Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

We’re not going back!

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Update 17: Friday Night Edition

War for Ukraine Update 17: Friday Night Edition

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We’re going to start tonight with some mixed messages arising from conflicting strategic communication.

This morning, President Biden rightly made it clear that any use of chemical weapons by Putin would result in severe consequences. I expect this also counts for the use of biological weapons too.

This afternoon, President Biden released this statement:

While each of these individually are clear and concise messaging, together they are actually contradictory statements. If the US and/or NATO is not going to directly confront Putin unless he attacks a NATO member state, then there is no way to inflict a severe price on Putin if he uses chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. I understand that President Biden is trying to tamp down calls for direct US and NATO military involvement in Ukraine. I understand that he’s trying to avoid saying things that Putin can use to justify whatever it is Putin is going to do anyway. But if you’re going to announce there will be a severe price to pay for behavior, just leave it at that. Let the strategic ambiguity that arises from our strategic communication work against Putin the way that the strategic ambiguity of Putin’s statements about the use of nuclear weapons works against the US and NATO.

One final point on this. Even if the Ukrainians know that this is the reality, that the US, the EU, and NATO are willing to defeat Putin and the Russian military by fighting them to the last Ukrainian – and we need to be honest with ourselves, that is our, the EU’s, and NATO’s policy right now – we don’t have to keep articulating it over and over. Because it demoralizes the Ukrainians even if they do know in their heart of hearts that we’re not coming to help them by providing US and/or NATO forces. Yes, they are making appeals from emotion for our direct involvement. And who can blame them. For the Ukrainians and from their perspective being dead from having a thousand pound bomb dropped on the hospital where you’re waiting to give birth is just the same as dead from having a nuke dropped on the hospital where you’re waiting to give birth. At the end of the day, dead is dead. So it is unnecessary to destroy their morale.

In other misadventures in strategic communication, Facebook/Meta made this absolutely STUPID decision last night:

I cannot stress enough just how galactically, astoundingly, dumb this decision is. There have been lots of people who have observed that Facebook has served like a Radio Rwanda for genocides in Myanmar and other crimes against humanity. This decision makes that observation a reality. Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Kaplan who runs the DC office, and every other senior leader at Facebook/Meta are contributing to war crimes and crimes against humanity as a result of this decision. They’re a bunch of sociopathic, avaricous ghouls!

Based on reporting, Putin appears to be going after the heads of the FSB:

Here’s Dan LaMothe reporting on today’s DOD update briefing. First tweet below followed by all the others copied and pasted into a quote box:

  • On to the briefing. No major changes on battlefield. Mariupol and other major cities are getting pummeled. Fierce ground fighting in several areas, too.
  • On Thursday, the Pentagon indicated the long-stalled Russian ground convoy north of Kyiv had moved from about 12 miles outside the city center to nine miles away. No change to that Friday, though there is some movement within the column.
  • New nugget from Pentagon: A senior U.S. defense official says today that some vehicles in the stalled Russian convoy north of Kyiv have been pulled off the road and into tree lines, an effort to disguise them and hide them from attack.
  • In light of questions around chemical-biological issues in Ukraine, senior U.S. defense official says the Pentagon has not sent protective gear for that to the Ukrainians. Also not aware of a request for it.
  • The senior U.S. defense official said Ukraine still has 56 operational jets in its arsenal and has been flying them just five to 10 hours per day. Points to that as one reason the Polish proposal to send Polish MiG-29 jets to Ukraine by way of the U.S. government was scuttled.
  • The Russian military, by comparison, has been flying about 200 sorties per day, senior U.S. defense official says. Some do not cross into Ukraine, he added, noting the Russians can fire aerial-mounted cruise missiles from planes at Ukraine from the Russian side of the border.
  • As of Friday, the Pentagon assesses that Russia has launched “nearly 810” missiles at Ukraine since invasion day. “The majority, nearly 400 of these missile strikes,” have been launched from Russian launchers in Ukraine.
  • Russia still has about 90 percent of the combat power it had arrayed at the Ukrainian border prior to invasion available to them for use, senior U.S. defense official says, indicating thousands of soldiers are dead, wounded or captured.
  • Ukraine has “a tad more” than 90 percent of its combat forces available, same U.S. defense official says. Important note: Its military is significantly smaller.
  • Pentagon is aware of Russian rhetoric that they want to recruit 16K foreign fighters from the Middle East to fight in Ukraine. Some efforts are being made in Syria, but it’s unclear if recruiting goes beyond Syria or if they are having success, senior U.S. defense official says.
  • No additional weapons systems to announce going to Ukraine. Arms deliveries to the Ukrainians continue, defense official says.

