World
Russia needs to be contained, not beaten, to save Ukraine | View
![Russia needs to be contained, not beaten, to save Ukraine | View Russia needs to be contained, not beaten, to save Ukraine | View](https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/06/69/69/12/1000x563_cmsv2_9909a162-cf99-52ef-94b5-9b22ef3af874-6696912.jpg)
Geography has dealt Ukraine a troublesome hand. It holds good playing cards, comparable to wealthy soils and rivers that draining south into the Black Sea, permitting Ukrainians to export their wheat to the remainder of the world.
However its unhealthy ones, above all its place the place the arid Asian steppes meet Europe’s wetter mountains, forests, and plains, are very unhealthy certainly. Ukraine’s very identify in all probability comes from an Previous Slavonic phrase that means “Borderland,” and for at the very least 6,000 years, it has been fought over by extra highly effective neighbors.
Within the late Stone Age, Ukraine’s black earth attracted immigrants from the Balkans, who expelled the hunters who had beforehand lived there, turned it into farmland, and constructed a few of the greatest cities the prehistoric world ever noticed.
By 500 BCE, Athenians needed Ukraine to be their breadbasket, and despatched retailers with ships stuffed with silver to purchase its grain. Within the Center Ages, khans using out of central Asia used Ukraine as a (comparatively) delicate winter pasture for his or her horses and offered its individuals into slavery. By the 14th century, Lithuanians had been treating Ukraine (or Ruthenia, as they referred to as it) as a buffer towards these khans, and within the sixteenth century, Poland turned it into one other one towards the Turks. Within the seventeenth century, Sweden was drawn in too, making Ukraine a pawn in its wars with Poland and Russia—and Russia’s tsars got here to see Ukraine as a dagger pointed at their hearts.
Since then, Ukrainians’ historical past has overwhelmingly been about what got here their manner from Russia. Till the sixteenth century, Russians had apprehensive most about Mongol khans, to whom they paid tribute within the hope of shopping for peace, however within the 1550s, Ivan the Horrible started pushing them again utilizing newfangled European cannons and muskets. Russian settlers crossed the Urals in 1598 and simply stored going till they gazed upon the Pacific in 1639.
By no means once more would nomads from the steppes threaten Russia, and since 1571, when Crimeans burned Moscow, that metropolis’s tsars, common secretaries, and presidents have persistently seen the West because the supply of their biggest issues. Polish armies took Moscow in 1610, carrying Tsar Vasili IV off to Warsaw in a cage and murdering him.
Swedes besieged St Petersburg in 1705 and marched deep into Ukraine in 1709; Napoleon burned Moscow once more in 1812; Germany pushed Russia into revolution in 1917, detaching Ukraine as an unbiased nation; and in 1941, Germans as soon as extra threatened Moscow. No surprise Russians worry Europe.
For over 400 years, Russian rulers have identified they may haven’t any safety if they’ve enemies in Ukraine. That is only a reality of life for them. Catherine the Nice absorbed the area into Russia in 1764, including Crimea in 1783. Ever since, Ukraine has been the important thing to Russian efforts each to create strategic depth for protection towards Europe and to realize entry to warmwater ports.
Catherine the truth is aimed to comply with up capturing Crimea by marching on Constantinople, one thing the Soviets had been nonetheless contemplating within the Nineteen Eighties. When Vladimir Putin referred to as the Soviet Union’s collapse “the best geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century,” what he meant was that it had undone 400 years of Russian coverage.
The purpose of this historical past lesson is that Vladimir Putin will not be an anomaly in looking for to dominate Ukraine.
Geography is future, and, just like the Romanovs and Bolsheviks earlier than him, Putin grasps the geographical actuality that Ukraine is the important thing to Russia’s safety. Nevertheless the present warfare seems, neither Putin nor anybody who replaces him will begin seeing the map in another way. However what can maybe be modified what they do about what they see.
