17 March 2022 20:56

Politics

Holocaust, Berlin Wall for Germany, and Putin's loss: Foreign Media Digest as of March 17

Authors

Olexandra Zakharova , Ksenia Lisna

The Western media continues to cover the war in Ukraine: today, on March 17, the media covered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to the Bundestag, the US warning to Russia about chemical and biological weapons, and the heavy casualties of the Kremlin in the war.

In addition, the Western media analyzed why Vladimir Putin had already actually lost the war against Ukraine.

offers an up-to-date review of what the European and American media are reporting about, covering 22 days of an active Russian invasion.

Russia is warned about chemical weapons against Ukraine

Photo: Getty Images

The BBC reports that the United States warned Russia about the "consequences of any possible decision to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine."

Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan had a telephone conversation with Russian Security Council Secretary General Nikolai Patrushev.

Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke over the phone on Wednesday with the secretary of the Russian Security Council, General Nikolay Patrushev.

The White House itself requested this conversation for the first time since Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in February 2022.

Both countries have accused the other of housing and preparing to use biological weapons inside Ukraine.

The publication also cited the British Ministry of Defense that believes that the Russians are using older and less accurate weapons due to the inability to achieve their military goals.

The UN has now confirmed 729 civilian deaths in Ukraine, although the actual number is expected to be much higher.

Zelensky reminded Germany of Berlin Wall and Cold War

Photo: President's Office

The German outlet Deutsche Welle reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Bundestag for the first time on the morning of March 17.

The Ukrainian president told German deputies that "help came too late" to stop the Russian invasion. Zelensky had some harsh words for the German government about its economic interests in relations with Moscow.

"We could see your willingness to continue to do business with Russia and now we're in the middle of the cold war. And again this is something you have failed to see," Zelensky told the Bundestag. "You're still protecting yourself behind a wall that does not make it possible for you to see what we are going through."

Zelensky also addressed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz with the words:

"Mr. Scholz, tear down this wall."

By using the term "wall", the president made a direct historical reference to a speech by US President Ronald Reagan standing next to the Berlin Wall in 1987, DW's Chief International Editor Richard Walker explained.

"This was a theme Zelenskyy had in his speech, that there is a new wall in Europe, and Ukraine is on the wrong side of, and that there is this in-group of NATO and there's Ukraine on the outside, vulnerable to these attacks from Russia."

"You put the economy before security"

Photo: facebook.com/deutschebotschaftkiew

The outlet Daily Mail cites an emotional address by Volodymyr Zelensky in which he accused Germany of putting its economy before his country's security.

"This is not the Berlin Wall — this is a wall in Central Europe between freedom and slavery, and this wall is getting bigger with every bomb dropped on Ukraine," he told deputies.

He pointed to the country's indecision when it came to imposing some of the toughest sanctions against Russia.

"We turned to you, we told you that Nord Stream was a kind of preparation for the war." Zelenskyy said. "And the answer we got was purely economic—it is economy, economy, economy but that was the mortar for the new Wall."

Zelensky also called for more help for his country, saying thousands of people have been killed in the war that started almost a month ago, including 108 children.

Referring to the dire situation in the besieged city of Mariupol, he said:

"Everything is a target for them, including a theater where hundreds of people found shelter."

Zelensky reminded Germany of the Holocaust

Photo: Wikipedia

The President of Ukraine stressed that the future of the continent is at stake in the current war.

"Every year politicians repeat "never again"," the Ukrainian leader said, referring to annual Holocaust commemorations. "And now, we see that these words simply mean nothing. A people is being destroyed in Europe. Help us stop this war."

Despite his blunt criticism, MPs gave Zelenskyy standing ovation after his 15-minute address and Scholz, in a tweet, thanked him for his 'forceful words'.

"We see that Russia is continuing every day to wage its cruel war, with horrible losses."

He added that Germany feels obliged to do everything it can so that diplomacy has a chance and the war can be stopped.

Putin has become poster boy for war crimes

Photo: Getty Images

The Washington Post published an op-ed by geopolitical commentator Jennifer Rubin on why Putin has already lost.

According to her, the Russian president will never be able to subdue ordinary Ukrainians, who have taken up arms to defend their homes and families. In fact, it is increasingly possible that Putin may not even control major cities.

"The extent of Putin’s failure is breathtaking. His military has sustained humiliating losses, provoking him to start firing advisers en masse so as to deflect blame," the author writes.

According to her, Kremlin’s invasion wound up energizing Ukrainians’ strong nationalistic spirit, even turning many Russian-speaking residents into virulent foes of Russia.

