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Putin's wartime bluster obscures Russia's precarious future

The grim realities of Russia’s war in Ukraine — tens of thousands dead, international isolation and a declining quality of life — are not part of the alternate reality of nationalist fervor created by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. 

But the future of Russia is bleak, experts told The Hill on the anniversary of the war, with Russian President Vladimir Putin showing no signs of letting up and the Russian people facing rising uncertainty over how it will end. 

“Certainly Putin … he basically threw his country back decades,” said Anna Vassilieva, director of the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“I always say we’ll have that blood on our faces for generations now, because of what he did. And that’s a terrible burden — we are lucky if there’s no nuclear war.” 

Putin has so-far weathered military defeats and has maintained a stranglehold on the minds of his people — even as his war is increasing the threat of nuclear weapons use to its most dangerous point since the Cold War, and his military commits atrocities of murder, rape and torture.  

Comprehensive insight into Russian public opinion is difficult to gauge, as the government has criminalized opposition and acts of protests are quickly and brutally stamped out. 

The Russian state has so far shown an ability to weather sanctions pressure, thanks largely to the Kremlin’s ability to prop up its economy through energy exports and that protect against mass discontent.

Illicit and creative shipping through third-countries and domestic production are replacing imports blocked by Western sanctions, helping to backfill Russian military supplies and easing the squeeze on a population of people who are told they are victims in a war waged by the West. 

“Let me reiterate that they were the ones who started this war, while we used force and are using it to stop the war,” Putin said in a major address to the Russian legislature on Tuesday.

There are presently few, if any, good options to compel Putin to withdraw his troops or bring about a secure cease-fire to halt the fighting. 

Advocates for dialogue warn against focusing solely on military superiority, raising alarm that pushing Putin too tightly into a corner may trigger unpredictable and irrevocable consequences — a fear stoked by the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling.  

But Ukraine’s strongest supporters say that serious dialogue with Putin is folly, as he has demonstrated a disregard for holding to any commitments beyond his own ambitions.

Yet the challenges of holding Russian society together will only grow as Putin’s war rages into its second year. 

Sanctions are imposing a slow deterioration

A virtually empty Red Square closed for security reasons prior to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual state of the nation address. U.S. officials say Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Sanctions imposed by Group of Seven (G-7) countries — the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom — and the European Union are aimed at strangling Putin’s ability to finance his war.

Experts are still evaluating the impact.

“One of the really remarkable things about the sanctions efforts so far has been the degree of coordination with the G-7, it’s really been moving in lockstep the entire time,” said Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow and director of the energy, economics and security program at the Center for a New American Security.

“That is unusual. And to the extent that the sanctions are having success, it’s because of that,” she added.

But Putin and his government have defied expectations, with the economy reported to be contracting by far less than originally predicted, largely financed by its energy sector.   

“If sanctioning instruments are not working at this point, it is because we still have this fundamental problem with Russia’s energy relationship with Europe and with the global market,” Kilcrease said.

Russian energy exports reportedly brought in $218 billion in revenue in 2022 — with the U.S., E.U. and other partners seeking to balance restrictions with limited backlash against their own societies and energy costs. 

Weapons are being provided by Iran and North Korea, according to Ukraine, the U.S. and allies, while China is said to be considering delivering lethal aid to Moscow.

Russia has also subverted export bans, with a report by the policy accelerator group Silverado detailing how Russia is routing commodities through third countries, citing import data for smartphones, washing machines, refrigerators and freezers, passenger vehicles and semiconductor chips. 

China and Hong Kong are cited as the primary suppliers of the chips. The integrated circuits are essential for the engineering of critical battlefield supplies but also have more benign uses in everything from cell phones to cars.

It’s tricky to cut off all these supplies, with the G-7 sanctions largely targeted at depriving Russia of chips that source technology from the U.S. and other countries in the sanctions group, like Japan and the Netherlands. 

“There’s probably some of that, that is illicit,” Kilcrease said of Russian chip imports, “but there’s probably some that is legal under the existing export controls, because it’s super, low-level chips. Would there be a desire at some point to go after that sort of trade flow?” 

Slow declines in quality of life

Despite sanctions imposed by G7 countries, the Russian government has largely been able to prevent a significant impact on its citizens. (Associated Press)

Kilcrease added that the Russian government has managed to limit the economic shocks to its population through creative, technocratic solutions.

“In the early days of the sanctions regime, we saw them immediately impose capital controls and other sorts of things that kind of arrested the fall of the ruble; that was an appropriate kind of bureaucratic technocratic maneuver,” she said. 

“They are a very capable bureaucratic actor,” Kilcrease added.

The government has also increased funding for social services to counter the higher costs of living and worked to replace Western services and products that exited the country in waves at the outset of the war. 

“The general public sentiment is not too bad in Russia,” said Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“People will remain very, kind of, optimistic about the future. They think this is not going to last for a while, they think it’s all recoverable. But time will tell if they’re right. I actually don’t think this is right. I think Russia is in it for a long haul,” she said, adding that there is a “slow deterioration of the life quality.”

