The Washington Post reports that Putin callled French President Macron. They spoke for 90 minutes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, in what appeared to have been a markedly more tense exchange than previous conversations between the two leaders.
The 90-minute call failed to deliver a diplomatic breakthrough, and a senior French official said it left Macron convinced that “the worst is yet to come” and that Putin aims to take control of all of Ukraine.
“Your country will pay dearly because it will end up as an isolated country, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time,” Macron told Putin, according to a French official, who added that Macron “called on Vladimir Putin to not lie to himself.”
The conversation, which the French presidency said was initiated by Putin, came as Ukrainian officials were set to hold talks with a Russian delegation, according to Russian and Ukrainian officials. But based on the two leaders’ exchange, there was no indication Thursday that a diplomatic solution could be in sight.
“At this point, [Putin] refuses to cease his attacks on Ukraine,” Macron wrote on Twitter later Thursday.
The Kremlin’s news service cited Putin as having told Macron that the objectives “of the special military operation” — the term the Kremlin has used to refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — “will be fulfilled in any case.”
“Attempts to gain time by dragging negotiations will only lead to additional requirements for Kyiv in our negotiating position,” Putin told Macron, according to the readout.
A senior French official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it is French government practice, said Putin’s remarks reflected a “determination to continue the military operation and to continue it to the end.”
In his speech, Macron had also said Putin’s claims that he wants to “denazify” Ukraine are “a lie” and “an insult to the history of Russia and Ukraine, to the memory of our elders who fought side by side against Nazism.”
Responding directly to those comments Thursday, the Kremlin news service said Putin disagreed “with many points” raised in Macron’s address, and he denied that Russia was behind the shelling of major Ukrainian cities — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Who is shelling Ukraine? It is a great mystery.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The objectives will be fulfilled in any case.
Spoken like the cold-blooded killer he is.
french fries 🍟 with cheese curds 🧀 and covered in gravy = poutine
Haaa!
Putin wants to be remembered as a big man, as a great, historic figure. Here’s how he could do that: He could do the truly heroic, courageous, historically unprecedented thing and pull his forces out of Ukraine and admit that he was wrong, that he misread the Ukrainian people and that it had become clear that the cost in innocent lives, in the lives of Ukrainian citizens and Russian conscripts, would just be too great. This is the only action he could take that the world would respect. This is the honorable course. Continuing to pursue his current course will bring upon him only dishonor, disgrace, infamy.
What does his honor mean to him? This is the question.
And there is no other way forward for him. If he “wins” in Ukraine, he loses. He finds himself an occupier embroiled in an interminable, bloody guerilla war; an international pariah; and his country in economic shambles. Or, worst case, he precipitates World War II, and everybody loses.
dishonor, disgrace, downfall, infamy
Putin can’t do that. Much the same as the tRump not being able to not lie.
Denying the reality of what is in front of our faces is the practice of established and would-be authoritarians. Acceptance of that, normalizing it is what keeps and establishes their power.
It was fascinating to watch the faces of his Defense ministers while he was making his announcements about the nuclear alert status. Beaten down. Resigned. Afraid. Completely aware that they work for a madman. I was reminded of Macbeth’s line: “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
Not a line of reasoning that worked out for him, was it?
Great line, Bob! Shakespeare said it best.
Macron said it will get much, much worse. Putin’s response to resistance will horrify the world, as it watches in astonishment. He will reduce Kiev to rubble. Not a building will be left standing. The President and his family will be assassinated. The world will watch. People will be upset. A few tears will be shed. Then it’s over.
And then he did it again. And again. And again. And again. I say, “This is ridiculous, Will. Give the rest of us who write a freaking chance.”
Years, ago, I edited an edition of Hamlet and decided to include in the appended study apparatus a list of “most famous phrases” from the play–phrases he invented for this play that were so memorable that they became standard idioms in our language. The list of such phrases was four pages long, single spaced, in 10-point type.
Encountering his thoughts is like watching a flock of innumerable starlings: they burst upon the sky, raucous, riotous, teeming, but then settle exactly, precisely in a single tree.
