Since today is International Women’s Day, I’ll repost this:
Here is the full video of Ukraine's women-warriors' address to Russians. I am so proud. pic.twitter.com/EOzS9YlU9W
— Nika Melkozerova (@NikaMelkozerova) March 7, 2022
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.
Excruciating pic.twitter.com/PIutGEIN0F
— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) March 7, 2022
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!
Undersecretary of State Toria Nuland, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, just said this statement was not pre-consulted with the U.S. Seems to have come as a bit of a surprise. https://t.co/GpjvK7MMwB
— Amy Mackinnon (@ak_mack) March 8, 2022
⚡️ Pentagon questions Poland's proposal to transfer MIG-29 jets to US.
“It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 8, 2022
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.
#BREAKING: #Russia's FM Lavrov:
"We have information the #US built two biological warfare labs in #Kiev & #Odessa. They have developed pathogens in those labs in #Ukraine."
Things are going from bad to worse……….pic.twitter.com/Tp2TJkX7ID
— Indo-Pacific News – Watching the CCP-China Threat (@IndoPac_Info) March 8, 2022
#BREAKING: #China — “The #US has 336 bio labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in #Ukraine alone.
It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.“pic.twitter.com/Xk2onke51V
— Indo-Pacific News – Watching the CCP-China Threat (@IndoPac_Info) March 8, 2022
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:
⚡️Biden announces US ban on Russian oil, gas imports.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that some European countries may not be able to join the ban due to shortages of energy supplies.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 8, 2022
Britain is doing the same thing on an extended timeline:
⚡️UK to phase out Russian oil imports by end of 2022.
The transition period will give the market enough time to find alternatives for Russian imports, the U.K. government announced, according to BBC.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 8, 2022
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:
Battle of Kyiv as of March 8.
Painted red are the Kyiv Region districts controlled by Russians. Pretty much no drastic changes since yesterday. pic.twitter.com/dNPJANxEsI— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) March 8, 2022
Pretty much unchanged from yesterday:
The Battle of Kyiv as of March 7.
As a witness, I can confirm the map’s accuracy.
As you can see, Russians are not even close to encircling Kyiv. And I don’t understand what are they counting on, given their severe casualties and extremely slow movement. pic.twitter.com/KOBW4owBAN— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) March 7, 2022
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!
Kharkiv is under full control of UA Armed Forces. No RU sabotage groups in the city. Today RU landed an air assault group of 120 people on 3 helicopters in Volchansk district. The offensive attempt was unsuccessful – most of the landing force was eliminated right on the spot. pic.twitter.com/alsl9un2T6
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 8, 2022
Mykolaiv is also holding:
The dude was not kidding, by the way.
— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) March 8, 2022
Here’s coverage of the efforts to get the most vulnerable out of Irpin:
This is Nina Mikhailovna, an 85 year-old evacuated from Irpin on the edge of Kyiv where there’s been heavy fighting.
A rescue worker is writing Nina’s name and phone number on her arm in case she gets lost during the evacuation. pic.twitter.com/qV8P0zrDpN— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) March 8, 2022
Excerpted from a thread reporting on what is going on in Irpin:
And several photos I snapped in Irpin as people desperately tried to seek safety beyond the Russian bombs. pic.twitter.com/ZMNUji99AK
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 8, 2022
Other good news:
⚡️5,000 people successfully evacuated from Sumy to Poltava Oblast on March 8, according to Dmytro Lunin, who heads the Poltava Oblast Military Administration.
Those evacuated were mostly women and children, as well as citizens of Turkey.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 9, 2022
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!
Bad adventure for Matteo Salvini at the Ukrainian-Polish border:
the mayor of Przemys refused to go with him and showed the shirt worn by the leader of the League in the European Parliament a few years ago: "No respect for you"
(? @SimoneAlliva)
— Marco Bresolin (@marcobreso) March 8, 2022
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:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February was accompanied by military advances from its proxies in eastern Ukraine.
Follow events in "DNR" and "LNR": 20 Dec. 2021 – 08 March 2022 via civicmonitoring (Newsletter 98) / by @niktwick https://t.co/0r5s2z9ID3
— civicmonitoring (@civicmonitor) March 8, 2022
Not good news!
⚡️International Atomic Energy Agency loses contact with safeguards monitoring systems at Chornobyl.
Systems that monitor nuclear material at the radioactive waste facilities at Chornobyl, taken over by Russian forces, have stopped transmitting data, the IAEA said on March 8.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 9, 2022
Looks like they’ve started the shelling and bombardment a bit early tonight:
⚡️Air raid sirens in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and in Vasylkiv.
