Archive for the ‘Ukraine’ Category

US Troops in Poland Prepare for Arrival of Refugees From Ukraine – The New York Times

U.S. Army troops are preparing to move closer to Polands border with Ukraine to help process people fleeing the country after Russia launched an all-out assault, an Army spokesman said on Thursday, as Poland said it was ready to provide shelter to anyone fleeing the conflict.

Many of the 5,500 troops who arrived in Poland this month have been working with Polish forces to set up three processing centers near the border to help deal with tens of thousands of people, including Americans, who are expected to flee neighboring Ukraine.

American officials have estimated that a nationwide attack on Ukraine could result in one million to five million refugees, with many of them going to Poland. That could lead to the largest arrival of refugees in Europe since more than one million migrants and refugees arrived in 2015, a dynamic that had a profound effect on European politics by bolstering far-right parties.

Until Thursday, officials had seen barely a trickle of people come through the sites. But the flow is expected to grow as the conflict intensifies and expands.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said that U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine or rescue Americans trapped there by a Russian attack. But American commanders and their counterparts in Poland have been preparing parts of several Polish facilities for possible evacuees.

In Jasionka, Poland, an indoor arena has been outfitted with bunk beds and supplies for up to 500 people, and U.S. officials say that capacity could be quickly expanded.

Polands border is open and the country is ready to host refugees from Ukraine, the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, told reporters on Thursday. Eight reception points where people fleeing Ukraine can seek food, medical assistance and information are already operational. Authorities said they were ready to transport refugees from those to other regions as needed.

We have been preparing for several weeks for a wave of refugees that might occur, Mr. Kaminski said. We will do everything to provide safe shelter in Poland for everyone who needs it.

Polands defense ministry introduced a higher alert level on Thursday, requiring soldiers from operational and territorial defense forces to stay in their units. All leave and business trips were canceled.

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US Troops in Poland Prepare for Arrival of Refugees From Ukraine - The New York Times

In Ukraine Crisis, the Looming Threat of a New Cold War – The New York Times

MOSCOW Vladimir Pozner was an English-language Soviet propaganda editor in Moscow in 1962, a job that gave him rare access to American newspapers and magazines. That allowed him to follow the Cuban Missile Crisis outside the Soviet media filter, and sense a world at the brink of war.

Mr. Pozner, a longtime Russian television journalist, says he now feels something similar.

The smell of war is very strong, he said in an interview on Friday, a day when shelling intensified along the front line in eastern Ukraine. If we talk about the relationship between Russia and the West and in particular, the United States I feel that it is as bad as it was at any time in the Cold War, and perhaps, in a certain sense, even worse.

Unlike 1962, it is not the threat of nuclear war but of a major land war that now looms over Europe. But the feeling that Russia and the United States are entering a new version of the Cold War long posited by some commentators on both sides of the Atlantic has become inescapable.

President Biden hinted at it on Tuesday in the East Room of the White House, pledging that if Russia invaded Ukraine, we will rally the world to oppose its aggression. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia drove the matter home on Saturday, when he oversaw a test launch of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles that can evade American defenses.

We are entering a new stage of confrontation, said Dmitry Suslov, an international relations specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. After this crisis, we will naturally be much more explicit and open in acknowledging that we are enemies, we are adversaries, with all the ensuing consequences.

For now, no one knows just how the world will emerge from the crisis whether Mr. Putin is staging an elaborate, expensive bluff or is truly on the verge of launching the biggest military offensive in Europe since 1945. But it does appear clear that Mr. Putins overarching aim is to revise the outcome of the original Cold War, even if it is at the cost of deepening a new one.

Mr. Putin is seeking to undo a European security order created when his country was weak and vulnerable after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and to recreate the sort of geopolitical buffer zone that Russian rulers over the centuries have felt they needed. He is signaling that he is prepared to accomplish this by diplomatic means, but also through the use of force.