And even as the U.S. estimates that approximately 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the fighting, there seems to be little public outcry.

“For some Russians, yes, they’ve acquired a meaning to their suffering, or a meaning to their patriotism, we can’t discount that,” said Vassilieva, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Putin’s base of support appears rooted in a generation that came of age with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 but were left out of the benefits of a society that promoted capitalist gains. 

“The majority of the Russian population, those who are over 50, are still very traumatized by the ‘90s,” Vassilieva said. 

“Those people who failed to become successful ‘capitalists’, or successful citizens of the market economy, who suffered financially, who lost the sense of dignity, that sense of mission that they had during the Soviet time when they were growing up, they accept it [the propaganda] and they believe it. So their suffering acquires some meaning.” 

But nearly 1 million Russians have fled the country, according to U.S. officials and media reports, driven by opposition to the war, strain under economic pressure or fleeing conscription.  

An exodus of young, largely educated professionals has caused a “brain drain,” one that Vassilieva reflects on with sadness — describing Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities as formerly lively, cosmopolitan centers of business and culture that are being suffocated. 

“The country was starting to spread its wings,” she said.

Where is the opposition? 

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny stands in a cage in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia on Feb. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Among the Russians in exile under Putin are supporters of jailed Russian political opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Long a thorn in Putin’s side, Navalny remains outspoken on social media, where his political platforms are posted by supporters transcribing his handwritten notes sent from jail. 

Navalny and his supporters are the most prominent faces of a disjointed and disunited opposition in exile.

Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in early February. 

Stephen Nix, the regional director for Eurasia with the International Republican Institute, who works closely with Navalny’s exiled network, described the opposition actors as motivated and hopeful that they can exploit — however slowly — doubt and mistrust among the Russian population toward Putin’s failures in Ukraine. 

“There is no one in a position to change things right away,” Nix said, “but the longer this goes on, with no Russian victories, this drags on, that this doubt will increase to the point where there’ll either be a public reaction or there’ll be an internal reaction.”

But Snegovaya, of CSIS, is critical of that notion.

“There’s no protest against the war even outside the country and that’s all you need to know, on the Russian side, that’s all you need to know about this,” she said.

Still, public pressure has shown some influence on Putin, who has so far held back on announcing a public, second mobilization and that follows fierce backlash and chaos surrounding a September drive for 300,000 recruits — and that prompted one of the major waves of exodus from the country. 

Putin remains ‘all in’ on the war

President Vladimir Putin speaks in a recording of his annual televised New Year’s message after an awarding ceremony during his visit to the headquarters of the Southern Military District. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Nix said that focusing on exploiting doubt and uncertainty within the Russian population is an imperative over the next year, ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential elections where Putin will have three choices — to run, step aside or cancel the contest. 

“None of those three options are attractive to Vladimir Putin,” Nix said, adding that Putin is unlikely to step down and that he expects massive voter fraud would be needed to assure his victory.

Canceling the elections would be an admission that the “special military operation” — as it’s officially referred to in Russia — is going badly. 

Still, European officials say that Putin has shown no signs of abandoning his original ambitions of overtaking Kyiv, even in the face of all his failures — Ukraine’s successful defense of the capital in the initial days of the invasion; embarrassing Russian military defeats and troops fleeing their positions; the deaths of top generals; and attacks against symbols of Russian might, such as the sinking of its naval flagship the Moskva and an explosion against the Kerch bridge linking Russia to Crimea. 

Putin is “all in on Ukraine getting back into the so-called Russian empire,” a senior European official told reporters in a briefing on Feb. 20. “There may be nothing short of that goal that he’ll ever settle for. Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t accept an interim peace deal, just that in two, three, four years time, it wouldn’t be a peace deal because he’d try again.”

Another senior European official, in a briefing with reporters on Feb. 17, said “Putin’s war aim continues to be the same, the center of gravity is Kyiv.”

The path to peace looks long

Ukrainians cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

Given Putin’s refusal to back off his maximalist ambitions, U.S. and European officials are doubtful of an opening, in the short term, for negotiations. 

“President Putin has too much to lose on one hand to go for negotiations, at this point he feels he can get further gains,” the European official told reporters on Feb 17.

And Ukrainians, holding the front line under a battering from Russia targeting energy and civilian infrastructure, are resolute in their ability to further push Russian forces out.

“I think we should all be focused on one thing: Even if we are deadly tired, we cannot allow ourselves to get tired of fighting for freedom,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Munich Security Conference this month.  

Kyiv has talked about pushing Russia out of all its territory, including the parts seized in 2014 and in particular the Crimean peninsula, a major military base and staging ground for Moscow.

While U.S. officials have reportedly expressed doubt over Ukraine’s ability to retake Crimea, they are public about the need for the peninsula to be a main focus of any settlement.

“Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarized. And that is part of ensuring that there is a sustainable deterrent,” Victoria Nuland, under secretary of State for political affairs, told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Feb. 16. 

