War Notes — March 1, 2022

New York Times: Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions.

Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. . . .

After years of discussions in Washington and in tech circles about the need for public-private partnerships to combat destructive cyberattacks, the war in Ukraine is stress-testing the system.

The White House, armed with intelligence from the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, is overseeing classified briefings on Russia’s cyberoffensive plans. Even if American intelligence agencies picked up on the kind of crippling cyberattacks that someone — presumably Russian intelligence agencies or hackers — threw at Ukraine’s government, they do not have the infrastructure to move that fast to block them.

“We are a company and not a government or a country,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, noted in a blog post issued by the company on Monday, describing the threats it was seeing. But the role it is playing, he made clear, is not a neutral one. He wrote about “constant and close coordination” with the Ukrainian government, as well as federal officials, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

“I’ve never seen it work quite this way, or nearly this fast,” Mr. Burt said. “We are doing in hours now what, even a few years ago, would have taken weeks or months.”

Paul Krugman, Nobel-winner economics columnist, on the key role of taking on money laundering to penalize Russian aggression — if we have the guts to face our own, too:

“Russia has run huge trade surpluses every year since the early 1990s, which should have led to a large accumulation of overseas assets. Yet official statistics show Russia with only moderately more assets than liabilities abroad. How is that possible? The obvious explanation is that wealthy Russians have been skimming off large sums and parking them abroad.

The sums involved are mind-boggling. [Scholars] estimate that in 2015 the hidden foreign wealth of rich Russians amounted to around 85 percent of Russia’s G.D.P. To give you some perspective, this is as if a U.S. president’s cronies had managed to hide $20 trillion in overseas accounts. . . . As far as I can tell, the overseas exposure of Russia’s elite has no precedent in history — and it creates a huge vulnerability that the West can exploit.

But can democratic governments go after these assets? Yes. As I read it, the legal basis is already there … and so is the technical ability. Indeed, Britain froze the assets of three prominent Putin cronies earlier this week, and it could give many others the same treatment.

So we have the means to put enormous financial pressure on the Putin regime (as opposed to the Russian economy). But do we have the will? That’s the trillion-ruble question.

There are two uncomfortable facts here. First, a number of influential people, both in business and in politics, are deeply financially enmeshed with Russian kleptocrats. This is especially true in Britain. Second, it will be hard to go after laundered Russian money without making life harder for all money launderers, wherever they come from . . . .

What this means is that taking effective action against Putin’s greatest vulnerability will require facing up to and overcoming the West’s own corruption.

Can the democratic world rise to this challenge? We’ll find out over the next few months.”

David Miliband: Mr. Miliband is the president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee. He served as Britain’s foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the military balance of power in Europe is up for grabs. The moral balance is also at stake. The West needs to show that it can live up to its values — as well as defend itself.

Vladimir Putin’s willingness to challenge international norms means Ukraine’s 44 million citizens are living in fear for their lives and their futures. All possible outcomes involve sacrifice and suffering on a huge scale.

More than 500,000 people already have fled across Ukraine’s borders; at least 160,000 more have been internally displaced by the fighting. The United States has predicted there could be as many as five million refugees — joining what is already a record 31 million refugees and asylum seekers around the world.

With Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 required to stay and fight, women and children are on the humanitarian front line. They are scared and exhausted, leaving behind their homes and possessions, desperately trying to make the right choices to stay alive.

How these people are treated presents not only an immediate practical challenge but also a political one, since both Europe and the United States have in recent years turned tail on their values. (Just ask Afghans, Syrians or Yemenis seeking refuge and respite from war.)

. . . The West cannot afford a further humanitarian fumble in the Ukraine crisis. Autocrats around the world claim that Western commitment to human rights and rule of law is a hypocritical sham. They must be proved wrong.

Brown Pietsch: Arguably [Zelensky’s] most consequential acting role was on the show “Servant of the People” as Vasyl Holoborodko, a teacher whose impassioned speech about corruption in Ukrainian politics goes viral, catapulting him to the presidency.
Then TV became reality: With the country’s deeply entrenched corruption a key theme in the 2019 election, Zelensky decided to make a real-life run for the top office.

“People want to see a president like [Vasyl Holoborodko], with the same moral values,” Zelensky said before the election. “They’re fed up with the establishment. People want something new.”
What are Zelensky’s political views, including on Putin and Russia?

Zelensky has overseen the name changes of Soviet-era monuments and street names to honor Ukrainian heroes.
And while he has become a hero of sorts to the Ukrainian public in the days since the Russian invasion began, his popularity as president had appeared to be waning. He had been criticized for not pushing anti-corruption reforms, as he had touted during his campaign, and some Ukrainians felt he was too weak and compromising with Putin.

Where are Zelensky and his family?

Although Zelensky has claimed that Moscow is targeting him for assassination to “destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” he has not backed down. In the days since the invasion began, he has walked the capital’s streets, filming himself in videos urging the Ukrainian people to resist the Russian invasion. His calls appear to be working, with the United States and Britain reporting that Moscow is facing stronger resistance in Ukraine than it had anticipated.

Zelensky’s family is Russia’s “target No. 2,” he has said. In a meeting with CIA Director William J. Burns in January, Zelensky asked whether he or his family were in danger amid growing concerns of Russian aggression. He was initially skeptical that the Russians would try to kill him.

For security reasons, he has not disclosed the location of his family — his wife and two children — though they are believed to be near him. “My children are looking at me, I will be next to them and next to my husband and with you,” first lady Olena Zelenska wrote on Instagram last week.
— Washington Post