The crisis has already brought Mr. Putin some tactical wins as well as perilous risks. Since first mounting a threatening troop buildup on Ukraines borders last spring, he has managed to seize Washingtons attention a goal for a Kremlin that, as in the Cold War, sees confrontation with the United States as its defining conflict. But his actions have also spurred anti-Russian attitudes and further united Europe and the United States against Russia something that should worry the Kremlin given the Wests still-far-greater global economic and political might.

Daniel Fried, a retired American diplomat who dealt with Moscow both during the Soviet era and the Putin era, said he had a message for Russians who long for the Cold War days when their country, in their telling, was respected by the United States. After all, the Soviet Union lost the original Cold War.

You may just get that back, Mr. Fried said in an interview. And it will not go well for you.

Unlike the Soviets, Mr. Putin is not trying to wage a global ideological struggle, nor is he for now bankrupting his country in a costly arms race. Russia is far more intertwined in the global economy, a reality that some still hope will help the world avoid as deep and long a confrontation between East and West. And to the United States, it is China not Russia that now looms as the more serious strategic adversary in the long term.

But to Mr. Putin, the fight to roll back his countrys defeat in the original Cold War has already lasted at least 15 years. He declared his rejection of an America-led world order in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, warning of unexploded ordnance left behind from the Cold War: ideological stereotypes and double standards that allowed Washington to rule the world while crimping Russias development.

Feb. 24, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

This weekend, in one of the many ominous developments of recent days, Russia is skipping the Munich conference an annual meeting at which Western officials have been able to sit down with their Russian counterparts throughout the prior tensions of Mr. Putins rule.

Instead, the Kremlin released footage of Mr. Putin in the Kremlins situation room, directing test launches of its modernized arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles from bombers, submarines and land-based launchers. It was a carefully timed reminder that, as Russian television recently told viewers, the country can turn American cities into radioactive ash.

And Mr. Putin has massed a monumental force to Ukraines north, east and south in order to signal that the Kremlin sees the former Soviet republics pro-Western shift as such a dire threat that it is willing to fight a war to stop it. The confrontation in some ways evokes the Berlin crisis of 1961, when the Soviets demanded that Western forces leave Berlin, and East Germany eventually built the wall that divided East and West. To some Russians, the fact that Ukraine is much closer to Russia than Berlin is what makes the new Cold War even more dangerous.

Back then, the frontier ran through Berlin, said Mr. Suslov, the Moscow analyst. Now the frontier goes through Kharkiv a Ukrainian city on the Russian border that is a days drive from Moscow.

The Cold War may also offer parallels for what could happen within Russia in the event of war. Analysts predict an even more authoritarian swing by the Kremlin, and an even more ruthless hunt for internal enemies purportedly sponsored by the West. Mr. Pozner, a state television host who was born in Paris, grew up in part in New York and moved to Moscow in 1952, posited that Russias foes in the West could even be quietly hoping for war because it could weaken and discredit the country.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

Im very worried, Mr. Pozner said. A Russian invasion of Ukraine is a catastrophe for Russia, first and foremost, in the sense of Russias reputation and whats going to go on inside Russia as a result.

Some Russian analysts think Mr. Putin could still de-escalate the crisis and walk away with a tactical victory. The threat of war has started a discussion in Ukraine and in the West about the idea that Kyiv may disavow NATO membership. And the United States has already offered talks on a number of initiatives that Moscow is interested in, including on the placement of missiles in Europe and on limiting long-range bomber flights.

But Mr. Putin is making clear he wants more than that: a wide-ranging, legally binding agreement to unwind the NATO presence in Eastern Europe.

The intensity of the crisis that Mr. Putin has engineered is evident in the harsh language that the Kremlin has deployed. Standing this month alongside President Emmanuel Macron of France at the Kremlin, Mr. Putin said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had no choice but to carry out a 2015 peace plan that Russia was pushing: You may like it, you may not like it deal with it, my gorgeous. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in a joint news conference with his visiting British counterpart, Liz Truss, said their discussion had resembled that of a mute person with a deaf person.