Comfort Ero, CEO of the International Crisis Group, said in a briefing with reporters that ICG is advocating for Ukraine’s military and diplomatic backers to “dangle some incentives in front of Russia, should it show a willingness to stop the war and to pull back from Ukraine.”

“These are unpalatable options right now, both for Ukraine and Russia,” she said, but added the goal is to avoid pushing Putin into a corner, “and what he does as a result of that is not clear. And then he may then push for an ugly settlement and that would, I think for the Ukrainians, be a serious concern.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The Memo: Media has it wrong in labeling Haley a moderate

Don’t call Nikki Haley a moderate. It’s not even a label she wants for herself.

Haley has been a presidential candidate for less than two weeks. But the battle is already being cast in the media as one that pits her in one lane against hard-liners like former President Trump — and, once he enters the race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — in another.

Trump and DeSantis purportedly represent the right-wing, populist MAGA wing of the GOP. Haley has been cast as some kind of centrist.

She has previously been able to “appeal to [Trump’s] more moderate critics,” according to CNN. She is “a more moderate alternative to the ex-president” according to Forbes. Parts of her message will “play well with moderate suburban women voters,” according to a Council on Foreign Relations blogger.

The last part may be true — but not because of Haley’s policies. Her potentially distinctive appeal resides in the fact that she has a temperamental evenness which the former president clearly lacks, and favors a tone that is conversational rather than combative.

This hardly makes her a moderate. Her positions are not those of centrist figures currently mulling a run, like former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R). Nor is she so direct a critic of Trump as another possible contender, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R).

In her stump speeches, her affable demeanor goes hand-in-hand with staunchly conservative proposals and themes. 

At a Tuesday evening appearance in Marion, Iowa, covered by The Hill, the thrust of her arguments was in lockstep with today’s right-wing, populist GOP.

On immigration, “we need to seal off the border, we need to go back to the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy,” she said — especially now that “every state in America has become a border state.”

On crime, the main problem was that law enforcement officers “don’t feel like anybody’s got their backs.”

On education, sexuality and “wokeness,” the controversial Florida bill backed by DeSantis, which bars the teaching of any material related to gender or sexual orientation before the third grade, “doesn’t even go far enough” according to Haley.

“Parents,” she said, “are the ones that should be teaching their kids about anything to do with gender, lifestyle and everything else.”

She also delivered standard but fiery jabs at Democrats. She accused President Biden of stumbling through a “debacle” in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and of having permitted “a national embarrassment” in the shape of the recent Chinese spy balloon.

Perhaps most controversially of all, Haley defended her proposal for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 in unusually personal terms.

Responding to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who had accused her the previous night of “nothing more than old-fashioned ageism”, Haley told the Iowa crowd that Sanders, 81, is “exactly the reason we need it.” 

Amid laughter in the venue,  she went on to assail two California Democrats, 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein and 84-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters in similar terms.

Haley’s backers don’t even speak of her as a moderate — perhaps because the label is likely a ticket to defeat in today’s GOP.

Some note that her political roots lie with the Tea Party movement that helped propel her to a come-from-behind victory in the GOP primary when she first ran to become South Carolina’s governor. 

Others cite her immigration record while holding that office, including mandating the use of E-Verify by employers.

The pro-Haley voices contend that her personal style can help her expand the appeal of staunch conservatism in a way that the darker rhetoric and more belligerent stances of figures like Trump and DeSantis cannot.

That is a thesis that will be severely tested. Polling has been sparse since Haley officially launched her campaign, but she had previously been trailing way behind Trump and DeSantis in polls.

The jury is still out as to whether today’s GOP primary electorate, which often thrills to the culture war combat favored by Trump in particular, really wants a kinder face.

But there is clearly some kind of constituency for what Haley is offering.

Jeff Simoneau, a project manager, Marion resident and self-described conservative, told The Hill before Tuesday’s campaign stop, “I think she is right what we need — some fresh young faces in the Republican Party.”

For Simoneau, the differences Haley offered to Trump were a central part of her appeal.

“Her personality is in stark contrast to the prior president’s, but the polices were really good [under Trump],” he said.

The 45th president’s achievements, in Simoneau’s view, were “overshadowed by the personality. And that is what we don’t need right now.”

Are there many other Republicans seeking Trump-like policies in a very non-Trump persona?

Maybe such voters will simply go to DeSantis.

But, for now, Haley is out there on the trial making her case as the sole alternative. 

Maybe she’s wrong and her campaign will fizzle, as her many doubters predict.

But Haley has been underestimated before — and it could be happening again.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Source: TEST FEED1

Four systemic safety issues the East Palestine crash report may point to

A new report on the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine points to several possible systemic safety issues that advocates and safety experts say go well beyond this specific crash. 

The preliminary report released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the runaway overheating of a ball bearing in one of the train’s wheels caused it to careen off the tracks. 

Rail bearings are small in comparison to the size of a freight train — they weigh about 80 pounds.  

But when they overheat, they can cause a great deal of damage. Historically, bearing failures have been a leading cause of train crashes, according to research from the University of Illinois, though last year they caused just 1 percent of derailments.

