Comments

1. Why do you write Kiev instead of Kyiv?

2. Because it’s how I learned it in 5th grade and I haven’t invested in the debate over whether usage ought to change based on derivation of Kiev from the Russian language. There’s no embedded political message in using the more historic/traditional spelling rather than the revisionist one.

3. These are very encouraging developments including Germany’s willingness to send defensive tank and helicopter killing technology.
   The world is rooting for and standing with Ukraine -or at least most of it – including a bunch of Putin’s own citizens.

4. I am not in favor of the US banning any airlines. There are likely many Americans who are in Russia who need to get out, as well as others from other countries that need to get out but can no longer fly through Europe. I think it is important to keep flights to help these people.

5. @Guflyer
   Its okay, Biden will rescue them….

6. Sanctions have failed thus far and will be totally ineffective going forward (short of a 100% oil and gas ban). They are not a way of changing Putin’s behavior. Rather, a theatre to hide the impotence of the Biden regime. Ask your Democrat friends, “Why didn’t Putin invade under Trump”?

7. @ L3 — Because he didn’t need to. His puppet, Trump, would do whatever he wanted. Now, Biden is standing up to him, so he is having to use military force. It is sad that people are so easily brainwashed by the absolute nonsense spewed on FoxNews.

8. @ CHRIS — Well, he will certainly try, rather than just doing whatever Daddy Vladdy asks, like lapdog Trump did while he was busy robbing America blind.

9. @ Gary — Hopefully, cutting off Russian banks from SWIFT will slow the flow of Russian money to Trump.

10. @Gary,
    Refusing to use the correct spelling of Kyiv is an inherently political choice. You may see it as just using what you were taught but the world progresses and staying behind is your own prerogative.

11. @gary – Here is an organization that we have supported and worked with for years. They run 20 orphanages in Ukraine and could use any help we can give them right now:
    http://www.lifesong.org/countries/ukraine

12. China, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — each for their own narrow interests — have been on the de facto support side of Russia when it comes to this Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although Germany was — until very recently — very reluctant to pay the price for cutting itself off from doing business with Russia, Germany was never on the de facto support side of Russia when it comes to this Russian invasion of Ukraine. Turkey has this adversarial cooperation thing it keeps doing with Russia, but Erdogan and Putin are birds of the same feather. Counting on Erdogan is like counting on the Chinese, Indians, Israelis, Pakistanis, or Saudis: the US can’t count on them to be anything but manipulative self-dealers trying to squeeze everything they can out of the US while undermining long-term US interests. These “allies” are way worse than most “non-allies”. With “allies” like them, who needs enemies.

13. I still type Kiev. It just seems more natural to me in English. “Kyiv” just seems like it is begging for a transliteration into English.

14. 1st; arguing over spelling in the midst of an invasion, is counter productive and childish. Stuff you airs of superiority where the sun don’t shine.

    2nd: As was said above, Putin did not invade while the orange turd was President, because he did not need to. He had control of the WH and could ensure a lack of American support for Ukraine. Once Biden took office, it was as if Obama (who stood up to Putin and glared eye-to-eye with him), was back and Putin knew he had ZERO control now over the American WH.

    3rd: Any Americans still in Russia, should have left long ago. This was predicted, and fairly certain to occur and known about, for the past month. Absolutely, close off airspace to Russian airlines. Leave them with China they can fly to.

15. What the heck is this supposed to mean? “It seems as though Russia eventually prevails…”

16. Putin invade Georgia under G W Bush in 2008.
    Putin invaded Crimea under Obama.
    Putin invaded Ukraine further under Biden.

    Under Putin’s useful idiot Trump, Putin had Trump do his desired dirty business of weakening long-standing US alliances, ripping at NATO, and doing other stuff that has been Putin’s wet-dream. Under Trump, Putin was given additional time and opportunity to beef up his ability to mess around in the world. Putin invaded America under Trump, so that was good enough for Putin.

17. I agree with Gary.

    I made Chicken Kiev a couple months ago. Don’t really care if someone dislikes how I spell it. It was delicious btw.

