Ukraine’s drone strikes reveal Russian planning failures, expert says



Davis Winkie
Tue, March 1, 2022,

Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a small portion of the defenders’ arsenal has had a disproportionate effect — Ukraine’s handful of Bayraktar TB2 armed drones.

Videos of their exploits have millions of views. They’ve destroyed surface-to-air missile launchers and logistics trains. They’ve inspired songs and are a common refrain in videos taunting the Russian invaders.

Despite their small number — around 20, according to pre-war comments made to Al-Monitor — the drones have been heavily utilized, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia, on the other hand, claims it has shot down some of the drones.

According to Stijin Mitzer, an open-source intelligence analyst, the small Turkish-made drones have destroyed at least 32 Russian vehicles since war broke out last week, though it’s impossible to independently confirm the total number of vehicles they’ve destroyed.

An expert on Russian drone warfare, Samuel Bendett of the CNA think tank, explained to Military Times that even the drones’ limited successes show that Russia is failing to implement its own air defense strategies. He added that Russia studied the lessons learned by Armenia in last year’s war with Azerbaijan, which saw the latter nation decimate Armenian positions and vehicles with Bayraktar drones and loitering munitions.

Perhaps the “biggest lesson” of that conflict, Bendett said, was that slow, low flying drones like the Bayraktar are effective against outdated air defense systems. Russian planners were confident that their force structure, which prioritizes modernized, layered air defense, would be able to prevent such a massacre — but “we’re not seeing...what Russians have advertised,” Bendett said.

Russian units are usually arrayed in battalion tactical groups, BTGs, with layered air defense and anti-drone capacity, said Bendett. But the forward elements of Russian forces have failed to operate as BTGs in Ukraine, frequently leaving behind their air defense assets “in inexplicable fashion,” he added.

“[In Ukraine], Russia doesn’t seem to display the very tactics, techniques and procedures that it’s practiced for years and sought to perfect in Syria...[to provide] adequate cover to its ground forces,” he said.

Bendett also pointed towards “the mythology of the Bayraktar” and how “Ukraine is winning the information war.”

“For all the Russian military talk about winning information war, they seem to be losing, and the videos of Bayraktars striking what appears to be Russian targets is feeding into that [Ukrainian] information campaign,” he said.

Bendett believes that the days of Bayraktar strikes are limited, though, should Russia reorganize its advance.

“If the Russian military reorganizes — if it sends in the BTGs, if it sends in adequate air defense capability, if it sends in its [electronic warfare] forces...it would become increasingly more difficult for Bayraktars to operate in an uncontested fashion,” said the drone expert. “They were definitely aware of the threat. They definitely practiced against the threat.”

And even should the Russians recover and counter the drone threat, he noted, “they were supposed to eliminate a lot of Ukrainian air defense capability from the...first hours of the campaign.” That includes the air bases where the drones are stored, fueled and equipped.

A portion of that responsibility, according to other experts and U.S. officials who spoke with Reuters, lies with the conspicuous absence of the Russian Air Force over the skies of Ukraine.

“The fact that there may be surviving [Bayraktars] somewhere is an embarrassment [to Russia],” said Bendett. “Clearly.”

Ocean carrier alliances control 95% of shipping between Asia and the US and have hiked rates more than 1,000%. 

The White House wants to shake their control.

Dominick Reuter

Tue, March 1, 2022

A MSC ship beside a smaller Maersk ship.Ingo Wagner/Picture Alliance/Getty Images

• The vast majority of international shipping is controlled by just three cooperative alliances.

• The White House says the consolidation has led to increased freight rates that spur inflation.

• A new federal initiative will use anti-trust laws to promote competition in the shipping industry.

Expensive shipping costs are the target of a new initiative that the White House announced on Monday, which directs the Justice Department to use anti-trust laws to push the industry's largest companies to be more competitive with each other.

Roughly 80% of all global shipping capacity — and 95% of East-West trade — is controlled by a trio of alliances that allow freight carrier firms to coordinate rates and schedules.

This consolidation largely flew under the mainstream radar until the pandemic completely disrupted the global supply chain. Ocean carriers responded to the increased demand and reduced supply by hiking the rates for shipping cargo between Asia and the US by over 1,000%.

When freight costs go up, the prices of consumer goods go up too, and White House experts estimate that shipping will add a full percentage point to inflation in the coming year.

