Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Bark louder, little dog.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

T R E 4 5 O N

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Update 14: The Ukrainians Are Still Holding, But Some Things Are Getting Weird

War for Ukraine Update 14: The Ukrainians Are Still Holding, But Some Things Are Getting Weird

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This post is in: , , , , ,

Since today is International Women’s Day, I’ll repost this:

It’s also taco Tuesday, but I don’t think that’s really relevant to this post…

And here’s President Zelenskyy’s address to Parliament in case you wanted to watch it and haven’t had a chance:

Lot’s of big news today. So if I miss something smaller, but relevant, try to flag it in the comments or tomorrow. Also, for those of you who are read more tag enthusiasts (fetishists?), I simply forgot to toggle it on last night, that’s why it wasn’t there. No need to freak out, I just plain forgot to embed it. Remember, there’s a war on where one side’s rules of engagement appear to be disregard all laws of war, Geneva conventions, and professional military ethics in order to commit as many war crimes as possible. So maybe if the read more tag isn’t used you don’t have anything real to actually bitch about provided no one is dropping 1,000 pound bombs on your home or shooting at you from a tank while you’re in your car in front of a hospital or invading your city and forcing you to hide with no food, water, electricity, or medical supplies/medicine or you’re walking however far you have to go to get to safety.

You can let us know there’s an issue without the drama. If there’s a legitimate problem with the site, let someone know, otherwise, perspective people, get some!

One last house keeping item: everyone please dial it back a bit in the comments. I get it, everyone is pissed off at Russia. Unfortunately, because of the nature of Putin’s Russia, we do not have any really good way of knowing how much popular support he has for this war against Ukraine, nor how many people really actually know what is going on. Being pissed at Putin, the oligarchs, siloviki, strongmen, political, and military leaders, as well as the repugnant people licking his jackboots in Russian state controlled media is all well and good. But it is important to keep a bit of perspective here and separate all of those horrible people and the Russian state from the actual Russian people. Because when all of this is over, those people who have been propagandized to believe we’ve been waging war on them for 30 plus years, are going to need a lot of our help, compassion, and charity. And that doesn’t mean that the Ukrainians are more deserving of any and all of that right now and won’t need it too.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite: MiG 29s, MiG 29s, who has the MiG 29s? Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out the following statement this morning:

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in connection with the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine

08.03.2022

The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.

At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.

The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.

And everyone started celebrating. Unfortunately no one seemed to have told either the State Department or the Department of Defense!

I’m not sure if anyone has any idea what is actually going on with the Polish MiGs right now. This may have just been Poland’s way of dumping the logistics problem back on the US. So until we can fix it, nothing is actually happening, but Poland looks like it did something so everyone stops pestering them.

I also want to highlight this statement from Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov from earlier today before we get to the read more jump. Especially because the PRC’s Foreign Ministry  seems to be backing it up.

Russian military doctrine for setting a theater of operations is to achieve informational dominance prior to conducting actual lethal or kinetic operations. My worry is that’s what they’re doing here with these clearly bullshit accusations. Specifically that the agitprop that Lavrov is spewing and the PRC’s Foreign Ministry is amplifying is not just misinformation, but intended to establish an informational narrative and context in which Russia undertakes a biological attack against either Russian speakers in Donestk or Luhansk or Russians within Russia proper. This would reinforce their false causus belli, but also serve as a provocation to rally Russians to support Putin and his war against Ukraine. Also, because it is an accusation the US has biological warfare labs, this is intended to be easily digested, repeated and retransmitted, and amplified by the QAnon and anti-Fauci crowd here in the US.

Much, much, much more after the jump!

Biden announced that the US will stop purchasing Russian petroleum:

Britain is doing the same thing on an extended timeline:

The rest of the EU member states so far are not on board. We’ll see if this becomes a major issue between the US, the UK, and the EU.

For those of you that have to have a Coke or a Pepsi, you’ll be happy to know that both companies are suspending sales and operations in Russia for the time being. McDonald’s is also closing operations at their stores in Russia too.

A lot of people are making maps of the Russian invasion forces, where they are, what they’ve occupied, etc. All of them have flaws and if you all want I can do a technical post on the specifics later, but the bottom line is they’re both showing that Russia is controlling too much of Ukraine and not enough of Ukraine at the same time. Basically, showing the roads that Russia has convoys of troops and/or supplies on is indicating more control than Russia has in those areas of Ukraine. Not being able to drill into the actual cities or towns or villages may either under or over represent the Russian control in some places. And since everyone is trying to be careful and not give away Ukrainian military positions, the Ukrainian military information is usually completely missing from these maps. Why is this important?

There’s been a lot talk, reporting, and analysis that Russia will have Kyiv encircled soon, but provided this Ukrainian MOD map is correct, unless something changes, that doesn’t seem likely:

Pretty much unchanged from yesterday:

As long as the Ukrainians can hold their lines in the suburbs, bedroom communities, and towns outside of Kyiv, then they can hold Kyiv. Putin needs to take that capitol as quickly as possible. He needs to be able to get his quislings in place ASAP so they can claim to be the new, real de-NAZIfied Ukrainian government and sign the bogus documents on official letterhead capitulating to Putin’s demands. Every day the defenses in Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Gostomel hold is a day that Putin is definitely not winning!

Which is why this reporting is good news!

Mykolaiv is also holding:

Here’s coverage of the efforts to get the most vulnerable out of Irpin:

Excerpted from a thread reporting on what is going on in Irpin:

Other good news:

The Mayor of Przemys, Poland decided to give Matteo Salvini, former Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, Federal Secretary of the Lega Nord Party, member of the Italian Senate, and one of Putin’s catspaws in Italy, both barrels!

That is going to leave a mark!

I’m sure that by now everyone has seen references to twenty-seven senior, experienced foreign policy professionals signing an open letter calling on the Biden administration to establish an aerial exclusion zone over Ukraine. Every signatory knows exactly what that entails including the risks.

Open Letter Calling for Limited No-Fly Zone

We, the undersigned, urge the Biden administration, together with NATO allies, to
impose a limited No-Fly Zone over Ukraine starting with protection for humanitarian
corridors that were agreed upon in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials on
Thursday. NATO leaders should convey to Russian officials that they do not seek direct
confrontation with Russian forces, but they must also make clear that they will not
countenance Russian attacks on civilian areas.

Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has caused massive devastation and loss of
life for Ukrainians. His premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression has
created the greatest crisis on the European continent since the end of World War II.
Despite the truly heroic efforts by Ukrainian soldiers and average citizens to resist the
marauding Russian forces, Putin’s military is poised for further attacks on major cities,
including the capital Kyiv. Targeting residential buildings, hospitals and government
complexes, as well as nuclear power plants, Russian forces will be responsible for an
even higher death toll.

The international community has responded swiftly through an unprecedented array of
sanctions and a significant increase in lethal military assistance to help Ukraine defend
itself. But more must be done to prevent more widescale casualties and a potential
bloodbath.

President Biden and NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg have stated that neither the
United States nor NATO will engage Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine. What we
seek is the deployment of American and NATO aircraft not in search of confrontation
with Russia but to avert and deter Russian bombardment that would result in massive
loss of Ukrainian lives. This is in addition to the request from Ukrainian leaders for A-10
and MIG-29 aircraft to help Ukrainians defend themselves, which we also strongly
support.

Already more than a million Ukrainians have fled their country to escape the brutality
Putin has unleashed. Estimates suggest that that number could reach 5 million, more
than 10 percent of the population. Several thousand Ukrainians have already died from
Putin’s latest aggression, on top of the more than 14,000 killed following Putin’s first
invasion of Ukraine starting in 2014. Ukraine is facing a severe humanitarian disaster,
and the effects are being felt across the European continent and beyond.

The refrain “never again” emerged in the wake of the Holocaust, and Ukrainians are
wondering whether that pledge applies to them. It is time for the United States and
NATO to step up their help for Ukrainians before more innocent civilians fall victim to
Putin’s murderous madness. Ukrainians are courageously defending their country and
their freedom, but they need more help from the international community. A U.S.-
NATO enforced No-Fly Zone to protect humanitarian corridors and additional military
means for Ukrainian self-defense are desperately needed, and needed now.

