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Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya raises his phone and shakes it toward the Russian representative, imploring him to call off the war. Screen shot/C-SPAN hide caption

Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya raises his phone and shakes it toward the Russian representative, imploring him to call off the war.

Moments after Russia announced the invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian representative to the United Nations launched an intense, last-ditch call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York Wednesday night, Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya held up his smartphone and shook it toward his Russian counterpart, demanding he put an end the invasion right then and there.

"Call Putin, call [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov to stop aggression," Kyslytsya implored in his speech fully in English (full text below). And at the end of his address, he warned: "There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, Ambassador."

Russia happens to hold the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council, so its ambassador to the U.N., Vassily Nebenzia, was chairing over a litany of charged speeches by member states against Russia.

Kyslytsya said Nebenzia should hand the Security Council presidency over to a "legitimate member."

Here is the full text of the Ukrainian ambassador's Wednesday night address at the U.N. Security Council.

Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya: Distinguished members of the Security Council, Secretary-General, Undersecretary,

Before I try to deliver parts of the statement that I came here with tonight most of it is already useless, since 10 p.m. New York time I would like to cite Article 4 of the U.N. Charter. And it says:

Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

Russia is not able to carry out any of the obligations. The ambassador of the Russian Federation three minutes ago confirmed that his president declared a war on my country. So before I read parts of my statement, I would like to avail the presence of the secretary-general and request the secretary-general to distribute among the members of the Security Council and the members of the General Assembly the legal memos by the legal council of the United Nations dated December 1991, and in particular, the legal memo dated 19th of December, 1991. The one that we've been trying to get out of the secretariat for a very long time and were denied to get it.

The Article 4, paragraph 2 of the charter reads:

The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

Mr. Secretary-General, please instruct the secretariat to distribute among the members of the Security Council and the members of the General Assembly a decision by the Security Council dated December 1991 that recommends that the Russian Federation can be a member of this organization, as well as a decision by the General Assembly dated December 1991 where the General Assembly welcomes the Russian Federation to this organization.

It would be a miracle if the secretariat is able to produce such decisions.

There is nothing in the Charter of the United Nations about continuity, as a sneaky way to get into the organization.

So when I was coming here an hour ago or so, I was intending to ask the Russian ambassador to confirm, on the record, that the Russian troops will not start firing at Ukrainians today and go ahead with the offensive. It became useless 48 minutes. Because about 48 minutes ago, your president declared war on Ukraine.

So now I would like to ask the ambassador of the Russian Federation to say on the record that at this very moment your troops do not shell and bomb Ukrainian cities, that your troops do not move in the territory of Ukraine.

You have a smartphone, you can call Lavrov right now. We can make a pause to let you go out and call him.

If you are not in a position to give an affirmative answer, the Russian Federation ought to relinquish responsibilities of the president of the Security Council, pass these responsibilities of a legitimate member of the Security Council, a member that is respectful of the charter. And I ask the members of the Security Council to convene an emergency meeting immediately and consider all necessary draft decisions to stop the war.

You declared the war. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war.

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N.

Because it's too late, my dear colleagues, to speak about de-escalation. Too late. The Russian declared the war on the record.

(He raises his smartphone and shakes it, gesturing toward the Russian ambassador.)

Should I play the video of your president? Ambassador, shall I do that right now? You can confirm it.

(The Russian ambassador begins to speak to answer him.)

Do not interrupt me, please. Thank you.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia: Then don't ask me questions when you are speaking. Proceed with your statement.

Kyslytsya: Anyway. You declared the war. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war. So I call on every one of you to do everything possible to stop the war.

Or should I play the video with your president declaring the war?

Thank you very much.

Nebenzia: I must say that I thank the representative of Ukraine for his statement and questions I wasn't planning to answer them, because I've already said all I know at this point. Waking up Minister Lavrov at this time is not something I plan to do. He said the information that we have will be something we provide.