And while we’re on this subject:
Putin, “Beware the ides of March.”
The UN needs to get off its collective butt and send an overwhelming peacekeeping force to Ukraine.
Now. Not after cities are reduced to rubble.
and countless irreplaceable lives, each the universe born again, are lost
Yes
Won’t happen. Russia has an automatic veto on the Security Council. Nothing will get done.
What I described here is the legal means by which the UN can proceed despite that veto.
Oh. I see. I describe that below. The UN General Assembly needs to act under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution to override the no votes in the Security Council and send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine to counter Russia’s illegal act of aggression (the technical legal term for violation of a member state’s territorial integrity). There are some historical precedents for doing this. And there needs to be a no-fly zone above Ukraine, but not imposed by the US and NATO but by the General Assembly.
See below, TOW
Putin is a hideous malignancy and a menace to world peace. He’s committing what amounts to genocide in Ukraine, indiscriminate bombings on civilians and leveling cities to rubble. The best thing that Putin could do is to put a bullet through his bloated face. Tragically, the slaughter is not over and this monster will not be satisfied until he has created a puppet regime obedient to his every whim.
The criminals just bombed a nuclear power plant–the largest one in Europe. It’s on fire. This could be an unprecedented disaster.
Five nuclear plants at the site, and the Russians are shooting firefighters trying to get to it.
Insane. And evil.
Six plants. Five in operation. And they are bombing the site and firing on it from all sides.
Off topic, but I’m sure everyone will be interested to hear that NYC will be lifting its mask mandate for schools . . . except for children 5 and under. Yes, the only people in NYC schools who will be required to wear masks will be children 5 and under. Because of science!
https://gothamist.com/news/elected-officials-call-for-mandatory-student-covid-vaccinations-and-masked-option-for-nyc-schools
Off topic, but there’s a Kremlin bot holiday on spreading vaccine disinformation now that Russia is murdering innocent Ukrainian grandmothers and children. All bots now spread pro-Russia military “denazification” BS. People are dying and you still prattle on about the horrors of wearing a mask. Maybe extra precaution isn’t so crazy considering there’s much to learn about novel viruses. Are you this exorcised that surgeons have been masking for a century?
No, that surgeons wear surgical masks during surgery doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that the only students who must wear masks all day at school are children under 5.
But I’m an odd duck, in that I’m essentially the only one here who has a problem with the pointless theater of masking children under 5.
Masks for toddlers is a sick fetish which is doing untold damage, IMO.
The PEOPLE are victims of oligarchs whose sovereignty has no borders.
If the No Fly Zone were imposed it should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who is bombing the power plants. Putin says it’s not him. No proof without the NFZ. What does it mean to “denazify” Ukraine?
What if the Nazi’s he’s referring to are people pulling all the strings?
“For what else is the life of man but a kind of play in which men in various costumes perform until the director motions them off the stage.” – Erasmus
Who were the White Helmet volunteers in Syria? Which among them were embedded by the oligarchs?
Where is the information on the White Helmets now in Kiev? They’ve been there since day 2.
“The White Helmets deployment actually began last Thursday, when Frederic and other officials started a joint effort with Argentina’s Ambassadors to Kyiv, Elena Mikusinski and Warsaw, Ana María Ramírez as well as with members of the diplomatic mission in Romania, it was reported.
Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba are the only Latin American countries with a diplomatic mission at Embassy level in Kyiv.”
https://en.mercopress.com/2022/03/01/argentina-to-deploy-white-helmets-to-poland-ukraine-border
What about the “white hats” responsible to abusive control of our children’s futures?