The twenty-seven signatories and their affiliations are at the link. I know two of them, but not well. On a personal note, no one ever asks me to sign their open letters to presidential administrations…

We spend a lot of time highlighting what is going on in Ukraine, but not a lot about what is going on in Russian occupied Dohetsk and Luhansk. Largely because there’s not a lot of coverage of what is going on there. Russian forces have occupied 100 towns, villages, etc. This site has updates:

Not good news!

Looks like they’ve started the shelling and bombardment a bit early tonight:

Mariupol is still occupied and is in desperate need of humanitarian relief!

Since we’re not using our Air Force or Naval aviators to deny flight over Ukraine right now, I have two good targets for them:

These folks don’t deserve a presidential visit, they deserve a stern talking to about just who guarantees their safety and security.

Finally, Russian warship: go fuck yourself!!!! Right to the bottom of the Black Sea!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

236Comments

  1. 1.

    different-church-lady

    I don’t know anything about anything, but my gut tells me those reports of US biolabs is bullshit.

  4. 4.

    CaseyL

    China getting some of its own back, after Trump and the GOP accused it of deliberately creating/releasing Covid-19.

  5. 5.

    HeleninEire

    Thank you Adam. Your contribution here is so needed. I depend on you to tell me the truth. There is so much bullshit information out there. I trust you a lot more than any other MSM outlets. Again thank you.

  7. 7.

    Mallard Filmore

    I have lots of time to rummage through YouTube.  Today I found this:

    “Belarus military quits invasion demoralized by defections and resignations will not join Ukraine war”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbH-mAjoq3U

    The vlogger showed an article from isrealhayom.com …
    Is this a reliable source of news?
    Is this old news?  Fake news?  Meh news?

  8. 8.

    guachi

    It’s odd how so many people keep underestimating Biden. I will shed no tears if Biden tells Saudi Arabia to get bent.

  9. 9.

    debbie

    Thanks, Adam, for being so good at all this. I don’t know how the world can come back from this moment when disinformation is the default setting.

  12. 12.

    frosty

    @HeleninEire: Aww, HeleninEire, you had to give him a puppy? Next thing we’ll hear from Adam is that he has a new pupper to walk and he’ll be out of the comments for awhile.

    // in case it’s not clear

  13. 13.

    MisterForkbeard

    @different-church-lady: It’s a common staple of QAnon, actually. Putin is supposedly the good guy because “liberating children from slavery” and “blowing up Biden’s biolabs” in Ukraine.

     

    What’s probably true is that there’s some research team based in Ukraine or similar. And they’re going to pretend that’s a “biolab”.

  14. 14.

    Ruckus

    @different-church-lady:

    Think about the amount of land and security needed for as much as that video stated. I don’t know anymore than anyone else but I do know that bullshit in any language smells the same.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    But Some Things Are Getting Weird

    Since this war has already featured, among other things, John Deere’s emergence as a major defense contractor, that ship has well and truly set sail.

  17. 17.

    Kalakal

    That drivel about biolabs seems to be aimed at the MAGAQ Putin fanbois, it’s practically an article of faith amongst them that Fauci is manufacturing evil bioweapons/covid/nanochips/harvesting god knows what from children all over Ukraine in secret underground biolabs and that’s why Putin is really the hero in all this.

    It’s complete hogwash to the rest of humanity but absolute truth to 5th columnists

  19. 19.

    Martin

    @Yarrow: Its probably okay. The folks running the show there know what they’re doing. Russia doesn’t want to irradiate their primary highway toward Kyiv.

  20. 20.

    Sebastian

    I was looking forward to this post all day.

    Has anyone noticed that UA MoD publishes daily tallies of killed Russian and destroyed gear by type, UA SM is full of captured vehicles and tons of POWs, yet you see no tallies?

    I don’t believe this is by accident. When the time is right, UA will shock Russia with the (yet) unimaginable number of Russian boys they hold hostage. It is one thing to grieve for a dead child, it is a whole other ballgame if your child is still alive. For now.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: I’m shocked John Deere hasn’t put an ad out yet talking about their ability to tow a T-90 out of the mud. That’d sell me as a farmer.

  23. 23.

    jl

    I wasn’t in the mood to read about it, but there it was and so I did. Thanks for the update, Adam.

    This stuff is above my paygrade, but I think it is hard to distinguish the high level psyops and disinformation campaigns for social engineering (some for Russian domestic consumption) versus signals for anything. I read a while ago that the Russians spread absurd nonsense about Ukraine secretly developing nuclear weapon. But the Russians haven’t used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine yet.

    This may sound heartless, but as long as Ukraine is holding on and keeping Russia bogged down, that might be the best way forward. Keep the Russians dribbling in stuff, not too slow, not too fast, but just right. Strategic ambiguity on some issues might be a good way to do that, including possible No Fly Zone, planes, etc. President me would, and maybe I’d be a heartless jerk president destined for damnation, would ask the Pentagon every day how long those kinds of decisions could be postponed, what could be done to postpone them a little longer, and also ask for ideas on how to keep the Russians worrying about what we’d do as much as possible for as long as possible. I’d do that to maximize the chances of calibrating the Russian resource dribbling to bog them down as much as possible. I figure the more the Russians have to worry about future escalation, the more they’ll hold back for reserves, and higher chance of optimizing (from my point of view) the bogged down dribbling.

    But, I’m way over my head on this stuff. Maybe Adam can chime in on my wacky way of thinking.

  25. 25.

    Fair Economist

    Russian doctrine is to create civilian panic to interfere with defensive mobility and transport. This goes back to the Nazi blitzkrieg. Ukraine has done a great job keeping the evacuations orderly. Indeed if the claim of 600k evacuated from Kharkiv (pop 1.4 million) is correct they’ve done enough there that it’s probably too late for a disorderly panic; just not enough to leave.

    My grim prediction is that, having failed to generate panic with carpet bombing, they are going to try nuclear or bio weapons. I don’t think that will succeed either at this point with the Ukrainian embrace of martyrdom-if-necessary, but it might leave a grim legacy.

  27. 27.

    Martin

    The MiG situation seems clear enough to me. The US wants it to look like Poland gave Ukraine jets and Poland wants it to look like the US gave Ukraine jets. Now, I know for a fact you can put one on a semi and just drive it there. Unloading it might be tricky.

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Martin: Martin, is that really it?  I mean, it isn’t some logistical issue —  just a game of “hot potato” ?  B/c if so … jesus, we’re all gonna hang together or hang separately.  And NATO’s umbrella covers Poland, or it covers nobody.  Crikey.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @MisterForkbeard: Oh, it’s just completely made up. This was broadcasted around 10 days ago as a likely route that Russia would use to drum up popular support inside the country.

  30. 30.

    RaflW

    Speaking of tractors and cons, here’s a fun (if sprawling) thread about how Russia has lost some ability to even build home-grown tractors, how Russian officials scam the system, then get ‘caught’, burn their underlings and rise further into the corrupt system.

  32. 32.

    LivinginExile

    Any chance Ukraine already has the planes from Poland and this is just a shell game by Nato to make it look like they are not sending them?

    Or what Martin said.

  33. 33.

    Chetan Murthy

    @jl: I’ve never served, so this is all pulled-outta-my-ass.

    Imagine that we provided UA enough drones, artillery & radars so they could effectively destroy the RU artillery park in UA and on UA’s borders.  Imagine how that would affect morale.  And artillery aren’t small things: if Putin’s gonna bring in new pieces, they’re gonna be visible from satellite, so UA could blow those up, too.

    I cannot believe that such a timeline is worse than one in which we dribble aid to UA — just enough to keep them in the fight.

    We need to end this thing decisively, for the good of all participants, even the Russian soldiers, but esp. UA’s people.

  34. 34.

    marcopolo

    @dmsilev: honestly, my strategy for getting the Polish fighters into Ukraine while avoiding a NATO gov’t being “involved” would be leaving them unguarded w/ the keys inside near the P/U border, letting some Ukrainian farmers know, let them “steal” the unattended fighters, tractor them over the border, and then “donate” them to the Ukrainian war effort.