(Later in the meeting)

Kyslytsya: Well as I said, relinquish your duties as the chair. Call Putin, call Lavrov to stop aggression. And I welcome the decision of some members of this council to meet as soon as possible to consider the necessary decision that would condemn the aggression that you will launch on my people. There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell. Ambassador.

Nebenzia: I wanted to say in conclusion that we aren't being aggressive against the Ukrainian people, but against the junta that is in power in Kyiv.

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Read the impassioned plea from Ukraine's U.N. ambassador to Russia to stop the war - NPR

Ive also spoken with Defense Secretary [Lloyd] Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. [Mark] Milley about preparations for additional moves, should they become necessary to protect our NATO allies and support the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, NATO, he said.

Biden added that troops wont be going to Ukraine and be engaged in the conflict, but instead will be sent to reassure NATO allies.

The move came as the U.S. and its allies imposed a range of sanctions on the Russian economy and banking system, and as Russian troops pressed the fight in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon Thursday, a senior DoD official said Moscows ultimate goal in invading Ukraine is decapitating the government and installing a Russian-backed government in Kyiv, a senior U.S. Defense Department official said Thursday.

In a multi-pronged assault that began just before dawn, Russian forces launched over 100 ballistic missiles at military targets, including airfields and ammunition depots, across the country.

Ground forces and aircraft have also breached Ukraines borders from the east near the city of Kharkiv, the south around Odessa, and the north from Belarus, an assault that included airstrikes and helicopter assaults.

In response, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday gave the authority for U.S. Gen. Tod Wolters, NATOs Supreme Allied Commander Europe, to call up the 40,000-strong NATO Response Force.

A NATO official told POLITICO that Wolters has not yet decided to call up the force, which would trigger the activation of 8,500 additional U.S. troops to join the larger unit. Wolters wanted the authority early in order to move quickly once he saw the need to activate and deploy the force.

In a speech in Brussels, Stoltenberg said the alliance had decided to activate our defense plans, at the request of our top military commander, General Tod Wolters, which would enable us to deploy capabilities and forces, including the NATO Response Force, to where they are needed.

A U.S. military official in Europe directly involved in military planning said he also expects requests for more forces from the United States in the coming hours and days to beef up NATO deterrence efforts.

NATO is making plans, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. If they activate those, then the U.S. posture is to contribute a whole bunch of stuff. Well see in the next day or so how that plays out.

Its all likely to happen very quickly; the official described the dispatch in the last 24 hours of additional fighter aircraft to the Baltic nations of Estonia and Lithuania, as well as Romania, as pretty freakin fast.

The additional forces would most likely deploy to NATOs Eastern European alliance members to assist with humanitarian missions should they be needed. Elements of the force were activated in August 2021 to assist with the rapid withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, once the Taliban took control of the city.

On the Polish border, a stream of civilians fleeing the fighting in Ukraine has started trickling through checkpoints, with more expected in the coming days. A second DoD official told POLITICO that the 5,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, rushed to Poland in recent weeks, are not taking part in that humanitarian mission, but will train with Polish forces and deter any potential Russian move into Poland.

Social media has been flooded since the early morning hours with videos of burning tanks and armored vehicles from both sides, as well as casualties and captured troops. The Ukrainian government has claimed to have shot down seven Russian aircraft, along with a number of helicopters.

The Pentagons early assessment is that the Russian operation is still in its early stages, and not all Russian troops arrayed around Ukraines borders have moved in. The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a fluid situation, didnt cut corners when laying out the larger picture.

We havent seen a conventional move like this, nation-state to nation-state, since World War II, certainly nothing on this size and scope and scale, they said.

The official would not rule out the repositioning of more U.S. troops inside Europe, or more coming from the U.S. to bolster NATO allies Poland, Latvia Lithuania and Estonia, which border Russia and Belarus.

The military official in Europe also said that the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine continues, but it has become more challenging.

We had pretty robust ISR over Ukraine up until yesterday, the official said, using the acronym for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. We were supporting them with as much ISR as we could, which was a lot. As soon as the Russians did what they did, we had to get out of the way.

