supported establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine and had been unhappy with the U.S. response so far. I truly believe that it could be doing more to help, she said. It is the humane thing to do.

An Economist/YouGov survey conducted in early March showed that a majority of Americans, about 73 percent, sympathized more with Ukraine than Russia. The poll also showed that 68 percent approved of imposing economic sanctions, and slightly less approved of sending financial aid or weapons. But only 20 percent favored sending American troops to fight Russians in Ukraine.

Alejandro Tenorio, 24, said sanctions ought to be the primary tool to force Mr. Putin to back down, and maybe motivate the Russian people to act.

I think these political sanctions should continue. Let the people from Russia take matters into their own hands to maybe try to change the government and change their ways, said Mr. Tenorio, a tech support specialist for a data company who described himself as a left-leaning moderate.

The Biden administration, said Mr. Tenorio, who lives in Johns Creek, Ga., could be a bit more aggressive, with more things to hurt their economy.

I think that should be about it, he said. I think Biden is doing as much as he can, or as much as hes allowed to do.

An attack in the west. A missile strike rattled the outskirts of Lviv, a western city that has been a haven for people fleeing areas under siege. The mayor of the city said several missiles had struck an aircraft repair plant at the airport in Lviv, destroying the buildings.

A looming energy crisis. The International Energy Agency said that the repercussions of Russias invasion of Ukraine arelikely to intensify over the next several months, and nations around the world should respond by reducing their use of oil and gas.

Others believe that American troops on the ground are a dangerous but necessary response.

Dan Cunha is a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired small business owner who lives in Anaheim, Calif. He describes himself as a political independent, and wrote in John Kasich, the Republican former governor of Ohio, in the 2020 election.

It breaks my heart to see what is happening there now, to see an autocrat rise to power, and were not doing anything to stop it, he said. He is nationalist in the extreme. If it were up to me, I would put troops there. Putin is a bully, and bullies need to be slapped back.

Mr. Cunha regularly spends time at the local V.F.W. outpost, where most of his friends are what he describes as die-hard Republicans, and said that many argue that the conflict would not have happened at all if Donald J. Trump were still president.

The majority of the veterans I talk to say the same thing as I do boots on the ground, he said.

While supportive of Ukraines plight, some Middle Eastern refugees and immigrants outside of Detroit said this conflict felt different from those in Afghanistan and Iraq, because the world is paying attention to the suffering of white European families in a way they felt that it had not with their own.

I grew up watching my country get torn apart, said Maria, a Syrian college student who asked that her full name not be used for fear of endangering her family still in the country. She emphasized that she felt and understood Ukrainians pain, and that she herself had been stunned to see Europeans go to war. But she said she hoped that Americans would realize that this is what life had been like for people in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries for decades.

The war feels personal for Maryana Vacarciuc, 24, and her husband, Radion Vacarciuc, 25. The Ukrainian immigrants have been living in the metro Atlanta area with their two children for the last three years, but they still have relatives in Ukraine.

Unlike some Ukrainian immigrants who are pressing for greater American involvement, they feel bad about the predicament of their homeland and family members and recall the last conflict in 2014 but said they recognize the limitations of the U.S. government.

I understand what Americas doing. It doesnt want to help, not more, because it doesnt want to get into more of a conflict with Russia, Ms. Vacarciuc said.

Her husband added: But if America gets too involved, then we might be the ones leaving our kids and going to fight the war, he said. Asked if America has a role to play in the Ukraine war, he said no.

America is its own country, he said. Ukraine, Russia, theyre fighting their own battles.

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Russias Ukraine Invasion Rallies a Divided Nation: The United States - The New York Times

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, an outcry has arisen around the world. On March 2, the UN voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution demanding the end of the invasion, with only five countries opposing Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, and Syria. As the war rages on, thousands have been killed according to Ukrainian authorities and many more injured.

In response, the US, EU, UK and other countries have levelled sanctions, both general and targeted, and doors have closed to Russians around the world, from research institutions to sporting events, in protest at Russias invasion.

Sanctions have targeting banks, oil refineries, military and luxury product exports as well as members of the Russian regime and oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin. Companies, too, have closed their doors in Russia, including fast-food giant McDonalds which has temporarily shut its roughly 850 outlets.

