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Russian President Vladimir Putin hasnt been coy about why he invaded Ukraine: He says it isnt a real country. He claims Ukraine is a fiction, created by communist Russia.

As Voxs Zack Beauchamp explained, Putins central claim that there is no historical Ukrainian nation worthy of present-day sovereignty is demonstrably false. But this does not mean Putin is lying: In fact, Russia experts generally saw his speech as an expression of his real beliefs.

So its worth digging into the political and historical ties between Russia and Ukraine to better understand just whats going on, as Russia closes in on Kyiv.

Ukraine has a long history of what a Poynter fact-check called an extended tug-of-war over religion, language and political control with Russia, but starting in 1917 when the Russian empire collapsed, some Ukrainians called for independence. They wanted a republic. And for the next 100-plus years, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has been marked by animosity over at least some Ukrainians desire to be a nation, and Russias desire for it ... not to be.

Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Yale historian Timothy Snyder to understand the background that led up to this point in history. A partial transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. (A full transcript of the show is available here.)

You wrote an essay recently in which you called Ukraine, over and over again, a normal country. Why did you frame it that way?

When we listen to other peoples propaganda, it enables us to make exceptions in our own minds. Now, if we listen to what Mr. Putin says about Ukraine, we start to think, Oh, theres some reason why we shouldnt be treating the country of Ukraine, the state of Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, like everybody else.

And my point was to say, No, its a state, its a country, its a people very much like other peoples. And if anything, its more interesting,

The propaganda youre referring to, in part, is Russian President Vladimir Putins claim that Ukraine is not a country, that it was entirely created by Russia. What is the argument that he is making?

Ill address it, but I would first just suggest that its much more a framing device than it is an argument. You know, its like if I say that Canada is not a country, its just a creation of the United Kingdom. Its going to sound ridiculous.

But [Putins] technical argument is that when the Soviet Union was created, a Ukrainian republic was established. In that sense, Ukraine was created by the Soviet Union.

There are three terribly wrong things about this argument. No. 1, the Soviet Union is not the same thing as Russia. It was established deliberately as non-Russian, as an internationalist project.

No. 2, hes got it completely backward because the Soviet Union was created as a federation of national units. That was precisely because everybody, including internationalists like Lenin, understood in 1917, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, that the Ukrainian question was real. A century ago, this was not actually a big debate, even on the far left. Several years of watching people being willing to fight and die for Ukraine convinced the Communists who founded the Soviet Union that there was a real question here, and they had to have a real answer for it. So in that sense, it would be truer to say, Ukraine created the Soviet Union, because without the general acknowledgment of a Ukrainian question, the Soviet Union wouldnt have been set up the way that it was.

But then the third point, I mean, the third way this is just absurd is that, of course, Ukrainian history goes way back before 1918. I mean, there are medieval events which flow into it, early modern events that flow into it. There was a national movement in the 19th century. All of that is, going back to your earlier question, all that falls into completely normal European parameters.

So Ukraine didnt get created in any sense when the Soviet Union was created. It was already there, and it already had an extremely interesting history.

And during the time of the Soviet Union, was Ukraine allowed to be its own country in terms of language and culture?

It goes back and forth.

When they set up the Soviet Union in 1922, the initial idea is: Were going to win over Ukraine. And the way were going to win over Ukraine is were going to have policies of affirmative action where we will recruit Ukrainian elites into the Soviet Union by promoting them, by opening up Ukrainian culture, by opening up jobs in the bureaucracy. That goes on through the end of the 1920s. But then when Stalin comes to power in 1928, he sees the situation differently. He is trying to transform the Soviet Union economically.

He carries out a policy called collectivization, which basically means the state taking control of agriculture. Ukraine is the most important agricultural center in the Soviet Union. Its the breadbasket of Eurasia, basically. When his collectivization policy fails and starts starving people to death, Stalin says, No, no, this problem is caused by Ukraine. Its caused by Ukrainian nationalists. Its caused by Ukrainian agents funded from abroad, which is all complete nonsense.

But what it does is that it turns the Ukrainian question around, and suddenly all of these people whod been promoted through the 1920s are put in show trials, are committing suicide, or executed in the great terror. Suddenly, Ukrainian traditional village life has been wiped out by a famine which was not only entirely preventable but which was basically not just allowed but determined to happen in 1932 and 1933. So Ukraine is allowed to rise in a certain way, and then its crushed.

Can you tell us about the famine in Ukraine? Give us a sense of what happened and what the outcomes were for people who lived in Ukraine.

The five-year plan from 1928 to 1933 was to turn the Soviet Union, which was basically a country of peasants and nomads, into a country of workers. And an essential part of that was to get agriculture away from private farmers, from smallholders, who were very common in Ukraine, and get it under control of the state because that would allow the state to control a source of capital, which you could then divert toward industrialization.