And a bit from LaMothe’s article in The Washington Post:

The Biden administration, under pressure to expand the arsenal of weapons that Ukraine has in its conflict with Russia, is working with European allies to expedite more sophisticated air-defense systems and other armaments into the war zone, U.S. officials said Friday.

Discussions were ongoing ahead of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s planned trip next week to meet with NATO allies in Brussels and Slovakia, which along with Poland and Romania has indicated a willingness to transfer military aid to its embattled neighbor. Slovakia also possesses the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, which is used to shoot down enemy aircraft and is familiar to the Ukrainians.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the United States is committed to arming the government in Kyiv with “the kinds of capabilities that we know the Ukrainians need and are using very well.” He declined to specify what types of weapons could be included in the next wave of shipments.

“Some of that material we have and are providing. Some of that material we don’t have but we know others have, and we’re helping coordinate that as well,” Kirby said.

NATO countries have been limited in what they can send to Ukrainedue in part to the Ukrainian military’s training, which centers heavily on Soviet- or Russian-made weapons that exist in dwindling stock.

Ukraine has sought the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, said a senior European official familiar with the situation. There are ongoing talks about that possibility, the official said, but questions remain about whether there are any that can be spared.

“Nobody wants to mishandle expectations,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The bottom line is we’re not sending anything advanced that they’re not already trained on because we’re not sending anything that will require American or NATO trainers and advisors. And we’re not sending a lot of the former Soviet stuff because our former Soviet NATO allies just don’t have a lot of it left that is operational. I’m pretty sure this also means we’re not going to give them MQ9 Reapers either. But I’d love to be proven wrong.

Much more after the jump

Israeli PM Bennett is doing his thing. It isn’t a very useful or helpful thing, but he’s doing it nonetheless.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy that he recommends Ukraine take the offer made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war – which includes many Ukrainian sacrifices – in a phone call on Tuesday, according to an official in Ukraine’s government. According to the official, Zelenksy did not take Bennett’s advice.

The source claimed that the phone call was initiated by Bennett. “If I were you, I would think about the lives of my people and take the offer,” Bennett reportedly said.

Zelenksy’s response was short. “I hear you,” he said.

According to the report, Zelenksy and his people did not like the advice.

“Bennett told us to surrender,” said the official. “We have no intention of doing so. We know Putin’s offer is only the beginning.”

In the past two weeks, and especially since Bennett’s visit to Moscow, the prime minister’s office and the Foreign Ministry have been claiming that Israel’s mediation efforts force them to keep an even more cautious and balanced approach. This message was also passed quietly to Zelenksy’s office. The official also said that Israel asked Ukraine not to request more military and defense aid because such a request could harm the mediation efforts.

According to the official, however, Zelenksy’s office isn’t seeing results from the mediation. He said that Bennett isn’t mediating so much as he is functioning as a mailbox and just passing messages between the two sides. According to him, a mediator needs to try to put together a compromise between the two sides and make his own offers.

Israel is in dire need of running a complete, thorough, broad, and deep anti-Russian and post Soviet state oligarch financial criminal network investigation because the only reason Bennett is doing this is that if there’s one place as badly corrupted by Russian and post Soviet state oligarch money as Britain and the US it’s Israel!

Just as soon as someone at the Ukrainian Farmers and Tractor Operators Union provides them with the list of most up to date Russian military equipment available and the prices. Delivery by Ukrainian tractor to Belarus will include an upcharge!

Speaking of Belarus… At 1430 Ukrainian local time, the Russians or Belarusians launched a CAP of 2 SU 25 close air support fighters (the Russian version of an A10) from an airfield in Belarus. Ukraine tracked them crossing the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. Once inside Ukraine they first attacked Ukrainian targets and were then tracked by the Ukrainians flying back across the border into Belarusian airspace where they then attacked targets in Belarus. The Ukrainian parliament – the Verkhovna Rada – released the information, as did several other Ukrainian government sources, to preempt Russian and Belarusian attempts to claim that Ukrainian fighters breached the Belarusian border and struck Belarusian targets, which would be a major escalation by the Ukrainians. Bottom line: the Russians tried to stage a false flag to provide justification for Lukashenko, who is in Moscow today meeting with Putin, to order his forces to invade Ukraine to assist Russia in their reinvasion and war on Ukraine.