Putin also has unified the West, prompted NATO to beef up its military spending, kick-started a resurgence of pro-democratic sentiments, revealed his own weakness with his clumsy crackdown on the media.

The bloodthirsty despot made himself the poster boy for war crimes. Biden himself labeled Putin a "war criminal" for the first time on Wednesday.

War becomes devastating for the RF and crippling for Putin

It’s clear the war has been devastating to Russia — and perhaps crippling to Putin. He now finds himself the butt of jokes. After the leader of the Russian Federation imposed "sanctions" against U.S. politicians, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated:

"None of us are planning tourist trips to Russia, and none of us have bank accounts we won’t be able to access, so we will forge ahead."

Despots also need a degree of international respect to maintain the illusion that they can bring prestige and security to their people.

Putin’s ability to represent his country in the world community is now imperiled, perhaps permanently.

The revelation of Russia’s military ineptitude and the total failure to achieve his aims makes negotiating an end to the hostilities difficult for Putin. The worse his conduct becomes, the harder it is to "give" him something for the sake of reaching a peace deal.

After several weeks of Russian attacks on civilians, it’s inconceivable he could escape accountability for war crimes witnessed by the entire planet.

Giving in to Kremlin's demands would be a betrayal of the heroism of Ukrainians

Giving in to his demand that Ukraine forswear its ability to ally itself with the West would be a horrid betrayal of the heroic efforts of Ukrainians, the author of the article also stresses.

This is precisely why U.S. intelligence officials expect that it will become increasingly desperate and reassert its aggression.

Beth Sanner, a former top intelligence official, recently told the New York Times:

"It wasn’t a cakewalk for Putin and now he has no choice but to double down. This is what autocrats do. You cannot walk away or you look weak."

Ironically, Putin’s abject failure and international humiliation may pose the greatest barrier to ending his terribly miscalculated war.

"It’s hard to give a war criminal an "off-ramp," the observer writes.

Invaders’ morale is deteriorating: They leave tanks and run into woods

The New York Times reports that Russian military deaths are climbing, and this is fraught with the morale of their armed forces.

According to the Pentagon, even a 10 percent casualty rate renders a single unit unable to carry out combat-related tasks.

Now that more than 150,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine, the Kremlin's casualties include between 14,000 and 21,000 wounded. The invaders lost at least three generals in the battle.

Pentagon officials say that a high, and rising, number of war dead can destroy the will to continue fighting. The result is reflected in the intelligence reports: one of them recently described how the soldiers simply left their vehicles and went into the forest.

"These soldiers don’t understand why they’re fighting," said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official during the Obama administration.

Ukraine has become a graveyard for Russian tanks

The Wall Street Journal reports that Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine with the world's largest tank force, but the losses it has suffered reveal its weakness on the modern battlefield.

Moscow’s forces have lost more than 230 of the heavily armored tracked vehicles since they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to Oryx Blog, a site that tracks military-equipment losses. Many were destroyed. Others were abandoned, captured or damaged.

Before the war, Russia had roughly 3,000 heavy tanks. Ukraine began the war with about 850 tanks. Neither side has said how many tanks it has lost.

Analysts say the bludgeoning of battlefield armor in recent weeks likely represents the highest number of tanks destroyed in such a short period since World War Two. In that conflict, the most effective way to destroy a tank was with another tank.

But today, Ukraine relies on more compact and nimbler weapons, including Turkish-made armed drones and U.S.-made Javelins and other infantry-carried antitank missiles. Russia was not ready for such tactics.

Instead of an afterword. After Western media (especially British) had reported about how Vladimir Putin could be convinced that he had won and that Ukraine could surrender to him so that the Kremlin could look like a winner inside the country, the rhetoric changed somewhat. Perhaps this was influenced by the speeches of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Parliaments of Britain, the USA, and Germany, or perhaps further coverage of Ukraine’s casualties in the war and the problems of Russian troops, but talk of Kyiv declaring status neutral or "temporarily" giving up Crimea and Donbass has stopped for now.

Officially, the President and other officials of his office assured that Ukraine holds the same view: the war must be stopped, Russian troops must leave our territories. In addition, Kyiv demands establishing a new bloc that would guarantee security in the world if the situation with the invasion of a sovereign country is repeated anywhere.

From the Americans, we also see renewed rhetoric: the West has constantly warned that Russia's power is overwhelming in this war, but now recognizes how heavy the losses are for the Kremlin and how disastrous Putin's actions are both militarily and politically. Ukraine continues to defend its borders and independence for 22 days.