And it's not only consumers who are stuck paying more — exporters have complained that the major firms aren't carrying US products to foreign markets.

Some carriers apparently found it more profitable to send empty containers back to Asia to reload, instead of carrying US agricultural goods to other ports.

These ballooning prices have been good for shipping companies' profit margins, soaring to 56% in the third quarter of 2021, compared with 3.7% in 2019.

For President Biden, such fat profits in such a historically low-margin business are evidence of anticompetitive practices. He plans to address the issue during the State of the Union address Tuesday evening.

Under the new initiative, a regulatory agency known as the Federal Maritime Commission will coordinate with the Justice Department to identify and prosecute violations under the Shipping Act and the main US anti-trust laws, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act.

"Competition in the maritime industry is integral to lowering prices, improving quality of service, and strengthening supply chain resilience," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "Lawbreakers should know that the Justice Department will provide the Federal Maritime Commission all necessary litigation support as it pursues its mission of promoting competition in ocean shipping."

This heightened scrutiny of the shipping industry follows weeks of political messaging that blames corporate greed for making inflation worse. Other sectors that have come under the microscope include beef producers and oil companies.

BENNY HILL

Belarusian president displays map suggesting Putin plans to attack Moldova

Grayson Quay, Weekend editor
Tue, March 1, 2022, 3:23 PM·1 min read

Alexander Lukashenko MAXIM GUCHEK/BELTA/AFP via Getty Images

Russia may be planning aggressive moves against the Republic of Moldova, according to a map Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko displayed during a meeting of his country's security council.

Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He seemingly allowed Putin to use Belarus as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine and is reportedly planning to commit his own country's troops to the conflict.

The map, which Financial Times Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon shared on Twitter, shows Ukraine split into its four operational command districts and features red arrows that appear to indicate planned troop movements.

One of those arrows originates in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which Russian troops have not yet reached, and terminates on the other side of the Moldovan border.



In January, Ukrainian intelligence warned that Russia could initiate false flag operations in Moldova to justify intervening in the pro-Russian separatist-controlled region of Transnistria, according to Al Jazeera.

Transnistria, a narrow strip of land with around 400,000 inhabitants, is internationally recognized as part of Moldova, but the Moldovan government has exercised no authority over the breakaway republic since 1992. Russian troops have been stationed in Transnistria ever since.

In 2014, after Putin seized control of Crimea, the head of Transnistria's parliament requested to join Russia, BBC reported at the time.

Why Russia Hasn't Launched Major Cyber Attacks Since the Invasion of Ukraine

Josephine Wolff

TIME
Wed, March 2, 2022

In this photo illustration, a warning message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish languages is displayed on a smartphone screen. Hackers carried out attacks on several Ukraine's government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Science, the State Service for Emergency Situation and others, reportedly by local media. This attack, on Ukrainian government web resources is the largest in the last four years. 

Credit - Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar-SOPA Images/LightRocket

In the relatively short and rapidly evolving history of cyber conflict, perhaps nothing has been established with greater certainty and more widely accepted than the idea that Russia has significant cyber capabilities and isn’t afraid to use them—especially on Ukraine. In 2015, Russian government hackers breached the Ukrainian power grid, leading to widespread outages. In 2017, Russia deployed the notorious NotPetya malware via Ukrainian accounting software and the virus quickly spread across the globe costing businesses billions of dollars in damage and disruption. In the months that followed the NotPetya attacks, many people speculated that Ukraine served as a sort of “testing ground” for Russia’s cyberwar capabilities and that those capabilities were only growing in their sophistication and reach.

As tensions escalated between Russia and Ukraine, many people were expecting the conflict to have significant cyber components—the United States Department of Homeland Security even issued a warning to businesses to be on high alert for Russian cyberattacks, as did the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre. What is surprising is that—so far, at least—the devastating Russian cyberattacks everyone has been expecting have yet to materialize. There’s no guarantee, of course, that a large-scale cyberattack on Ukraine’s electrical grid or global banks or anything else isn’t just around the corner. Russia has proven time and again that it has few compunctions about targeting critical infrastructure and causing considerable collateral damage through acts of cyber aggression.