Surveys have suggested that the majority of Russians support the invasion. But it is difficult to determine how reliable these surveys are, in light of new crackdowns on free speech and dissent in Russia, where even the use of the word war to describe the invasion is now a crime. In the meantime, sanctions affect every Russian citizen in their daily lives both those who support and those who oppose the war, those at home and those abroad.

Al Jazeera spoke with five young Russians about their views on the invasion, and how the blowback has affected them.

Im doing OK, but the whole situation is quite tough. Literally, all of my friends and me are shocked. None of us wanted this war, and we stand in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putins actions. But we have no right to express our position. At demonstrations, people are detained for several days or fined. Now, any anti-war speech can result in up to 15 years of imprisonment. Some of my friends are leaving the country right now, and I understand them.

Russian authorities wantto declare Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) extremist. All those platforms will stop working in Russia, but I hope that with a VPN, it will be possible to continue using them.

I deleted some of my messages because the police check social media chats on public transportation. In addition, the police recently searched the flat of a close friend of mine and then put her under house arrest for two months. I was very frightened. She had been putting up posters that said No to war around the city. The investigation is ongoing, but she is fine. But the whole situation is awful, of course.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the older generation is drowning in propaganda and believes that Putins actions are justified.

It is surreal. Ive already stopped communicating with my father and grandfather for a while.

Now, Im very encouraged by the fact that the world understands that the Russian people did not choose this war, that instead it was started by a president who lives in some absurd reality of his own. And if I am not imprisoned soon for speaking out against war, I want to try together with like-minded people to do everything I can to give our country hope for a peaceful future.

When I think about the conflict, I feel anxious, sad, and frustrated. Mostly because I dont understand how anyone could take this step to send people to fight, to kill others. Its scary.

On one hand, its affected everyone psychologically, economically, and in many other ways. And on the other hand, I understand that we could be hurt if we did something to try and change it. It feels like we dont have any control. Petitions and protests are forbidden. People are arrested for even walking around the area where a protest was scheduled.

Right now, we can see that the situation is changing every day, and were trying to figure out things like, How can we pay for foreign goods if the bank doesnt work? Or, What are we going to do with these publications, university admissions, and conferences that weve been rejected from because we are Russians?

For example, we cant access Zoom. And other specialised apps, like Matlab (a programming and computing platform) and Coursera (an online course platform). Also, prices for some ordinary things, like cosmetics and food, have doubled, but in many cases, we have no alternative because there are no factories here that produce those products.

I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher. Now, those who want to publish and are affiliated with Russia have been asked to withhold applications, though they have not yet been officially withdrawn. The same thing with conferences international events that take place in Moscow are all cancelled.

Its affected me. I was planning to publish this month. And were seeing products disappear from shelves rice, flour, sugar, canned food but I guess thats really just because of mass panic. I have never seen empty shelves in stores in the centre before. Yesterday, I couldnt buy contact lenses because they ran out in the store where I would normally buy them. It seems like it will close I saw employees removing shelves and emptying boxes, and the light was turned off.

There arent long lines at ATMs any more, but we saw them a few days ago. Right now, we cannot withdraw other currencies at ATMs until September.

I was thinking about leaving Russia, but there is the problem of money ticket prices have increased tenfold, and also, theres no one waiting for me over there.

Its hard to differentiate global problems from everyday ones, as you can see. But to combat the anxiety, we try to remember our connections with friends and family and enjoy the spring weather.

Im OK, physically. Mentally, Im a bit of a wreck, but Im managing.

I moved to Germany last year to get my Masters. However, my whole family is in Russia.

I was planning to go see my family right about this time, but it doesnt seem possible any more. I mean there is probably a way to go to Russia, but almost zero way for me to come back to study, and as a new semester is coming, Im not risking it. I have a residency permit right now, but it expires in May. Because of everything escalating so rapidly, Im anxious about whether Ill have issues renewing it due to me being Russian.

Due to Russian cards getting blocked and Russia being disconnected from SWIFT (the international payment system), my family had to send me some money in advance, just in case, and I had to withdraw it really quickly before I lost access to it.

My family has already seen changes in prices. My sister was struggling to get baby products for my nephew because the prices skyrocketed. One of my brothers-in-law and my father will potentially lose their jobs because their businesses worked very closely with European businesses, and all of those lines of communication are closed off now.

We have a distant relative who lives in southern Ukraine. Their town has been directly affected, so we are worried about them. Right now, they are relatively safe, but its a constant worry for my family.

We are all affected mentally, scared, and stressed. Ive been struggling with my mental health for months and everything thats happening is affecting that a lot.