But the official said U.S. air and space commanders believe they can still gather significant intelligence on the Russian invasion.

It depends on how high over Ukraine you want to be, the official said. If you are talking [satellites in] low-Earth orbit, you can see a lot of stuff. He also cited the U-2 spy plane, which can fly pretty high.

As for most other piloted aircraft, thats a no go due the risk of being targeted by Russian anti-aircraft missiles or combat planes, the official said. But we can get pretty close with unmanned a little bit more risk tolerance for that.

One of the things we dont want to do, the official added, is provoke a conflict with the Russians directly. But we can get a pretty good look.

Its not clear, however, if Western powers might be able to continue to supply military or humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, given the fighting around the Kyiv airport, and the heavy damage taken at other regional airstrips. The Ukrainian port at Odessa has also come under attack, potentially holding the Ukrainian navy in place, and the Russian overland assault from Belarus could effectively seal off the western part of the country, making land routes dangerous.

The official said the U.S. is looking to continue to find ways to provide them both lethal and non lethal assistance, but admitted that some of the methods [that you do] are going to have to change now.

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Pentagon sending 7000 more troops to Germany as fighting rages in Ukraine - POLITICO

Follow the latest news on Russias invasion of Ukraine.

SLAVIANSK, Ukraine Russian mercenaries with experience fighting in Syria and Libya have covertly trickled into two rebel territories in eastern Ukraine, helping to lay the groundwork for war, according to two senior European security officials.

The mercenaries, which so far number about 300, are with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner and arrived in the separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk wearing civilian clothes, according to the European officials. Western intelligence services have tracked them leaving Libya and Syria and arriving in Russian-controlled Crimea, from where they have filtered into the rebel territories, one of the officials said.

Their numbers are tiny compared to the estimated 190,000 troops that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has placed around Ukraines border as he threatens to wage what many fear could be the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

But the presence of Wagner fighters is another ominous sign of the approach of war, and raises the possibility that Mr. Putin may follow a playbook used in 2014, when the Kremlin deployed Russian mercenaries, mostly veterans of the Russian military, to augment the forces of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.

The precise purpose of the mercenaries is a subject of debate. One of the officials said the mercenaries had been placed in the rebel territories to engage in sabotage and stage false flag operations intended to make it seem as if Ukrainian forces were attacking civilian targets.

But the second senior official, who is with Ukraines military, said the mercenaries began arriving two months ago and were primarily brought in to fill out the ranks of the separatist forces, to make it seem like local fighters were leading the charge. The Ukrainian official, interviewed on Wednesday, said it was Russian intelligence services that were responsible for sabotage.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss sensitive intelligence findings.

Ukraine is at a moment of intensifying anxiety. For months, even as Russian troops have amassed on their borders, Ukrainians have been largely sanguine and their government mostly dismissive of increasingly alarmist rhetoric from the West that a Russian invasion could be at hand.

But the mood appears to have changed dramatically almost overnight.

Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has mobilized military reservists and declared a state of emergency. Columns of military vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks carrying light artillery pieces have appeared on Ukrainian roads.

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, less than a few dozen miles from Russian forces across the border, soldiers dressed in body armor and carrying automatic weapons had set up checkpoints on Wednesday and were checking cars, seemingly at random.

This week, Ukraines defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, wrote a blunt open letter to Ukraines troops, warning them to prepare for the worst.

Ahead lies a difficult test, he wrote. There will be losses. You will have to go through pain and overcome fear and despondency.

Last month, the White House warned that the Russian military was sending saboteurs into eastern Ukraine to stage events U.S. officials said could be used to fabricate a pretext to war. That warning appears to have come to fruition, at least according to Ukrainian officials, who pointed to a recent spate of curious incidents, including the detonation of a bomb in the vehicle of a rebel security official, and a bizarre report by Russian government media that five Ukrainian soldiers were killed trying to launch a sneak attack across the Russian border. Ukrainian officials have said each of these incidents was fabricated. It was not clear whether any mercenaries were involved in these episodes.