But as the invasion continues with few signs of any sophisticated cyber conflict, it seems less and less likely that Russia has significant cyber capabilities in reserve, ready to deploy if needed. Instead, it begins to look like Russia’s much vaunted cyber capabilities have been neglected in recent years, in favor of developing less expensive, less effective cyber weapons that cause less widespread damage and are considerably easier to contain and defend against. For instance, many of the cyberattacks directed at Ukraine in the past month have been relatively basic distributed denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers bombard Ukrainian government websites and servers with so much online traffic that those servers cannot respond to legitimate users and are forced offline for some period of time. Denial-of-service attacks can be effective for short-term disruptions but they’re hardly a new or impressive cyber capability—in fact, they’re what Russia used to target Estonia more than a decade ago in 2007. Moreover, launching these types of attacks requires no sophisticated technical capabilities or discovery of new vulnerabilities, and they typically have fairly contained impacts on the specific, targeted computers. Similarly, recent reports that Belarusian hackers are trying to phish European officials using compromised accounts belonging to Ukrainian armed services members suggests that not only are these efforts relying on fairly basic tactics like phishing emails, they are not even being carried out by Russian military hackers directly.

Read More: The World Is Watching Russia Invade Ukraine. But Russian Media Is Telling a Different Story

Somewhat more worryingly, Russia has also used wiper malware to delete data held by Ukrainian government agencies and Microsoft has also reportedly detected wiper programs attributed to Russia in recent weeks and shared that information with the U.S. government as well as other countries concerned about Russian cyberattacks. NotPetya was a form of wiper malware and its ability to delete data caused massive damage, so the discovery of new Russian wipers is certainly cause for concern. But unlike NotPetya, the wiper programs that have been the focus of the latest wave of alerts—including the FoxBlade program identified by Microsoft—have shown little ability to spread quickly via common, difficult-to-patch vulnerabilities like the EternalBlue vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that NotPetya exploited back in 2017.

It’s likely that the combined efforts of Microsoft, the U.S., and many other countries and companies to ramp up cyber defenses both in and outside of Ukraine has undoubtedly helped curb the damage caused by these efforts. But if Russia really had on hand a stockpile of previously undetected vulnerabilities and sophisticated malware designed to exploit them, these lines of defense simply would not be enough to prevent some significant damage and disruption. Updating critical infrastructure networks and systems is slow, expensive, complicated work and it’s impossible that every potential target has been hardened to the point where it is no longer vulnerable to Russian cyberattacks—unless those cyberattacks were never all that impressive to begin with.

Moreover, many of the early theories for why Russia might have voluntarily abstained from more serious cyberattacks look increasingly implausible as the conflict continues for an extended period. For instance, one explanation for why Russia left Ukrainian electricity distribution and communication networks intact was that Putin wanted the rest of the world to see Russia’s swift, decisive victory in Ukraine via a steady stream of images and videos that might have been hampered by such an attack. But as it becomes increasingly clear that no swift, decisive victory is forthcoming, it makes less sense that Russia would continue to leave that infrastructure untouched unless they were truly unable to take it out. This interpretation seems further supported by the Russian decision to strike a TV tower in Kyiv, rather than trying to disrupt media and communications systems more effectively and less violently via cyber capabilities.

Read More: Ukraine’s Secret Weapon Against Russia: Turkish Drones

Given Russia’s past willingness to deploy cyberattacks with far-reaching, devastating consequences, it would be a mistake to count out their cyber capabilities just because they have so far proven unimpressive. And it’s all but impossible to prove the absence of cyber weapons in a nation’s arsenal. But the longer the conflict goes on without any signs of sophisticated cyber sabotage, the more plausible it becomes that the once formidable Russian hackers are no longer playing a central role in the country’s military operations—whether because they no longer have the resources they once did to purchase and develop tools for computer intrusion and exploitation, or because the government can no longer attract and retain technical talent, or simply because Russia has decided that cyberattacks, for all the damage they can do, are not an effective means of achieving its larger goals in Ukraine.

Of course, even if Russia has no particularly sophisticated cyber weapons to fall back on right now, that doesn’t mean they won’t go on to develop some new ones in the future. But the current lack of any significant cyber conflict is an important reminder of how little we actually know about any country’s cyber capabilities. Many of our beliefs about which countries have the most impressive hacking tools and Russia’s cyber dominance are based on incidents several years in the past—and an awful lot can change in just a few years.