Im against the war, and most of my friends and people I know feel the same way. These are mostly people around my age with the same level of education. However, when it comes to family, I, unfortunately, do have a conflict with my parents. This has been pretty hard as we have very different views.

I cant even really tell why they believe what they believe. It could be their Soviet past, or the government propaganda that has been poured out for so many years, or just that there is too much fear and anxiety to actually allow the thought that the world is different from what they expect. Regardless, Im having a pretty hard time with it. Being far away from them helps because we try to prioritise keeping our relationship intact and caring for each other more than anything. Sometimes I cant help but try to convince them, which obviously doesnt work. For the record, they dont support the war in general, they do want it to stop; however, they can justify it in their heads somehow.

Its true that all my favourite shops like H&M, Bershka, and P&B are closed. Im a little bit upset because of this. However, I have my favourite Russian showrooms, so the spring collection will be great, too.

I just bought an iPhone. It was three days before the inflation. It was rather cheap, but now I want to buy AirPods and theyre really expensive. They were 7,000 roubles and now cost more than 14,000 roubles.

My friend was going to be a trainee at an international magazine publisher, but they stopped working in Russia on his first day there. As for me, Im involved in the sports industry. Im sure you know about the FIVB world volleyball championship 2022 which was planned in Russia. It wont be in Russia, now. Its like having your legs cut out from under you. Its shocking. How do you live without the thing you were living for?

I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram. After that, it wouldnt work. TikTok isnt available either. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but its not the same.

I cant even look at the word Telegram any more, it was on every story on Instagram. People were linking to new Telegram channels because Instagram is no longer working, saying, Lets keep in touch or This is my last story, see you on TG.

Most of my friends say that our government is awful. I dont support that view, but I do think we need some changes.

There were rallies against the war. But the older generations are for our president. One of my friends is against our government while her grandmother supports them, and I know thats caused a quarrel between them.

My feelings are mixed regarding the decision of our president.

I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine. Also, my neighbour is from western Ukraine. She supports our president, despite the fact that her whole family is still over there. When I hear it from Ukrainian people, I begin to doubt that our presidents strategy is wrong. Maybe Putin and his people know more and its really all justified. I hope so, and I hope theyll stop it soon.

The situation in our economy isnt good today. Our president should care about us, about his people. What about my future? I dont want to live in isolation here.

I really cannot understand why Russians dont have the right to eat in McDonalds. Of course, that may be a strange example, but I just mean those of us who are against war still suffer from it.

Most of the sanctions seem strange to me. The heads of government started this horror, but prohibitions and sanctions have been imposed on ordinary people. Closing ordinary stores and removing some food from shops is illogical. Why take away even something insignificant from ordinary people? Were in deep s*** already. The world hates us all, thats already enough.

As for me, personally, I lost the opportunity to move into my own apartment, which I was supposed to do soon because the renovations became too expensive. Because of this, I will have to live for a long time in a place where Im not very comfortable.

I can do without access to the blocked social media platforms. But many Russians are being deprived not only of a meaningless feed with entertaining content, but also of memories, work, and also important and truthful information about what is happening, which cant be obtained from a zombie box (television). They blatantly lie to us on there.

Where I am, people typically express their opinion at rallies, on social networks and among their inner circle. Usually, people will spread the word about protests secretly. But everyone who wants to participate can easily find out about it. For example, in certain online communities, theyll just post a single number (indicating a date) and everyone understands everything. But I dont feel safe expressing my opinion, especially when I talk about it online or on the phone. I dont attend protests. Its too scary, the idea of dying or being locked up for life. Plus, I can see that despite many years of huge protests, the people have not achieved anything at all. The government doesnt need the people.

The majority of the people in Russia are against the war. Many shout about it openly, but it doesnt end in anything good. We really want to help, but we havent been able to solve problems even in our own country, and now requests are flying around that we stop the war in another country. Trust me, were still trying. We write about it on social networks, sign petitions, send money, go to rallies, but so far this hasnt yielded any results, the government only hits us with a truncheon.

And, well, if you really want to throw anger at someone, shout at least that Putin is an a****** and his retinue, and not ordinary citizens. What have we to do with it?

As told to Delaney Nolan.

Edited and condensed for clarity and length.

*Names have been changed at the interviewees request.

See the original post here:
Russia-Ukraine: What do young Russians think about the war? - Al Jazeera English