Residents are asked to go to the nearest shelter.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 9, 2022
Mariupol is still occupied and is in desperate need of humanitarian relief!
AP photographer Mstyslav Chernov shared these images from Mariupol, the city under Russian blockade and shelling, said there's no electricity, water, drugs, mobile connection. Bodies lie on the streets and nobody collects them, people trapped in basements, shops are looted pic.twitter.com/5kAgcmiuX3
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) March 8, 2022
⚡️FM Kuleba: War crimes are part of Russia’s deliberate strategy.
Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that Russia holds 300,000 civilians hostage in Mariupol, a city in Donetsk Oblast, and prevents humanitarian evacuation despite agreements with the Red Cross mediation.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 8, 2022
Telegram Statement under the name of Vadim Boichenko, mayor of Mariupol. Says 6yr old girl trapped under a destroyed house died of dehydration before rescuers found her. No water, electricity, heating, mobile connection. Accuses RF of blocking evac & humanitarian deliveries
— Roland Oliphant (@RolandOliphant) March 8, 2022
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:
Ghosted: Persian Gulf monarchies have signaled they won’t help ease surging oil prices unless Washington supports them in Yemen, elsewhere https://t.co/tL1uAsK3t1
— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) March 9, 2022
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!
The Vasily Bykov, a large patrol corvette that was commissioned in December 2018, appears to have been hit during a firefight.
Video shared by the Ukrainian navy showed rocket exchange, followed by the sound of two men trying to work out whether they hit the ship
— The Times (@thetimes) March 8, 2022
A video that is claimed to show Ukrainian Forces using Multiple Launch Rocket Systems to Sink a Russian Project 22160 Patrol Ship specifically the "Vasily Bykov" off the Coast of Odessa earlier tonight. pic.twitter.com/lYInLiKMiM
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 7, 2022
Video allegedly showing the Russian Navy patrol ship Vasily Bykov burning after being targeted by Ukrainian forces last night.#Ukraine #Russia https://t.co/7d2FbQYppc pic.twitter.com/FK13sjlmLX
— BlueSauron?️ (@Blue_Sauron) March 7, 2022
Open thread!
different-church-lady
I don’t know anything about anything, but my gut tells me those reports of US biolabs is bullshit.
Morzer
I am waiting for the Russians to accuse Biden of deploying a partridge in a pear tree.
zhena gogolia
Thank you.
CaseyL
China getting some of its own back, after Trump and the GOP accused it of deliberately creating/releasing Covid-19.
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.
Adam L Silverman
@HeleninEire: I’m making it all up. None of those are real tweets. All the links are made up too.//
You’re quite welcome.
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?
guachi
It’s odd how so many people keep underestimating Biden. I will shed no tears if Biden tells Saudi Arabia to get bent.
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.
HeleninEire
@Adam L Silverman: ? Here’s a puppy for you. Not made up. Hope you see it.
JoyceH
@different-church-lady: Ya think? But hey, it’s an interesting experience for us to be on the receiving end of bogus claims about bio weapons labs.
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
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”.
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.
Yarrow
That Chornobyl news doesn’t sound good.
dmsilev
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.
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
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: Can’t spell contractor without tractor.
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.
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.
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.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: You also can’t spell contractor without con – as the Russian military are demonstrating.
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.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: well played
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.
RaflW
@different-church-lady: I kinda wonder if China is getting a bit of delayed revenge for Trump’s Covid “lab leak” bullshit.
eta: Or what @CaseyL said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
KrackenJack
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, but it has a pleasing sheen of plausibility – which is good enough for me.
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.
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.
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.
Sebastian
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is becoming brutally effective.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@jl:
Hey, I haven’t seen you in forever! Nice to see you commenting again
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.
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?
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.
Jay
@dmsilev:
Orxy has noted ( tongue in cheek) that Ukrainian Farmers are now the 5th largest armoured force in Europe.
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.
Bill Arnold
@different-church-lady:
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.
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.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
@Chetan Murthy:
I’m not sure what so different about supplying fighter jets vs things like NLAWs tbh
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!
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Three faculty at Marine Corps University wargamed it in a digital/computerized simulation a couple of weeks before the invasion.
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.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@jl:
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
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Jay
Georgia’s former defense minister Irakliy Okruashvili has arrived in Ukraine with his squad to join the International Legion.
Note this very interesting container this gentleman is holding.
https://mobile.twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1501285838193410051?cxt=HHwWhoC-vYDh0dUpAAAA
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.
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.
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
Ha! Thanks! It sounded a bit too good to be true.
JaySinWa
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/03/internet-backbone-giant-lumen-shuns-ru/
For better or worse Russia is becoming more isolated.
