I last saw Evan in January when he brought salmon roe, Russian New Year's-style, to my apartment.
I've been thinking about his commitment to telling Russia's story — and how the outpouring of support for him from Russian journalists has affirmed it.
Zelensky addressing the Russian people in Russian now:
“Today I initiated a phone call with the president of the Russian Federation. The result was silence, though the silence should be in the Donbas. As a result I want to address all citizens of Russia…
“You are told we hate Russian culture. How can one hate a culture? … Neighbors always enrich each other culturally, however, that doesn’t make them a single whole, it doesn’t dissolve us into you. We are different, but that is not a reason to be enemies. …
"But if we are attacked, if someone attempts to take away our land, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves. We won’t attack, but defend ourselves. By attacking, you will see our faces, not our backs, but our faces.”
"Listen to the voice of reason. The people of Ukraine want peace, the authorities in Ukraine want peace, they want it and are doing everything they can for it. … We don’t need war. …
… us, then maybe it will sit down at a table with you. Do Russians want war? I would very much like to answer this question. But the answer depends only on you — the citizens of the Russian Federation.”
“I know this speech of mine won’t be shown on Russian TV, but the people of Russia need to see it. They need to know the truth. The truth is that this must be stopped before it is too late, and if the leadership of the Russia does not want to sit down at a table for peace with …
“War will remove guarantees from everyone. No one will have security guarantees any more. Who will suffer most of all from this? People. Who wants this the least? People. Who can not allow this to happen? People. There are these people among you, I’m sure of it. …
"We are separated by more than 2000 km of mutual borders, along which 200,000 of your soldiers and 1,000 armored vehicles are standing. Your leadership has approved their step forward onto the territory of another country. This step could become the beginning of a big war…
"The cause could come up at any moment, any provocation, any spark, a spark that could burn everything down. You are told that this flame will liberate the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free. …
Russian state TV is now following up on Putin's speech with a graphic diagramming territorial "gifts" to Ukraine from Russian Czars, Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev. The yellow bit in the middle is labeled "Ukraine."
Another extraordinary televised Kremlin meeting, this one with oligarchs. The head of the industrialists' lobby group tells Putin to avoid wrecking the Russian economy further in responding to Western sanctions; Putin responds describing today's invasion as a "necessary measure."
Many thousands are in the streets of Khabarovsk, 4,000 miles east of Moscow, for the 3rd Saturday straight in the biggest protests Russia’s regions have seen in many years. It took 14 minutes for the march to pass by me here:
Many analysts in Moscow thought the buildup was a bluff. Today: “Everything that we believed turned out to be wrong”; “I don’t understand the motivations, goals or possible results… What is happening is very strange.”
Zelensky addresses the people of Belarus in his address this morning, speaking Russian; Belarus is holding a referendum today that's expected to tighten Lukashenko's grip on power.
“From your territory, forces of the Russian Federation are firing rockets at Ukraine…
Putin: “I have taken the decision to carry out a special military operation. Its goal will be to defend people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime. For this we will aim for demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine…
Oleg Tinkov, who has spoken more forcefully against the war than any other major Russian business tycoon, tells the
@nytimes
that he was forced to sell his stake in his bank. “It was like a hostage — you take what you are offered. I couldn’t negotiate.”
It's almost 4 a.m. in Moscow, but lots of Russians are already posting about Zelensky's moving speech. "The problem is there's no one to respond to him," one writes. "Most Russians are in no condition right now to decide, say or think anything."
Zelensky addressing the Russian people in Russian now:
“Today I initiated a phone call with the president of the Russian Federation. The result was silence, though the silence should be in the Donbas. As a result I want to address all citizens of Russia…
Less than two hours after she burst onto the Channel 1 set, Marina Ovsyannikova's Facebook page already has 4,600 comments from people mainly saying "thank you."
More than 3,000 Russians were arrested at antiwar rallies across the country today, the police said — the highest official single-day total at any nationwide day of protest in recent memory.
Here people chant “Freeedom!” and “Putin’s resignation is the best amendment!” — a reference to the recent constitutional vote that gives Putin the chance to rule til 2036.
Echo of Moscow, Russia's flagship liberal radio station, is shutting down, its editor
@aavst
announces. The station was a symbol of Russia's newfound freedom after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
.
@statedeptspox
on the
@SecPompeo
visit: "Unfortunately, we must reschedule the
#Berlin
meetings due to pressing issues. We look forward to rescheduling this important set of meetings. The Secretary looks forward to being in Berlin soon."