Federal regulators, advocates and safety experts suggest the crashes could point to broad issues with federal regulations and the methods America’s freight railways use to detect and respond to overheating car wheels. Here are four possible problems they’ve raised.

The speed of the detection system

“Roller bearings fail. But it’s absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Thursday press conference. 

Railroads like Norfolk Southern rely on a network of temperature sensors every 10 to 40 miles. These are placed along rail lines to catch rising wheel temperatures before they reach the critical point at which breakdown is imminent. 

Homendy pointed to one potential weakness in that network: the distance between its sensors. “Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred. But that’s something we have to look at,” she said.  

Buttigieg echoed these concerns in comments from East Palestine when he singled out the detectors as “something that needs to be looked at to try to prevent things like this from happening again.” 

In the case of train 32M, which ultimately derailed in East Palestine, the NTSB report found that the train passed through two of these wayside hot-bearing detectors (HBDs).

Those registered their wheel temperature as hotter than average — but still below the “warm bearing” threshold that would have triggered an automatic inspection, let alone an emergency stop. 

By the third detector, it was too late. Railside sensors noted that one of the wheels had soared to 253 degrees Fahrenheit above average and transmitted an alarm over the engine’s radio warning the crew to stop at once. At that point, the crew began emergency braking.

Emergency braking is far more aggressive than a train’s usual controlled stop — so violent that the force of the sudden braking can be enough to derail a train all by itself. By the time the train stopped, 38 cars had derailed – 11 of which carried hazardous materials. 

Federal regulations — or the lack thereof

The report comes out amid charged and often conspiratorial speculation about the role the nation’s rail safety policies played in the crash. 

“We’ve been saying the same thing about a degrading safety culture for the past five years,” AFL-CIO transportation department head Greg Regan told The Hill.  

Regan and his colleagues pointed to federal data showing that the rate of incidents per train mile has doubled at Norfolk Southern since 2013 — and the rate of total accidents and accidents per mile also sharply increased. 

Rail critics have specifically highlighted what they say is a lack of adequate braking regulations in the wake of the East Palestine derailment. Rail industry lobbying weakened an Obama-era push to require new-model electro-pneumatic brakes (ECBs) — which cause railcar wheels to stop all at once, rather than in a slow backward cascade from the engines — to a simple mandate restricted to oil trains and other high-hazard flammable trains, as The Lever reported. 

Under the definitions adopted at the time, train 32M would not have needed to use the advanced brakes — even had the Trump administration not withdrawn that requirement in 2018.

In proposed rail safety reforms released on Tuesday, Secretary Buttigieg called on Congress to strengthen braking rules and said his agency was considering its actions.

Christopher Barkan, who runs an Association of American railways-funded rail safety research department at the University of Illinois, argued that the new brakes were “a red herring.” The Federal Railway Administration withdrew its Obama-era rule because studies from agencies like Government Accountability failed to verify that the brakes would make a substantial difference in safety. 

Research over the past decades has shown that the brakes were more effective – but not substantially so, Barkan said. Had Norfolk Southern train 32M had the brakes, the crash “would have been slightly less severe,” he said. “The last car to derail wouldn’t have derailed — but that car wasn’t the problem.” 

The electro-pneumatic brakes are “a band-aid” that would have been little use in this situation, said Constantine Tarawneh of the rail safety department at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.  

The bigger problem, his research suggests, is that a bearing can go from warm to on fire in just a couple of minutes – a system that the national trackside detection system simply isn’t set up to head off.

How train companies respond to warnings

Other critics pointed to another problem regarding the detectors: human crews have to make snap judgment calls about what to do with their alerts.

Sometimes that means ignoring them. Norfolk Southern is unusual among the Class I freight railroads in that it allows controllers to disregard warning signs rather than immediately stopping a train for inspection, a report by ProPublica found.

Last October, a Norfolk Southern train passed through a hot bearing detector with a wheel reading too hot — something the Norfolk Southern dispatcher reportedly told them to disregard.  

Twenty miles later, that train derailed, spilling molten candle wax across Sandusky, Ohio. 

Norfolk Southern says it has invested more than $200 million to install about 1,000 hot-bearing detectors, generating more than 2 billion readings each year.

But “in the absence of regulation, there’s no cause for the railroad to comply with any of the information these defect detectors provide,” John Esterly of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen told Ohio lawmakers this week. 

Regan of the AFL-CIO concurred, noting that the NTSB report “leads us to believe that there is room for improvement surrounding Norfolk Southern’s use of these detectors.” He told The Hill that his union would publish proposals for how best to use the detectors shortly. 

Norfolk Southern representatives defended the company system in a statement on Thursday, which noted that the company’s sensors trigger a cockpit alarm at temperatures “among the lowest in the rail industry” and that while all detectors in the vicinity of the accident were operating normally, it would be inspecting all of its nearly 1,000 sensors.  

“Once the rail crew was alerted by the wayside detector, they immediately began to stop the train,” the statement noted. 