18. Love the delusional anti-Trumpers. The fact remains that Russia annexed foreign territory while Biden was VP and now as “president”. While Trump was president, there was peace. Bullies always act when the other side is weak, and Putin rightfully perceives Biden as weak. None of your mental gymnastics can change that.

19. Hey Gary, I’m older than you. I say and type Beijing, not Peking. Likewise, it’s Kyiv, not Kiev.

20. NO!… Haven’t we had enough restrictions on travel during covid – but now you want to restrict us again based on your personal beliefs about a remote conflict that carries every bit as much complexity as past *U.S.* military incursions around the world?

    Please get off my back as a consumer and let me make my own travel- and spending decisions.

    So what’s going to happen now with Russia airspace overflights which will be the first to be closed off in this tit-for-tat to the bottom? 100,000 annual regional and intercontinental flights becoming infeasible or forced to take huge deviations.

    There is too much emotion going into decisions on this issue, and it’s not going to end well.

21. I’m astonished that Aeroflot is still being allowed to fly to the US during the midst of all this. A flight from JFK to SVO is taxing for takeoff right at this moment!

22. Only global neutrals/approvers now of Russia appear to be China, Hungary, Belarus…and the far right MAGA mouth-breathers (now appearing at a white nationalist conference near you!!!)

23. @A, @David – as the Ukranian-born Eugene Volokh says on the matter, “I call the city of my birth the Russian-derived Kiev, not the Ukrainian-derived Kyiv, partly because that’s how I grew up thinking about it, and partly because that’s the traditional English-language term; we, which is to say we Americans, say Russia, Moscow, and Ukraine, not Rossiya, Moskva, and Ookraina—likewise with Kiev.” (A bit of trivia, the Volokh Conspiracy was the very first blog ever to link to mine 20 years ago)

24. @GUWunder you need to fact check. India and Israel are very pro Ukraine. Also brush up on Steele Dossier news as of late.

25. @Gene: The Durham and Mueller investigations have already shown that your view is just a fantasy that you were told to regurgitate by th Clinton campaign and its whore, CNN. Be bid and admit you were used.

26. Adolf Putin knows the Biden Regime is weak, so he pushes forward. Meanwhile Brandon needs someone to change his Depends so he can go back and hide like a coward under his desk.

27. @GUWonder: Trump strengthend NATO. National GDP expenditures on defense were higher when he left office than when he came in.

28. @Jim: Trump armed and pressured for training the pathetically weak Obama-era Ukraine military. Obama refused to give lethal aid. Biden restored the Obama policy before belatedly seeing the writing on the wall and emulating Trimp’s re-arming. As with a lot of policy areas, Biden did a complete reversal within a year when the wisdom of the Trump policy became clear.

    Read the facts of what happened and so will you.

29. @L3 – Trump withheld funding to Ukraine with his poor attempt at a bribe, and cozied up to Putin quite nicely for four years (we’ll never know what happened in Helsinki due to him breaking protocol)…you stupid MAGA cuck

30. I understand that you learnt it as, “Kiev,” in 5th grade per your reply to Bob but its official name is now Kyiv. The spelling Kyiv was legally approved by the Ukrainian government in 1995.

    In October 2019, IATA, following the decision of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, switched to Kyiv.

    You learnt Mumbai’s name as Bombay in 5th grade but your 2019 post is titled, “Delta Will Fly New York – Mumbai This Year! (and Tells Some Fibs, Too).” By your logic for using Kiev over Kyiv, you should be using Bombay instead of Mumbai in your posts.

31. @Joe: Absolutely right.

32. UA-NYC has such a powerful intellect and cogent argument. This is how it goes: “you stupid MAGA cuck”.

    Very convincing.

33. @Gene ” Hopefully, cutting off Russian banks from SWIFT will slow the flow of Russian money to Trump.”

    But that is exactly what the west is NOT doing. Again, you can’t grasp the most basic facts.