Ukrainian cyber resistance group targets Russian power grid, railways

Tue, March 1, 2022, 
By Joel Schectman, Christopher Bing and James Pearson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Ukrainian cyber guerrilla warfare group plans to launch digital sabotage attacks against critical Russian infrastructure such as railways and the electricity grid, to strike back at Moscow over its invasion, a hacker team coordinator told Reuters.

Officials from Ukraine's defense ministry last week approached Ukrainian businessman and local cybersecurity expert Yegor Aushev to help organize a unit of hackers to defend against Russia, Reuters previously reported.

On Monday, Aushev said he planned to organize hacking attacks that would disrupt any infrastructure that helps bring Russian troops and weapons to his country.

"Everything that might stop war," he told Reuters. "The goal is to make it impossible to bring these weapons to our country."

Aushev said his group has already downed or defaced dozens of Russian government and banking websites, sometimes replacing content with violent images from the war. He declined to provide specific examples, saying it would make tracking his group easier for the Russians.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

A Ukrainian defense attache in Washington declined to comment on Aushev's group or its relationship with the defense ministry. Aushev said his group has so far grown to more than 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign volunteers.

The group has already coordinated with a foreign hacktivist organization that carried out an attack on a railway system.

After word spread of the formation of Aushev's team, the Belarusian Cyber Partisans, a Belarus-focused hacking team, volunteered to attack Belarusian Railways because they said it was used to transport Russian soldiers.

The Cyber Partisans disabled the railway's traffic systems and brought down its ticketing website, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.

On Monday, a Cyber Partisans spokeswoman told Reuters the group carried out those attacks and confirmed her organization was now working with Aushev's group.

The spokeswoman said because her group had brought down the reservation system, passengers could only travel by purchasing paper tickets in person. She sent Reuters a photo of a paper, handwritten ticket issued on Monday.

"We fully side with Ukrainians," she said. "They are now fighting for not only their own freedom but ours too. Without an independent Ukraine, Belarus doesn’t stand a chance."

Reuters could not confirm attacks against the Belarus railway's traffic system. The company's reservation website was down on Tuesday afternoon. A railway spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials at the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a Russian news outlet on Tuesday that Russian embassies were under cyberattack by "cyber terrorists from Ukraine."

Beyond striking back at Moscow, Aushev said his team would help Ukraine's military hunt down undercover Russian units invading cities and towns.

He said his group had discovered a way to use cellphone tracking technology to identify and locate undercover Russian military units moving through the country, but declined to provide details.

Russian troops are reportedly using commercial cell phones in Ukraine to communicate, multiple media outlets reported.

Over the last week, numerous Russian government websites have been publicly interrupted by reported distributed denial of service (DDoS) style attacks, including one for the office of President Vladimir Putin.

(Reporting by Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing from Washington, and James Pearson from LondonEditing by Kieran Murray and David Gregorio)

Iran's Khamenei says homosexuality example of West's immorality

CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD BURTON WOULD DISAGREE


Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with people from East Azarbaijan in Tehran

Tue, March 1, 2022

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described homosexuality as part of the "moral deprivation" widespread in Western civilisation, during a televised speech on Tuesday.

"There is severe moral deprivation in the world today such as homosexuality and things that one cannot bring oneself to even talk about. Some have rightly called Western civilisation a new age of ignorance," Khamenei said.

Western rights groups have often criticised Iran, where homosexual acts among men can be punished by the death penalty.

Tehran has dismissed the criticism as baseless and due to a lack of understanding of its Islamic laws.

"The same moral vices of the age of ignorance (in pre-Islamic Arabia) exist today in the so-called civilised Western world in an organised and more widespread way. Life in Western civilisation is based on greed, and money is the basis of all Western values," Khamenei said.

Sheikh Nefzaoui: The Perfumed Garden

https://holybooks-lichtenbergpress.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploa… · PDF file

The Perfumed Garden was translated into French before the year 1850, by a staff officer of the French army in Algeria. An autograph edition, printed in the italic character, was printed in 1876,

The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight is a fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nefzawi, also known simply as "Nefzawi".

FREDDY MERCURY WAS PERSIAN

Square Waves Are a Thing — and If You See Them, Get Out of the Water Immediately


Stacey Leasca
Tue, March 1, 2022

Cross sea waves in La Rochelle, France

Adrian Hij/Getty Images

Heading to the coast for a seaside trip is what vacation dreams are made of. Soaking in the sun while feeling the warm sand between your toes as the shore laps against your feet makes for a magical scene. However, there are still a few things to be wary of when spending time at the beach — namely, some very specific water safety tips to keep in mind.