“Everything will be OK,” Navalny recently wrote from jail. “And even if it won’t be, we will console ourselves with the knowledge that we were honest people.”
A profile:
New video from Zelensky this morning, in front of presidential residence in central Kyiv: "There's a lot of fake news that I'm calling on the army to put down its arms and evacuate. Here's how it is: we are not putting down any arms. …
And now Putin on TV again. Describes Zelensky's government as a "band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis that has lodged itself in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people."
Here in Istanbul, I met a Russian who had just fled Moscow — and whose relative had fled Russia to Constantinople in 1920. “History moves in a spiral, that of Russia especially. It comes back to the same place — back to this same place.”
Navalny: “Millions and hundreds of thousands cannot be locked up. I really hope that more and more people will recognize this. And when they recognize this — and that moment will come — all this will fall apart, because you cannot lock up the whole country.”
Russia’s new law effectively criminalizing independent reporting about the war in Ukraine has prompted The Times to make the extremely difficult decision to move staff out of the country temporarily. We look forward to being back as soon as possible.
Navalny, in a makeshift courtroom just now at a police station near the airport, with one of his Putin epithets: “It seems that the grandpa in the bunker is so afraid of everything that they demonstratively ripped apart the code of criminal procedure and threw it in the trash.”
NYT analysis of satellite imagery shows at least 11 of the bodies seen on a street in Bucha in an April 2 video had been on the street since March 11 — when Russian forces occupied the town.
Shokhin, the chief lobbyist: “Everything should be done to demonstrate as much as possible that Russia remains part of the global economy and will not provoke, including through some kind of response measures, global negative phenomena on world markets.”
The protester is an employee of Channel 1, the OVD-Info rights group says. She recorded a video beforehand: “I’m now deeply ashamed … We silently watched this anti-human regime … We are Russian people, thinking and smart ones. Only we have the power to stop all this craziness.”
Navalny in court: “No matter how much [Putin] portrays himself a great geopolitician…his main resentment against me now is that he will go down in history as a poisoner. There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we’ll have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”
An extraordinary day in Moscow: Even his allies say there is a strong chance Navalny will be arrested after he lands at Vnukovo Airport tonight. "Leaving Navalny free would mean showing weakness in the eyes of his inner circle."
Putin's response is another veiled threat at the West: “We don’t plan to damage a system of which we feel we are a part, to the extent that we feel we are a part of it… Our partners should understand this and not set themselves the task of pushing us out of this system.”
Putin: “To be clear, what is happening is a necessary measure. They just gave us no chance to act otherwise. … The risks were such that it was unclear how our country would even continue to exist.”
On the radio this morning: “So, has Russia become Venezuela or is it still Iran?”
“We’ll go through the Iran phase, but what happens after that is hard to say.”
In Minsk today, a column that looked to be more than 100,000 marched up to Lukashenko’s Independence Palace and demanded he resign. Here’s what we saw:
A story on Russian state TV, the war and conscience. “Many thinking people are sensing their own guilt. And there is no exit, you understand? Simply asking for forgiveness is not enough.”
Ukrainian officials confirm that all aboard today's UIA flight from Tehran to Kyiv have died; Zelensky's office says the president is cutting short his trip to Oman and returning to Kyiv.
Evan Gershkovich appeared in court today in Moscow, and had his appeal denied yet again. He has now been held unjustly for more than six months.
#freeEvan
“Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.”
A “catastrophically incorrect assessment”: even supporters of Putin’s war on Ukraine are voicing unease over the Kremlin’s handling of it. With
@mschwirtz
Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat in Geneva, today became the most prominent Russian official to resign and publicly speak out against the war.
Putin, he told the
@nytimes
, has turned Russia “into some kind of total horror.”
Another notable line from Scholz earlier: “It was Putin, not the Russian people, who chose this war, and so it must be said clearly: This is Putin’s war. The distinction is important to me because reconciliation between Germans and Russians after World War II is and remains…
Russia has scaled back its diplomatic demands, prompting some officials to to believe Putin may be seeking a negotiated way out. Kuleba and Lavrov meet in Antalya shortly, the highest-level talks since the war began. With
@PatrickKingsley
&
@michaelcrowley
Zelensky just called on Putin for talks "to stop the dying," but Russia signaled today it's not interested. "We are ready for talks at any moment," Lavrov said, "as soon as the Ukrainian Armed Forces…stop their resistance and put down their arms."
“We have been forced not to publish this interview,” Mr. Muratov said in a phone interview. “This is simply censorship in the time of the ‘special operation.’”