    The Biden regime OPPOSED that (in order to keep funding Putin through fuel purchases) in opposition to several other NATO countries.

34. The upside is there is plenty of award space first class to Moscow
    -The Points Guy

35. A few thoughts that probably aren’t directly related to the post, but close enough…

    I want Zelenskyy awarded citizenship and elected to (any) office in the USA once his term is over in Ukraine. When the shit hits the fan I want that dude leading the way. And if he’s killed put him on Mt Rushmore. Not a joke.

    Next, we need to stop referring to Putin as the next Hitler. He’s not. He’s the first Putin. Hopefully the last. 30 years from now people will reference someone as the next Putin. If he succeeds he’ll be remembered as changing the world order in favor of autocracy and maybe causing WW3. If he fails he’ll be remembered as a small man who bit off more than he could chew. How he is remembered is up to us. Not the US. Us. Everyone on earth who values freedom. Act accordingly. “Never again” means never again.

    I honestly sympathize with the Russian people who know this is wrong but live in fear. They’re the battered wife who makes excuses for their abuser. Hopefully they find the courage to save their cousins in Ukraine. And yes, that’s what they are. I have also have politcal disagreements with my cousins. But never consider killing them.

    Lastly, everyone needs to stop using this as an excuse to bash Trump or Biden. Completely irrelevant. Grow up. This is our best opportunity in 20 years to rally around principles, not politics. The people of Ukraine deserve that much.

36. Marco,
    thankfully most of the western world is more principled than you and are willing to undergo a few sacrifices even if they are virtually inconsequential as Russia tries to overrun a democratically elected government of another country whose people overwhelmingly do not want to submit to Russia again.

    And the bigger issue in all of this is that a large part of Russia’s fleet is western built and financed which is banned under the latest EU agreements? Perhaps the EU has asked Russia to seize Aeroflot’s aircraft on the ground in the US?

37. @Guflyer There are Land Borders with Europe still apparently open between St Petersburg & Finland, ferries to Sweden plus crossings to the Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and presumably Vladivostok to Japan or down to China/S Korea. In mid Asia there are routes into the “Stans” and onwards. All a minor inconvenience for those who wish to escape Russia. Certainly compared to the millions of Ukrainian women and children walking miles, waiting hours in freezing temperatures at the Polish or Romanian Border Crossings not knowing where their next meal or warm bed is coming from.

38. @Tim Dunn
    You’re the one that’s not principled with your blatant DAL stock shills here and on other forums. Don’t pretend otherwise.

    The fact is that the west underwrote a coup in 2014 of a democratically elected government in Ukraine in order to install a puppet regime friendly to the west and a hostile posture toward Russia. I live in the States, and have no horse in the game – certainly not with Russia which has huge issues with maintaining democratic issues, an independent judiciary, and civil society in general.

    But the current Ukraine government is NOT liberal democratic but rather the same quasi-authoritarian kind as the Russian one, persecuting opposition figures and shutting down critical tv stations. So in all, we shouldn’t take sides so quickly. Especially in trying to score own-goals restricting global travels. We’ve spent two years in the paranoid covid basement already.

    So if you want to join the face-diaper, border-closing crowd, be my guest. But don’t blame the rest of us for your favored inept, weak-and-woke DL management that wants to push extra-judicial no-fly lists and other nonsense that is antithetical to free society and Delta’s own busness ahead of shareholder and passenger interests.

    “And the bigger issue in all of this is that a large part of Russia’s fleet is western built and financed which is banned under the latest EU agreements? Perhaps the EU has asked Russia to seize Aeroflot’s aircraft on the ground in the US?”

    Yes, so who is at blame here?… And how will the denial of spare parts to maintain SU’s fleet safety benefit anyone? So cynical.

39. Elon Musk has reconfigured the Starlink satellite system to provide increased access to Ukraine and is sending more terminal points to the country.
    The world is pitching in for the Ukrainian people.