Sometimes discussions were rather heated between Soviet and American leaders, said Pavel Palazhchenko, a former Soviet diplomat. But probably not to that extent and not as publicly as now. There is really no parallel.

Mr. Palazhchenko, who translated for the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in his summits with American presidents, describes that language as an outgrowth of a Russian frustration with the countrys security concerns being ignored. During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow came together over landmark arms control agreements. During the Putin era, little of that has happened.

This is a clear emotional and psychological reaction to the years and even decades of the West and the U.S. being rather dismissive of Russian security concerns, Mr. Palazhchenko said.

Doug Lute, a former American ambassador to NATO, rejects the notion of past disrespect for Russian interests, especially given that Russias nuclear arsenal is the only existential threat to the United States in the world. But like Mr. Palazhchenko, he also sees lessons in the Cold War for emerging from the current crisis.

It may be that we settle into a period where we have dramatically different worldviews or dramatically different ambitions but even despite that political contest, theres space to do things in our mutual interest, Mr. Lute said. The Cold War could be a model for competing and cooperating at the same time.

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In Ukraine Crisis, the Looming Threat of a New Cold War - The New York Times

Ukraine’s musicians reject Russia and assert their Ukrainian identity – NPR

Taras Shevchenko (left) and Kateryna Pavlenko from the band Go_A sing exclusively in Ukrainian and represented Ukraine on the main stage in 2021 at Eurovision, the popular European song contest. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

Taras Shevchenko (left) and Kateryna Pavlenko from the band Go_A sing exclusively in Ukrainian and represented Ukraine on the main stage in 2021 at Eurovision, the popular European song contest.

KYIV, Ukraine Anton Slepakov, a Ukrainian electronic musician, used to spend a lot of time recording music in Russia. That was back when he used to sing exclusively in Russian with his former band.

It made business sense. Bigger, richer Russia offered Ukrainian musicians more lucrative gigs, and singing in Russian attracted a deeper pool of fans.

"It didn't bother anyone," says Slepakov, now the lead singer of an underground electronic band called Vagonovozhatye, Russian for "tram drivers."

All that changed after 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and fueled a separatist rebellion in Donetsk and Luhansk, in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. That sparked an eight-year war that escalated this week, as Russia sent in troops and asserted the region's independence from Ukraine in an attempt to tear off that part of the country.

In 2014, "We were in talks to play in this very cool Russian club, Chinese Pilot," says the 49-year-old Kyiv-born musician, who wears a screw for an earring. "But during the negotiations, Russia's aggression in Donbas began, and we as a band decided we cannot tour in Russia."

The band backed out of the Moscow gig and has refused to set foot in Russia ever since.

Slepakov has joined many of his fellow Ukrainian artists in a cultural boycott of Russia, part of a national project to assert their country's identity as separate from its heavyweight neighbor. It's a response to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long claimed Ukraine has no separate national identity of its own and seeks to reassert Russian influence there.

Ukrainian electronic musician Anton Slepakov used to sing exclusively in Russian. That changed after 2014, when Russia fueled a separatist rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

Ukrainian electronic musician Anton Slepakov used to sing exclusively in Russian. That changed after 2014, when Russia fueled a separatist rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

"Modern Ukraine was completely created by Russia," Putin said Monday in an angry speech on Russian state TV.

Slepakov has been vocal in opposing Russia's occupation of Crimea and Donbas. As a result, he recently avoided a flight with a layover in St. Petersburg on his way to play a concert in Finland, fearing possible detention by Russian airport authorities.

He has also given up writing songs in Russian. His lyrics now are exclusively in Ukrainian. The first Ukrainian song he wrote is titled "Where Are You From" a reference to Ukrainians' soul-searching as they reshape their national identity in relation to Russia.

Some Ukrainian artists continue touring in Russia, but many turn down tempting offers from Russian venues on principle.

"You can't measure everything in money," Slepakov says.