So the peasants would be put under control, the land would be put under control, the food would be put under control. And the idea was that this would allow the state to divert resources to what it really wanted to do, which was build up the cities, build up the mines, build up the factories.

So thats 1928, 29, 30. It doesnt really work very well. Collectivized agriculture doesnt work in general very well, and the transition to it can be particularly horrifying. In 1931 and especially in 1932, theres a transition to collectivization in Ukraine; there is a bad harvest. And what Stalin does is he interprets it politically.

He says this is the fault of the Ukrainian Communist Party. In other words, he gives a highly politicized interpretation of a failure which is basically about his own policy. And then he tries to make reality match his interpretation. So the famine is not treated as real or its treated as the fault of the Ukrainians.

Grain is confiscated from Ukrainians in 1932 and even into 1933, when its clear that hundreds of thousands of people or even millions of people are going to die. In November-December of 1932 especially, Moscow pushes through a series of extremely harsh policies for example, that peasants are not allowed to go to the cities and beg. No one is allowed to leave the Ukrainian Republic. You know, things like this, which basically make a kind of prison of the entire republic so that starving people have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

The result of all of this is the greatest political atrocity in Europe in the 20th century up to that point and a nationally and politically directed famine in which I think, by the best estimates currently, about 3.9 million people die who did not need to die.

Oh my God, 3.9 million people die who did not need to die. And at that point is Ukraine essentially beaten into submission? I mean, how do people respond?

It happens over weeks and months. And as it happens, people lose their ability to behave politically or in a way that they could protect themselves. They very often, you know, lose the elemental aspects of what we would think of as human morality and decency. So its a very, very heavy weight on Ukrainian society. Its an unforgettable episode, and it is one of the things that marks Ukrainians now off from Russians. And so if a foreign government, you know, tries to deny [that historical episode] or minimize it or spin it in some way, as the Russian government has been doing, that causes a good deal of resentment and alienation.

What happens to Ukraine?

Ukraine is a constitutive part of the Soviet Union from its establishment in 1922 to its disintegration in 1991. The back-and-forth of how the Ukrainian question is treated continues after the Second World War, if in a less violent way.

So during the Second World War, for a while, Ukraine is praised by Stalin, and thats because the war is being fought largely in Ukraine. And by the way, Ukrainians suffer more than Russians in that war, not just relatively, but also in absolute terms. The civilians suffer more in Ukraine than in Russia. But during the war, because the Germans are trying to control Ukraine, Stalin praises Ukraine. But when its over, that all turns around again, and the fact that Ukraine was occupied by the Germans is turned against Ukraine. Now, Ukrainians are suspected of being collaborators. Theyre more suspicious than Russians are.

When Stalin dies, theres a certain loosening, which comes to its apex in the 1960s, where theres a certain relaxation and Ukrainian culture is allowed to flourish a bit. But when Brezhnev takes control from the late 60s and especially from the early 70s forward, you have a policy of a very deliberate Russification in Ukraine.

And its that moment the 1970s that are so important for understanding the present because thats when people like Putin grew up. So Putins perspective that everything is basically Russian and like, you know, everyone really speaks Russian, and even if they seem not to, they really want to thats a very 1970s perspective on all of this. From the Ukrainian point of view, the 1970s were very much a down point.

Its really only after Chernobyl, when Gorbachev and the Soviet leadership dont say anything about the spread of radioactive material, that things start to move in Ukraine. And a new kind of politics emerges in Ukraine, which starts to talk about Ukrainian autonomy or even Ukrainian independence.

The Soviet Union comes to an end in 1991. Contemporaneous with that, theres a referendum in Ukraine about independence, in which theres not only a very large majority across the country for independence, theres also a majority in every region of Ukraine, including the ones that Russia claims, or occupies, or says its fighting for right now. So after that, Ukraine has to build everything anew. It has to build a state, it has to build an economy, it has to build a political system. And thats the phase of history that were in right now.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get podcasts. And find more coverage from Today, Explained, The Weeds, and more Vox podcasts on Russias invasion of Ukraine in this Spotify playlist:

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What you need to know about the history of Ukraine - Vox.com

For weeks, a Russian invasion had been feared, but once the sweeping attacks began last week, hitting seemingly every corner of Ukraine, the war became unavoidably tangible for its people, a hovering cloud of darkness that once seemed unimaginable in the post-Cold War era.

Hearing the booms of missile explosions and air attacks, and reports of battles that had killed both civilians and soldiers, some vowed to fight the intruders however they could. Most also realized, though, that life defying Russias overwhelming might was likely to be unsettling and treacherous.

In parts of Ukraine, people cleaned out grocery stores. They rushed the A.T.M.s to get their savings while they could. Many thousands waited in impossible lines for bus tickets or sat in their cars in monstrous traffic jams, seeking to head west, to NATO-protected lands. Others took up arms in volunteer militias or donated blood to their fellow citizens.