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

The use of mercenaries is regarded as a key feature of the Kremlins military strategy around the world. But the strategy was born and honed in Ukraine, beginning in 2014, when Moscow sought to disguise its involvement in supporting what it publicly was calling a popular, democratic uprising against Ukraines government.

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.

The involvement of mercenaries, as well as regular Russian soldiers, was never easy to hide. Dead and wounded fighters turned up at hospitals in the eastern Donbas region with Russian passports. The bodies of young men, riddled with shrapnel, would unexpectedly turn up in their home villages deep within Russia with no explanation of how they died.

Moscow has consistently denied that professional Russian soldiers have taken part in any fighting in Ukraine, though the United States and Ukraine say that tens of thousands of Russian troops have been deployed over the years to fight in the separatist enclaves, even before the recent military buildup.

But Russia has acknowledged the participation of what it calls volunteers, saying they choose to spend their holidays assisting fellow Slavs fighting against what Moscow has called a fascist regime in Ukraine.

Wagner is the best-known of an array of Russian mercenary groups, which over the years have become more formalized, acting more like Western military contractors.

Wagners fighters have gained military experience in wars in the Middle East and serve as security advisers to various governments, including in the Central African Republic, Sudan and, most recently, Mali. Though they are loosely tied to the Russian military, they operate at a distance, which has allowed the Kremlin to deny responsibly when fighters engage in unseemly behavior.

In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Dmitri Utkin, the commander of the Wagner group, for his role in recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. In 2021, a United Nations report found that mercenaries from Wagner based in the Central African Republic had killed civilians, looted homes and fatally shot worshipers at a mosque.

Several years earlier, Wagner fighters in Syria, together with Syrian pro-government forces, launched a massive artillery barrage against American commandos at a desert redoubt, apparently in an attempt to seize oil and gas fields the Americans were protecting. In response, the Americans called in airstrikes that resulted in 200 to 300 deaths.

In both cases, the Russian government denied involvement.

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Russian Mercenaries Covertly Entered Separatist Areas of Ukraine - The New York Times

Ukrainian military forces walk in front of damaged buildings on the front line with Russia-backed separatists in Mariinka in the Donetsk region on Feb. 7. Aleksey Filippov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Ukrainian military forces walk in front of damaged buildings on the front line with Russia-backed separatists in Mariinka in the Donetsk region on Feb. 7.

In the latest flare-up of the crisis in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday recognized the independence of two breakaway regions in Ukraine's east as independent and ordered military forces to deploy there.

The rebel-controlled territories, Luhansk and Donetsk, comprise a larger region called Donbas that borders Russia. The two territories have been led by pro-Russia separatists for nearly a decade.

Experts warn that Putin's order for troops to carry out what he called "peacekeeping functions" in the region and what President Biden has now called the start of an invasion could lay the groundwork and provide the pretext for a larger Russian military incursion into Ukraine.

To understand why Luhansk and Donetsk are playing such a central role in the conflict's most recent escalation, it's worth going back to the popular uprising that kicked off the current unrest in Ukraine, which has been simmering since 2013.

In November of that year, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych announced he would refuse to sign an agreement with the European Union to bring Ukraine into a free trade agreement, citing pressure from Russia.

The move sparked massive protests in Ukraine calling for Yanukovych to resign. In February 2014, violence between police and protesters in Kyiv's Maidan square left dozens dead; Yanukovych eventually fled to Russia and the Ukrainian parliament established a new government.

Greeting the new government and Yanukovych's ouster as a coup, Putin sent troops into Crimea, a former Soviet republic that had been part of Ukraine since 1954.

Within days, Russia annexed Crimea despite international pressure from the U.S. and European allies following a referendum that apparently resulted in 97% of voters choosing to join Russia, though the results are disputed.