What triggers the detection system

But Tarawneh argued that those looking to blame the speed of the detectors or the railways’ responses had missed a far more significant problem with the system. He says the sensors — which track heat — are looking at the wrong factor.

“Bearings are like humans,” he said. “What is the first sign you’re getting sick? Not temperature. You start sneezing — first comes noise.” 

It’s the same with a bearing, he said. “Vibration increases first, not the temperature.”  

As a bearing breaks down, wheel lubricant fills the new pits and pockets opening on its surface — reducing the friction that would otherwise cause heat to spike. 

Until that is, the bearing is fatally compromised. “When things happen, they happen very quickly — in 1-2 minutes,” Tarawneh said. “Within a mile, the bearing could catch fire.” 

Adding to the difficulty of the snap judgment call is the fact that the data is ambiguous. The trackside sensors can’t pick up absolute wheel temperature. Instead, they assemble a map of the train’s average heat — from which proprietary algorithms pick out specific outlier points where a problem may be developing. 

This system presents rail controllers like those working for Norfolk Southern who are seeing elevated wheel temperatures with a tough choice, Tarawneh said: Stop the train and cause costly traffic delays based on an uncertain reading, or keep going and risk a potential disaster. 

Tarawneh has a dog in this fight: his lab has developed an acoustic sensor that picks up on the vibrations as a bearing begins to grind itself apart — something he says would allow technicians to foresee a failure 50,000 miles in the future. 

But that is investment companies have been reluctant to make, Tarawneh charged. The U.S. also has a system of acoustic sensors and accelerometers that could have caught such a problem early — but with “only about 30 in the entire U.S., some bearings will go entire lives never passing through one,” Tarawneh said. 

Barkan of the University of Illinois noted that rail safety is generally moving toward more proactive and predictive solutions, allowing companies to schedule repairs at leisure.  

Tarawneh’s device — currently in use on a railway company pilot project — might predict bearing failure better than the trackside detectors, he said. 

“But here’s the challenge: there are 1.5 million freight cars, with about eight wheels per car. That’s 12 million of these detectors are needed, and a lot of information to process, and reliability to consider.”  

Such an increase in data would also bring a corresponding rise in misfires and false positives, he noted — causing more train delays. 

Representatives of the Association of American Railroads pointed to another problem — rail companies don’t generally own the cars they transport, which are far more likely to belong to leasing or shipping companies. That limits the companies’ ability to make unilateral safety upgrades. 

Tarawneh brushed these concerns off. Companies haven’t gone with the safer technology “because no regulation says you have to do it,” he said.  

Between 2016 and 2020, federal statistics showed that derailments cost railroads an average of $10 million per year — less than the cost of avoiding them, he said. “In every conference, people tell me ‘$10 million is nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket.’ Yes, it is — but not for the people of East Palestine.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden faces political threat with East Palestine train derailment

President Biden and the White House face a political threat over the fallout from the administration’s response to the Norfolk Southern train derailment that has left residents of East Palestine, Ohio, scared and frustrated.

Republicans have gone on the attack over the Feb. 3 derailment, questioning the urgency of the administration’s response and asking why Biden has not visited the impacted community.

Former President Trump on Wednesday accused the Biden administration of “indifference and betrayal” toward East Palestine during a visit there, while the mayor of the village called it a “slap in the face” that Biden went to Europe before visiting the site of a potential environmental disaster. The White House said Biden has not spoken to the mayor.

It’s not as if Biden is at a political low point.

He returned late Wednesday from a dramatic trip to Ukraine and Poland to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, completing a secretive and complex visit to an active war zone with no U.S. military presence.

That visit was a sign of the president’s strength and will be used by the White House and Biden allies to both shore up support for the Western effort to back Kyiv and to counter any suggestion that Biden lacks the strength and energy to do his job.

It is part of a broadly successful several weeks for Biden, who put Republicans on defense over Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union address. The president’s approval rating increased to 49 percent, according to an NPR poll released Wednesday; it’s his highest mark in nearly a year.

Yet there are real risks to the train derailment story, which took place in the traditional swing state of Ohio that has in the last decade seemingly turned against the president’s party. Fallout from the train derailment has also hit the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Republicans have made pointed arguments directed toward both Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited East Palestine on Thursday. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has called on the secretary resign.

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who represents the area where the derailment occurred, gave Buttigieg an “F” for his response to the toxic chemical spill in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 18.

“I mean, he hasn’t shown up,” Johnson said.

Trump, who is running for president next year, clearly saw a political opportunity in his visit, meeting with first responders, local officials and Ohio Republicans and promising to deliver his namesake water to the community.

Separately, reporters peppered White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre with questions about why Biden does not yet have plans to visit Ohio. She argued there was no reason to “struggle” over why the president hasn’t been there yet.

Buttigieg himself admitted Thursday that he could have spoken out sooner about the crash.

At the same time, both Buttigieg and Jean-Pierre sought to go on offense on Thursday, focusing on what the administration has done while taking to task Trump and other Republicans for opposing safety regulations.