As Ukrainian forces waged intense battles for Kyiv, the capital, Kharkiv and other major cities, people waited to see what might come of an escalating war, Western sanctions against Russia and sputtering diplomacy. Photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations are throughout Ukraine, providing a look at a populace coping with the uncertainty and fear of a military invasion.

A Ukrainian war ship off the coast of Odessa, Ukraine.

A detainee was led out of Kyivs main train station by Ukrainian security forces as attacks against Ukrainian targets continue and Ukrainian forces battle Russian forces on the outskirts of the city.

Damage from a rocket strike at the main train station in Kyiv.

Ukrainian families scrambled to get on trains traveling west out of Kyiv toward Lviv.

Volunteers at a veterans association in Lviv helped to prepare boxes of first aid supplies to be sent to frontline areas around the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday. We have a special people, an extraordinary people, he said.

A train station in Radymno, Poland, where many refugees start their journey deeper into Poland after getting some rest at a reception center set up at a shopping mall.

Statues and monuments of cultural significance around Lviv were wrapped with foam and plastic sheeting, to protect them against possible bombardment.

Taria, 27, in her tent where she is living with her two children and other Ukrainian families below ground in a subway station. Many of them have been there for about a week as Russian and Ukrainian forces fight on the outskirts of Kyiv.

A Ukrainian mother tends to her newborn in a maternity ward in the basement of a hospital in Kyiv.

Hundreds of women and children were crammed into the tunnels of a Lviv train station as they waited to board evacuation trains out of Ukraine.

Dima Kurganov, 39, said goodbye to his wife and two children before they left on a train to Poland.

Ukrainian refugees waiting at the main hall of a train station in the small Polish village of Przemysl.

People were blessed by a priest during Mass on Ash Wednesday at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Cathedral in Lviv.

The headquarters of Moldova for Peace, a working group under the auspices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Government of the Republic of Moldova, in Chisinau. The groups volunteers are helping refugees coming from Ukraine.

The Ukrainian village of Dachne, north of Odessa, as Russian forces escalated attacks on civilian targets.

Volunteers put sandbags around the regional administration building in Vinnytsia.

Ukrainian security forces guarding Maidan Square in Kyiv.

Grigore Josan and his wife, Gheorgjina, have been hosting 11 members of a Ukrainian family for a week in Causeni, Moldova.

Steel barricades used to obstruct tanks and other armored vehicles being welded in Odessa, before being distributed throughout the city.

Volunteers cutting strips of cloth to make camouflage nets for the Ukrainian military in Vinnytsia.

Refugees from Ukraine after crossing the border in Medyka, Poland.

Tents for refugees to rest after crossing the border in Palanca, Moldova.

Refugees resting in a tent in Palanca.

Ilona Koval, center, the choreographer for the Ukrainian national figure skating team, fleeing Ukraine with her daughter, left, and a family friend.

Worshippers attending a service in the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves.

The monastery, parts of which are almost 1,000 years old, is one of the holiest sites for Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine and Russia.

Ukrainian volunteers filing into a bunker on Monday as a sirens warned of a possible incoming attack at a base in Kyiv where volunteers and security forces are readied for war.

Ukrainian volunteers getting ready for combat at a base in Kyiv where they receive rapid training in military disciplines ranging from intelligence to the use of weapons.

Daniel Shevchenko, 21, who was a coffee roaster until a few weeks ago, on guard duty at a base as other volunteers and security forces train for the fight ahead.

Nastya, 24, a Ukrainian volunteer, smoking a cigarette in a bunker at a base in Kyiv.

Ukraines former first lady, Maryna Poroshenko, serving food to Ukrainian volunteers.

Ukrainian women tending to their sick children in a basement shelter of the Okhmadet Childrens Hospital as Russian troops battle Ukrainian forces in and around Kyiv.

Tending to sick infants in the basement shelter.

Sasha Gonsharova, 38, caring for her eight-month-old son, who has anemia.

Volunteers in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, collecting and organizing supplies donated to Ukraines military and to people displaced by the Russian invasion.

Long lines of cars and trucks waiting to enter Romania from Moldova.

Civilian volunteers sorting empty bottles to be used for Molotov cocktails in a parking lot in Dnipro, Ukraine.

Civilian volunteers in Dnipro organizing and packing donations for distribution.

Loading empty bottles to be used for Molotov cocktails in Dnipro.

Volunteers filling sand bags in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine, in an effort to fortify the citys defenses.

Several hundred people who fled Ukraine huddled in small groups on Saturday at the train station in Zahony, Hungary, trying to figure out their next move.

Refugees from Lviv, Ukraine, waiting for their further journey after crossing the border in Medyka, Poland.