  37. 37.

    Alison Rose ???

    Thank you as always, Adam.

    Every time I see this de-Nazify shit in a country led by a Jewish man, I want to scream. I know we usually say we need something like a lokh in kup in a kidding manner, but regarding Putin, he needs one literally.

  38. 38.

    jl

    @Sebastian: Or just keep them wondering. If Ukraine has a lot of POWs, but keep them hidden (and I hope treated well) then more suspicion inside Russia that the government is hiding casualties.

    A while ago, people were praising Putin for his ability to do clever asymmetrical warfare. Maybe not it’s our turn to show that we can do it too. Seems to me our first option should be thinking up every asymmetrical trick we can to keep Russian leadership uncertain, keep them hopeful enough of progress to not use WMD in Ukraine.

    I read an article a few days ago that claimed the US military war gamed a Russian invasion, and the results were pretty much what happened, we  saw there was really no way out of a botch. I thought then that the US and other militaries must be gaming out stuff 24/7 for months. So, why have some military experts write up that war game? Surely the Russians have people who read that stuff. To get inside certain peoples’ heads?

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sebastian: I’ve seen video, just today in fact, of Russian POWs being escorted by Ukrainian forces from where they were captured or surrendered to wherever the Ukrainians are going to process them as POWs.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy: I think it comes down to how it’s interpreted. You fly a fighter jet out of a US airbase in Germany into Ukraine, and the US is now in this war.

    We’re really talking about various accounting tricks to prove that this dollar I just gave you wasn’t stolen from those people over there, but at the same time, we’re using various accounting tricks to do just that.

    Wali, former top Canadian sniper just arrived in Ukraine. Did he volunteer? Yeah. Will he get a fat check from some TLA (three-letter agency) when he gets home? Yeah. Are we sending troops to help Ukraine? No. Are the troops we would have sent to help Ukraine all volunteering to help in Ukraine? Oddly, yes.

  42. 42.

    Bill Arnold

    @different-church-lady:

    I don’t know anything about anything, but my gut tells me those reports of US biolabs is bullshit.

    It’s bullshit retread propaganda. There may be a few research sites but they were not doing military bioweapons research and certainly not for the US. This has roots in Russian complaints/conspiracy propaganda about the Lugar Center Laboratory in Georgia, related to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, part of demilling some parts of the FSU (former soviet union).
    (Some of the bioweapons scientists involved should probably have been retired with a bullet to the head, but we took another path.)
    There was at least one African swine fever (ASF) outbreak (in pigs only) that was blamed on one of the labs, which is reverse causality; they were investigating the outbreak because they had the skills, and that disease is endemic in some places with occasional outbreaks in the general area. I have heard an assertion that one lab had samples of something rather more dangerous, but have seen no evidence and the asserter said it wasn’t weaponry related.
    When I googled yesterday, the first few pages of google hits were all clearly dodgy propaganda sites amplifying the Russian propaganda/false accusations about bioweapons.

  43. 43.

    jl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Thanks for noticing. Nice to see familiar names again. I been busy and just left off commenting for a while. I’ll probably be sporadically in and out for a while.

    BTW, great thanks to AL for her daily covid report. I read it first thing every morning. I have a lot of material for that, but not up at the time it comes out.

  45. 45.

    oldster

    Some people worry that if we push Putin too far, he’ll go nuclear.

    My worry is that if he’s backed into a corner, he’ll release the pee tape.

    Please, Vlad, for the love of humanity, don’t release the pee tape!

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: Three faculty at Marine Corps University wargamed it in a digital/computerized simulation a couple of weeks before the invasion.

  47. 47.

    RaflW

    I know this is a URK thread, but this just sucker-punched me.

    Cheryl is well known around here, and I don’t think of her as heedlessly alarmist. But in re our own homegrown far-right (but major and still fluffed as both-sides) party that is in a cold civil war with ourselves, this new tweet. Ugh.

    @CherylRofer
    It’s hard not to see the sequel to this, and the Missouri bill on abortion, as setting up camps for pregnant women and trans people

    @ErinInTheMorn

    Idaho’s house just passed HB 675.

    It passed by a vote of 55-13.

    It would make providing gender affirming care to trans teens a felony with a life sentence..

    Worse… it makes leaving the state with your trans teen to move elsewhere and provide them with care a felony as well.

  48. 48.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @jl:

    Thanks for noticing. Nice to see familiar names again. I been busy and just left off commenting for a while. I’ll probably be in and out for a while.

    I get that. I’ve taken sabbaticals from commenting myself the last few months for a few days to a week at a time. Sometimes I just can’t look at some of the bad news at times

  49. 49.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sebastian: As someone who does OSINT professionally, has been since 2007, and is the primary author of an Army handbook on how to use socio-cultural OSINT and teams that do this type of work, I can honestly tell you that thread is a MESS!!!! He identifies that guy as several different people as opposed to the person he is. If you go to slide 4 and look at the screengrab of faces The guy he’s trying to ID is in the first row in the right column. Whomever did that thread continually misidentified him throughout the rest of the thread.

  50. 50.

    jl

    @Chetan Murthy: “We need to end this thing decisively”

    I agree. But I think the issue of whether we can, and if so, how, is very tricky. I’d like to be in on all the war gaming going on. Maybe offer my services free of charge. But then, some of the scenarios might drive me crazy mighty quick.

    Maybe Adam can chime in, but it seems to me that some escalation scenarios might get a lot of Ukrainians killed very quickly. A botched No Fly Zone could do that, and I’m speaking in purely practical terms besides risk of very dangerous escalation. Could we do one as well as we think we could?

    Maybe I’m too cautious, but if there is a way to use asymmetrical warfare to lead the Russians on to low level bogging, I’d prefer that. I’d be reading a lot of Sun Tzu.

  51. 51.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @RaflW:

    Conservatives: “Parents should have the final say in how they raise their children unless it’s in a way I disagree with.”

    This has to be flagrantly unconstitutional. Jesus Christ, a life sentenc

    Worse… it makes leaving the state with your trans teen to move elsewhere and provide them with care a felony as well.

    Now that I’m thinking about it, how would this be enforced, anyway? If they move to another state couldn’t those state authorities (say California, etc) refuse to extradite the trans teen and their parents/guardians?

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bill Arnold: And it’s the same woman and her blog who is the primary source for this disinformation and agitprop. From the Lugar Biolab in Georgia bullshit to the US military biolabs in Ukraine. It all goes right back to the same woman: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva.

  53. 53.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: There was only one going on? And it came out that the US military pretty much could see what would happen? Sounds awfully convenient to me. And Marines do that stuff? They think fancy pants stuff like that?

  54. 54.

    Sebastian

    @RaflW:

    This is absolutely amazing. These insights should lead to new regulations, namely, the more extractive, the more regulated and audited the industry has to be. See Koch brothers.

  55. 55.

    RaflW

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is flagrantly unconstitutional until John Roberts looks like a liberal squish (which, to some on the right, he already does).

    The 5-4 (and 6-3) Court is extremely unpredictable right now. If we lose the House and Senate in November, I think all bets are off for the five. They’ll go wilding for all they can smash and grab.

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @jl: Well, there’s no reason to keep it a secret now. Russia did a thing, it largely failed, and our analysts said ‘yeah, we reached the same result when we tried it’. No new information learned.

    That article though was interesting to me because it reported that the analysts used Russias assets in a more conventional manner – trying to get air dominance, etc. and still got the same result.

    Separately, I’ve been hearing that Afghans have been giving Ukrainians advice on how to make IEDs on social media. Russia sure hasn’t made many friends in the world.

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    @Chetan Murthy: I don’t know anything, but my guess is that the “logistical issue” is that NATO countries are (with some exceptions) fine with weaponry being driven across the border on land, but warplanes being flown from anyone’s territory to Ukraine looks a lot more like that country joining the war.

  60. 60.

    JaySinWa

    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/03/internet-backbone-giant-lumen-shuns-ru/

    “We decided to disconnect the network due to increased security risk inside Russia,” the statement continues. “We have not yet experienced network disruptions but given the increasingly uncertain environment and the heightened risk of state action, we took this move to ensure the security of our and our customers’ networks, as well as the ongoing integrity of the global Internet.”