While you may know a thing or two about traditional rip currents and changing tides, you may not be aware of the dangers of square waves. Yes, this is a real thing — and a truly stunning phenomenon at that — but it's also one of the most dangerous sights to see in the water.

Known as a "cross sea," a square wave occurs when two swells meet to form a square, often resembling a checkerboard pattern. As the European Space Agency explained in 2010, "The conditions are quite common in the ocean and occur when a windsea and a swell, or two swell systems, coexist." It pointed to a 2004 study that showed "a large percentage of ship accidents occurred in crossing sea states."

HowStuffWorks further explained, these square waves are rather rare, but when they do occur, they generally can be found along coastal areas. A prime place to view them from a safe distance is along the western coast of France on the Île de Ré. (If you want to really get into it, HowStuffWorks also pointed to a scientific breakdown of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation, which is why these waves form in the first place.)

But these cross seas can form swells up to 10 feet high, as well as create unique wind patterns, making it difficult for boaters to navigate and swimmers to make their way through. So, again, while rare, if you do stumble across this, avoid heading out via a boat or swimming in the potentially rough seas. Instead, choose to spend your time relaxing on the sand, or just splash in the shallows for a refreshing dip and wait for better conditions to take your ocean plunge in peace and safety.

MODI HAS NOT CRITICIZED PUTIN'S WAR

Indian students in Ukraine in fear as Russian invasion grows

By KRUTIKA PATHI and SHEIKH SAALIQ

1 of 18

Mansi Singhal, an Indian student studying in Ukraine who fled the conflict, hugs her mother after she arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian student Abrar Sheikh has been waking up to the loud thuds of bombs that have pummeled Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine near the Russian border, for the last three days. When he hears the sounds of shelling, he rushes to a nearby bunker, praying the bombs don’t find him.

On Tuesday, the blare of the bombs became louder. The food inside the bunker got scarcer and the cries of children inside grew.

“At that moment, all I could think of was my family,” Sheikh, 22, said by cellphone from the underground bunker on Wednesday, his voice thick with fear.

“Sometimes the bunker goes all silent after we hear the sound of the bombs and I think, ‘Is this it?’” he said. “At night we pull the curtains in our rooms to keep them dark, hoping Russian troops don’t know we are inside.”

Thousands of Indians studying in Ukraine have suddenly found themselves in the midst of the war after Russia invaded the country last week, with many hunkered inside bunkers and fearful of what lies ahead.

Pressure on the Indian government to pull out its citizens has intensified in recent days, especially after one student died in shelling in Kharkiv on Tuesday. The government says about 17,000 out of an estimated 20,000 Indian citizens in Ukraine have left the country and that India is trying to evacuate the rest to nearby countries from where they can be flown back home. Many of those who remain stranded are in conflict areas such as Kharkiv and Sumy.

Sheikh, a medical student at Sumy State University, has been trying to leave the city for several days. But shelling by Russian forces has left him and about 500 other Indian students in the city trapped.

They are about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Russian border. But they are hundreds of kilometers and at least 10 hours away from Ukraine’s western border, considered to be safer, where Indian officials have so far focused their evacuation efforts. Evacuation flights have taken off from countries bordering western Ukraine, such as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, with more scheduled. A group of Indian Cabinet ministers has flown to these countries to help with rescue efforts.

But for those stuck in the eastern region, there appears no safe way out yet. India has sent a team from its embassy in Moscow to Belgorod, a Russian city close to the border with Ukraine, foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said Tuesday. “This team is in place and ready to see whatever we can do to extract our students and citizens from the Kharkiv and Sumy area,” he said.

India has asked all its citizens to immediately leave Kharkiv after receiving information from Russia, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said. They have been advised to move to three safe zones about 15 kilometers (9 miles) away using any means, including on foot, he said. Bagchi did not describe the information provided by Russia.


Activists of All India Students' Association hold a photograph of Indian student Naveen who was killed in Russian attack in Ukraine, during a protest in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. The protesters were demanding that Indian government should bring back students studying in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin should stop the war. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

In Sumy, about 180 kilometers (110 miles) from Kharkiv, an oil depot was reportedly bombed, railway tracks have been destroyed, and there is fighting in the streets, students said.