40. A day late and a dollar short.

41. @Marco: You make two important points that everyone here should be aware of:

    1) The leader of the Ukranian oppposition party sits under house arrest right now, accused in May 2021, but not convicted, of the usual esoteric crimes dictators accuse other dictators of (high treason, violating the laws and customs of war, and assisting terrorist organizations.) Zelensky, the freedom lover, put him there.
    https://apnews.com/article/europe-ukraine-arrests-business-government-and-politics-f50da684fab61add42348d276482477c

    2) You are correct that the corrupt Russian puppet Yanukovych was overthrown in a 2014 coup that, while depicted as a popular uprising, was actually a western (CIA) undercover operation. Most Americans are unaware of this and that it is one of Putin’s ‘casus belli’ for the current invasion. The key point is that no matter how contemptible a democratically elected leader is, he must be overthrown the way he came in, the ballot box. Otherwise, his successor lacks credibility.

    Your points are important, not in casting Putin as a puppy lover who is just misunderstood (he is a KGB apparachik!), but in sunlighting key facts that the current invasion is not “good vs. evil”.

42. How many base units can Starlink get in?

43. @ L3 — What? You make no sense.

44. Everybody seems happy about this!!! This is reciprocal which means nations prohibiting Russian planes from their airspace will be prohibited from flying their planes over Russian airspace! And Russian airspace is HUGE – the ceiling of the world!

    They need to go back to the drawing board and think of other means of solidarity that won’t shoot them in the foot!

45. I’m not sure how much of a ban there really is so far. SU2614 is en route Milan right now, scheduled to land at 10am CET Feb 27.

    As to the US banning Aeroflot, I think it should happen, and happen soon (24 – 48hrs warning on commercial flights). No private RU jets either, and that ban can happen now.

    If Americans aren’t on the current flights out of Russia, I’m not sure what on earth they’re thinking. Depart while you can.

46. Trump-apologist Joe,

    Putin perceived the Ukrainians, and Biden, to be weak, so Putin invaded more? Guess what, the Ukrainians and Biden are less cowardly than your Lord Trump. And the Ukrainians are no cowards, nor is Biden. Can you imagine Trump daring to personally take up arms if someone tried to again occupy Washington? Trump would unleash “friendly-fire” because of his unlimited incompetence and borderless ignorance. Trump can’t even ride a bike properly without coming off across like a clown.

47. DaninMCI, you need to fact check yourself because your assertion comes off as clueless in the context of Russia’s further invasion of the Ukraine this month.

    In fact, India and Israel have been soft-pedaling for Russian against Ukraine during the course of this week. And India and Israel are both more interested in kissing up to Russia than in kissing up to Ukraine, but they both increasingly found themselves in a diplomatically tricky situation because people like me are willing to call out their underhanded ways on the international stage.

    Why are you afraid of a spade being called a spade? Facts matter, and India and Israel have been more eager to maintain a more cooperative relationship with Russia at the expense of Ukraine because they are like Trump in believing “might makes right” even at the grave expense of others and it shows at times like this.

48. That person is going to wish someday they never did this.

49. Gene has no clue about Starlink; L3’s point is that Starlink works by having ground based transmitters which Musk says he will expedite to Ukraine to keep the internet working.
    Given that Putin appears to be moving increasingly to a scorched earth policy because he miscalculated and underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people and thought way too much of his own forces’ strength.

    GU Wonder,
    we agree about some things but I loathe people like you trying to turn an obvious foreign policy disaster for Biden into a bash of Trump. The simple fact is that energy IS core to this crisis and Biden has weakened it. The simple fact is that Putin acted under Biden, not Trump. The simple fact is that Biden, not Trump majorly botched the Afghanistan withdrawal. The simple fact is that Biden is underwater in polls on foreign policy just as he is in most policy areas.

    I don’t challenge anyone’s loyalty to their own beliefs until they become so irrational that that irrational defense of their own system fails their own arguments.