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/big-tech-children-future-covid-pandemic-education-privacy-data?fbclid=IwAR1LkGQbsK8u9v4OdHO36woa_6en4Eq_gB198spsq_NMBYExA-9TJIYMu2o
The PEOPLE are victims of oligarchs whose sovereignty has no borders.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/zelenskyy-congress-call-no-fly-zone-aid_n_622393a3e4b042f866ee99da
Don’t shoot the questioner. The physical location of the battle stage is unfolding on my ancestral land. These are my people suffering and dying. My point is that war is far more complex than what we imagine. It doesn’t erupt overnight. Years of planning and staging
Money and Power are behind all wars and those who planned this one were, by and large, well situated years beforehand. There is no priority greater than oligarch controlled and implemented virtual (digital) currency and dataveillence used to impose social credit scores to control humanity.
https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/datafication
The PEOPLE are victims of oligarchs whose sovereignty has no borders.Have them embedded their actors on all ends to district the people while stage crafting world wide social credit scoring?
On another note, my fellow Floridian on Rick Scott’s “Save America Plan”:
No, I think it is the US/NATO who want all of Ukraine – rich in natural resources.
So, it’s impossible that the Ukrainians want Ukraine?
False dichotomy is a common logical fallacy.
Troll alert!
I think it is the Ukrainians who want all of Ukraine. They elected their president. Who elected Putin to serve for three decades? Where are his political rivals? Dead or in prison.
Ukraine for Ukrainians!!
Diane and all: Yes, . . . all those Nazi toddlers must go.
But I finally read something by Timothy Snyder (very long article from the New York Review but hugely informative) that gave the underlying history to Putin’s present state of mind, such as it is. In the article, Snyder shows the relationship between Putin to an early 20th century prolific Russian philosopher named Ivan Ilyin. (Is it any wonder . . . )
My brief take: An absorbing read, especially with one eye on today’s news . . . . Ivan IIyin purveyed an already twisted set of philosophical and religious ideas that were and are now transported into the thought of a very disturbed-anyway Putin.
But AS TWISTED these ideas give entrance into understanding the upside-down activities that come streaming out of Russia every day, that are manifest now in Putin’s treatment of Ukraine, that forecast the TOTAL demise of the European Union and the West (USA) (which has a serious problem of self-projection); and that have found their way directly into our lives in the United States, especially since the 1990’s, as they resonate with our own brand of distorted self-serving psychologies and political and religious lowlifes. Need I name names.
Three quotes from IIyin:
The fact of the matter is that fascism is a redemptive excess of patriotic arbitrariness.”
—Ivan Ilyin, 1927
“My prayer is like a sword. And my sword is like a prayer.” —Ivan Ilyin, 1927
“Politics is the art of identifying and neutralizing the enemy.” —Ivan Ilyin, 1948
“All those Nazi toddlers must go,” is not a joke. Here is the blurb about Snyder and his other writings, and below that the link to the New York Review article which changed and deepened my understanding of our present situation. I highly recommend it: CBK
“Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale, where he also serves as faculty adviser to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Among his many books are: Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015), and, most recently, On Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary (2020); a new graphic edition of his On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, illustrated by Nora Krug, is published in October 2021
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%2003-03-22%20Schwartz%20Parks%20Graham%20Brown%20Gerstle%20Johnson&utm_content=NYR%2003-03-22%20Schwartz%20Parks%20Graham%20Brown%20Gerstle%20Johnson+CID_4c67ea754f9f21ef6f5130a54507e470&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Ivan%20Ilyin%20Putins%20Philosopher%20of%20Russian%20Fascism
Fascinating and bizarre, Catherine!
Fiona Hill asserts we are already in WWIII. She’s not alone in that assessment, speaking of Ilyin:
Russia interfered in an American Presidential Election. That is a major, major attack. It is an act of war for a sovereign nation to do something like that, to try to literally install a puppet leader. To try and unravel a democracy. It is an attack on a society’s critical systems, just like, for example, attacking its water supply or food supply or dropping a bomb on its power systems — because democracy, of course, is a critical system to us in the West.
And yet nothing happened. Nothing much has still happened. And I’m leaving aside the obvious — which is that Fox News and such far right organizations are all obvious means of Russian “firehose” propaganda, too.