In April 2014, fighting began northeast of Crimea across the Sea of Azov, in another pro-Russian stronghold called Donbas.

Clashes soon broke out between pro-Russian rebels in Donbas and Ukrainian military forces, with about 40,000 Russian troops stationed just across the border. (In a similar warning to his more recent overtures, Putin said at the time that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine and that it would only send troops into the country if necessary.)

Critics have accused Russia of aiding in the insurgency in eastern Ukraine, though Moscow has denied it.

By late April 2014, Ukraine's interim President Alexander Turchinov said the government had lost control of the eastern part of the country.

What followed were years of tense relations between the Ukrainian government in Kyiv and the self-described Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic.

A man walks past an abandoned building in the Donetsk region town of Avdiivka on Monday. Aleksey Filippov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A man walks past an abandoned building in the Donetsk region town of Avdiivka on Monday.

A 2014 referendum in the region found strong support among residents for secession from Ukraine, and a national presidential election in the spring was marred by obstruction and in some cases violence in the breakaway east, as clashes continued.

Later, Ukraine's government decided to grant the separatist regions self-rule and give the militants amnesty, though the move stopped short of declaring the regions fully independent. It was a major concession from the government, though some separatists said it didn't go far enough. On-again, off-again fighting continued even as both sides agreed on a cease-fire.

The violent power struggle in eastern Ukraine, though at times reduced to a low boil, never really ended.

In 2019 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Putin for face-to-face peace talks on the continuing violence in eastern Ukraine, but the discussions didn't lead to a long-term solution.

More than 13,000 people have died as a result of the conflict and more than 1.5 million were displaced, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Activists hold banners and shout slogans during an "Empire must die" rally outside the Russian Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Activists hold banners and shout slogans during an "Empire must die" rally outside the Russian Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Now the threat of major violence is looming again.

U.S. officials said that a recent warning from Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, of an impending attack by the Ukrainian military was nothing more than a "false flag" operation meant to sow unrest. Russian state media have also accused Ukraine's military of killing civilians, though again there is no evidence to back up their claims.

Western powers say they support Ukraine's sovereignty and have provided the country with military equipment for self-defense, but they haven't sent their own troops to beat back the Russian advance.

Rather, now that Biden has called Russia's latest move an invasion, Western powers are responding with sanctions they hope will end any further escalations in Ukraine.

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Why Luhansk and Donetsk are key to understanding the latest escalation in Ukraine - NPR

Are you listening to Putin? is not the kind of text message I expect to receive from a friend in Moscow. But thats the question my closest friend asked me on Monday, when the Russian President was about twenty minutes into a public address in which he would announce that he was recognizing two eastern regions of Ukraine as independent countries and effectively lay out his rationale for launching a new military offensive against Ukraine. I was listeningPutin had just said that Ukraine had no history of legitimate statehood. When the speech was over, my friend posted on Facebook, I cant breathe.

Fifty-four years ago, the Soviet dissident Larisa Bogoraz wrote, It becomes impossible to live and to breathe. When she wrote the note, in 1968, she was about to take part in a desperate protest: eight people went to Red Square with banners that denounced the Soviet Unions invasion of Czechoslovakia. I have always understood Bogorazs note to be an expression of shamethe helpless, silent shame of a citizen who can do nothing to stop her countrys aggression. But on Monday I understood those words as expressing something more, something that my friends in Russia were feeling in addition to shame: the tragedy that is the death of hope.

For some Soviet intellectuals, Czechoslovakia in 1968 represented the possibility of a different future. That spring, events appeared to prove that Czechoslovakia was part of the larger world, despite being in the Soviet bloc. The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was instituting reforms. It seemed that, after the great terrors of both Hitler and Stalin, there could be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free exchange of ideas in the media, and possibly even actual elections in Eastern and Central Europe, and that all of these changes could be achieved peacefully. The Czechoslovaks called it socialism with a human face.