“We cannot leave. We have no way of getting to the western part. There is no train or bus or any transport to take us there,” said Chandra Reddy, 22, another medical student at Sumy State University.

Reddy said he was in touch with Indian authorities, who urged him to stay put for now.

He said he risked his life on Tuesday to go to a nearby grocery store, leaving the bunker where he has spent most of his time over the last six days. He quickly bought packets of rice, vegetables and fruit — enough to last a few days — before rushing back.

On the same day, Indian student Naveen S. Gyanagoudar was killed in Kharkiv when he left his bunker to go buy food.

“When I heard that, it hit me that I had just done the same thing, that this can be me next,” Reddy said.

Approximately 18,000 Indian students were in Ukraine, most of them studying medicine. The state-run universities are popular with Indian students for their high-quality education at affordable prices, and as an alternative to India’s overcrowded and competitive public universities.

Following the invasion last week, a number of Western and Asian countries slapped sanctions on Russia, but India sought to appear neutral. It has refrained from criticizing Russia or directly acknowledging Ukraine’s sovereignty, instead pushing for diplomacy and dialogue. On Wednesday, it abstained from voting on a U.N. General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate halt to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine - similarly, it abstained from voting on a U.N. Security Council resolution last week. Experts said the decision didn’t signal support for Moscow, but reflected India’s historic partnership with Russia, a Cold War ally it continues to rely on for energy, weapons and support in conflicts with neighbors.

Activist of All India Students' Association shout slogans during protest in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. The protesters were demanding that Indian government should bring back students studying in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin should stop the war. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Stranded Indians have appealed for help on social media. In one video, a crying student begged the Indian government for assistance. Another showed dozens of students walking toward crowded borders where they waited for hours before being allowed into neighboring countries.

Such images have sparked sharp criticism of the government’s rescue operation, with some, including opposition political leaders, saying India should have reacted sooner.

India issued an advisory on Feb. 15 telling those who didn’t have essential work in Ukraine to consider leaving temporarily — four days after the United States urged all Americans to leave immediately.

Government officials have rejected the criticism. Many have rushed to New Delhi’s airport in recent days to welcome returning students with flowers.

Nimshim Zimik, who returned to India on Tuesday, said she spent a week in a basement in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, ready with her luggage and essential documents. At night, she and her friends took turns sleeping.

“But we could never really sleep knowing that a bomb could fall anytime on us,” she said.

On Saturday, with no signs of help arriving, Zimik decided to leave the city.

She and 53 other students contacted a Ukrainian driver and left early in the morning. But the bus broke down midway, forcing them to walk almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the Romanian border.

She was finally evacuated in a special flight from Romania on Tuesday.

“It’s like a dream,” she said. “Arriving here feels like a very heavy load has been lifted off me.”

___

Associated Press journalists Ashok Sharma and Chonchui Ngashangva contributed to this report.

In wartime battle over imagery, so far it hasn’t been close

By DAVID BAUDER

Members of civil defense prepare Molotov cocktails in a yard in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. A Ukrainian official says street fighting has broken out in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv. Russian troops also put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

NEW YORK (AP) — For people outside Ukraine, the conflict with Russia is experienced almost solely through the media. In that theater, it hasn’t been close.

Virtually all of the war’s indelible images — a woman’s chilling offer of sunflower seeds to a Russian soldier, city residents turning old bottles into Molotov cocktails, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he wants ammunition instead of a ride — have served to rally the world to his country’s side.

Ukraine may ultimately be overcome by sheer military might, but the power of war’s imagery will likely never be underestimated in the future.

News coverage has emphasized a David vs. Goliath theme, capturing both the fortitude and suffering of Ukrainians, and the country’s leaders have skillfully provided material to advance the narrative.

“They seem to recognize that this is a war of images as much as a ground war,” said Kenneth Osgood, a professor of history and an expert on propaganda and intelligence at the Colorado School of Mines. “Because without support, as a military reality, Ukraine doesn’t stand a chance. As a political reality, it absolutely does.”

Few moments captured the imagination quite like the answer reportedly offered by Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea, when those on a Russian warship told them to surrender or face a bombing.

“Russian warship,” the answer came back, “go (expletive) yourself.”

Although early reports said the soldiers were killed in an ensuing attack, the Ukrainian Navy later confirmed they were alive and well. The AP could not independently verify any of the account.