Can you imagine what should have happened? Having seen that our literally leadership and democracies were under serious and critical attack, we should have, in the West, done all this then — all the sanctions on the oligarchs, all the cutting of business ties, all the elimination of Russian money and influence from our societies. Had we done that then, Ukraine — and the rest of us — might not be in this position now.
https://eand.co/is-this-world-war-iii-eed6d0e2dec1
Hello Christine: My hope is that there is LOTS going on behind the scenes. Catherine
Notes on Translating from Putinese
Simply reverse whatever he said, so, “We have no intention to invade Ukraine” means “We have an intention to invade Ukraine.” And yesterday, when he said,
“There are no bad intentions towards our neighbors. And I would also advise them not to escalate the situation, not to introduce any restrictions. We fulfil all our obligations and will continue to fulfil them. . . . We do not see any need here to aggravate or worsen our relations. And all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation.”
means
“We are planning on taking action in response to actions unfriendly to our invasion of Ukraine and will use your actions as a pretext. If you are on the border of Ukraine or Russia and allow war materials to stream through, we reserve the right to invade you, too, and, in fact, that was always part of our planning.”
I once worked for a company whose CEO sent out an all-employee memo saying that there was no truth to the rumors that x was being fired a couple days before the person in question announced his “retirement.” A few months later, the same guy sent out a memo saying that there was no truth to the rumors that y division was being sold. One of my staff asked me, “Does this mean that they are selling that division?”
“Guess so,” I replied. And, ofc, this was just what happened.
A few months later, the CEO sent out a memo saying that there was no truth to the rumors that the company was being sold. Guess what?
I think Putin is a victim of a old school dictator trying a ole school move in the new modern world. Putin could have pulled off this move 30 years ago but not today.
Putin miscalculated his move not realizing he is an ole school dictator making a move in the new modern world. Putin can have Ukraine but it will be a matter of time before the isolated country runs out of essentials to sustain two countries.
Exactly
This is the one bit of light in the current darkness. The level opposition to this “ole school move” is historically unprecedented. One hopes that this will become the new normal and that atrocities like the US invasion of Iraq in the Second Iraq War and the current Russian invasion of Ukraine will, in the future, be seen as unthinkable.
The UN General Assembly needs to act under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution to override the no votes in the Security Council and send a peackeeping force to Ukraine to counter Russia’s illegal act of aggression (the technical legal term for violation of a member state’s territorial integrity).
Diane, Mike Madden and Bob Shepherd: If I read the above article rightly, Putin IS a bringing-forward of what you are calling the “old school” totalitarianism. But he brings his own twisted mentality to it; and in OUR time, I hope the powers that be are understanding the difference.
In that light, what at first and to many in the West might sound like gibberish from Putin in his missives about Ukraine, his intentions, and his attitude about negotiations (my way or the highway), makes perfect sense (<–tongue in cheek). In that light, however, we can understand Putin’s absolutist even religious ideology is coupled with his appraisal of the high place of Russia in the historical scheme of things.
From there, his “hard” Ideology enables him to abandon his own thinking powers, it makes him unable to think, or to listen, or to consider his actions as questionable AT ALL. Check the ideology and then go forward regardless. It allows him to consider his ends ONLY, and regardless of his means. And THAT starting place allows him to do anything he wants to anyone he pleases. It’s a perfect example of “might makes right. . . . period.” Further, he has the United States, and any Nation who crosses him, in his nuclear crosshairs.
Also, from many in the news I hear a sense of “I cannot believe it, . . . . he wouldn’t do THAT. . . ” which is pure projection of the hard won civilization of others who just cannot believe Putin would do, . . . well . . . what he is actually doing. (We in the US are still doing that kind of thinking with Trump.) CBK
Putin’s is an old, old story. The autocrat, defensive about his masculinity, surrounds himself with terrified yes men, takes sadistic pleasure in the terror he instills, becomes isolated, starts believing his own bs, and fabricates outlandish, mystical, unmoored-to-reality as propagandistic justifications for whatever furthers his control and delusions of grandeur. This never works out well.