The Ukrainian flag is raised over a newly established checkpoint on Sunday in Hushchyntsi, Ukraine.

Local men digging a bunker and building a checkpoint at the edge of their village in Hushchyntsi.

Worshipers at morning services at St. Paraskeva Orthodox Church in Kalynivka, Ukraine.

The Sunday service in Kalynivka, in central Ukraine.

Emergency workers at the scene after a residential building was hit by missiles in Kyiv.

A burned vehicle at the scene of a fierce pre-dawn battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Kyiv.

Ukrainian emergency workers outside a residential building in Kyiv that was hit by a missile.

Ukrainian volunteers getting a briefing before being deployed to fight Russian troops in Kyiv.

A Ukrainian nurse, Iryna Salujan, drawing blood from Slava Kamshyshov, 50, as Ukrainians spent hours in line to donate blood for wounded soldiers and civilians in Kyiv.

Volunteers hand-tied camouflage netting for use by the military in Kalynivka.

An evacuee from Ukraine crying as she arrived with relatives in the Polish village of Medyka, at the border crossing with Ukraine. More than 100,000 Ukrainians had entered Poland as of Saturday.

Cars lined up for nearly two miles to pick up family members from Ukraine who had entered Poland.

An employee of the Kalynivka road service removed a road sign on Saturday. Workers around Ukraine were ordered to remove road signs to complicate navigation for Russian troops.

Svetlana Akimova, 82, on Saturday in a parking garage where she had been seeking shelter for the past day amid heavy fighting outside her apartment building in Kyiv.

Demonstrators confronting the Russian police during an antiwar protest in Moscow on Saturday.

A member of a locally organized security patrol inspecting a bus shelter while on the lookout for Russian saboteurs in Khomutyntsi, in central Ukraine.

The body of a Russian soldier next to an armored vehicle that Ukrainian soldiers said was Russian, in Kharkiv.

Ukrainian soldiers at the entrance to Kharkiv, in the shadow of huge blue and yellow letters spelling the citys name.

A Ukrainian military position outside Kharkiv.

Ukrainian emergency services officers in Kharkiv trying to remove the body of a rocket they said had been fired by Russian forces on Friday.

A residential building was hit by missiles in Kyiv on Friday.

Cleaning up debris after a residential building was struck by missiles in Kyiv.

The remnants of a downed aircraft in Kyiv.

Social media videos and news footage from Friday depicted the scope of Russias invasion of Ukraine and the toll it was taking on its citizens.

People seeking safety from bombings in subway cars and in the halls of a subway station in Kharkiv.

Ukrainians leaving the Polish village of Medyka on a minibus after crossing the Ukraine-Poland border on Friday.

Ludmyla Viytovych with her daughters Sofia and Solomea at a makeshift reception center at the train station in Przemysl, Poland. Mrs. Viytovych was traveling toward Vienna, where her family lives.

Refugees from Ukraine awaiting transportation upon their arrival in Medyka at the pedestrian border crossing.

Military volunteers loading magazines with ammunition at a weapons storage facility after the Ukrainian government announced it would arm civilians to resist the Russian invasion.

Military volunteers receiving weapons in Fastiv.

The aftermath of a strike on a military airport on Thursday in Chuguyev, near Kharkiv.

Families boarding evacuation trains in Kramatorsk on Thursday evening, bound for Kyiv and Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine.

The remnants of a munition piercing an apartment near Kharkiv.

Lining up to withdraw cash in Severodonetsk.

Video: Families fleeing Thursdays attack in Kyiv were stuck in traffic for miles on the capitals longest avenue, as they tried to escape the advancement of Russian troops.

Ukrainian military vehicles on the side of the road outside Severodonetsk.

Covering a body after bombings in Chuguiv.

Packing up belongings from an apartment to move farther from shelling in Kramatorsk.

Praying at St. Michaels Golden-Domed Monastery on Thursday in Kyiv.

Russian attacks damaged radar arrays and other equipment at a Ukrainian military site outside Mariupol.

Waiting for trains out of the city at the main station in Kramatorsk.

Dusk in Kyiv on Thursday, as Russian forces were advancing on the city.

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See Photos on the Ground in Ukraine - The New York Times

RZESZOW, Poland In the hours before dawn, as the world held its breath watching the first movements of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, the Turkish military made a last-minute dash to evacuate diplomatic staff and other citizens of Turkey from the capital, Kyiv.

Two military cargo planes entered Ukrainian airspace soon after midnight and circled down into Boryspil International Airport, the main civilian airport that lies 18 miles east of Kyiv city center.

But the planes ended up stranded. So too were their military crews, and the Turkish diplomats and citizens they were trying to evacuate. At 5 a.m., Russia unleashed the first salvos of its war on Ukraine, making any flight out impossible.

