What the world wrote about the war in Ukraine on April 17. Review of publications of leading foreign media:
Los Angeles Times writes about pro-Russian moods and Putin’s sympathizers in Germany. While there a lot of Germans who support Ukraine, many of the more than 2 million migrants from the former Soviet Union who now live in Germany are strong supporters of Vladimir Putin. The movement has appropriated the David’s star, comparing the persecution of Jews during WWII to the current exclusion of Russians. The pro-Russian protesters also are not shy to use Z and V symbols as well as the black-orange St. George ribbons – a symbol of Russian military glory. The protests are backed with pro-Russian media and social media, including Telegram channels or magazines like a far-right “Compact Magazin” that hails German-Russian friendship. All of these groups play to existing anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-Western sentiments.
Christopher Booth, a former chief of Moscow BBC bureau, published a column on the Spectator about his thoughts on “cancelling of Russian culture”. Booth provided an example of Putin’s most favorable conductors Valery Gergiev, who is not anymore welcome to perform at La Scala or other international stages. Some might see “Russophobic hysteria” behind his canceling, however, Booth writes, Gergiev cheerfully directs orchestras in Putin’s blood-soaked warzones — Palmyra in Syria, South Ossetia in Georgia, and even was featured in Putin’s 2012 re-election campaign. This seems a pretty good reason to argue that culture and politics can’t necessarily be kept separate. Moreover, it seems that “canceling all Russian” is a part of the Kremlin’s propaganda, as on the very evening that Putin declared "Tchaikovsky had been canceled", “Eugene Onegin” opened at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
W. Robert Pearson, an American diplomat who has served at NATO, discusses potential post-war security architecture between Russia and the Western bloc in his column on The Hill. According to Pearson, Putin intends to claw back Baltic countries along with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova and he will do his utmost to bolster Russia’s military presence as far west as he can. The current war in Ukraine forces the West and NATO to stop playing defense, as this strategy would help Putin. The task of NATO and the EU, writes Pearson, is to re-energize the promise that motivated our diplomacy to end the Cold War — to build a Europe whole and free. Now is the moment to reverse the arrow of history to point against the new wave of imperial colonization.
The New York Times published a guest essay by David Hume Kennerly, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for his images of the Vietnam War. Kennerly recons his experience in Vietnam, looks into photos from Ukraine and claims specific power photographs have in times like this. The photos are specifically important, writes Kennerly, as they are the documentation the world needs to finally understand what is really happening in Ukraine. Images are a direct line to people, over the heads of officials, pundits and disinformation, even though Kremlin claims all of them are fake. Even though public might get “used” to suffering, some photographs will always have the power to make us confront horror. “The best photographs of war might make us want to look away. It’s imperative that we do not.” – concludes Kennerly.
ArmyTimes informs that US Army trainers are using lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine as they train soldiers for future fights against an enemy like Russia or China. A role-play, currently ongoing at the National Training Center, is taking place around the fictional town of Ujen, controlled by the enemy force – the Denovians – who use social media to make false accusations against the American brigade preparing to attack. The scenario will focus on how to battle an enemy willing to destroy a city with rocket and missile fire in order to conquer it. The training goal is to teach how to fuse all elements of their combat power into a coordinated assault. Another goal of the training is to help US army officials think about the modernization of military equipment, for example when it comes to the right balance between mobility, survivability, and lethality of US tanks.