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ABOUT UKRAINE
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent
Derived from Slavic words meaning “at the edge” or “on the border,” Ukraine is again at the precipice of international struggle and possible war.
Keep in mind: Things can change quickly. For the latest and greatest on what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, check out our coverage here.
Where things stand
Our own Nick Schifrin has led on several important stories here:
- The United States believes Russia plans to invade Ukraine and that decision has been conveyed to the Russian military, multiple defense officials told him Friday.
- And the U.S. has believed the invasion would start this week, after what they anticipate to be an initial campaign of aerial bombardment and electronic warfare, again per his sources.
Some basics about the landscape:
- Russia has denied any plans to invade Ukraine. But Ukrainian leaders remain cautious. President Vladimir Putin announced today that Russia is pulling some troops from the Ukrainian border.
- Here’s how Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, put it: “Russia constantly makes various statements. … We won’t believe when we hear, we’ll believe when we see. When we see troops pulling out, we’ll believe in de-escalation.”
- As of Feb. 13, some 130,000 Russian forces are near the border with Ukraine, per the Associated Press, citing an estimate from an anonymous U.S. official. This may include air as well as ground troops. It’s unclear how Putin’s announcement today about pulling troops affects this number.
- Where are they? This map from The New York Times shows the Russian build-up. Ground troops are concentrated along the eastern and northern borders of Ukraine. Russia could attack by water as well. Forces positioned in Crimea could move across the Black Sea toward the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa. It’s not immediately clear, however, where Russian troops are being pulled back after today’s announcement. For what it’s worth, NATO said its alliances “have not seen any sign of de-escalation.”
- What about Belarus? Russian troops are also positioned in neighboring Belarus. While the two countries are officially holding joint military drills, some Western experts believe the drills are a pretext for Russian troop readiness to invade Ukraine. The Belarussian border is less than three hours’ drive from Kyiv.
- … NATO? Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. But four countries bordering Ukraine on the west are NATO members: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
- Where do diplomatic efforts stand? Some key players have hinted that diplomacy could be possible as things escalate, but the U.S. government is preparing for the worse.
A quick look at some of these countries’ militaries, writ-large:
- Russia: 900,000 active duty troops. Another 2 million in reserve, per the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
- Ukraine: 209,000 active duty troops. Another 900,000 in reserve, per the same institute.
- The U.S.
- 1.3 million active duty service members. Another 2.3 million in reserve, per the U.S. military.
- 4,700 U.S. troops total will be in Poland, including a second tranche of support troops announced this week.
- President Joe Biden said sending U.S. troops into Ukraine to fight is “off the table,”something he reiterated in an address Tuesday from the White House.
- The rest of NATO
- The U.S. has by far the largest military of any NATO country.
- The next largest are: Turkey with 437,200 troops and France, 208,000.
The options for the U.S.
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The United States, with the world’s largest economy and one of the world’s largest military forces, has a few strategic tools it can use. Biden touched on a few of them in Tuesday’s address.
- Send funds and military aid, including weapons, to Ukraine. The U.S. has sent some $650 million in “lethal aid” to Ukraine in the last year.
- Continue to move more U.S. troops to the region around Ukraine.
- Press for a variety of diplomatic talks to continue. These can be among groups of countries or bilateral with just one country, like Germany or Russia. Putin, as of Tuesday, said talks should continue and that Russia is “ready to follow the negotiation track.” But, he added that the U.S. and NATO have yet to meet Russia’s security demands.
- Sanctions by the U.S. and NATO allies. The U.S. and allies can issue sanctions on Russia in a variety of forms.
- Those can be targeted at individuals, including Putin’s inner circle or even at Putin himself, to the extent his assets are clearly known.
- Sanctions also can be targeted to a specific sector, like oil and gas. But, in the case of an invasion, the Biden administration has made it clear it would impose broad financial sanctions that could cripple Russian banks and/or shut off significant business with American companies. Those sanctions could include so-called “secondary sanctions,” penalizing non-Russian banks which work with Russian banks on the sanction list. Such a move would be intended as a financial siege around Russia’s economy.
THE ‘CIVIL RIGHTS QUEEN’ OF THE JUDICIARY |
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In this 1966 photo, Constance Baker Motley sits with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office on the day he nominated her as a federal district judge. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage
Senior Editor, Digital
Nicole Ellis, @NicoleEllis
Digital Correspondent
Biden’s choice for a U.S. Supreme Court nominee is imminent.
As the president prepares to nominate the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, a new biography seeks to “correct the historical record” on the life of Constance Baker Motley and her contributions to the judicial system, including as the first Black woman to argue a case in front of the high court.
Motley, who died in 2005, is associated with multiple historic “firsts.” She was the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge when she was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1966. (She also became chief judge in 1982.) And before her time as a federal judge, she was for years the only woman on the legal team of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
She “had tremendous impact as a lawyer, helping on Brown v. Board of Education, and a range of cases that really changed the legal architecture of this country,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.”
Motley had a commanding voice in cases ranging from higher education to ones involving the right to counsel and civil protest, she added.
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Motley (center) amid the other judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Photo courtesy of the Motley family
Brown-Nagin said she wanted her biography to place Motley among the “pantheon of great American leaders.”
“I want readers to see the value of looking at the civil rights movement through the lens of gender and through the eyes of a woman because of enduring issues around gender equity today.”
Only four of the 115 justices in Supreme Court history have been women. And only three have been Black or Latino: Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, both sitting justices; and the late Thurgood Marshall. No Black woman has ever been nominated for or served on the high court.
More on the SCOTUS nomination from our recent reporting:
#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage
Digital Editor, Senior
Many past presidents have written about their time in office. It’s a tradition at this point.
Our question: But who was the first U.S. president to write a biography about another president? (Make sure to name the writer and the subject of the biography.)
Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.
Last week, we asked: Who is the only U.S. president to attend an Olympics on foreign soil while in office?
The answer: George W. Bush. He attended the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Here’s a photo of him cheering on U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps.
Congratulations to our winners: Carolyn Priest and Joanne B. Martin!
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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