Buttigieg called on the former president to support the Biden administration reversing Trump-era deregulation, saying “we’re not afraid to own our policies when it comes to raising the bar on regulation.”

Jean-Pierre said attacks on Buttigieg were in “bad faith” because former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao wasn’t attacked when similar types of chemical spills occurred during her time as head of the agency.

“There’s been a lot of bad faith attacks on Secretary Buttigieg. Why we believe it’s bad faith is if you remember, Elaine Chao … she was the head of the Department of Transportation and when there was these types of chemical spills, nobody was calling for her to be fired,” Jean-Pierre said.

“It is pure politics,” she added.

Jean-Pierre spent much of Thursday’s press briefing focused on visits this week by both Buttigieg and Environmental Protection Agency head Michael Regan.

Buttigieg’s visit aligned with the release of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) initial findings from the investigation into the derailment that tentatively corroborated reports that a wheel bearing severely overheated ahead of the accident.

The Transportation Department also defended the timing of the secretary’s trip, saying Buttigieg wanted to “go when it is appropriate and wouldn’t detract from the emergency response efforts.” 

The White House and the Transportation Department have both said that the EPA is taking the lead on the federal response to hold Norfolk Southern accountable, noting those officials arrived at the site early on Feb. 4, hours after the crash.

Others argued that Buttigieg represented the White House well when he went to East Palestine.

“His presence represents not only transportation, but also represents the White House’s commitment to this issue,” said Brandon Neal, an Obama Transportation Department alum and former Buttigieg campaign adviser.

The White House in recent days has blamed Republicans for pushing to loosen railway and environmental regulations. Railway companies themselves have spent millions on lobbying efforts to kill bills in Congress and in state legislatures that aim to implement any further safety standards. 

Andrew Bates, a deputy White House press secretary, accused Republicans of laying the groundwork for the situation in East Palestine by opposing tougher regulations on the rail industry and seeking to rollback environmental rules around drinking water.

Abdullah Hassan, an assistant press secretary at the White House, shared a readout on Wednesday detailing what the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration have been doing on the ground to aid an investigation into the derailment.

“While some have been exploiting the people of East Palestine for their own self-interest, others have been doing the actual work of holding Norfolk Southern accountable for the company’s mess,” Hassan tweeted. 

Biden lost Ohio in 2020 to Trump, who received more than 53 percent of the vote. A Democrat hasn’t won Ohio in a presidential race since 2012, but Democrats were surprisingly competitive there in last year’s Senate race, where Republicans spent big to ensure GOP Sen. J.D. Vance defeated former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan.

East Palestine is located in Columbiana County where 71 percent of voters backed Trump in 2020. It also sits near the border of Pennsylvania, another high-stakes state crucial to victory.

At least one Democrat has joined the Republican chorus of criticizing the Biden administration for the timing of its response.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va), whose state also sits on the border with Ohio, said in a statement that the Biden administration had failed to “step up to the plate.”

“[I]t is unacceptable that it took nearly two weeks for a senior Administration official to show up,” Manchin said the day Regan visited the site on Feb. 16. “The damage done to East Palestine and the surrounding region is awful and it’s past time for those responsible to step up to the plate.”

This week, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the only other GOP-declared 2024 contender besides Trump, quipped: “Biden’s over in Poland but shouldn’t he be with those people in Ohio?” 

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Biden official says there's no evidence that Ukraine is misusing US assistance

A top Biden administration official affirmed that no evidence exists that Ukraine is misusing the financial assistance it is receiving from the United States.

Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said during a CNN town hall on Thursday evening that Ukraine has made progress for years in working to root out corruption, but officials are continually checking to ensure funding is being used properly. 

“Up until this point, we don’t have any evidence that U.S. assistance is being misused or misspent but, again, the key is not resting on anybody’s good will or virtue,” Power said in response to a question posed about Ukraine’s history of corruption. “It’s checks and balances, the rule of law, the integrity of officials.” 

Ukraine has struggled with corruption throughout much of its time as an independent country since separating from the Soviet Union in 1991, but Ukrainian officials have taken steps in recent years to institute reforms to limit corruption, most recently under the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

The USAID leader said Ukraine has seen a strengthening of its institutions fighting corruption since 2014, when then-President Viktor Yanukovych was forced out of office amid widespread protests over his close ties to Russia. 

She also explained that the U.S. Government Accountability Office launched a new initiative to help Ukraine expand its auditing institution, which she said will be needed for the reconstruction of Ukraine. 

Power added that the U.S. does not provide for resources like paying health workers or providing disability support to Ukraine unless officials see a receipt for an expenditure and acts on a basis of reimbursing Ukraine for its spending. 

Some Republicans who have raised doubts about the continued U.S. support for Ukraine have questioned how the money being sent there is being used. 

Zelensky removed some officials in his government last month as part of a push against corruption. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov also shuffled some of his top staff earlier this month over corruption allegations in his department.

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China calls for cease-fire between Russia, Ukraine as war anniversary approaches

China has called for a cease-fire in the war between Russia and Ukraine ahead of the one-year anniversary of the initial full-scale Russian invasion. 