Russia falsely claims Ukraine is oppressing native Russian speakers. Ukrainians say they're trying to build a national identity.

Guitarist Vitaly Abramov (left) plays for tips in downtown Kyiv. He sings in both Russian and Ukrainian. Daniel Estrin/NPR hide caption

Guitarist Vitaly Abramov (left) plays for tips in downtown Kyiv. He sings in both Russian and Ukrainian.

For centuries, under the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union, Ukrainian was stereotyped as a language of peasants. Russian was promoted as the language of culture.

"We have this thing we call inferiority complex," says Taras Shevchenko, keyboardist and percussionist with Ukrainian electronica-folk band Go_A. "People [who] even didn't hear Ukrainian music, they already think that it's bad and it's not interesting and it's not worth listening to."

Though Russian and Ukrainian share most of the same letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and a lot of vocabulary, they are distinct languages with only about 60% similarity akin to the similarity between English and Dutch, linguists say.

Unlike English and Dutch, many Ukrainians speak Russian and Ukrainian interchangeably. But legislation prioritizes Ukrainian in public life. In January, by law, all print media switched to publishing in Ukrainian. Russian isn't banned, though publications must also issue equal versions in Ukrainian.

In 2016, legislation dictated that 35% of music on the radio must be in Ukrainian. The law increased popular demand for pop music in Ukrainian.

"I just love this language. This language makes me proud to be Ukrainian," says Go_A musician Shevchenko, who shares his name with Ukraine's 19th century national poet, Taras Shevchenko.

Go_A, which sings exclusively in Ukrainian, represented Ukraine on the main stage last year at Eurovision, the popular European song contest. It was the country's first performance at the competition to be sung entirely in Ukrainian.

The band performed "SHUM," which means "noise" and refers to a traditional springtime folk song of the northern Ukrainian region where Go_A's lead singer grew up. It's also where Chernobyl, the site of a catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident, is located.

"Oh spring song, spring song, where have you spent your winter?" "SHUM" begins.

The nuclear disaster forced residents to abandon their homes, and the band wants to promote the ancient folk music tradition that disappeared in Chernobyl after they left.

"We have our unique culture and our unique traditions, and Chernobyl, it's not only about the catastrophe. It's about people, it's about people's lives," says Go_A's lead singer, Kateryna Pavlenko.

Their Eurovision performance placed fifth and was the runner-up for audience favorite. It has since become a Ukrainian favorite. A street musician played "SHUM" on his flute one recent afternoon in a Kyiv subway station.

Despite the tensions with Russia, Pavlenko says she still receives fan mail from there.

Eurovision has become a litmus test as Ukraine tries to assert its own culture. Ukraine's state broadcaster, which oversees the nation's musical entry, rules that contestants must swear off performing in Russia.

In 2019, Ukraine's Eurovision contestant Anna Korsun, known by her stage name Maruv, defended touring in Russia "Performing concerts is my way of bringing peace," she said but it sparked controversy and she dropped out of the competition. Ukraine sent no one to the contest that year.

Last week, Alina Pash, Ukraine's pick for this year's competition, also withdrew after word got out that she had performed in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Other Ukrainian musicians, though, see no contradiction between their Ukrainian identity and their embrace of Russian language and music.

Close to midnight one recent night on a snowy pedestrian avenue in downtown Kyiv, guitarist Vitaly Abramov played for tips, belting out an old Russian song from the Soviet era about the comfort of a pack of cigarettes.

He was displaced from his hometown in Ukraine's east after it was occupied by Russian-backed separatists in 2014. But he shrugged about singing in Russian on the eve of a potential new Russian attack.

"If you talk Russian, it doesn't mean that you think you are Russian," Abramov said.

His next song, a love ballad, was in Ukrainian.

Jonaki Mehta contributed to this report from Kyiv.

