Playbook PM: ‘Our army is ready’: Ukraine preps for full-blown conflict

From: POLITICO Playbook - Wednesday Feb 23,2022 06:00 pm

Feb 23, 2022

By Eugene Daniels, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun

Presented by

Probably the most important line of the day comes from OLEKSIY DANILOV, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council: “Our army is ready.”

Danilov’s statement comes as his country is getting ready for a possible full-blown conflict with Russia. Here’s the latest:

— Today, “additional Russian troops have in fact crossed the border into the Donbas region,” CNN reports . According to the information at my disposal, Putin is moving additional forces and tanks into the occupied Donbas territories,” said Latvian Prime Minister ARTURS KRIŠJĀNIS KARIŅŠ. “According to a senior U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence, Russia has deployed one to two so-called battalion tactical groups, Russia's main combat formation, each of which comprise an average of about 800 troops.”

— Ukrainian officials will soon declare a “30-day state of emergency and [mobilize] military reservists” amid Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN’s continued military escalation, per the NYT.

— “Ukraine says another sweeping cyberattack underway as state websites and banks hit,” reports Reuters.

— “Russia began evacuating its embassy in Kyiv, and Ukraine urged its citizens to leave Russia on Wednesday as the region braced for further confrontation after President Vladimir Putin received authorization to use military force outside his country and the West responded with sanctions,” AP’s Dasha Litvinova, Yuras Karmanau and Jim Heintz report in Kyiv.

— In a televised speech on Wednesday, Putin blamed the situation on “the military activity of the NATO bloc,” and added: “I will repeat: Russia’s interests, our citizens’ safety, are absolute.”

— In a significant shift in policy, the Biden administration is expected to drop the national security waiver on Nord Stream 2 to allow for sanctions on the company behind the project — “effectively a death knell,” an official told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, Kevin Liptak and Phil Mattingly.

— But Ukraine has felt the most significant economic impact of the invasion so far. “With Russian troops encircling much of the country, Ukrainian businesses large and small no longer plan for the future — they can barely foresee what will happen week to week,” AP’s Lori Hinnant writes.

— WaPo’s Dan Lamothe has the summary of all the actions the U.S. military is taking in response to the situation.

— The EU has made plans to “sanction Russian Defense Minister SERGEI SHOIGU and the country’s Internet Research Agency, diplomats said, part of the first wave of measures that governments in Washington, Brussels and London say will be a coordinated package of fuller sanctions should Russia escalate military tensions in Ukraine,” WSJ’s Laurence Norman and Evan Gershkovich report. … Related reading: “Sanctions Threaten U.K.’s Position as Playground for Russian Oligarchs,” by WSJ’s Max Colchester and Alistair MacDonald

THE VIEW FROM AMERICA — WaPo’s Marc Fisher takes the temperature of the American public as the world watches “a return to a kind of aggression — one country seeking to take over another — that many American policymakers and voters believed had become passe.”

“The prospect of ground warfare and a brutal assault on a sovereign nation at the edge of America’s European alliance is raising worries about whether the United States pivoted too sharply to Asia and the Middle East in recent decades; whether America’s historical bonds with Europe remain strong enough to protect U.S. interests now; and whether U.S. strategists focused too heavily on the new forms of warfare that have dominated recent international clashes, including cyberwar, drone assaults and targeted assassination.”

— The conflict marks “the first major skirmish of a new order in international politics, with three major powers jostling for position in ways that threaten America’s primacy,” WSJ’s Michael Gordon writes , pointing to the emerging alliance between Russia and China, which “leaves the U.S. contending with two adversaries at once in geographically disparate parts of the world where America has close partners and deep economic and political interests. The Biden administration now faces big decisions on whether to regear its priorities, step up military spending, demand allies contribute more, station additional forces abroad and develop more diverse energy sources to reduce Europe’s dependence on Moscow.”

Good Wednesday afternoon.

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CONGRESS

THE SQUAD’S SOTU PLAN — Rep. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-Mich.) will deliver a formal response to Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, putting on display “the deep rifts within the Democratic Party that have marked Biden’s presidency,” Holly Otterbein writes . “In the speech, given on behalf of the left-wing group Working Families Party … Tlaib will praise Biden’s stimulus bill and make the case that liberals have pushed aggressively for his agenda, according to a summary of her remarks shared exclusively with POLITICO. She is also planning to argue that Republicans and a handful of intransigent Democrats have blocked progress on lowering the cost of housing, health care and prescription drugs.”

FOR YOUR RADAR — “The leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are demanding Attorney General MERRICK GARLAND take immediate action to reform the beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons in response to Associated Press investigations that exposed widespread problems there, serious misconduct involving correctional officers and rampant sexual abuse at a California women’s prison,” AP’s Michael Balsamo and Michael Sisak report.

THE PANDEMIC

CHANGING TUNE ON VAX PASSPORTS — It’s something of an about-face in several red states: After previously eschewing so-called “vaccine passports” over concerns that they limited freedom, many GOP-leaning states are now embracing the idea, Ben Leonard reports . “The technology is gaining momentum in at least five states — Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Utah — despite bans on ‘vaccine passports’ or governors opposing them. The states see the passports, which often include a scannable black and white square of code, as a way to facilitate travel to places that require proof of vaccination and give residents easier access to their records through a more nimble digital format.”