    According to Internet infrastructure monitoring firm Kentik, Lumen is the top international transit provider to Russia, with customers including Russian telecom giants Rostelecom and TTK, as well as all three major mobile operators (MTS, Megafon and VEON).

    For better or worse Russia is becoming more isolated.

  61. 61.

    Mallard Filmore

    @RaflW: 

    Worse… it makes leaving the state with your trans teen to move elsewhere and provide them with care a felony as well.

    I don’t get it. If you move out of state with no plan to return, they will swear out a warrant for arrest? Demand that other states back them up? Fugitive slave laws are on the comeback.

  62. 62.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @RaflW:

    The 5-4 (and 6-3) Court is extremely unpredictable right now. If we lose the House and Senate in November, I think all bets are off for the five. They’ll go wilding for all they can smash and grab.

    Maybe, but doing so would be placing big targets on their backs

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @RaflW:

    It would make providing gender affirming care to trans teens a felony with a life sentence..

    Worse… it makes leaving the state with your trans teen to move elsewhere and provide them with care a felony as well.

    WHAAAAAAA??

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: We have air superiority to the point of over match against any air force in the world. And we know how to set up aerial exclusion zones and enforce them. That’s not the issue. The issue is everyone is afraid doing anything like that, even just threatening that if one more humanitarian corridor is attacked after Russia agrees to a ceasefire will see a limited and proportional response, will lead not to a war with Russia, but with Putin just firing off nukes willy nilly.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sebastian: Frankly, I wouldn’t want to eyeball a facial recognition either, which is what they’re doing. There’s a reason we have software for that.

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @Sebastian: Their use of Yandex might be short lived, as Yandex is almost certainly out of money by next week. Will likely get nationalized.

    Related, seems like many grocery stores in Russia are completely cleaned out. Probably more related to people stocking up ahead of inflation/import issues than supply problems, but it suggests the Russian public is expecting bad times.

  74. 74.

    Aziz, light!

    The alleged FSB whistleblower said that Putin might launch a tactical nuke not to achieve a military aim but simply to freak out Ukraine’s NATO allies and get them to back off. Could that tactic work?

  77. 77.

    Mallard Filmore

    @JaySinWa: Maybe they will interconnect with China.  Reminds me of Sanford Wallace’s alternate internet backbone, AKA SpamBone, where participants could throw Unsolicited Commercial Emails at each other.

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    @Sebastian:

    Has anyone noticed that UA MoD publishes daily tallies of killed Russian and destroyed gear by type, UA SM is full of captured vehicles and tons of POWs, yet you see no tallies?

    Okay, so UA is the abbreviation for Ukraine.

    What is MoD and what is SM?

  79. 79.

    RaflW

    @RaflW: And another fine Balloon Juice alum weighs in on TX and our fu*ing Court.

    @AngryBlackLady
    I need people in the mainstream media to wake up and realize what is going on with the Supreme Court. Seriously. “Unconstitutional on its face” doesn’t mean anything. The six week ban in Texas is unconstitutional on its face. The @FedSoc Six don’t care.

  84. 84.

    Martin

    @jl: Maybe I’m too cautious, but if there is a way to use asymmetrical warfare to lead the Russians on to low level bogging, I’d prefer that. I’d be reading a lot of Sun Tzu.

    What do you think ‘nuke their economy from orbit’ is?

  89. 89.

    jl

    @Martin: “What do you think ‘nuke their economy from orbit’ is?”

    Sure, that is good. But I want maximum asymmetrical warfare on military  side too. Anything to get the generals even more pissed at Putin, and military hesitant to make decisive commitments wherever and whenever possible.

  93. 93.

    Eolirin

    @SiubhanDuinne: That law, at least as currently written, does not actually do that. They tacked an amendment onto an anti-female genital mutilation law, and the crossing state lines thing only applies to that provision.

    It’d be easy enough for them to change a couple of words and have it apply to transition support, and making it a criminal offense of up to life to provide that is bad enough, but…

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @jl: Y’know, “asymmetrical warfare” usually means a strategy of the weak, when confronted by the powerful, usually trading lives for time and/or attrition.  As in the fourth-generation warfare of the taliban and other partisans, where every clash between the taliban and the US Army generated more new taliban than were killed.

    It’s exceedingly bloody work.  We should be pushing our government to arm the UA army enough that they can *finish* Putin’s horde, not “just enough to keep bleeding him”.

  95. 95.

    Sebastian

    @Adam L Silverman:

    UA had a clear policy from the beginning on how to handle POW. They filmed them, treated them well, gave them tea, which is a HUGE cultural marker in Russia. I can’t forget the one boy nervously sipping hot tea every two seconds while eating a pie in the other hand.

    This is a PsyOps operation and echoes the first Biden-Trump campaign where everyone was focused on Trump being the interrupting loudmouth but the smart folks pointed out “Hey, this is targeted at the suburban women”.

    The Ukrainians, with massive help from the US I bet, are running a full-blown influence campaign on the Russian Mothers, which were the ones who turned the Russian Army upside down during and after the Chechen War. For those who do not know or remember, young Russian conscripts were killed by the hundreds in Chechnya and the relentless protests and heartbreaking pleading by the mothers forced Putin to change the law. No recruits are allowed in combat zones, only those who have signed a contract and are thus professional soldiers can be deployed into combat.

    This happened only 20 years ago and is a fairly fresh scar in Russian society.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/10/russia.chechnya

    That chapter of Russian history was thought finished and closed. Putin thought he would just roll into Ukraine and it would be ok to do so with conscripts, there would be no fighting. By doing so, he broke his truce with the Russian mothers, the one opponent he was never able to bend.

    Ukraine: Mother of Russian soldier asks ‘Whose door should I knock on to get my child back?’ [BBC]

    Putin is so fucked.

  96. 96.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    same woman: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva.

    Not that one (thanks much for the name), but someone (solidly anonymous) who regularly scans very large amounts of propaganda/influence op material and background factual material.
    I was frankly surprised at the sloppiness of this particular Russian op. They seem to be flailing.

  97. 97.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    What is the difference between supplying Ukraine with fighter jets and equipment like NLAWs? As Omnes points out, the planes could be shipped across the border on the ground, couldn’t they?

  98. 98.

    Kent

    @Aziz, light!: I’m no expert in any of this.  But I have to think that any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be so far beyond the pale that whatever few friends Russia still has would find Russia “radioactive” so to speak.  I can’t imagine the Chinese would be happy about nukes being deployed in a border dispute.  That is not a road any other stable military power is going to want to go down.  Because if tactical use of nukes becomes normalize it means nonproliferation is history and every two-bit country is going to be scrambling for nukes.  China doesn’t want Taiwan thinking about nukes, for example.

    I think for that reason alone Russia won’t deploy nukes.  They have to know it would mean total isolation from the rest of the planet.  The US and all the western allies would be completely unanimous in imposing absolutely BRUTAL sanctions on any country even thinking about continuing to trade with Russia.

  101. 101.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Ostensibly (per Martin, and I don’t blame him, b/c he’s just describing what we see in the news), one (NLAWs) can be trucked over the border; the other can only be flown.

    It’s come down to that.

  105. 105.

    Kalakal

     

    UK to phase out Russian oil imports by end of 2022.

    Brave Sir Boris doing sod all of any substance then.

    I am so angry with those Tory swine

  107. 107.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Again I’m citing from news reports.  It seems that flying those planes from NATO countries’ airfields, into UA, is already a sufficient issue that Poland doesn’t wanna do it from Polish airfields, and the US doesn’t wanna do it from Ramstein in Germany.

    Again, I don’t understand all this, and I could be misinterpreting, but it sure feels like we’re in a defensive crouch, terrified of Putin lobbing nukes, to the point of paralysis.