Pictures of the airport the next day, obtained from the commercial satellite imagery company Planet Labs, show two gray military cargo planes parked in the open at one side of the airport, which so far has not been a target of Russian airstrikes.

The stuck planes have now become Exhibit A of President Recep Tayyip Erdogans misreading of the Ukraine situation, opening him to criticism at home for not evacuating Turkish citizens in time, for misjudging President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and for not taking American warnings of an invasion seriously enough.

Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Putin have had a sometimes close, sometimes contentious relationship as the Turkish leader has cultivated links with Moscow partly as leverage against the West, but also out of necessity, since Turkey is being squeezed from several sides by Russia.

Turkey is a NATO member, but so much distrust has built up because of Mr. Erdogans flirtations with Russia that it was not invited into at least one of the alliances leadership-level meetings before the Russian invasion, according to Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

At the same time, Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan have in recent years found themselves on opposite sides of conflicts in Azerbaijan, Libya and Syria.

Russian troops in Syria have long threatened to press their offensive against the last rebel-held area in that country, which could force up to four million Syrians to flee into Turkey. And since 2020, the Russian military has expanded its footprint in the Caucasus region.

Now Russia looks poised to dominate the northern shores of the Black Sea with its advances in Ukraine, where Mr. Erdogan has irritated Russia by selling Turkish-made drones, some of which have been used to strike Russian armored convoys since the invasion began, according to Ukrainian officials.

Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Putin spoke on the telephone on Feb. 23, hours before the start of the invasion. Mr. Erdogan repeated his offer of mediation between Russia and Ukraine and reiterated his invitation to Mr. Putin to visit Istanbul for a meeting with Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

President Erdogan stated that he always attaches great importance to the close dialogue he established with Russian President Putin on regional issues, that they have seen the positive results of this and that he is determined to maintain this understanding, an official statement from the Turkish presidency said.

Mr. Erdogan has maintained an even tone in his public statements over the situation, describing the invasion of Ukraine as unacceptable but continuing to call for a peaceful resolution.

But there is a sense of anger in Mr. Erdogans presidential circle that Mr. Putin lied to them about his intentions in Ukraine, Ms. Aydintasbas said.

Turkey was late in taking action and evacuating its people, Ms. Aydintasbas wrote in a text message, adding, They never believed the U.S. scenario of a full-scale invasion and dismissed U.S. warnings..

March 4, 2022, 7:29 a.m. ET

I suspect Erdogan trusted his relationship with Putin and thought it would be a minor incursion, she added. Turkey also failed to evacuate its citizens based on that belief. Thats proving to be a huge miscalculation.

The situation seemed to have inspired a shift in Turkeys stance toward Russia on Sunday, when both the Turkish foreign minister and head of presidential communications described Moscows intervention against Ukraine for the first time as an act of war.

Turkey oversees access to the Black Sea through the Montreux Convention, a 1936 international treaty that regulates sea vessels passing through the Bosporus. Defining the situation as war would allow Turkey to close the Bosporus to vessels of the countries involved.

There remains a loophole for Russia, since, as one of the littoral states on the Black Sea, it can claim the movement of vessels is for them to return to their home base. Russian warships and a submarine have already passed through to the Black Sea in recent weeks and have played a part in the attack on Ukraine, but Turkeys action may complicate Russias ability to send reinforcements or resupply its forces.

Its not a game changer but its a nuisance for the Russians, Ms. Aydintasbas said. Its a nuisance not to be able to have their Mediterranean fleet go up the Bosporus to the Black Sea. The change in tone was indicative of the sentiments in Turkey, she added.

Not much is known about Turkeys decision-making process in the last hours before the outbreak of war, but it is clear that Mr. Erdogan miscalculated the speed and the severity of the Russian operation, and the urgency for an evacuation.

According to flight-tracking records, two Turkish Air Force planes landed at Kyiv, one with the code TUAF600, at 12:15 a.m. on Thursday and the second, TUAF601, at 3:43 a.m., said Justin Bronk, a research fellow for air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

A Ukrainian city falls. Russian troops gained control of Kherson,the first city to be overcome during the war. The overtaking of Kherson is significant as it allows the Russians to control more of Ukraines southern coastline and to push west toward the city of Odessa.

Two hours after the first plane landed, Ukraine announced that it was closing its airspace because of the impending Russian attack. The second Turkish plane appeared to turn back, missing its scheduled landing at 2:46 a.m., but then proceeded and landed about an hour later.

There are no flight records of the two military planes leaving in the hours after they landed, Mr. Bronk said. Both Ukraine and Russia had announced the closing of airspace by then, he noted.

The flights could have left unseen if the pilots turned off their transponders, Mr. Bronk said. But the satellite images seen by The New York Times indicate otherwise.

Turkey has been calling its citizens in Ukraine individually for the last month, urging them to leave, and is still trying to evacuate 6,600 citizens from the country, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Sunday.