Separately, Ukrainian authorities released that they believe Belarus will launch such an invasion at or after 2130 hours Ukrainian local time. The SU 25 attack was a false flag to provide a causus belli for Belarus entering the war on behalf of Russia.

The good news is I have seen absolutely no reporting that the Belarusian military has attempted to invade Ukraine. This could mean that the announcements by the Ukrainian authorities achieved their objectives – to freeze the Belarusians by revealing their plans – or that the plans themselves were agitprop intended to goad the Ukrainians into attacking the Belarusians. Or both.

Given that Farage is himself, actually, a Russian oligarch’s asset, I think he’s really concerned that he will be seized by the British government. Of course the current British government is itself being run by and populated with a number of Russian oligarchs’ assets, so…

Another Russian general has been killed in action:

These guys are starting to be like the #3 guy in al Qaeda…

We now have at least a partial explanation for why the Russian Soldiers in Ukraine have no rations:

Here’s a Russian convoy having a very bad day!

NPR has published a detailed, in depth report about just how bad things actually were at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant when the Russians attacked it:

Last week’s assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was far more dangerous than initial assessments suggested, according to an analysis by NPR of video and photographs of the attack and its aftermath.

A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack reveals that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant’s massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel. Photos show that an administrative building directly in front of the reactor complex was shredded by Russian fire. And a video from inside the plant shows damage and a possible Russian shell that landed less than 250 feet from the Unit 2 reactor building.

The security camera footage also shows Russian troops haphazardly firing rocket-propelled grenades into the main administrative building at the plant and turning away Ukrainian firefighters even as a fire raged out of control in a nearby training building.

The evidence stands in stark contrast to early comments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which while acknowledging the seriousness of the assault, emphasized that the action took place away from the reactors. In a news conference immediately after the attack, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi made reference to only a single projectile hitting a training building adjacent to the reactor complex.

“All the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all,” Grossi told reporters at the March 4 briefing.

n fact, the training building took multiple strikes, and it was hardly the only part of the site to take fire from Russian forces. The security footage supports claims by Ukraine’s nuclear regulator of damage at three other locations: the Unit 1 reactor building, the transformer at the Unit 6 reactor and the spent fuel pad, which is used to store nuclear waste. It also shows ordnance striking a high-voltage line outside the plant. The IAEA says two such lines were damaged in the attack.

“This video is very disturbing,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. While the types of reactors used at the plant are far safer than the one that exploded in Chernobyl in 1986, the Russian attack could have triggered a meltdown similar to the kind that struck Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, he warns.

“It’s completely insane to subject a nuclear plant to this kind of an assault,” Lyman says.

In a news conference on Thursday, Grossi said that he had met with Ukrainian and Russian officials but failed to reach an agreement to avoid future attacks on Ukraine’s other nuclear plants. “I’m aiming at having something relatively soon,” he told reporters in Vienna.

Maybe using “aiming” wasn’t the best choice of words there Sparky! Much, much more including imagery and video clips at the link above!

I’ve now seen this reported by three reputable sources, so I’m posting it:

Here’s your daily bayrakter:

I’m pretty sure these guys are from the West Virginia part of Ukraine!

The mayor of Melitopol has been scarfed up by the Russians:

This is what the Russians have in store for all the other elected and appointed officials, civil society leaders, military leadership, and religious leaders in Ukraine.

Mariupol is still besieged and suffering.

Mariupol’s population is around 450,000. If humanitarian relief can not be provided soon, this siege and bombardment is going to be in the running for the mother of all mass casualty events against a civilian population as a war crime!

And the Russians have been pounding Mykolaiv:

Here’s an interview with Mykolaiv’s mayor from earlier today:

And, apparently Kyiv Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel.

I’m going to say it again: the defenses to the north, west, and east of Kyiv must hold!

Kharkiv is also still being pounded:

And here’s an update from Luhansk:

Frankly, I’d adjust this assessment from may to will!