So, yeah, the mystical justifications adopted differ in some respects, but it’s the same old story. And even those justifications are typically variations on a theme–a lost mythical greatness, enemies within and without, a people united by blood and what is rightfully their soil. Blut und Boden.
Putin and Trump are brothers from another mother in this sense: both have profound insecurities about their masculinity that find expression in ludicrous displays, malignant pathological narcissism, manipulativeness, dishonesty, and criminal behavior, including violence
And yes, nothing matters to such people but themselves. They recognize no law. They are the law. Other people are objects from which they can extract stuff or that can be eliminated.
In the future, I predict, the little man at the end of the long, long table will become THE enduring symbol of this complex of fascist psychosis.
I think the only way the world accepts Russia back is without Putin. So the question is how long will it take before the people of Russia and Ukraine for that matter – decide its time to remove the ole school dictator.
exactly
https://twitter.com/innasovsun/status/1499455753282899974?s=21
WTF?
No one in the West is acting like these atrocities aren’t occurring?
What are you trying to say with this posting, FLERP!?
I’m just sharing the video. I didn’t write the text.
Okay!
And in the face of this, there are people showing up on this blog and attempting to justify Putin’s murder of grandmothers and children.
Bob: I think we find ourselves in the presence of what could be named: Political genocide.
Now, instead of hating some kind racial background, nationhood, or blood belonging, it’s just hating democratic thinking, regardless of where you come from or what religious order you belong to. Hitler let German Jews leave the country . . . oh, I forgot . . . that was before he put them up in concentration camps and gas chambers. CBK
YUP. Putin will not survive this.
Bob, I wish I could agree that Putin will not survive this.
Why not?
He has an iron grip and engineered an extension of his term in office until 2034.
The Russian public is fed propaganda: everything in Ukraine is going according to plan. No problem.
Meanwhile he is closing down all independent media.
He is following the Stalin-Hitler playbook.
The U.S. and NATO will not protect Ukraine, will not create a no-fly zone because they rightly fear that Putin will launch nuclear weapons.
No one wants WorldWar 3 but Putin.
You may be right, Diane. But the people around Putin can’t be liking what is happening to their own fortunes. And Russia is facing a long, bloody insurgency as in Afghanistan and extreme, economy-wrecking long-term sanctions.
Bob: A case in point:
“At home, Putin has waged an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community, framing it as part of a larger campaign to protect Russia’s ‘traditional culture’ from the West. The Ukrainian LGBTQ community fears what a Russian occupation might bring.”
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-03/lgbt-ukrainians-are-terrified-of-a-life-under-russia-where-homophobia?utm_id=49695&sfmc_id=639504
Breathtakingly backward.
Catherine,
That is probably why the current Republican Party has been so enamored of Putin and said so many times that they preferred Putin’s leadership to Biden. Putin and the Republicans share many of the same values.
Trump was Putin’s Mimi-Me. The Repugnicans went full Trump. So, the Republicans went full Putin.
And hand the whole government to them in 2024, we’ll see the extent to which that is true.
Trump wanted to use Border Patrol to shoot and kill innocent asylum seekers. Even his crazy Secretary of Homeland Security wouldn’t do that, and Trump was furious. Trump wanted to use the military to shoot and kill BLM protestors. Esper and Milley wouldn’t let him do that. Trump wanted to overthrow the free election he lost. Pence and Barr wouldn’t let him do that. But there are plenty in the Repugnican leadership today who will not blink when the next, smarter but equally morally bankrupt Trump has the office.
exactly
I don’t have the words after seeing that video, horrific, shocking and sickening that one man can be responsible for so much carnage. These are crimes against humanity, Putin is tapping into his inner Stalin.
Bob: Nice post about the price we pay for openness.
When seen as a shift of power between totalitarian/authoritarian and democratic political systems, education becomes the do-or-die field where a working democracy can emerge, but need not . . . as the power shifts downward, so to speak, from parents and leaders to a person developing who (via the principles of democracy itself) chooses to take up the reigns, . . . to become ABLE to live well in a democracy, having been educated and civilized enough to understand and be responsible for guarding that openness so that it can survive from generation to generation, and for everyone concerned.