A Turkish student stuck in Kharkiv, a northeastern city that has come under the most intense assault, posted on Twitter to appeal for help on Saturday.

We are a student community of 35 people in Ukraine/Kharkiv (this number is not the total number of students in Kharkiv), the student, Ahmet Kagan Gumus, wrote. 3 of us were evacuated and now we are 32. For the first time, we hear the sounds of clashes, bombardments, helicopters and jets from very close.

The predicament of Turkish citizens students, tourists and business professionals stuck in Ukraine as the war intensifies is not unique. Thousands of foreigners have been struggling to flee, including Afghan refugees, African students and employees of Western companies and embassies.

Turkey, like many other nations, is scrambling to rescue citizens who manage to travel overland out of Ukraine to neighboring countries, but the borders are clogged with tens of thousands of refugees and 20-mile tailbacks. Mr. Cavusoglu said that a Turkish Airlines plane was bringing home some who had succeeded in reaching Romania.

The Turkish defense minister, Hulusi Akar, demanded to speak to his Russian counterpart to arrange an air corridor for evacuations, Mr. Cavusoglu said. Mr. Akar did reach the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, on Sunday, according to an official Turkish statement.

But that statement made no mention of any agreement for an air corridor.

Nimet Kirac contributed reporting from Rzeszow, Poland, and Safak Timur from Istanbul.

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Ukraine Invasion Increases Friction Between Erdogan and Putin - The New York Times

WASHINGTON U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and John Kennedy (R-LA) in introducing theDeterring Communist Chinese Aggression Against Taiwan Through Financial Sanctions Actwhich would impose devastating financial sanctions on the Chinese government if Communist China invaded or blockaded Taiwan, or attempted to change the status of Taiwans governance through use of force.

The situation in Ukraine is the very real consequence of weak leadership and a lack of a true deterrence for Russia. Taiwan is a friend, good trading partner, and beacon of freedom and democracy. Our bill threatens crippling financial sanctions as a deterrence to China trying to follow in Putins footsteps as it relates to Taiwan,said Senator Cramer.

Taiwan is one of Americas most important partners in the Asia-Pacific, and its peace and stability are in our political, security, and economic interests. We have watched Communist Chinas increasingly frequent actions to harass and intimidate the Taiwanese people, through regular military encroachments and cyberattacks. We must be clear that these intimidation tactics will not be ignored. As Beijing quietly watches Putins invasion of and assault on Ukraine, America must stand strongly behind our partners in democracy and leave no ambiguity as to our resolve to condemn and punish tyrants who attack our partners. Passing this bill will make clear to General Secretary that if he mimics Putins invasion then he will be met with economic isolation and severe financial sanctions. I urge my colleagues to join me in this important work, and I hope to see this bill move swiftly through the Senate,said Senator Scott.

TheDeterring Communist Chinese Aggression Against Taiwan Through Financial Sanctions Actwould:

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Sen. Cramer, Colleagues Introduce Bill to Sanction Communist China in the Event of Taiwan Invasion - Kevin Cramer

On February 16, more than 1,500 people crowded into the town hall of Montreuil, a working-class but rapidly gentrifying suburb in eastern Paris. Wearing red surgical masks and carrying flags and banners, they were there to celebrate le dfi des jours heureux, literally meaning the challenge of happy days. Hearkening back to the National Resistance Council program that helped orient Frances reconstruction at the end of World War II, this promise of happy days provides the campaign slogan of French Communist Party (Parti communiste franais, PCF) candidate Fabien Roussel, who has in recent weeks emerged as a dark horse for Aprils presidential elections.

Speaking before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Roussel started his speech with a call for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Eastern Europe. But his focus was less on international politics than the hot-button domestic issues deindustrialization, purchasing power, inequality that he has made his calling card since officially declaring his run for the presidency in May 2021.

Here [in the Paris suburbs], successive administrations of both Left and Right have left inequalities to fester, he told the crowd of mostly party loyalists and activists. This class inequality is unacceptable. You are the real heroes of the republic, and you are essential [workers].

Polls suggest the diverse array of left-wing candidates total just over a quarter of the vote, with right-wingers seemingly the main challenge to incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Yet Roussels message seems to be resonating within this subset of the French electorate ahead of the first-round vote on April 10.

In the past month, Roussel has more than doubled his polling average from 1.9 to 4.4 percent, putting him neck-and-neck with Green Party candidate Yannick Jadot and well above Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo, whose campaign has floundered in recent weeks. If elections were held today, the PCF would likely beat the Socialists in a major political race for the first time since the 1973 legislative elections, nearly fifty years ago. This is a remarkable prospect for the Socialist Party, which held the presidency as recently as 2017.