50. A lot of bla, bla, bla from mostly foolish Americans who don’t understand Russia (and much of the world either)
    This “tit-for-tat” thing US and EU has been used to is being blown up by Putin. He is looking to create a new order in the world – one which is enabled by the US smaller in strength. He’s no dummy. He sees what lunatic US society has become, and that the political “democratically elected” administrarions have been steering the country against it’s own self-interests over and over on every issue. He understands that just as Britain was a the dominant world power, and after WW2 this shifted to the US and the USSR, so again can a big, aggresive behaviour (with no one to stop him) he can hit hard the already started-to-sink US, and it too can become Britain : once the number 1 world power, today still a large economy, but a depressing wellfare society with no real global power to it’s name.

51. This week and even today the internet has been working in Kiev in parts, and that was even without the oh-so-great loony Musk. You too can try your luck in remaining in contact with people in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine using WhatsApp — one of those wonders given to us by a Ukrainian who became American and is now a Ukrainian-American.

    What obvious foreign policy disaster for Biden? Nothing more than the mess he inherited from the Trump Administration. Let’s not forget that Trump was hostile toward Ukraine for Ukraine’s unwillingness to do Trump’s bidding on beating the drums on Hunter Biden’s ties with Ukrainian business interests.

    Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was ongoing during the Trump Administration, using not only a proxy force but also embedded Russian special forces in regions that Putin has this month claimed are independent of Ukraine. That downplayed invasion with its back and forth was during Trump’s time as President.

    Real leaders during time of crisis don’t behave like Trump and lick their finger to see which way the poll winds blow in deciding what is right and wrong. Trump’s not a leader, he’s a buffoon who made messes, made messes worse for the country and the world. With Biden, now the adults are again in the room to try to pick up the pieces from the tantrum-throwing adult-sized toddler Trump. Biden has an unthankful job, but he’s doing it and doing it well on the international stage given the bad hand he was dealt by the previous Administrations.

    Biden has managed to get the Germans to move and move on their positions over Russian energy/business ties, over militarily supplying Ukraine, over SWIFT. And it’s under Biden that Germany has committed to increase defense spending to a post-Cold War record. Biden has put together an alliance that then-President Trump mocked and didn’t appreciate, and Biden has made it stronger. Biden has his eyes on getting Sweden into NATO and if he can swing in Finland too, Biden’s doing more to build NATO than Putin expected. I count that as a success in the foreign policy realm.

    Exiting Afghanistan was always going to be a debacle for any US President. Having an expensive, long and brutal occupation in hostile territory is an invitation to inevitably have the exit be a debacle and nothing but a debacle. Trump didn’t exactly help to make sure it wouldn’t be a debacle.

52. It’s Russia that is declining in relative power on the world stage more than the US. Russia has China as its savior. And nowadays nothing speaks more to decline in relative power than having to count on China as the emergency backstop when dealing with opposing powers.

    And like many a poorly-aging bully, the tantrums get worse as their relative decline becomes ever more obvious to the poorly-aging bully’s targets and opponents.

    The Trump-supporting crowd is very much like Putin and his Russian supporters — what with all their insecurities about their (declining) place in the country and on the world stage driving them to lash out in anger and support angry madmen in their calls to “make ____ great again” and cry about “”you’/’they’ will not replace ‘us'”.

53. Anybody seen Hunter lately? I mean, its nice of the Bidens to support Ukraine as a fitting “thank you” for laundering their money for the past many years. Don’t forget: “10% for the Big Guy”.

54. Real leaders own and fix the problems that exist, including what they inherit.

    What you write proves you aren’t a real leader.

55. @CHRIS
    Where’s your proof? Typical “Chump Fool” following the great leader lying a-holes the Chumps.

56. @ GUwonder: “Why are you afraid of a spade being called a spade?” … really? Thought you were woke.

57. Gary (and GUWonder, et. al.):

    Words matter. Defiantly continuing to use the Russian transliteration of Ukraine’s capital, just because that was prevalent while the city and country were under Soviet domination during your childhood, instead of the Ukrainian transliteration adopted by the Ukrainian government, the U.S. government, and most international bodies and press organizations is to adopt Putin’s rhetoric of the indistinguishability and indivisibility of the Russian and Ukrainian people (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-new-ukraine-essay-reflects-imperial-ambitions/) and the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian state as an artificial construct of the Soviet Union (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/23/fact-checking-putins-speech-ukraine/).