JOIN THURSDAY TO HEAR FROM MAYORS ACROSS AMERICA: The Fifty: America’s Mayors will convene mayors from across the country to discuss their policy agendas, including the enforcement of Covid measures such as vaccine and mask mandates. We’ll also discuss how mayors are dealing with the fallout of the pandemic on their local economies and workforce, affordable housing and homelessness, and criminal justice reforms. REGISTER HERE.

ALL POLITICS

ONE TO WATCH — “The North Carolina attorney general’s office says a constitutional prohibition on insurrectionists seeking federal office could be applied to GOP Rep. MADISON CAWTHORN if a state board determines he aided or encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” reports Kyle Cheney.

DESANTIS’ RIGHT HAND — NYT’s Patricia Mazzei has the story on JOSEPH LADAPO, the doctor who is up for confirmation as Florida’s next surgeon general and who has emerged as “a partner in fighting what Dr. Ladapo calls the policies of ‘fear’” with Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS . “For a Republican governor whose brash opposition to conventional public health wisdom has helped fuel obvious presidential ambitions, the appointment of Dr. Ladapo signals Mr. DeSantis’s determination to continue powering through a pandemic that has already cost 68,000 lives in Florida — this time, with what the governor can claim is a medical seal of approval.”

DISINFO DIGEST — “Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo,” by NYT’s Stuart Thompson: “The embrace by some conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists is part of a broader effort to shift people away from Big Tech.”

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AMERICA AND THE WORLD

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — The State Department asked diplomats from Afghan’s ousted government to shut down their embassy and consulates in the U.S. in an early February letter, giving them 30 days to wind down operations, according to ABDUL HADI NEJRABI, who was the Afghan embassy's deputy chief of mission in Washington, D.C.

That’s a problem , Nejrabi told our Daniel Lippman, in part because there are tens of thousands of Afghans who have fled to the U.S. since the Taliban retook power last August — and they need consular services like birth certificates or passports, which they may not be able to access if the country’s remaining diplomats leave.

Nejrabi said the embassy has asked the State Department to let them continue to work, and to compensate Afghanistan’s diplomats-in-exile so that they can “avoid becoming homeless.” Their U.S. bank accounts have been frozen for months, leaving the ousted diplomats in a financial lurch. Nejrabi said the embassy sent letters to the State Department in November, December and January asking for State to speak to Treasury and allow them to access roughly $1.5 million they have in frozen accounts. In mid-February, the NYT reported that “U.S. officials have tried, unsuccessfully, to assure Citibank that it would not be penalized if the Afghan funds were unlocked.”

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson said: “We are in consultations with the missions concerning their status given financial constraints they are facing, but there has been no change in the status of the Afghan mission or its personnel at this time.”

CLIMATE FILES — A new report is sounding a familiar and dire warning for the world. “A warming planet and changes to land use patterns mean more wildfires will scorch large parts of the globe in coming decades, causing spikes in unhealthy smoke pollution and other problems that governments are ill prepared to confront, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday,” AP’s Matthew Brown writes . “The Western U.S., northern Siberia, central India, and eastern Australia already are seeing more blazes, and the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires globally could increase by a third by 2050 and more than 50% by the turn of the century, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Program. Areas once considered safe from major fires won’t be immune, including the Arctic, which the report said was ‘very likely to experience a significant increase in burning.’” (The full report)

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BEYOND THE BELTWAY

NEW 15-WEEK ABORTION BANS — A handful of GOP-controlled states “could ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy as soon as this week, passing bills modeled on a Mississippi law that the Supreme Court could soon deem constitutional. But those same states aren’t taking restrictions as far as Texas, which bans all abortions after six weeks,” Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly report . “The approach has opened fissures in the conservative movement, with some urging more caution while others demand states swiftly follow Texas or go even further.

“Legislators in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia and several other states advancing 15-week bans say they’re taking what they see as a politically and legally safer approach, even if it means the vast majority of abortions in their states could still take place. Their strategy underscores the confidence conservatives feel that the Supreme Court will rule their way and limit or eliminate Roe v. Wade later this year, and the concern many have that the Texas law could ultimately be undone by a barrage of ongoing legal challenges.”

PLAYBOOKERS

COMING ATTRACTIONS — The Gridiron Club announced that New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will be the featured speakers for their respective parties at the 135th annual spring dinner on April 2.

IN MEMORIAM — “Sherry Jones, an Emmy-winning documentary producer who wedded investigative reporting with dramatic visuals, crafting television films that explored foreign affairs, American politics and national security issues including the Cuban missile crisis and the CIA torture program approved after 9/11, died Feb. 14 at a hospital in Washington. She was 73.” (Full obituary by WaPo’s Harrison Smith)

MEDIAWATCH — Bhaskar Sunkara has been named president at The Nation. He is the founder and publisher of Jacobin. (The announcement)

TRANSITIONS — Avideh Moussavian is joining USCIS as a senior adviser to the director. She previously was director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center. … Jason Pressberg and Grace Hass-Hill are joining Brady PAC. Pressberg is now executive director and previously was area director at AIPAC for the Washington D.C.-Baltimore region. Hass-Hill is now PAC manager and is a Terry McAuliffe campaign alum. … Noyah King is now a digital strategist at Woolf Strategy. She most recently was at AmeriCorp and is a Do Big Things alum. …

… David Asher, Thomas DiNanno and Jerry McGinn are joining Menlo Micro’s D.C. ops team. Asher will be director of federal business development and currently is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. DiNanno will be a senior adviser for national security and is a House Intelligence Committee alum. McGinn will be a strategic adviser of U.S. government operations and is executive director of the Center for Government Contracting in the School of Business at George Mason University.