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Ukraine's musicians reject Russia and assert their Ukrainian identity - NPR

For Ukraines Jews, the Threat of War Stirs Memories of Past Horrors – The New York Times

Military officials and analysts agree that any large-scale military action against Ukraine is likely to begin in the east, yet Odessa would present a clear target. It is home to the countrys largest ports and is the headquarters of Ukraines Navy. It is flanked by Russian-occupied Crimea to its east and the Russian-backed separatist enclave of Transnistria, in Moldova, to its west, a region along Ukraines Black Sea coast that Mr. Putin has referred to using the czarist-era name, Novorossiya, or New Russia.

Odessa also sits just a few hundred miles from where Russian naval forces have been carrying out massive military exercises in the Black Sea, and some ships are close enough to reach the city in a matter of hours.

Like the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Odessa was the site of a pro-Russian separatist uprising in 2014 that sought to create an independent state. Unlike the eastern territories, the independence movement was quashed after a series of pitched street battles pitting the separatists against Ukrainian nationalists and soccer hooligans, which culminated in the torching of a trade union building on the outskirts of Odessa. At least 40 pro-Russian activists were killed.

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not entirely straightforward for the Jews. Particularly in Odessa, most Jews, as well as much of the city, speak Russian rather than Ukrainian, while many Jews have family and congregational ties that stretch across borders. But while some expressed annoyance at the Kyiv governments recent efforts to enforce laws requiring that the Ukrainian language be used in official settings, they dismissed the idea, repeated often by Mr. Putin and his subordinates, that Russian speakers, Jews or others, might need rescuing by Russian forces.

Pavel Kozlenko, the director of the Museum of the Holocaust, who lost 50 members of his family at the hands of the Nazis and their allies, accused Mr. Putin of betraying the memory of the common victory of World War II. Then he told a joke, as Odessans often do in dark times, about two Jews standing on the street speaking in Yiddish.

A third comes up and says, Guys, why are you speaking in Yiddish? Mr. Kozlenko said, to which one of the Yiddish-speaking men replied, You know, Im scared to speak in Russian because if I do Putin will show up and try to liberate us.

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For Ukraines Jews, the Threat of War Stirs Memories of Past Horrors - The New York Times

Russian Conflict in Ukraine is Reshaping the Climate Debate – The New York Times

It was only three months ago that world leaders met at the Glasgow climate summit and made ambitious pledges to reduce fossil fuel use. The perils of a warming planet are no less calamitous now, but the debate about the critically important transition to renewable energy has taken a back seat to energy security as Russia Europes largest energy supplier threatens to start a major confrontation with the West over Ukraine while oil prices are climbing toward $100 a barrel.

For more than a decade, policy discussions in Europe and beyond about cutting back on gas, oil and coal emphasized safety and the environment, at the expense of financial and economic considerations, said Lucia van Geuns, a strategic energy adviser at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies. Now, its the reverse.

Gas prices became very high, and all of a sudden security of supply and price became the main subject of public debate, she said.

The renewed emphasis on energy independence and national security may encourage policymakers to backslide on efforts to decrease the use of fossil fuels that pump deadly greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Already, skyrocketing prices have spurred additional production and consumption of fuels that contribute to global warming. Coal imports to the European Union in January rose more than 56 percent from the previous year.

In Britain, the Coal Authority gave a mine in Wales permission last month to increase output by 40 million tons over the next two decades. In Australia, there are plans to open or expand more coking coal mines. And China, which has traditionally made energy security a priority, has further stepped up its coal production and approved three new billion-dollar coal mines this week.

Get your rig count up, Jennifer Granholm, the U.S. energy secretary, said in December, urging American oil producers to raise their output. Shale companies in Oklahoma, Colorado and other states are looking to resurrect drilling that had ceased because there is suddenly money to be made. And this month, Exxon Mobil announced plans to increase spending on new oil wells and other projects.

Ian Goldin, a professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford, warned that high energy prices could lead to more exploration of traditional fossil fuels. Governments will want to deprioritize renewables and sustainables, which would be exactly the wrong response, he said.