  108. 108.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yes, China is trolling the US w/ the amplification of Lavrov’s biological warfare lab claims. In fact, Chinese MFA spokespersons (it might even be Zhao Lijian specifically) have been trying to shift scrutiny to these USAMRIID facilities around the world since May 2020, after Trump, Pompeo & Matt Potting started playing up the lab leak/bioweapons CT for COVID-19 origin. They might see this as an opportunity to actually gain some traction. Their past focus has largely been w/ Fort Dietrich in Maryland, which apparently had some kind of safety incident that required a multi-month shut down/corrective action in Fall 2019. According to Chinese media, a few members from Fort Dietrich had been part of the US delegation to the World Military Games in Wuhan in Oct. 2019, & a few of the US team members fell sick & had to be treated at the Jinyintan Hospital for Infectious Diseases, before evacuating back to the US. Supposedly they had malaria, but there has been no malaria outbreaks in China in ages. Some Chinese CTists strung these bits & pieces of info (some probably unconfirmed or erroneous)  shortly after the Wuhan outbreak started, & came to the conclusion that COVID-19 came out of Fort Dietrich. After the Trump administration started to fan the WIV lab leak CT to divert attention away from its abysmal pandemic response, elements of Chinese state media & officialdom started to raise the Fort Dietrich CT as a counter-trolling operation (“just asking questions!”), & from what I could tell more of an external facing effort than internal.

    I never considered the CT plausible enough to actually investigate the pieces of information to vet which were real, which were false, & which were misunderstood. I am fairly certain the Fort Dietrich shut down did happen, cause remains unclear. I consider the Fort Dietrich origin theory to be much less plausible than WIV accidental leak theory, which itself is getting less plausible by the day, w/ each new study. I am certain few people in China really believe the Fort Dietrich origin CT for COVID-19, because it only gets trotted out as a deflector shield whenever challenged on lack of Chinese transparency wrt to the early outbreak & access to the WIV.

    I don’t know if USAMRIID actually does operate so many labs around the world. Perhaps Adam can enlighten us? DOD does show such biolabs located in 25 countries. I assume they are studying emerging diseases, & indeed the WHO has historically relied on USAMRIID’s expertise & capabilities. Furthermore, some of the confirmed/suspected facilities are located in countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Kenya & Tanzania, countries very friendly w/ China or Russia or both. If there is anything nefarious going on, I am sure China & Russia would know.

    Going forward, though, perhaps such effort is better placed under the CDC umbrella, than the DOD’s.

  109. 109.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Kent:

    I’d add, from my wholly ignorant and amateur standpoint, that there aren’t enough Russian officers willing to obey a nuclear launch order from Putin.

    Just a hunch, a guess, but I seriously wonder how many men or women are willing to turn those keys and press those buttons.

  110. 110.

    Sebastian

    @Jay:

    Did he get it in Ukraine or is it now BYONLAW?

    All jokes aside, if the former Defense Secretary is fighting against the Russians in UA, how long until Georgia starts moving its troops out of the barracks?

  111. 111.

    marcopolo

    So this did say open thread, so now for something completely different:

    Transport noise linked to increased risk of dementia, study finds

    Exposure to noise from road traffic and railways is associated with an increased risk of dementia, according to the largest study of its kind.

    Research has consistently linked transport noise to health conditions including heart disease, diabetes and obesity, but studies on transport noise and dementia were scarce and small, and findings inconsistent.

    Now an “impressive” study involving two million adults, conducted over more than a decade, has concluded that people living in areas with transport noise face a higher risk of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease. The findings were published in the BMJ. noise face a higher risk of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease. The findings were published in the BMJ.

    Yes, yes, my morning walk is on a path that runs alongside an eight lane highway, why do you ask?

  112. 112.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Going forward, though, perhaps such effort is better placed under the CDC umbrella, than the DOD’s.

    There’s a wry joke people sometimes make, that the only part of our government that actually works, is the DoD.  So if you want something done, give it to the DoD.  That joke contains too much actual truth to be funny.  Sigh.

  114. 114.

    Ohio Mom

    I think the proposed Idaho law is aimed at parents taking their trans kids to see specialists in other states, then returning home.

  115. 115.

    Bill Arnold

    Every country has its own constitution; ours is absolutism moderated by assassination.
    (Anonymous Russian, as quoted in Political Sketches of the State of Europe, from 1814-1867 (1868) by Georg Herbert Münster-Ledenburg, p. 19)

    Also seen, some corrections made so not actually an exact quote:
    “March is an officially difficult month for Russian rulers. Stalin died on March 5th, Alexander II was assassinated on March 13, Ivan the Terrible died on March 28, Paul I. got strangled and trampled to death on March 24. Not that I’m implying anything but tradition is important.”

  116. 116.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chetan Murthy: but it sure feels like we’re in a defensive crouch, terrified of Putin lobbing nukes, to the point of paralysis.

    Just because things are not happening on a timetable that satisfies you does not mean that NATO is in a defensive crouch.  And tying to do things in a way that does not increase the chances of nuclear conflict isn’t a bad idea.

  118. 118.

    patrick II

    @RaflW:
    Yesterday I saw a Russian Orthodox bishop say that if Russia lets Ukraine have closer relations to the EU, then they will be forced to have LBQT parades and somehow that justifies war with Ukraine.  Now I am reading about Idaho and life sentences for parents of trans kids. It seems the use of fear of sexual differences as a bludgeon by fascists everywhere is going to drive us all to oblivion.​

  119. 119.

    Chetan Murthy

    You can’t really blame him, I guess.

     

    Here are the quotes from PM @MorawieckiM – h/t @AP “We are always emphasizing that Poland is not party to this war and NATO is not party to this war, this is why any decision of delivering offensive weapons has to be taken by the entire NATO on an unanimous basis. 1/
    — Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) March 8, 2022

  120. 120.

    Sebastian

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Yeah, this is like in a court of law, certain lines you cannot cross. So we have to find a country that is not in NATO but close enough from where the planes could fly into UA.

    That country would immediately be on Russia’s shitlist but hey, nothing that a fat loan guarantee couldn’t fix. What’s the range for a MiG-29?

    Finnland is a no, too dicey. Sweden same. Bosnia maybe. Serbia won’t. Macedonia perhaps or are they NATO already?

    Albania might be a candidate by elimination.

  122. 122.

    Eolirin

    @Ohio Mom: If it applied to that section, it would be, but it only applies to the FGM provisions.

    Still deeply troubling assault on trans and parental rights.

  123. 123.

    RaflW

    Adam, I wonder what your thoughts are on this? Seems a problem, though not at a screaming urgent level.

    @carriecordero
    There’s a lot of important     national security lawyering going on right now, and in such times, hard decision making & accountability matter. As best as I can tell there is no Senate confirmed Legal Advisor at State or GC at Air Force, no nominee for CIA GC, & an Acting GC at NSA.
    …not a comment at all on the quality or competency of the individuals filling those roles as Actings. But formal authority – and where required Senate confirmation – matter. Especially in times of national security urgency.

    Though she then notes this:
    @martinmatishak
    INBOX: @POTUS announces his intent to nominate Kate Heinzelman for General Counsel of the @CIA.

  124. 124.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It is written into Russian military doctrine. It is called escalate to deescalate.

    That was talked about a lot in that timeframe and mentioned in Trump’s 2018 nuclear posture review but when I tried to find some source documents last week, the .ru sites were not responding.
    Any links (that work)?

  125. 125.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sebastian:

    I’ll tell you what. I’ll swear you were doing a great job taking care of his car the MiGs, but, you parked it them out back last night and this morning, it was they were gone.

    Animal House is never wrong.

  127. 127.

    RaflW

    @Ohio Mom: As drafted, it would also punish parents who move out of state for such care for their kid. Now, how extradition back to Idaho would happen I cannot guess. Bounty hunters?

    I suspect the net effect would be that it divides families. Once a supportive parent makes such a move, they’d be taking a risk going back to ID to visit gramma, other relatives or friends.

  129. 129.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chetan Murthy: Considering the colossal mess that is US weapons procurement, & the resultant waste, I think at least that part of the DOD has not been working, but grifting w/ the MIC.

  132. 132.

    Adam L Silverman

    @RaflW: It’s a problem. Cruz, Hawley, and Cotton have been dragging out confirmations for DOD and Intel senior appointees. This then slows the nominating process down. I haven’t checked in a while, but last time I looked less than 50% of the nominees for the DOD and the Services have been confirmed.