A post on the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry outlines a 12-point plan for finding a resolution in the conflict, including the end of hostilities. 

“All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiraling out of control,” the post reads.

“All parties should support Russia and Ukraine in working in the same direction and resuming direct dialogue as quickly as possible, so as to gradually deescalate the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire,” it continued.

The plan comes amid reports that China has sent nonlethal aid to Russia and is considering also sending lethal aid to support Russian forces. The Pentagon has warned China against sending any lethal aid to Russia, saying that it would face consequences. 

China has officially declared neutrality in the conflict, and Beijing slammed the United States for its accusation, saying the U.S. has been the one “pouring” weapons into the region. 

Other parts of the plan include resuming peace talks, protecting civilians and prisoners of war, as well as abandoning a “Cold War mentality” of regions working to strengthen or expand military blocs. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also released a 10-point peace plan last year to end hostilities in the conflict, including the total withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. He has been emphatic that Ukraine regain control of all of its territory that Russia has occupied. 

China also called for resolving the humanitarian crisis that has seen thousands of Ukrainians flee from their homes as Russian forces have advanced and stopping unilateral sanctions that individual countries have issued without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. 

The United States and other Western allies have placed numerous sanctions on Russia throughout the conflict. The UN Security Council could officially condemn Russia’s invasion, but Russia has veto power over any resolution from the council because of its position as a permanent member. 

The Associated Press reported whether China’s plan could make any progress is uncertain as Beijing has increased its ties to Russia and might not be seen as a neutral arbiter. 

But Zelensky said at a news conference before the plan was released that China calling for peace is a first step and “not bad,” AP reported. 

Bloomberg reported that Wang Yi, the director of China’s Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, has said that the relationship between China and Russia “can stand the test of international risks.”

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How the US could respond if China gives lethal aid to Russia

The U.S. could enact strict economic sanctions against China should it support Russia’s war in Ukraine with weapons and munitions.

Washington has already issued several warnings to deter Beijing from taking the course.

The Pentagon, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield all warned of consequences should China supply Russia with arms, but they have not made clear what the retaliatory action would be.

Given China’s role in the global economy, sanctions are a likely start.

Maia Nikoladze, the assistant director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. would likely start with sanctions. China would have to decide whether supporting Russia is worth alienating itself in the global economy.

“China is a lot more intertwined with the world economy than Russia is,” she said. “I do not think that China would go so far as to take Russia’s side. They’re just trying to be neutral [but] only so far as it does not cause punitive economic measures.”

Blinken warnings, Chinese denial

Blinken first sounded the alarm last weekend when he said China has already provided nonlethal assistance to Russia and was considering a shift in its aid.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Monday denied allegations that Beijing is considering sending lethal aid and instead accused the U.S. of escalating the war in Ukraine by “pouring weapons into the battlefield.”

In a Thursday interview with The Atlantic, Blinken added that the U.S. has “picked up information” in the last couple of months indicating that China is considering the possibility of escalating the level of aid it provides to Russia, but said it might not follow through.st

“I’m hopeful but in a very clear-eyed way that China will get that message, because it’s not only coming from us, it’s coming from many other countries who do not want to see China aiding and abetting in a material way Russia’s war effort in Ukraine,” Blinken said.

The U.S. on Friday will sanction Chinese companies determined to be in violation of export control measures placed on Russia in order to deprive Moscow of materials for its military, according to Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs.

Nuland also told Washington Post Live on Thursday the administration is “watching very, very carefully” and warning Beijing against delivering lethal assistance to Russia.

“This is not something that can be done under the carpet while China professes to be neutral,” Nuland said. “What we’re trying to do here is to ensure that the Chinese understand that this would be a complete step change — not only in how they are viewed globally and their claims of neutrality — but also in our relationship with China.”

Jason Li, a research associate with the East Asia program at the nonpartisan think tank Stimson Center, said the possibility of China providing lethal assistance is “quite low.”

China would not be able to change the course of the war in terms of material support, Li estimated, and Beijing is better situated by economically propping up Russia.

“China is trying to walk the line on its position in Ukraine,” Li said, noting that Chinese officials are seeking a peace solution for the war. “It’s very [unlikely] for China to be both fueling a war by selling arms, but also politically saying that they want an end to the war. That would look hypocritical for the Chinese.”

What US sanctions could look like

In the event China does supply lethal aid, the U.S. may start with sanctioning some Chinese companies in the military industrial complex. It could expand that list if the support continues.

Further action could result in secondary penalties placed on China, which would sanction other countries and entities outside of China who do business with Beijing.

A more drastic possibility would be the U.S. imposing export controls similar to an October rule that restricted semiconductor chips made with American tools from being sent to China. Should those rules extend to more products that China needs to source from abroad, including parts in the aviation sector, China’s economy could be seriously damaged.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have long been allies, and both leaders announced a “no limits” partnership shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Trade has boomed between both countries, soaring to record levels last year. And China, Russia and South Africa are holding joint military drills this weekend.