“It was as brave and courageous and in-your-face as it could possibly be,” said Marty Kaplan, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. “That’s what the world was seeing. They were speaking on our behalf to the Russians.”

News reports have been filled with stories of ordinary Ukrainians taking up arms, despite advancing age or inexperience.

Pictures of defiance were also common, like citizens in Chernihiv photographed standing in the road to block Russian tanks. In one widely spread video clip, an angry woman verbally confronts a Russian soldier, ultimately offering to “put sunflower seeds in your pocket so they grow when you die.”

In some cases, Ukrainians have humanized Russian soldiers in a way that divorces them from the faceless juggernaut, instead making them seem like vulnerable pawns themselves. In one posted video, a captured soldier phones home to his mother. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations read aloud the plaintive last text messages one Russian soldier sent home before he was killed.

Ukraine’s government has maintained an active Twitter feed. It posted a map showing the comparative sizes of Russia and Ukraine with the message, “realize the scale of Ukrainian heroism” and urged followers to “tag @Russia and tell them what you think of them.”

On Tuesday, it retweeted a photo of author Stephen King wearing a shirt saying “I Stand with Ukraine,” adding the message “we will prevail over those langoliers for you, sir,” a reference to one of King’s creations.

The Ukrainians have also stressed civilian casualties to emphasize the point that real people are suffering, despite Russian claims of seeking military targets. Pictures have emerged of unexploded bombs landing near a playground, or in front of a grocery store.

Reporters have found plenty of examples on their own. A story by The Associated Press depicted doctors in the port city of Mariupol fruitlessly trying to save a 6-year-old girl injured in Russian shelling.

As he tried to help save her, a doctor looked at the camera of a video journalist and said, “Show this to Putin.”

In a report that emphasized a victory for Ukraine, CNN’s Matthew Chance on Tuesday walked by a column of Russian military vehicles blown up by Ukrainian missiles, some still smoldering. He spotted an unexploded grenade on the ground and carefully walked away.

It was memorable television, yet its meaning was unclear. Was this just a random sign of military success or something more?

For the Ukrainians, Zelenskyy has been a tireless advocate, appearing with countrymen and on near-constant video addresses. Turning down an offer to escape the country and instead pleading for help made him a hero to many watching.

By video, he gave a speech Tuesday to the European Parliament, his translator at one point fighting off sobs.

After Zelenskyy received a standing ovation, MSNBC’s Willie Geist said, “the Churchill comparisons are exhausted at this point.”

“Zelenskyy and his team have been really clever for calling things what they are,” Osgood said. “They’re giving his message of ‘we’re standing alone against the giant’ with a refreshing kind of bluntness — and a hint of defiant desperation.”

The story being told through the imagery is more than superficial. It has almost certainly galvanized support for Ukraine elsewhere and provided momentum for military aid, sanctions and other economic repercussions to Russian interests that would not have otherwise happened, said Philip Seib, author of last year’s “Information at War: Journalism, Disinformation and Modern Warfare.”

In contrast to Zelenskyy, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has given speeches that have led to whispers about his mental capacity, and literally appears isolated by being seen at huge tables far away from any aides.

The Russian story — a brutal invasion of a neighboring country for reasons unclear — is a hard sell to begin with. But the Russians have shown a Soviet-era incompetence that contrasts with their recently displayed adeptness in information warfare, Osgood said.

“This is part of their overall strategy,” Seib said. “What they did not consider is that there are so many other voices out there.”

The momentum created has also led to other negative impacts for the Russians, including restrictions placed on social media distribution of their state-controlled media outlets.

Despite successes for the Ukrainians, many news outlets have been careful to note that dark days still lie ahead.

“This is genuinely suspenseful,” Kaplan said. “We don’t know what is going to come next. It could end up in horror. Or it could end up being the triumph of the human spirit.”

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Captured Russian Troops Call Home While Filmed by Ukrainian Officials, Raising Geneva Convention Questions



Richard Sisk
Tue, March 1, 2022

Several demoralized Russian troops captured in Ukraine were allowed to call home over the weekend to tell their families they were safe and profess confusion about why they were sent to war.

"Mama and Papa, I didn't want to come here. They forced me to," a Russian soldier said in videos purporting to show the phone calls that were taken by Ukraine's Interior Ministry and posted on YouTube. Videos and stills of captured or surrendered Russian troops also were posted on the Ukrainian Security Service's Facebook page.