Earlier than 1945, Ukraine’s neighbors persistently relied on drive to attain their goals. However after 1945, though Western leaders remained prepared to make use of drive, additionally they noticed that “gentle energy” labored higher. A lot of the world needed to share within the prosperity of the American-dominated international financial system and the freedoms that got here with democracy, and that always did extra to additional American goals than any quantity of threats. The European Union has expanded eastward since 2004 as a result of individuals welcomed it, not as a result of NATO armies exported it.
Soviet Russia additionally possessed gentle energy, and made its personal efforts to export it within the Chilly Conflict. Within the Nineteen Seventies, my grandad, a steelworker in Stoke-on-Trent, used to lecture me earnestly about how a lot better life could be after the revolution, and an uncle even gave me a duplicate of Mao’s Little Crimson Guide.
Nevertheless, Russia at all times remained readier to resort to drive than the West. To the American diplomat George Kennan, stationed in Moscow in 1946, Stalin and his interior circle “stand earlier than historical past, at finest, as solely the final of that lengthy succession of merciless and wasteful Russian rulers who’ve relentlessly pressured [their] nation on to ever new heights of army energy with a view to assure [the] exterior safety of their internally weak regimes.”
Kennan was righter than he knew, and three quarters of a century later, not a lot has modified within the Kremlin. The revolutions of 1989 broke Russian arduous energy for a decade, however Russian leaders resumed utilizing drive to resolve their strategic issues within the early 2000s. Defeating the Russian military in 2022 is not going to be deliver peace.
When Finland defeated Stalin’s invasion of their nation in 1939, he simply conscripted extra males, bludgeoning the Finns into submission in 1940. The one option to dissuade Russia from taking the identical tack in Ukraine is by persuading its leaders to pursue their geopolitical targets with out resorting to violence—simply as Kennan suggested the US to do within the Chilly Conflict. Deterrence and appeasement are by no means far aside. The trail to peace will entails rising the advantages to Russia of accepting the established order in addition to rising the prices of attacking it.
Putin would possibly show no extra persuadable than Stalin, however containment is a marathon not a dash. The prices of preventing the American army and financial big did deter Stalin from launching World Conflict III; by the Nineteen Seventies, rising advantages from complying with the established order satisfied his successors to have interaction in détente; and within the Nineties, peaceable coexistence briefly appeared attainable.
Containment 2.0 hardly looks like a pretty choice. Like the unique model imposed on the USSR, it should continually create crises and produce dangers of warfare, even nuclear. Its prices will probably be a continuing drain on the world financial system. And most alarming of all, it dangers pushing Russia and China collectively into an alliance much more threatening than the Soviet Union ever was. However the arduous fact is that there is no such thing as a more sensible choice.
Pity poor Ukraine—so removed from God, so near the Russian Federation.
Ian Morris teaches at Stanford College and is a Fellow of the British Academy. He’s the bestselling writer of Why the West Guidelines – For Now, Conflict: What’s it Good For?, and most not too long ago, Geography Is Future: Britain and the World, a ten,000 Yr Historical past (Profile Books)
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World
American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 5 others 'brutally murdered' by Hamas right before rescue: IDF
![American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 5 others 'brutally murdered' by Hamas right before rescue: IDF American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 5 others 'brutally murdered' by Hamas right before rescue: IDF](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/hersh.png)
Hamas terrorists killed six hostages Saturday, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, as Israel Defense Forces closed in for a rescue attempt in the tunnels deep below Gaza’s Rafah.
Goldberg-Polin’s family confirmed his death early Sunday. His body was one of six recovered on Saturday. The IDF revealed that Hamas killed the hostages, who had been held for nearly 11 months, just as they were on the brink of freedom.
“According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement.
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was abducted at a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against the Jewish State. He lost part of his left arm to a grenade in the attack. His body was recovered Saturday in the tunnels under Rafah, along with Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sergeant Ori Danino.
DEFENSE MINISTER SAYS ISRAEL MUST ‘WIDEN THE GOALS’ OF WAR TO RETURN RESIDENTS TO THE NORTH
Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin has been confirmed dead. (Israel’s Minister of Defense)
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “He who murders abductees – does not want a deal. We are in a difficult day. The heart of the entire nation was torn.”