The U.S. and China are already competitors in virtually every sector. Washington has sanctioned several Chinese companies, including tech company Huawei, over national security concerns. Other entities have been sanctioned for alleged human rights abuses in the region of Xinjiang and the self-governing city of Hong Kong.

The U.S. has also sanctioned Chinese companies allegedly supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, including Spacety China, a satellite manufacturer accused of providing satellite imagery to Moscow.

Laura Kelly contributed.

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Marianne Williamson confirms she will run for president in 2024

Marianne Williamson, a prominent progressive who ran for president in 2020, confirmed in an interview published Thursday that she will run again for the Democratic nomination for president in 2024.

That would put her in a Democratic primary against President Biden, who has not announced his own plans but is widely expected to run for reelection next year.

“I wouldn’t be running for president if I didn’t believe I could contribute to harnessing the collective sensibility that I feel is our greatest hope at this time,” Williamson told the Medill News Service, which is run by Northwestern University, in an exclusive interview.

No other Democrats have officially waded into the race yet, making Williamson the first. Williamson previously teased “an important announcement” that she said she would be making on March 4, which has been speculated as a presidential announcement.

Williamson gained notoriety during the 2020 presidential race, especially during the first several presidential primary debates where some of her spiritual remarks won her fans online. However, her campaign last one year, and she dropped out in January 2020.

During her interview with the Medill News Service, she also criticized the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) decision to change the early presidential primary schedule, which places South Carolina as the first state in the lineup. South Carolina, where Biden placed first in 2020, is widely credited for helping boost his momentum in that Democratic primary. 

“How can you claim to be a champion of democracy when your own process is so undemocratic?” Williamson told the student-run news outlet.

The news comes as polling has often shown Democrats less favorable of a Biden reelection bid. One poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research , for example, saw only 37 percent of members of his party polled supportive of a second Biden term.

Biden was expected to make an announcement that he will be running for reelection in the coming weeks, multiple sources told The Hill last month, though it’s unclear when that might happen. 

This story was updated at 7:24 p.m.

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These 6 countries sided with Russia in UN vote on Ukraine war

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday to call for peace in Ukraine in a vote that marked the anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion.

But the vote was not unanimous. The resolution, which called for Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine and for peace to be restored to the region, passed with 141 countries voting in favor, six countries joining Russia in voting against it and 32 countries abstaining. 

The six countries to vote against the resolution were Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua. 

That number is an increase from the four that voted along with Russia against an October resolution denouncing Russia’s annexation of four occupied regions of Ukraine. Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Nicaragua voted against that resolution, while Mali and Eritrea were among the abstainers.

On a resolution last March calling on Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally” withdraw from Ukraine, Nicaragua and Mali abstained from the vote, while Eritrea joined the other dissenters in opposing it.

The resolutions do not have force in international law but represent a global rebuke of Russia’s invasion. Binding enforcement actions are up to the U.N. Security Council, where Russia has unilateral veto power as a permanent member of the council. 

The 32 countries that abstained from the resolution on Thursday included China, India, Pakistan and South Africa. 

The war will reach its first anniversary on Friday. Russia is expected to ramp up its spring offensive in the weeks ahead, while Ukraine is also planning renewed counteroffensives.

However, the course of the second year will depend largely on forces outside of either country.

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Judge says Trump, Wray can be deposed in suits from former FBI officials

A federal judge on Thursday greenlighted the depositions of former President Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray in suits from two former employees of the bureau who argue they were unfairly targeted due to their work investigating the former president’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.

Text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, who were engaged in an affair, show the two discussing the investigation into Trump and making critical comments about him.

Strzok, who was fired from the bureau, is challenging his dismissal, while Page, who resigned, similarly asserts that Trump and his appointees targeted her out of a political vendetta. 

An order from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, allows a two-hour deposition of each figure — if President Biden makes no executive privilege claims over any aspect of the testimony.

The Department of Justice sought to quash Strzok’s requests to depose Trump and Wray, contending that he had not shown their testimony was needed.

But Jackson said the testimony can move forward under the “apex doctrine,” which only permits depositions of high-ranking government officials when they have some personal knowledge about the matter and the information cannot be obtained elsewhere.

Her order, however, limits the depositions to “the narrow set of topics” specified at a sealed court hearing on Thursday.

Strzok filed his suit in 2019 after being fired the year prior. It came after a series of August 2016 text messages surfaced that include Strzok telling Page people had to “stop” then-candidate Trump from becoming president. 

Trump often pointed to the text messages between Strzok and Page to suggest he faced unfair scrutiny by the FBI, kicking off what would become a pattern of dismissing investigations into him as politically motivated.

Both Strzok and Page were involved in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Strzok has argued that his dismissal was politically motivated because an FBI executive originally recommended a less extreme disciplinary response to his conduct.

He contends that his dismissal violated his First Amendment rights to political speech and that the FBI deprived him of due process under the Fifth Amendment by denying him the right to appeal the decision. His lawsuit further claims federal law enforcement illegally leaked the text messages to the press.

—Updated at 4:52 p.m.

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