I do not speak of propaganda, and especially not of lies. (Apparently Putin even lied to China.) Neither Putin, nor Trump, or Marjorie TG, nor Tucker Carlson, (fill in all the blanks) can claim to have benefited from such an education, even if shards of it were present during their schooling. CBK
This is so horrific. I am glad the Putin-cheerleaders seem to have disappeared from here.
but, fyi, that video is all over the news media, so it’s a shame it was posted with a very out of date caption instead of using one of the many different links.
What is the best move forward now? Will the Republicans start supporting THEIR president instead of spewing their Tucker Carlson pro-Putin rhetoric in which Biden or “the democrats” are really to blame.
I am very glad Biden’s team is in charge as there is no good option — there is only a choice of options that will all cause some short term problems. Or maybe long term problems, like Lindsay Graham’s call for assassinating Putin.
I truly do not know what the “right” action is right now that won’t cause Putin to just say to heck with it and blow up the world. Nothing isn’t going to cause blowback. But it is long past time for Republicans to acknowledge that Putin is not “normal”. Although given that they still refuse to believe Trump is anything but an upright and honorable leader they must follow, I will not hold my breath.
I think it fascinating to read what the Putin cheerleaders have to say, so I don’t want them to go away. I suspect that in some cases we are reading in those Putin Glee Club posts the official propaganda line that Russian agents (or recruited American assets) are here to disseminate. And the insights that those posts provide are therefore valuable. They are windows.
Here’s something interesting to think about: In Russia under Tsar Vlad, the stuff supporting the other side is illegal, and people get killed or jailed (and their lives–their chances for education and jobs destroyed) for posting it. Fortunately, we do not live in such a place. But our very openness enables Russia to flood the U.S. with operatives like Maria Butina and Anna Chapman and countless others to promote Putinism and sow discord here by stoking the views and political power of the far right and the kooky left. However, the Russian agents and assets are often easy enough to spot. Trump, for example. So obviously a Russian asset that it is doubtless the greatest intelligence failure in history that he is not currently in prison as a traitor to his country.
I think that these Russian agents and assets are far more numerous than most Americans imagine them to be. The ease with which they proliferate here is a function of our openness, which we cannot lose. It’s one of the prices we pay and a price we have to pay. But it’s also a reason for vigilance.
No one really knows what is happening in Putin‘s inner circle. If something goes terribly awry at one of the 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine – a distinct possibility – it could radically change the calculus for supporting an erratic petulant dangerous boss. All despots end up the same. It’s just a matter of how long it takes and who does the deed.
Again, the UN General Assembly needs to act under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution to override the no votes in the Security Council and send a peackeeping force to Ukraine to counter Russia’s illegal act of aggression (the technical legal term for violation of a member state’s territorial integrity). There are some historical precedents for doing this.
And yes, there needs to be a no-fly zone above Ukraine, but not imposed by the US and NATO but by the General Assembly. It’s simply immoral for the GA to stand by and let the atrocities continue.
Here is a “keeper” paragraph and a link to its source: NOEMA online magazine:
“By going a step too far, the Russian president has broken the momentum of all those on the same track of aggressive nationalism. Far-right fans of Putin in Europe, such as Éric Zemmour in France or Matteo Salvini in Italy, have hurriedly sought to distance themselves from what all can now see as the ultimate consequence of their brand of politics. In the U.S. too, Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson are scrambling to save face while putting their tails between their legs.”
https://www.noemamag.com/by-crossing-the-line-in-ukraine-putin-fortifies-it-everywhere-else/
I very much hope so, Catherine, but I’m afraid that the Republican Party generally has shown that it is perfectly fine with fascism. The reason why McConnell has dropped his backing of Trump is that he believes (I think correctly) that if Trump is the nominee in 2024, the Pugs will lose. It’s not because he and his ilk have seen the light about wannabe Maximum Leaders.