  133. 133.

    Eolirin

    @RaflW: No, it doesn’t, as currently drafted

    ETA: To be clear this is not me defending that piece of shit, just being accurate.

  134. 134.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ksmiami: How do you propose doing that squashing without triggering a world wide exchange of nukes?  And no, I am not saying do nothing.

  136. 136.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That piece (good piece) argues that the evidence that escalate to deescalate is Russian doctrine is weak. (There was a swirl of public argument about this at the time IIRC.)  I sorta pity the DoD people trying to game out what Putin might do in his current state, though; nightmare job.

  139. 139.

    Sebastian

    @Kalakal:

    Thanks, I missed that somehow.

    I’ve written a response re Austria like five or six times and deleted it, from no way to maybe but the longer I think about it the more likely it is.

    And here is why:

    The Austrians are absolute masters at shrewd bureaucracy. Like world champions. There is an anecdote when I believe Zimbabwe wanted to leave the United Nations, everyone was perplexed as there is no process to handle such a request. The Austrian delegation came up with a solution that was as straightforward as it was hilarious: the application was “misplaced” and couldn’t be found.

    The more I think about it the more likely it is that the Austrians will come up with something like “we will allow the MiGs to be parked here for inspection by the IAEO (conveniently in Vienna) so it can be ensured they are not equipped with nuclear weapons”.

    The planes are then picked up by not the same guys who flew them in and who are the Austrians to determine what the exact flight routes are, right?

    It’s far-fetched but possible.

  141. 141.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bill Arnold: It’s an ongoing debate. You’ll have notice I repeatedly refer to ambiguity in Russian doctrine and concepts, both written an articulated. This is why.

  143. 143.

    patrick II

    @RaflW:

    We’re discussing out of state prosecution because it is so outrageous.  But probably most people cannot easily pick up roots and move and will live secret lives with troubled children.

  147. 147.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @RaflW: As I’ve said all too many times before, the reactionaries are trying to eradicate — a word I don’t use lightly — us trans people from public life. But just as people who burn books inevitably move on the burning people, it’s only a manner of time before they move on to trying to eliminate trans people period.

    This law (like the Texas forced-birth law) doesn’t actually have take anyone to court. The point is to create fear and uncertainty.

    @Mallard Filmore:

    If you move out of state with no plan to return, they will swear out a warrant for arrest? Demand that other states back them up? Fugitive slave laws are on the comeback.

    I’m sure Texas, Florida, and a number of other states controlled by the reactionaries would be more than happy to extradite trans kids and their parents back to Idaho. Because freedom.

  149. 149.

    NotMax

    Anybody cite this product of an irreparably damaged mind yet? (WaPo link.)

    Televangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “compelled by God” in his decision to invade Ukraine, suggesting that Russia’s attacks are a precursor to an end-times battle in Israel.

    The Christian media mogul returned to “The 700 Club” a few months after he retired from the show he hosted for 55 years on the Christian Broadcasting Network. In his return, Robertson claimed that Putin was simply following God’s wishes when Russia invaded Ukraine — to fulfill a biblical prophecy.

    “I think you can say, well, Putin’s out of his mind. Yes, maybe so,” said Robertson, 91. “But at the same time, he’s being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine, but that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately.” Source

  150. 150.

    jl

    I found a discussion in the twitter account of a national security expert type person, Franz-Stefan Gady, on whether the value of the Polish planes are worth the risk, given that they can be sent a lot of other things immediately that can have a big impact immediately. But I lost it in the maze of twitter threads, and I can’t judge the merits anyway. 

    But, I found this interesting item from a Ukrainian diplomat who would seem to know: Ukrainian civilians are using their cell phones to send geolocation info on Russian units to Ukrainian military.

    olexander scherba

    @olex_scherba

    Wherever #RussianArmy comes – there are Ukrainians with mobile phones there, submitting their coordinates to the army.
    They can run, but they can’t hide – literally.
    #StandWithUkraine #putinisfailing

    https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1501163512512626688

  151. 151.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): NLAWs are defensive. MiGs are offensive. You can’t bomb a Russian base with an NLAW like you can with a MiG.

    Seems like a minor difference to us, but it makes a big difference to the folks deciding if this is an escalation or not.

  152. 152.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Martin: And yet Turkey can deliver TB2 drones to UA, arguably offensive weapons.  Though I guess they’re trucked across the border, not flown.

  153. 153.

    jl

    @Chetan Murthy: I guess some of it has to do with how discreetly things can be moved, how much plausible deniability, how much uncertainty in exactly who gave what to whom and when before they showed up in Ukraine.

    Edit: process of getting planes up and running in Ukraine is too ponderous for any uncertainty.

    What would happen if Ukraine fired off some Chinese defensive weapons towards a tank one day?

  154. 154.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: We seem to have very high level intelligence assets. Reminding Russians that they don’t want to face instant incineration would likely be effective. Hate to be a jerk, but Putin started as a lowly street bully. He will only stop if he gets punched in the neck (figuratively)

  156. 156.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Not that it tempers the sheer bald-faced burbling nutbaggery one bit but for the record I should have noted that WaPo piece is from last week.

  157. 157.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m saying we don’t want nukes involved – period. If Putin even starts down that path, we need to pressure the chain of command. They have families too.

  158. 158.

    mrmoshpotato

    @jl:

    What would happen if Ukraine fired off some Chinese defensive weapons towards a tank one day? 

    Since when did China give defensive weapons to Ukraine?

  160. 160.

    jl

    @mrmoshpotato: Probably never. But they sell a lot of arms to other countries. I looked up one of their anti-tank weapons, and it’s used by 20 countries.

  163. 163.

    terry chay

    @Martin: Wasn’t it written somewhere recently that the mortar/artillery locators we gave to Ukrainian had to be modified so it couldn’t target inside Russia’s border? That gives you an idea the lengths the US has gone to to make it appear to Russia we aren’t giving Ukrainian offensive weaponry.

    While I don’t agree that we should avoid the appearance of aggravating Putin (I think he’s all bluster and like a bully he will never put up when a bigger person shows up), I find all this stuff that the US is the only Western country with any agency a little counter. This is in Europe, why should the US have to take the lead on everything when it is the backyard of some of our most important allies? Maybe they should be the ones demanding escalation and dragging us out of our shell.

  165. 165.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: So old can remember when Exocets were being hailed as the ne plus ultra.

    I don’t know what that means.  Care to put on some long pants and explain?

  166. 166.

    Sebastian

    @Martin:

    I wouldn’t blame them, Russians are smart and pragmatic. The shit they’ve seen in their lifetimes and all.

    The nationalization of Yandex is like marrying the girlfriend one has been living with for 20 years, isn’t it?

  168. 168.

    Sebastian

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Exocet is a French anti-ship missile, one of the first of its kind, which became notorious during the Falkland War when Argentina successfully hit and incapacitated the HMS Sheffield with one of them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZu8bvxJs4

    It was one of those watershed moments when everyone knew that going forward, the world would never be the same. My memory might be tricking me, but it achieved a similar status as the Ukrainian Javelins do now: David’s Sling, toppling Goliath.

  170. 170.

    jl

    @terry chay: One of the advantages of keeping a unified front against Russia is that so many countries, some unaligned with NATO or EU, can support economic, military, and other efforts. Gives Putin too many targets for focused ire.

  171. 171.

    NotMax

    @Sebastian

    Just goes to show what a fickle companion memory can be. I thought it was Great Britain that used them.

    Thanks for the correction.

  173. 173.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @NotMax: ​
    This vile creature got his daddy the US Senator from Virginny to pull him out of a combat assignment during the Korean War, boasted to his fellow Marine officers about it (to include Pete McCloskey), then sued McCloskey 35 odd years later for libel when McCloskey wrote about it. Amazingly, half a dozen Marines came forward to back up McCloskey, and Robertson dropped the suit the day before trial was to begin because truth is an airtight defense against libel.

  174. 174.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Adam L Silverman: with respect: I don’t believe that the issue is the ability to create “air exclusion zones”. It is rather the entry into sustained air-to-air and air-to-ground combat with Russia in Ukraine, until all Russian air defense capability is suppressed. And also, incidentally, while bringing along all the NATO allies in the matter, rather than breaking up the supremely important strategic renaissance of the alliance against Russia.