The posting of the videos showing captured Russian troops raised questions about whether Ukraine had violated Article 13 of the Geneva Conventions, calling for the protection of prisoners of war "against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

The captured Russian soldiers, and any Ukrainians captured by the Russians, were entitled to humane treatment and protections under the law of war and the Geneva Conventions, said Gary Solis, a Vietnam veteran, retired Marine judge advocate general and author of the book, "The Law of Armed Conflict."

"It's a violation" of Geneva to post the videos, but not what would be considered a "grave breach" to be taken up by a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Solis said.

"Anybody who is captured is a prisoner of war" and must be shielded from abuse and provided medical treatment as a lawful combatant, he added. "Clearly, the Russians who were captured were wearing uniforms."

He compared what the Ukrainians had done more to a misdemeanor than a felony, and also noted that there was a positive humanitarian aspect of the videos in showing "proof of life" to the families of the captured troops.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has made no mention of Ukrainian actions since Russia invaded last week, but on Monday, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a press release that he planned to begin an investigation "as rapidly as possible" into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia tied to the bombing and shelling of civilian buildings.

In English subtitles added to one video by Ukrainian authorities, another Russian soldier tried to explain his plight to his mother: "Hello, hello, Mom? Hi, did you recognize me? I am in the territory of Ukraine. I've been taken captive but I'm alright."

In addition to the videos of soldiers calling home, the Interior Ministry showed off-camera interrogators questioning the troops who mostly appeared to be unharmed and speaking freely, but some had cuts and bruises on their faces.

One soldier appeared under sheets in what was either an aid station or hospital bed and said "I got here not knowing" what the mission was, according to the Ukrainian translation. "I didn't imagine what will happen here. There was no need to come here."

He said "our convoy got under fire" and now "my legs are broken." He had a wife and two children back in Russia, the soldier said, and "I pray to God to recover."

A common theme among the soldiers was that they were conscripts, with little concept of why they were sent into Ukraine and-or what their mission was once they crossed the border.

One Russian soldier said: "We came here under the pretext of doing military exercises. We were not planning to make war on Ukraine. I am alive and healthy as a captive, and my message is to stop the war in Ukraine. It is nonsense; people are dying."

Ukrainian officials gave no overall figure for how many Russian troops may have been captured, but Ukraine's Interior Ministry reported Tuesday that 5,710 Russian troops had been killed since the Feb. 24 invasion began.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov declined Sunday to give numbers on how many Russian troops had been killed or captured but said more Ukrainians than Russians had been killed, Russia's Tass news agency reported.

"There are dead and wounded among our comrades," Konashenkov said without giving any figures, but added that Ukraine's losses were "many times" more than Russia's -- again without giving specifics.

Although they may not be wearing uniforms, the civilians would be considered lawful combatants so long as they were wearing a sign or symbol of their allegiance, and simply carrying a weapon would qualify as such a sign, Solis said.

Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com

Related: Russia-Ukraine War: What to Know on Day 6 of Russian Assault

Ukrainian authorities say citizens don't need to declare captured Russian tanks and military equipment for tax purposes

Cheryl Teh
Tue, March 1, 2022,

A fragment of a destroyed Russian tank on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine,

 on February 26.

SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian authorities said captured Russian tanks wouldn't be counted as part of citizens' income.

They said that seized tanks and military equipment need not be declared for tax purposes.

They said such items would be considered a "manifestation of the unity and cohesion" of Ukrainians.

Ukrainian authorities have reassured citizens that they don't need to declare captured Russian tanks or any equipment they pick up as personal income.

"Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland!" a statement from the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention seen by Interfax-Ukraine said.

"There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this ... does not exceed 100 living wages," or 248,100 Ukrainian hryvnia, the agency said, according to Interfax-Ukraine. The sum equates to about $8,300.

On the agency's website, a document dated Monday said the seizure of tanks or equipment would be considered a "manifestation of the unity and cohesion of the Ukrainian people in the fight against invaders" and would not be taxable.

"Thanks to the courage and victory of the defenders of the Ukrainian state, hostile military equipment, weapons, and other armor arrive as scrap. It is impossible to evaluate such objects in accordance with the Law of Ukraine," it said.

Ukraine has fiercely resisted Russia's invasion, which began on Thursday. Amid the conflict, images have emerged that appear to show abandoned Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

Insider's live blog of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is covering developments as they happen.