“Along with all the citizens of Israel, I was shocked to the core by the terrible cold-blooded murder of six of our abductees.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he “embrace[s] their families with all my heart, and apologize[s] for failing to bring them home safely.”
A dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, Goldberg-Polin immigrated to Israel with his family in 2008 at the age of seven, according to a statement from his family. He leaves behind his parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, and his two sisters.
Goldberg-Polin’s family and friends traveled the world demanding his release and met with world leaders, including officials in the Biden administration.
President Biden said he is “devastated and outraged” by the news of Goldberg-Polin’s death.
“It is as tragic as it is reprehensible,” he said. “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.”
Vice President Harris, also the Democratic nominee for president, said her prayers are with Goldberg-Polin’s loved ones as they mourn his loss.
“Hamas is an evil terrorist organization,” Harris said. “With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands. I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world. From its massacre of 1,200 people to sexual violence, taking of hostages, and these murders, Hamas’ depravity is evident and horrifying.”
ISRAEL KILLS PALESTINIAN COMMANDER MUHAMMAD JABER ‘ABU SHUJAA’ AS FIGHTING INTENSIFIES: IDF
![Hersh Goldberg-Polin](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/polin.png?ve=1&tl=1)
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was abducted at a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. (IDF)
“The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel — and American citizens in Israel — must be eliminated and Hamas cannot control Gaza,” she added. “The Palestinian people too have suffered under Hamas’ rule for nearly two decades.”
“A few hours ago, we informed the families that the bodies of their loved ones had been located by IDF troops in an underground tunnel in Rafah,” IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement. “According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.”
Fox News’ Yonat Friling contributed to this report.
World
Photos: Mass polio vaccination drive kicks off in Gaza amid Israeli strikes
![Photos: Mass polio vaccination drive kicks off in Gaza amid Israeli strikes Photos: Mass polio vaccination drive kicks off in Gaza amid Israeli strikes](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AFP__20240901__36F32UL__v1__Preview__PalestinianIsraelConflictHealth-1725178114.jpg?resize=1200%2C630)
Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies on Sunday began a vaccination drive against polio in the Gaza Strip, hoping to prevent an outbreak in the territory ravaged by nearly 11 months of Israeli bombardment.
Authorities plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza until Wednesday before moving to the more devastated northern and southern parts of the Strip, aiming to inoculate about 640,000 children. On Saturday, a few children were vaccinated before the formal start of the campaign.
“This is the first few hours of the first phase of a massive campaign, one of the most complex in the world,” said Juliette Touma, communications director of UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency.
“Today is test time for parties to the conflict to respect these area pauses to allow the UNRWA teams and other medical workers to reach children with these very precious two drops. It’s a race against time,” Touma told the Reuters news agency.
Israel and Hamas, which have so far failed to conclude a deal to end the war, said they would cooperate to allow the campaign to succeed.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that Israel has agreed to limited pauses in its military operations to facilitate the campaign. There were initial reports of Israeli strikes in central Gaza early on Sunday, but it was not immediately known if anyone was killed or wounded.
Hospitals in Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat confirmed that the campaign had begun on Sunday. Israel said on Saturday that the vaccination programme would continue through September 9 and last eight hours a day.
The vaccinations will be held at some 160 sites across the territory, including medical centres and schools. Children below 10 years of age will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first.
Gaza recently reported its first polio case in 25 years – a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in the leg. The WHO says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but are not showing symptoms.
Most affected children do not experience symptoms and those who do usually recover in a week or so, the UN health agency said. There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. When polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. The disease can be fatal if the paralysis affects breathing muscles.
The vaccination campaign faces a host of challenges, from ongoing war to devastated roads and hospitals shut down by the war. About 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.
Health officials have expressed alarm about disease outbreaks as rubbish piles up and the bombing of critical infrastructure has sent putrid water flowing through the streets. Widespread hunger has left people even more vulnerable to illness.
“We escaped death with our children and fled from place to place for the sake of our children, and now we have these diseases,” said Wafaa Obaid, who brought her three children to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah for vaccination.
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