    Using the Ukrainian transliteration is not “revisionist” as you claim, it is correctly rendering the monosyllabic Ukrainian word Київ as written in the Ukrainian language into English (or the Latin alphabet), rather than transliterating the Russian word Киев and pronouncing it with two syllables. Likewise, the largest city in Kazakhstan is Almaty, not the Russian Alma-Ata. There are many other examples of changes of city names since 1991 from Soviet names to names in the local language, which are then rendered into English.

    I do give you credit for dropping the word “the” before “Ukraine,” which also was prevalent during the Soviet era, but no longer is commonly used because it also connotes that Ukraine is nothing more than a region of Russia, like the steppe or the Far East. This does, however, undermine your argument about the immutability of geographic names learned in childhood.

    I also note this is not a case in which there is a common English name for the city. In English we say Belgrade, Serbia and Athens, Greece instead of transliterating the local language names for these cities and countries. Likewise, we say Vienna, Austria (not Wien, Österreich) and Munich, Bavaria, Germany (not München, Bayern, Deutschland) and the successor state to the Ottoman Empire in English is the Republic of Turkey (short form Turkey), not Türkiye Cumhuriyeti or Türkiye—yet. In English, we do say Istanbul (not Constantinople) and why they changed it I can’t say, but it’s nobody’s business but the Turks.

    I realize you have little regard for the U.S. State Department (still think tourism to Lviv would be just fine? https://viewfromthewing.com/ukraine-launches-new-tourism-campaign-as-it-prepares-for-invasion-by-russia-keep-calm-and-visit/ ), but it has used Kyiv for the U.S. Embassy in the Ukrainian capital since 2006. In 2019, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names determined that Kyiv is the only acceptable name for U.S. government use (https://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/PDFDocs/BGNStatement_Kyiv.pdf).

    Putin’s version of history, culture, and language is what is “revisionist.” Don’t promote and disseminate Russian disinformation.

58. @GUWonder

    I guess you like inflation

    Enjoy paying higher prices

59. @GUWonder – you are truly pathetic and incoherent, but history does not lie. There was peace when Trump was president. Now with Biden there is war and chaos, in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and who knows where else by the time his junta is replaced in 2024. Chew on that.

60. “There was peace when Trump was President”? Despite Trump’s riding on the coattails of the Obama-Biden Administration, no. Afghanistan was still a bloody mess during Trump’s time.

61. lol GUWonder is already making excuses for bidens latest failure in policy. Afghanistan, Ukraine everything biden has done has been a mess and a failure. The people in Ukraine are angry at the US for turning their back on them.

62. Since Putin’s useful idiot Trump has been tossed out of power, the US, under Biden, has turned hard on Putin’s Russia. And so it’s not surprising that Putin’s people in Ukraine would be angry at the US while the Ukrainian patriots and freedom fighters are being supported by a Biden Administration that has rallied the world against Putin’s further invasion of Ukraine.

63. @GU Wonder, each post makes you a bigger moron than the one before
    Keep on posting

64. When he was President, Trump resisted militarily supporting Ukraine until he was told it was good for business:

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/15/trump-resisted-ukraine-sale-javelin-antitank-missile/

    How much the Trump crime family got in kickbacks is still to be determined, as they’ve got dirty buddies who sort of specialize in corruption and trying to secretly squirrel away the corrupt proceeds.

    And who can forget that Trump refused to release military aid to Ukraine because they wouldn’t do his dirty work and publicly pretend as if Hunter Biden violated Ukrainian law:

    https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2019/9/24/20881505/donald-trump-withhold-aid-ukraine-timeline-whistleblower

    Trump then went on to push out the Ukrainian-American military officer who was a whistleblower.

65. Amazing how 99% of this has nothing at all to do with air travel. I guess Gary sees himself as a hack world news reporter instead of just a hack air travel reporter now.