    Describing this situation  by euphemisms such as “no-fly zone” establishment is not honest. It is in fact a major escalation of the conflict. If we want that, we should call it that, because that is certainly what we would have on our hands.

  177. 177.

    Sebastian

    @jl:

    You bring up a good point. The Polish MiG-29 are old and Mikoyan made a lot of updates that the Polish planes never got.

  178. 178.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Putin needs to take that capitol as quickly as possible. He needs to be able to get his quislings in place ASAP

    Speaking of that, is there a quisling. That FSB guy was saying that ones one of the things the Russian plan forgot.

  180. 180.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @YY_Sima Qian: So the short of it, this is part of that play ground fight with our crazies screaming “COVID is a Chines Bio-weapon!” and Chines crazies screaming “No-uh,  COVID is really a US bio-weapon!”?

  182. 182.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The Russian Project 22160 Patrol Ship is 1700 ton displacement and large enough to carry a helicopter (about half the size of a US WW2 destroyer) According to Wiki this is  class of six ships, three completed starting 2014. And the build times 4-6 years are awfully long for ship that size. Russian military problems may have been going on for a long while.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_22160_patrol_ship

  184. 184.

    Sloane Ranger

    @marcopolo: This is what Roosevelt and Churchill agreed when the US was neutral during WWII. The planes were left close to the Canadian border and Canadian military dressed in civvies came in during the night and trundled them on to Canadian soil.

  185. 185.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Unfortunately, pretty much. Although I have actually never directly engaged anyone in China (in person or on social media) that actually believes COVID-19 came out of Fort Dietrich. I have seen people posting sh*t that show up on aggregator platforms like Jinri Toutiao (“Headlines Today”), but even then they read like trolling.

    One thing about the CCP regime’s media control is constraining the popular passions in any direction, lest these passions force the regime’s hand or constrain its policy options.

    Here is an Ars Technica article that examines the censors in action wrt the Ukraine crisis. Posts that are rabidly pro-Russia/Putin/War are getting censored along w/ ones that seek to rouse sympathy for the Ukrainian cause.
    The war in Ukraine is keeping Chinese social media censors busy

  186. 186.

    Sebastian

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Wait, you are right. They went in without a guy. Yukashenko was an afterthought. They went in planning to shoot a ton of people, arrest a lot more, take out the entire admin and legislative, lotsa judges probably too, install anyone who loyal regardless of qualification, and then put somebody in charge who promises to keep the gas flowing. Doesn’t matter who.

  187. 187.

    Mary G

    Small setback today, Put on o2 discouraged. They say relax. Ha. Hard to sleep  on back with head and upper body elevated at least 30 degrees when you are a lifelong side sleeper. Watched a bunch of HGTV and JC is right that home buyers are morons.

  188. 188.

    Martin

    @jl: Sure, that is good. But I want maximum asymmetrical warfare on military  side too. Anything to get the generals even more pissed at Putin, and military hesitant to make decisive commitments wherever and whenever possible.

    I think you’re getting that. The US or NATO entering the scene immediately makes it not asymmetric. That’s kind of a boon for Putin. He’d MUCH rather lose to NATO than lose to Ukraine given that choice.

    Instead, you have the US and allies absolutely crushing Russia economically. That’s going to have long term consequences to Putin and to the direction Russia goes in (not necessary great ones, but consequences either way). And you have Ukraine slowly chewing up Russias military, of which Russia is struggling to replace.

    One of the assumptions at the outset of the war was that Russia would use precision munitions to allow their ground and air troops to stay out of reach of cheap weapons like Stingers and Javelins. They didn’t do that. Why? The only real explanation is that they don’t have any. They used them up in the preceding conflicts are aren’t making/buying more. Or maybe they did and they don’t work, because an economy based on theft produces shitty outcomes for the party being stolen from (the govt). If that’s something they already lack, their new economic reality is going to make that a permanent state.

    From the west’s perspective, they’re getting the fight they always wanted with Putin – a conventional fight where he doesn’t have such an overwhelming advantage that with some help to the defenders Russia might simply burn through their resources and gain nothing. Of course it comes at a huge cost to Ukraines civilian population, but again, that’s Putin’s choice. We could go in and help those civilians, but again that’s Putin’s choice to deny that opportunity.

    NATOs goal, when all is said and done, is to get a weaker Russia, and a stronger ability for NATO to protect Europe, and if Ukraine holds out against Russia, that’s exactly what they’ll get. Ukraine will come out of this in a better position (albeit with a big rebuilding and cost to their civilian population). The west can do a lot to ease some of that cost, and I expect we will. It still leaves Russia as a nuclear power, but one that we can use relief of economic sanctions to try and disarm.

  192. 192.

    The Pale Scot

    Sell the MIGs to those guys who own antique Korean jet fighters, they can sell them to UAK at considerable markup. Hey! It’s not like we’re socialists.

  193. 193.

    Martin

    @terry chay: The US isn’t taking the lead.

    Every military decision is signed off by NATO. Biden is rebuilding NATOs trust of the US after Trump by not dictating terms and not grandstanding.

    Every political decision here is signed off by the EU. That’s why he lifted sanctions on Nordstream last year (Germany asked him to) and why he put them on when he did last week (Germany finally agreed).

    Every major economic decision is being run past the G7.

    Now, it just so happens that the US is the nexus of all of those groups, and in fact either founded all of those groups or advocated for their founding such as with the EU. This is more or less the natural restoration of the Cold War alliances (with a few changed players).

    It looks like the US is taking the lead because we’re in the US and invariably we see Biden’s speeches and not Boris’. The US is the only entity who can do some of this stuff, notably the economic sanctions because to some degree all banking runs through the US. Some of the military stuff because they’re American weapons, and nobody wants to give up all their stock unless the US can backfill that from our factories. And some of the political stuff because if nukes do start flying, they’re our nukes.

    Honestly, I think this is as low-key as the US can be during something like this short of ducking out of it entirely.

  194. 194.

    JoyceH

    @Martin:

    The US isn’t taking the lead.

    Every military decision is signed off by NATO. Biden is rebuilding NATOs trust of the US after Trump by not dictating terms and not grandstanding.

    I really like the way Biden is handling this. If he were strutting around making statements all the time, the Russians would frame it as ‘that bully USA is picking on us and forcing all its Client States to go along with it.’ But with Biden low-key and letting other nations have some time in the spotlight, it’s more like ‘the entire world is understandably outraged at Russia’s behavior’.

    BTW, one of the things that has surprised me most about the Russia situation is the fact that apparently most Russian citizens entirely buy what they’re hearing on the news. To the extent that when their own children call them from Ukraine to tell them, Russia is bombing us and destroying our neighborhoods, they don’t believe their own kids! Back in the Soviet days, NOBODY believed the official news, they pretty much just laughed at it. I wonder what happened to them to lose that healthy and appropriate skepticism?

  195. 195.

    Ruckus

    @JoyceH:

    Is it possible that some of that “The Russian population is backing vova amazingly well just Russian propaganda? Now it is true that if you seriously affect the economy of a country people might just get a bit upset, but they know who vova is, what he is and did seem to be rather pissed off before everything got closed down. Do you think that all Russian citizens are going to blame the US for that? I don’t. vova is good at Russia bullshit, he didn’t get to where he is by not being good at it.

  197. 197.

    JoyceH

    @Ruckus: Good at it? I dunno, lately seems like he missed a step. You don’t wait until after you’ve already invaded to start demonizing your opponent as Nazis! Especially when your starting baseline is a population with quite good feelings toward Ukraine. It would take months at least with lots of stories and cooked up evidence to overcome that fraternal feeling.

  200. 200.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Me too. There was war, and rumors of war.

    And Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth was on the best-seller charts. I’ve read that while End Times doctrine had always been around, Lindsey’s book really popularized it.

  201. 201.

    lowtechcyclist

    Anyone else having trouble making sense of that map? For starters, I have no idea where Kyiv is on it.