Roussels campaign aims to reassert the once-mighty PCFs identity and reconnect with voters who have drifted away from the Left. In this sense, he has outshone other loosely progressive candidates. But his campaign also illustrates the Lefts much deeper difficulties in rallying the working-class electorate.

In Montreuil and elsewhere, Roussel has presented his platform as Roussellement the opposite of ruissellement, or trickle-down economics. The challenge of returning to happy days also a reference to FDRs New Deal campaign anthem is emblematic of the PCFs project of reconnecting with working-class voters who have increasingly abstained or moved to the far right.

Seeking to illustrate his down-to-earth, bread-and-butter campaign, Roussel has highlighted the importance of good meat, good wine, good cheese made in France a not-so-subtle jab at other left-wing forces, repeated in campaign stops over the past several months.

Roussels campaign has gotten a boost from this straight-talking nature, campaign manager Ian Brossat himself Pariss deputy mayor in charge of housing told Jacobin in a phone interview. A presidential election is of course about a political program, but its also about a candidate, Brossat said. Undeniably, Fabien Roussels personality has helped us to rise in the polls. He is sincere, he is frank, he speaks clearly.

In a divided left where just 25 percent of the overall vote is split among five candidates, both Roussel and Brossat highlighted the need to bring new voters into the fold. This is also about reinvigorating the PCF: it opted not to run its own candidate in 2012 or 2017, which in turn reduced its visibility on the national scale. Yet the party is still struggling to appeal to a working class that has drastically changed and faces accusations of further dividing the Left. In Montreuil, Roussel rejected this idea: My candidacy does not aim to take away votes from other left-wing and green candidates, but to win new ones, he emphasized.

Party members who spoke with Jacobin after the event felt that after years of infighting and reduced national visibility, the party had begun to chart a new course. Now that hes starting to carry some weight [on a national level], its bringing the party together, Julien, a thirty-nine-year-old railway worker from neighboring Drancy and member of the General Confederation of Labor (Confdration Gnrale du Travail, CGT) union, told Jacobin. Its been given a new lease of life.

Like many communist parties, the PCF which celebrated its centenary at the end of 2020 once played a key role in national and local politics, even briefly becoming the countrys biggest political force in the 1940s following the liberation from German occupation.

It was not simply a political party, it was a galaxy of organizations that included unions, associations, and the cultural world, Roger Martelli, a historian and author of multiple works on the French Communist Party, told Jacobin. It was this galaxy that allowed the Communist Party to establish itself, notably in urban peripheries, and which made it an unquestionable national force.

Over the next forty years, however, deindustrialization, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the failure to integrate a growing immigrant population into the partys political project all contributed to the PCFs decline a reversal that was particularly pronounced in national elections. By 1986, fewer than one in ten French voters cast their ballot for the PCF, down from nearly one in three during the partys postwar heyday.

But while Communist Parties in neighboring countries crumbled completely, in France, a combination of alliance-building and strong local activist networks in municipal strongholds like Marseille and the Paris suburbs forming what was once known as the Red Belt around the capital kept the party alive.

According to Martelli, the PCF nonetheless never succeeded or even refused to transform itself to meet the demands of a new working class. The Communist Party, little by little, lost its usefulness, Martelli said. And more recently, this party has seen itself facing competition from other forces.

By the start of the 1980s, the PCF facing already-waning membership was at best a junior partner to the Socialist Party and its leader Franois Mitterrand, whose rule from 1981 to 1996 made him the Fifth Republics longest-serving president. The party largely failed to impose its agenda on Mitterrands first government and by the end of his rule found itself challenged on opposite sides from Trotskyists on the Left to Jean-Marie Le Pens Front National on the far right. In 2002, the PCF failed to win 1 million votes for the first time in seventy years, scoring barely 3 percent of the vote.

But it was the emergence of La France Insoumise (LFI) in 2016 that nearly sounded the PCFs death knell.

Founded by Jean-Luc Mlenchon, a former Socialist Party senator from Marseille, LFI took the French left by storm in the 2017 elections. Its near20 percent of first-round votes were not enough to make it to the runoff but made it a real force on the national level. Much like Roussel today, back then Mlenchon ran on a platform which targeted fchs mais pas fachos angry, not fascist working-class voters who have either started backing far-right candidates or stopped voting altogether. In 2012 and 2017, the PCF backed Mlenchons presidential bids despite disagreements on key subjects including nuclear energy and public security.

But in 2018, the PCF changed tack. Frustrated by what they saw as Mlenchons high-handedness and disdain for the Communists, as well as the Lefts failure to win local races despite broad coalitions, the party elected Roussel as the new national secretary and decided to run an independent campaign.

The PCF judged that [it] had retreated because it had not publicly affirmed its identity enough, Martelli concluded.