Mallard Filmore
@RaflW:
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.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@RaflW:
Maybe, but doing so would be placing big targets on their backs
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
WHAAAAAAA??
Jay
New radar satellite imagery of Vinnytsia Airport in western Ukraine…shows damage to air traffic control towers and an aircraft…There is no apparent damage to the runway, similar to other airfields that have been hit by missiles in Ukraine”
https://mobile.twitter.com/shashj/status/1501317889516662789?cxt=HHwWisCjudGq4NUpAAAA
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.
MisterForkbeard
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Nothing about extradition at all. They can’t arrest you or bring you back.
But if you ever have a flight stopping there? They could arrest you, I guess.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is technically unconstitutional. Whether it is practically will depend on the 6 conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: That was the one reported on. I doubt it was the only one going on.
HumboldtBlue
Adam, could you please explain the perfidious acts committed by Prince John?
Kelly
@marcopolo: ?✈️
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.
Omnes Omnibus
This is always a possibility.
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.
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?
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: Someone watched the animated Robin Hood on Disney+ last night.
Dangerman
@different-church-lady: If WWII was a decent indicator, we can skip right the fuck over the Three French Hens.
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.
WaterGirl
@Sebastian:
Okay, so UA is the abbreviation for Ukraine.
What is MoD and what is SM?
RaflW
@RaflW: And another fine Balloon Juice alum weighs in on TX and our fu*ing Court.
Redshift
@Redshift: (Which Martin already said, but I didn’t refresh comments before posting.)
Adam L Silverman
@Aziz, light!: It is written into Russian military doctrine. It is called escalate to deescalate.
https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/nuclear-posture-review-russian-de-escalation-dangerous-solution-nonexistent-problem/
VeniceRiley
@JaySinWa: Yes! Internet backbone is a big deal!
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: MOD or MoD is Ministry of Defense. SM is social media. In this context.
Martin
What do you think ‘nuke their economy from orbit’ is?
Chetan Murthy
[deleted b/c superfluous]
Martin
@Mallard Filmore: The fugitive laws were about drawing up sides. The culture wars are drawing borders.
WaterGirl
@Jay: Some of us hav no idea what that is. Curious what you are getting at with that comment
Kalakal
@WaterGirl: MoD Ministry Of Defence
SM Social Media
Ah, Adam got there first
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.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: I can offer a list.
Librarian
@Jay: You spelled Oryx wrong again.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
What are the “some things are getting weird” things?
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…
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”.
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.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
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.
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?
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.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Pfft, Boebert would think the Magna Carta is a condom
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: He’s quoting from the tweet. Click on the link.
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.
Sebastian
@WaterGirl:
I am so sorry. I see Adam et al already helped you out.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: The ongoing drama with the MiGs.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Hmm. What if they were gifted to Ukraine and Ukrainian pilots flew them into the country?
Kalakal
Brave Sir Boris doing sod all of any substance then.
I am so angry with those Tory swine
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: The woman I named is the source of the agitprop, not someone documenting it.
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.
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.
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.
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?
marcopolo
So this did say open thread, so now for something completely different:
Transport noise linked to increased risk of dementia, study finds
Yes, yes, my morning walk is on a path that runs alongside an eight lane highway, why do you ask?
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
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.
delk
Dilyana Gaytandzhieva.? She better not go to Florida.
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.
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.”
Omnes Omnibus
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.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
MoD is Ministry of Defence,
SM is social media, also known as open source intelligence.
eg. Orxy or Bellingcat.
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.
Chetan Murthy
You can’t really blame him, I guess.
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.
Ohio Mom
@patrick II: Oops, I thought it was Idaho. All those Red western states are the same to me. I’m falling asleep, see you all tomorrow.
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.
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.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
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)?
Omnes Omnibus
@Sebastian:
Animal House is never wrong.
Kalakal
@Sebastian: Albania’s in NATO
Austria isn’t and is in ferry range (1,300 miles)
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.
Sebastian
@JaySinWa:
Lumen is fucking HUGE. You might know them under the name CenturyLink, Qwest, or Level 3.
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.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: hmm. If Russia uses any nukes, we should squash them like a bug. Start with the lair in the urals:
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, as I noted, it’s a wry joke. For precisely the reasons you adduce.
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.
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.
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.
Eolirin
@Adam L Silverman: Can we just fucking get those assholes hauled off for sedition already? They were all neck deep in the insurrection too.
Sorry, really angry today.
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.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: Not at 12:50 AM. I’ll try to cover the concept in tomorrow’s post.
NotMax
Succinct.
How on Earth Is Anyone Still Talking About a No-Fly Zone Over Ukraine?