Minutes earlier, Navalny's lawyer received this letter notifying him that his client's hearing was about to take place at the police station — not in a courtroom. Only pro-Kremlin media have been allowed inside.
This is Tinkov's first interview since the invasion. He says many in the elite agree with him, but are afraid of speaking up. “I’ve realized that Russia, as a country, no longer exists.” With
@INechepurenko
Yesterday, Navalny thanked his German hosts. “Do you hear ‘the kindest, helpful, friendly people’ and not immediately think of Germans?” he wrote. “Then you are wrong. That’s exactly who they are.”
A remarkable outpouring of anger with little precedent in post-Soviet Russia, and stark testimony to the discontent that President Vladimir V. Putin faces across the country.
The plane is in the air. Just before takeoff, Navalny posts a video in which his wife Yuliya quotes from the Russian crime drama "Brat 2": “Bring us some vodka, boy. We’re flying home.”
A pro-Putin lawmaker told me he expected the purges to accelerate after the end of the “active phase” of the war. But some of those already prosecuted for their antiwar stance have been taken aback by the outpouring of support they’ve received.
“We want peace, we want to meet, we want an end to the war. … Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku — we proposed all that to the Russian side. Any other city would work for us, too, in a country from whose territory rockets are not being fired.”
I’m honored to be the next Moscow bureau chief of the
@nytimes
and to work with
@AndrewKramerNYT
&
@INechepurenko
. I'm looking forward to
@ATHigginsNYT
's dispatches from his new perch, surely as empathetic and unexpected as the work that inspired all of us here.
Russian officials still routinely claim that evidence of war crimes in Bucha is “fake.” This painstaking investigation by my
@nytimes
colleagues documents what really happened and names victims and possible perpetrators.
"From your territory they are killing our children, destroying our houses, trying to blow up everything that was built over the decades, not just by us but by our fathers and our grandfathers…
Sometime after Haley’s comments on CBS, the Trump administration notified the Russian Embassy in Washington that the sanctions were not in fact coming, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said.
NEW —> The inside story of Trump putting the brakes on new Russia sanctions, reversing Haley's announcement that had drawn Kremlin denouncements. My latest with
@CarolLeonnig
@antontroian
@GregJaffe
An activist in Yakutsk described draftees being taken by airplane out of remote Arctic villages. “They have planted panic and fear everywhere.”
On the day the war came to Russia, with
@VALERIEinNYT
@INechepurenko
& Alina Lobzina
“How will you look your children in the eyes? How will you look into each others’ eyes? How will you look into your neighbors’ eyes? We are your neighbors. We Ukrainians …
"I genuinely hope you become the good, secure Belarus that Belarus was not so long ago. Make the right choice. I’m sure this is the most important choice of your great people.”
Zelensky also says he won't hold talks in Belarus as the Kremlin has been demanding.
On the eve of elections, Putin’s Russia is at a new apogee of authoritarianism, coated in a patina of comfortable stability.
With
@SergeyPonomarev
, a story about traveling from the Arctic to Chechnya, 3,000 miles from north to south:
An extraordinary act of protest on Russia's most-watched news show — the flagship of the Kremlin's propaganda machine.
Ovsyannikova has been detained and is being held at the Ostankino TV complex, her lawyer says.
Our colleague Evan Gershkovich of the
@WSJ
has now been in jail in Russia for 100 days — a travesty and injustice we can’t forget. He must be freed immediately.
@AfPalasciano
& I stand with Evan.
#FreeEvan
#IStandWithEvan
Putin thought he knew Germany; he lived there, speaks German fluently, visited Scholz's own Hamburg often in the 1990s, has had many German associates. Putin's Ukraine invasion seems to be forming a different Germany.
Navalny finishes by thanking those who “fight and are not afraid.” “They have the same rights as you do. We are also citizens, and we demand a normal justice system, to be dealt with normally, to be able to participate in elections.”
Arrived today at the
@washingtonpost
Moscow bureau. This is where I fell in love with reporting abroad and writing about Russia, 10 years ago. It’s already exhilarating to be back.
Scholz: “We are on the side of those who courageously confront Putin’s power apparatus and reject his war in Ukraine. We know they are many. I say to all of them: Do not give up. I am very sure that freedom, tolerance and human rights will win out in Russia, too.”
"… as well as taking to court those who carried out multiple bloody crimes against civilians including citizens of the Russian Federation. Our plans do not include occupying Ukrainian territory.”