For members of Roussels campaign, staying relevant on a national level was more important than joining a coalition of leftists with little chance of winning in the second round, such as Mlenchon, Hidalgo, Jadot, and Christiane Taubira, flagging in polls despite winning a popular primary widely seen as designed to launch her into the race.

The Left is [totaling] 25 percent, and people dont have much hope because they say they will never win, said Haby Ka, a twenty-four-year-old political science student from Montreuil and a member of PCF since 2014.

I think it is the clarity of [Roussels] campaign and the fact that he started campaigning well before [the other candidates], with a real program and without worrying about the popular primary on the Left, that allowed [him] to stand out, she added.

The PCFs recent rise in the polls has chipped away at the momentum of Mlenchons 2022 campaign. According to the Journal du Dimanche, between 7 and 13 percent of Roussels current prospective supporters are former Mlenchon voters. Yet in 2017 an even higher percentage of Roussels voter base supported Socialist candidate Benot Hamon, who has since left politics.

Members of Mlenchons party have criticized Roussel for further dividing the left in the lead-up to Aprils elections.

I regret that Fabien Roussel is more busy distinguishing himself at all costs than thinking about the popular bloc that we embodied together in 2012 and 2017 qualifying for the second round, Adrien Quatennens, who is also director of Mlenchons campaign, tweeted on February 16. If we add up Mlenchons 11-13 percent and his 3-4 percent, we are [in the second round], commented the LFI MP.

Brossat disagreed with this, telling Jacobin that on many issues LFI and the PCF were not aligned.

We dont say the same thing on every subject, Brossat said. On nuclear energy, on security, we dont have the same proposals, and moreover, I dont think we are talking to the same electorate.

Christian Louis, a fifty-three-year-old former train driver from the Nivre region in central France, told Jacobin that after twice voting for Mlenchon, he plans to vote for Roussel this time. He speaks like us, and I have confidence in him, Louis said, adding that he met Roussel in-person at a union event in 2019 and felt like he was close to [the people.]

While Louis voted (and campaigned) for Mlenchon in 2012 and 2017, he said that at least some of his union colleagues and friends had abstained from voting and would not vote for LFI in 2022, even against a right-wing candidate. He had two chances, Louis said of Mlenchon. That didnt do too much to change our daily lives.

In Montreuil, Roussel highlighted his campaigns positive outlook. Everyone, he said, has a right to happiness, a right to respect, adding, We need to speak to those who arent voting.

Brossat echoed this: We want to address people who may have voted left in the past and who have moved either to abstention or even to the extreme right.

Yet early polls show that Roussels campaign, paradoxically, seems to appeal to white-collar workers rather than blue-collar ones. In one poll, 5 percent of white-collar respondents said they intended to vote for Roussel versus just 2 percent of blue-collar ones. According to that same polling institute, the French Institute of Public Opinion (Institut franais dopinion publique, IFOP), in another sample, 9 percent of chefs dentreprise, a category that includes everything from small business owners to CEOs, intended to vote for Roussel.

Were not talking about the same working class who once voted for the Left and who today vote for the RN, but a new generation of workers who have replaced their parents, who have the same jobs, the same trade, but who work in a world that is radically different,

said Florent Gougou, who studies the working-class vote in France. I doubt that we can expect much from the Communist Party in this election.

Despite his intentions to renew the party, Roussels voting bloc still skews old and white, polls show. The candidate, famous for his brusqueness, has also come under fire from various parts of the Left and even his own party for his off-the-cuff comments.

In June 2021, Roussel told a journalist that if migrants dont have a reason to stay on French soil, then they have a reason to go back to where they came from. The comment came the month after Roussel had been criticized by others on the Left for attending a police union protest, a gaffe that one party member considered to have serious consequences, not only for the campaign, but also for the future and perhaps the very existence of the PCF.

In February of this year, after Roussels now-infamous rant on the merits of eating meat went viral on Twitter, French-Algerian militant journalist Taha Bouhafs wrote that Roussels classism in this extract is just alarming. Roussel was later backed up by a column in none other than Le Figaro one of Frances most conservative newspapers in which essayist Cline Pina wrote that the PCF candidate was under attack from the woke left that loves to point fingers but doesnt care about social justice.

On February 20, the French investigative news outlet Mediapart accused Roussel of occupying a fictitious job as a parliamentary assistant at the French National Assembly between 2009 and 2014 a scandal that could slow his momentum and perhaps even further shake up the Left, as a similar accusation did for the Right in 2017.

Despite the controversies, Martelli, who spoke to Jacobin before the Mediapart article appeared, said that he believes Roussel has a genuine desire to go back to the fundamentals and stop the erosion of the working-class vote toward the extreme right.

He does it through a pugnacious style that obviously works well, Martelli said. Will he succeed? We will know in a few weeks.

Link:
France's Once-Mighty Communist Party Is Struggling to Find Its Voice - Jacobin magazine