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.
patrick II
@Ohio Mom:
It was Idaho. I changed it, but not quick enough.
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.
Sebastian
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.
Kalakal
@Sebastian: Sounds like a plan. Great story, the spirit of Metternich lives on!
I had to check Albania, I thought it wasn’t in NATO
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: inside job. Covert removal. If Putin starts going nuclear, the Russian command center needs to shut it and him down.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sebastian: I wonder if we might not use the Rhodesia Solution.
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:
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.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: How is the within NATO capabilities?
NotMax
Anybody cite this product of an irreparably damaged mind yet? (WaPo link.)
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
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.
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.
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?
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)
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: Never mind. Not worth the effort of arguing with you.
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.
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.
mrmoshpotato
@jl:
Since when did China give defensive weapons to Ukraine?
terry chay
Apologies if this has been posted before, but I found this thread illuminating and it deserves a look if you missed it. It is about how Putin set up Russias economy and closes with a bit about the rationale behind the invasion.
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388?s=21
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.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
So old can remember when Exocets were being hailed as the ne plus ultra.
Kelly
Mike Luckovich on gas prices
https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/39-mike-luckovich-its-all-relative/RDHAL6544RCF3HI4YD55LVSWSE/
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.
mrmoshpotato
@jl: Maybe we should stick with known facts then.
mrmoshpotato
I don’t know what that means. Care to put on some long pants and explain?
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?
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
French missiles deployed by the British in the Falklands conflict.
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.
jl
@mrmoshpotato: I was giving a hypothetical scenario to illustrate a general point, not making an assertion of any kind.
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.
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.
Sebastian
@Kalakal:
Dude, Metternich name check, that’s a boss move!
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.
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.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
@Sebastian: I see.
Sebastian
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sublime. One of my favorite shows growing up.
800 Paratroopers? That’s a lot of goodwill!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gjln4gaeeg
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.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking of that, is there a quisling. That FSB guy was saying that ones one of the things the Russian plan forgot.
gwangung
Gawd, I wish the Leverage crew was around. Getting those MiGs to Ukraine would be a snap…..
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!”?
Ryan
But are they mobile biolabs?
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/
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
Origuy
100 years after Shackleton’ death.
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.
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
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.
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.
Martin
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.
Martin
@Mary G: Do take care. Been thinking about you.
And yes, the home buyers are always morons.
Darkrose
@gwangung:
Yes! Put Parker and co. on that, no problem except Parker deciding she really wants to fly.
The Pale Scot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Use the Radar O’Reilly method for sending a jeep home. Disassemble it and mail it )
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.
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.
JoyceH
@Martin:
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?
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.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
Best wishes, I hope you feel better soon.
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.
Geminid
@NotMax: Pat Robertson knows that nothing brings in donations like preaching the End Times.
Baud
@Geminid:
I remember when the end was nigh when I was a kid.
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.
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.
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.
evodevo
@Chetan Murthy: Hmmm..wonder if Sweden would be interested in getting involved?
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
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.
Baud
@opiejeanne:
“I should have studied for the exam.”
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.
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…
opiejeanne
@lowtechcyclist: I seem to remember that this End Times stuff got started in the 1800s, and it’s considered to not be theologically sound..
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.”
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…
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.
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.
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.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: that’s “Transcendentalism.”
Baud
@Geminid:
People followed this guy?
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:
Baud
@Geminid:
Heh. 19th century snark.
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.
Another Scott
@terry chay: Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sloane Ranger
@debbie:
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.
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.
trnc
@lowtechcyclist:
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!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
CNN says NATO is saying the Russians are basically stalled
https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1501278345106972673?s=20&t=swWHcdAjMiVqvaPF5ZYzYQ
Because of logistics, so apparently the news is right, The Russians have a truck shortage to bring up food and fuel to their tanks, so their solution is bring in moar tanks.
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?
Nettoyeur
@Sebastian: SM? Undefined terms greatly reduce post usefulness outside Beltway. There is no character limit.
Another Scott
@trnc: The map is of the Kyiv oblast (kinda like a county surrounding a city of the same name, as I understand it). The red region is what Russia supposedly controls.
Kyiv oblast in a different context
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Nettoyeur
@Redshift: So John bloody Deere the planes across the border. Like we did with planes to Canada in 1940.
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.
Carlo Graziani
@trnc:
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.
Sebastian
@Nettoyeur:
social media
Sebastian
@JoyceH:
Social Media and Western style TV propaganda
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.
Villago Delenda Est
@trnc: To enforce a no-fly-zone is to fire on Russian aircraft. There is no way around this.
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.
trnc
@Another Scott: Thanks! I’ll check it out again later.
Brantl
@RaflW: Holy shyte!