In August, 1968, Soviet tanks rolled in, crushing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and hope everywhere in the Soviet bloc. Nothing different was going to happen here. It became impossible to live and to breathe. This was when eight Moscow acquaintances, with minimal discussion and cordination, went to Red Square and unfurled posters that read For Your Liberty and Ours and Hands Off Czechoslovakia, among others. All were arrested, and seven were given jail time, held in psychiatric detention, or sent into internal exile.

Ukraine has long represented hope for a small minority of Russians. Ukraine shares Russias history of tyranny and terror. It lost more than four million people to a man-made famine in 1931-34 and still uncounted others to other kinds of Stalinist terror. Between five and seven million Ukrainians died during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation in 1941-44; this included one and a half million Jews killed in what is often known as the Holocaust by Bullets. Just as in Russia, no family survived untouched by the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, both Russian and Ukrainian societies struggled to forge new identities. Both contended with poverty, corruption, and growing inequality. Both had leaders who tried to stay in office by falsifying the vote. But in 2004 Ukrainians revolted against a rigged election, camping out in Kyivs Independence Square for weeks. The countrys highest court ordered a revote. Nine years later, when the President sold the country out to Russiaagreeing to scrap an association agreement with the European Union in exchange for fifteen billion in Russian loansUkrainians of vastly different political persuasions came to Independence Square again. They stayed there, day and night, through the dead of winter. They stayed when the government opened fire on them. More than a hundred people died before the corrupt President fled to Russia. A willingness to die for freedom is now a part of not only Ukrainians mythology but their lived history.

Many Russiansboth the majority who accept and support Putin and the minority who oppose himwatched the Ukrainian revolutions as though looking in a mirror that could predict Russias own future. The Kremlin became even more terrified of protests and cracked down on its opponents even harder. Some in the opposition believed that if Ukrainians won their freedom, Russians would follow. There was more than a hint of an unexamined imperialist instinct in this attitude, but there was something else in it, too: hope. It felt something like this: our history doesnt have to be our destiny. We may yet be brave enough and determined enough to win our freedom.

On Monday, Putin took aim at this sense of hope in his rambling, near-hour-long speech. Playing amateur historian, as he has done several times in recent years, Putin said that the Russian state is indivisible, and that the principles on the basis of which former Soviet republics won independence in 1991 were illegitimate. He effectively declared that the post-Cold War world order is over, that history is destiny and Ukraine will never get away from Russia.

Hannah Arendt observed that totalitarian regimes function by declaring imagined laws of history and then acting to enforce them. On Tuesday, Putin asked his puppet parliament for authorization to use force abroad. His aim is clear: in his speech, he branded the Ukrainian government as a group of radicals who carry out the will of their American puppet masters. As the self-appointed enforcer of the laws of history, Putin was laying down the groundwork for removing the Ukrainian government and installing one that he imagines will do the Kremlins bidding.

Putin expects to succeed because he can overwhelm Ukraine with military force, and because he has known the threat of force to be effective against unarmed opposition. Putins main opponent, Alexey Navalny, is in prison; the leaders of his movement are all either behind bars or in exile. The number of independent journalists in Russia has dwindled to a handful, and many of them, too, are working from exile, addressing tiny audiences, because the state blocks access to many of their Web sites and has branded others foreign agents. Putins sabre-rattling against Ukraine has drawn little protestless even than the annexation of Crimea did eight years ago. On Sunday, six people were detained for staging a protest in Pushkin Square, in central Moscow. One of them held a poster that said Hands Off Ukraine. Another was an eighty-year-old former Soviet dissident.

What Putin does not imagine is the kind and scale of resistance that he would actually encounter in Ukraine. These are the people who stood to the death in Independence Square. In 2014, they took up arms to defend Ukraine against a Russian incursion. Underequipped and underprepared, these volunteers joined the war effort from all walks of life. Others organized in monumental numbers to collect equipment and supplies to support the fighters and those suffering from the occupation of the east, in an effort that lasted for several years. When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.

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The Crushing Loss of Hope in Ukraine - The New Yorker