    And second, what do the adjacent regions look like? I’m guessing Kyiv is somewhere near the top of the map, and if so, what’s over the northern edge is relevant. I assume it’s not the edge of the earth.

    Third, things like major roads, rivers, rail lines are important, but I can’t see anything like that, other than what I assume is a big lake in the middle of things.

  202. 202.

    opiejeanne

    @Baud: It was nigh several times when I was a kid. I remember sitting in school one day and all of us watching the clock as it ticked toward 10am, the moment the world was supposed to come to an end according to some nutter.

  204. 204.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: ​
     

    And Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth was on the best-seller charts. I’ve read that while End Times doctrine had always been around, Lindsey’s book really popularized it.

    I was really into that stuff for a year or two, shortly after I first became a Christian. This would have been 1971, 1972. I went off to college in the fall of 1972, so I wasn’t around other people who were into all that crap, so I was thinking about it a lot less after that.

    But the clincher for me was 1975. By 1975, things were, well, normal. The turbulence of The Sixties had receded, the 1973 war and the oil crunch had come and gone, Nixon had resigned and the world carried on.

    There was absolutely nothing apocalyptic about 1975. If in 1971, you’d thought the world was going to end soon, 1975 said it wasn’t in much of a hurry really.

    And that was pretty much the end of my interest in the End Times. It’s basically a bunch of stapled-together nonsense: if you start off with Revelation, and you decide that this part of Daniel and that part of Ezekiel, and Matthew 24 and these few verses from Thessalonians, are all talking about the same thing whether they really fit together or not, then you get something that looks like End Times prophecy,

    Or you can think Ezekiel, Daniel, and John of Patmos were all talking about stuff that was in their faces at the time, which makes a hell of a lot more sense.

  206. 206.

    opiejeanne

    @Baud: Ha! I think we were supposed to writing or reading something during the class, but I can’t remember which subject it was. Possibly a Social Studies class.

    I wish our parents had talked about this BS with us, and called it out as such.

  207. 207.

    evodevo

    @Mary G: Have you got an airplane neck pillow?  I found that and bolster cushions invaluable , since I too am a side sleeper…the neck pillow especially…

  209. 209.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: My theory of the Book of Revelations:

    A monk on Patmos: “Oh, no! John’s been eating those orange mushrooms again! Quick, lock him up in his cell. And Theodore, you take some papyrus and a quill and ink. Write down what he says so when he comes down off his trip we can show him how nutty his ravings were.”

  210. 210.

    evodevo

    @lowtechcyclist: Yep…what I was going to say, but you nailed it..they have been talking about the End Times for 2000 years, and hasn’t happened yet, so they have to cobble together yet another set of excuses why it didn’t happen yesterday, and come up with another biblical scenario.  And to support all of their  mutterings, they have to twist  the biblical sources and wring them out to force them to appear to apply to their timeline.  Some of these people are “true believers”, but most are in it for the grift…

  211. 211.

    Geminid

    @opiejeanne: The first half of the 19th century saw a lot of novel religious movements. They included Transcendalism, Swedenborgianism, Mormonism, Christian Science (although Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the latter half of the century I think).

    One notorious sect were the Millerites, who believed the world would end on a certain date in the 1840’s. They were disappointed, but some went on to found the Seventh Day Adventists.

  212. 212.

    opiejeanne

    @Geminid: I’ve read about all of these in a very angry book written by a Baptist minister. There used to be a Swedenborgian church in Riverside, not far from our house, but I think they’re gone now. The little church they were in is probably considered a historical building. It had a long string of words in the name, like the circle of the star of the etc. etc.

    The Millerites’ leader had the grace to climb down from his roof and admit he was wrong. I think he gave it 2 tries before he remember what Jesus said about no man shall know the time of my coming. That pronouncement gives me peace, in a snotty sort of way.

  213. 213.

    debbie

    @HumboldtBlue:

    I sorta got lost on Twitter last night. What I “learned” was this: Prince John was one of King George’s (the current Queen’s father; don’t remember the number) sons who died as a young child and who, according to the usual suspects, will return alongside JFK Jr.

  216. 216.

    Geminid

     

    @opiejeanne: Universalism was another movement that gained prominence in the first half of the 19th century. Universalists believed in universal salvation, and survive to this day in the Unitarian-Universalist Church.

    In his great biography of Lincoln, Carl Sandburg has Lincoln tell a joke involving Universalists:

          A Universalist minister had come to a small town. When they saw the man gathering adherents, the Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist ministers got together and agreed that next Sunday they would “preach him down.”

    So that Sunday, the Baptist minister exhorted his flock:

    “And now, brethren, a man has come to our good town proclaiming the gospel that ALL will be saved! Surely we can hope for better than this!”

     

  218. 218.

    opiejeanne

    @Geminid: Haha! Good one.

    There was a story I read when I was a little kid, about Abraham Lincoln telling such funny jokes that he made a cat laugh.

  220. 220.

    Sloane Ranger

    @debbie:

     

    I sorta got lost on Twitter last night. What I “learned” was this: Prince John was one of King George’s (the current Queen’s father; don’t remember the number) sons who died as a young child and who, according to the usual suspects, will return alongside JFK Jr.

    One of the sons of the current Queen’s grandfather, George V actually, so Prince John was the brother of the Queen’s father and would have been one of Queen Elizabeth’s uncles had he lived.

  221. 221.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Sebastian: So they got a someone then. I will assume the guy is drunk because the Quisling not only has to worry about being assassinated by just about everyone, Putin will likely blame and murder the Quisling when the occupation inevitably turns into a mess.

  222. 222.

    trnc

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
     

    Anyone else having trouble making sense of that map? For starters, I have no idea where Kyiv is on it.

    I couldn’t figure it out, so I compared it to a couple of other maps and I still couldn’t figure it out. Glad to know the info is solid, though!

  224. 224.

    trnc

    We, the undersigned, urge the Biden administration, together with NATO allies, toimpose a limited No-Fly Zone over Ukraine starting with protection for humanitariancorridors that were agreed upon in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials onThursday. NATO leaders should convey to Russian officials that they do not seek direct confrontation with Russian forces, but they must also make clear that they will not countenance Russian attacks on civilian areas.

    Can someone explain how that works in practice or suggest example scenarios where we can prevent Russian pilots from doing what they’re doing without any direct confrontation?

  228. 228.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @trnc: While they are at it, can they explain how a No Fly Zone will help with all the artillery the Russians have massed on the east side of the Donabas River and apparently doing most of civilian killing?

    I will also point out that the No Fly Zone didn’t stop the Iraq Republican Guard from going on a rampage against the Shiite and Kurdish civilian populations.

  229. 229.

    Carlo Graziani

    @trnc:

    Can someone explain how that works in practice or suggest example scenarios where we can prevent Russian pilots from doing what they’re doing without any direct confrontation?

    It doesn’t work at all. It’s a cri-de-coeur, but in effect it’s also a call for NATO — principally the US — to enter air combat operations against Russia.

    Russia is not Iraq or Serbia. It has long-range SAM systems, and a large air force with fighters, interceptors, airborne radar controllers, long range air-to-air missiles, etc. Suppressing that lot is not beyond NATO capability — far from it — but it entails air-to-air and air-to-ground engagements extending into Belorussan and Russian territory.

    To do such a thing and call it a “no-fly-zone” is either folly or dishonesty or despair. What it is is the first phase of a direct military conflict between NATO and Russia. Nobody can know what the next phase would be, but many of the scenaria are very bad. Anyone who wants this kind of intervention should at least have the courage to call it by it’s real name: war.

  232. 232.

    VincentN

    @JoyceH: I read a suggestion that it isn’t that these Russian parents aren’t believing their kids but that they’re worried that their phones are tapped and don’t want to get arrested. No way to know how true that is.

  234. 234.

    Chris Johnson

    @VincentN:  Thing is, that is utterly realistic. Putin’s whole deal is that if you’re one of his citizens he’ll totally kill you if you’re his enemy. Nobody gets to respond as if they were some kind of free-to-talk person. Hell, it’ll take a long time to get ’em to do that even if Putin goes. They won’t trust that he’s really dead/gone. It could be a trick.

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