Europes transition to sustainable energy has always been an intricate calculus, requiring it to back away from the dirtiest fossil fuel like coal, while still working with gas and oil producers to power homes, cars and factories until better alternatives are available.

For Germany, dependency on Russian gas has been an integral part of its environmental blueprint for many years. Plans for the first direct pipeline between the two countries, Nord Stream 1, started in 1997. A leader in the push to reduce carbon emissions, Berlin has moved to shutter coal mines and nuclear power plants, after the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. The idea was that Russian gas would supply the needed fuel during the yearslong transition to cleaner energy sources. Two-thirds of the gas Germany burned last year came from Russia.

Future plans called for even more gas to be delivered through Nord Stream 2, a new 746-mile pipeline under the Baltic Sea that directly links Russia to northeastern Germany.

On Tuesday, after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia recognized two breakaway republics in Ukraine and mobilized forces, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany halted final regulatory review of the $11 billion pipeline, which was completed last year.

I dont think the threat from Russia is outweighing the threat of climate change, and I dont see coal mines opening up across Europe, said James Nixey, director of the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House, a research organization in London.

Certainly, the path of energy transition has never been clear. Five climate summits have taken place over the past 30 years, and progress has always fallen short. This latest setback may just be the latest in a long series of halfway measures and setbacks.

Still, without a more comprehensive strategy to wean itself off gas, Europe wont be able to accomplish its goal of reducing emissions 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, or to reach the Glasgow summits target of cutting net greenhouse gases to zero by 2050.

As Mr. Nixey acknowledged, this debate is changing as leaders are forced to acknowledge the downsides of dependency on Russian energy.

A rising concern. Russias attack on Ukraine could cause dizzying spikes in prices for energyand food and could spook investors. Theeconomic damage from supply disruptions and economic sanctions would be severe in some countries and industries and unnoticed in others.

The cost of energy. Oil prices already are the highest since 2014, and they have risen as the conflict has escalated. Russia is the third-largest producer of oil, providing roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes.

Gas supplies. Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.

Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the worlds largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.

Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctionsdesigned to restrict Russias access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.

Even in Germany, where the progressive Greens have gained a more influential voice in the government, there has been a shift in tone.

This month, Robert Habeck, Germanys new minister for the economy and climate change and a member of the Greens, said events had underscored the need to diversify supplies. We need to act here and secure ourselves better, he said. If we dont, we will become a pawn in the game.

Energy prices started to climb before Mr. Putin began massing troops on Ukraines eastern border, as countries emerged from pandemic closures and demand shot up.

But as Mr. Putin moved aggressively against Ukraine and energy prices soared further, the political and strategic vulnerabilities presented by Russias control of so much of Europes supply took center stage.

Europe is quite dependent on Russian gas and oil, and this is unsustainable, said Sarah E. Mendelson, the head of Carnegie Mellons Heinz College in Washington. She added that the United States and its European allies had not focused enough on energy independence in recent years.

Overall, Europe gets more than a third of its natural gas and 25 percent of its oil from Russia. Deliveries have slowed significantly in recent months, while reserves in Europe have fallen to just 31 percent of capacity.

For critics of the European Unions climate policies, the sudden focus away from greenhouse gas emissions and on existing fuel reserves is validating.

Arkadiusz Siekaniec, vice president of the Trade Union of Miners in Poland, has long argued that the European Unions push to end coal production on the continent was folly. But now he hopes that others may come around to his point of view.

The climate policy is a suicidal mission that could leave the entire region overly dependent on Russian fuel, Mr. Siekaniec said last week as American troops landed in his country. It threatens the economy as well as the citizens of Europe and Poland.

For Mateusz Garus, a blacksmith at Jankowice, a coal mine in Upper Silesia, the heart of coal country, politics and not climate change are driving policy. We will destroy the power sector, he said, and we will be dependent on others like Russia.

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Russian Conflict in Ukraine is Reshaping the Climate Debate - The New York Times