Anne Applebaum retweeted this update from someone in Kherson (there’s video embedded in the third tweet in this thread and a static image in the fourth, so click across on the tweet below if you want to see it):

  • Looks like Muscovites intend to coerce #Kherson into collaboration by detaining activists and anyone who could mount any resistance. Whether they succeed is dependent on the length of time their occupation takes.
  • What can be seen from eyewitnesses: apparently, these are FSB/Rosgvardiya troops (judging by black kevlar vests):
  • another one: literally Gestapo, trying to fish people out of their homes
  • To clear: we in #Kherson appreciate that Mariupol, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kyiv region are having it MUCH worse, with shellings and civ deaths. We do NOT urge anyone to “save us now”. We Southrons are fighters even if we are cornered. Just fuck’em proper, folks. For us.
  • Importantly, the Russians have NOT lifted the total blockade of #Kherson as of 11 Mar 2022. So the only relatively successful pincer movement they are doing in Ukraine is 1) to starve Kherson into submission and 2) to mow down any dissent by arresting the activists, Gestapo-style
  • Updates from our contacts throughout #Kherson as of 18:43, 11 Mar: more forced break-ins & arrests by Ru are reported, including in Ostriv District and Dniprovskyi district. In addition to SBU/police/terr defence members, family members of active army personnel are bng arrested

If you were wondering how Marianna was doing after she survived the bombing of the maternity clinic and children’s hospital at Mariupol, well here’s the update:

As part of my ongoing efforts to harsh everyone’s mellow regarding the economic sanctions and measures, here’s an explainer from The Guardian about how Russians are getting around the civilian aviation embargo.

Russians are exploiting a loophole known as the “Serbian backdoor” to flee to Europe and circumnavigate an EU-wide ban on flights to and from Russia.

Air Serbia, which is mostly state-owned, has doubled the number of direct flights from Moscow to Belgrade to 15 a week to meet rapidly rising demand after the EU banned Russian planes and airlines from its airspace, after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia responded by closing its airspace to EU and UK planes.

Serbia is not a member of the EU and has refused to impose sanctions against Russia, but its planes are free to cross EU airspace. This has made the Balkan country “the only European air corridor left open to Russia”, according to travel analytics company ForwardKeys.

More at the link above.

And here’s an op-ed in The Atlantic by Olena Halushka, who is a board member of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine:

ever could I have imagined that Ukraine would go through this hell. My beautiful homeland with centuries-old monuments, a country of peace-loving people, is being destroyed. These past 15 days have changed everything and been the most horrifying of my life. I wake up each morning not knowing if my close ones are still safe and alive.

The Kremlin is now executing Ukraine for its democracy-building efforts, while the world’s leading democracies do little to help us defend ourselves. Vladimir Putin’s Russian army continues to claim the lives of innocent Ukrainians each day while the West drags its feet in providing Ukraine with much more meaningful military assistance to protect our sky from Russian bombs and missiles.

I work at the Action Center in Kyiv, an anti-corruption NGO. Until the invasion, my colleagues and I had been watchdogging the Ukrainian government, cleansing the country’s judiciary, and advocating for reform. Despite challenges and roadblocks, Ukraine had been gradually and steadily building democracy.

Now the Russian military is shelling and striking residential areas across Ukraine—places like Kharkiv, Mariupol, Sumy, Chernigiv, and Kyiv have all come under attack. Some 900 towns and villages are cut off from electricity, gas, and heat. Many towns, like Mariupol, face humanitarian catastrophe, as Ukrainians are forced to sit in shelters for days, waiting for the Russian bombardment to end. Thousands of civilians cannot evacuate because Russian invaders are shooting convoys; just a few days ago, a mother and her two children were brutally killed in Irpin, a town in the suburbs of Kyiv. ​​The evacuation route Russia offered out of Mariupol was mined.

Yes, the Ukrainian army is performing miracles defending Ukraine. But most Russian war crimes are being committed with bombs and missiles. Human capacity to stop them is limited. If NATO is afraid to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, it has to do everything possible to arm the country urgently so Ukrainians can do it ourselves. We need much more advanced air and missile defense systems than we have received so far, as well as more drones, fighter jets, anti-tank weapons, and mobile artillery.

What else can the West do to stop Russia? Ukrainians are asking that, in addition to enforcing economic sanctions, the Financial Action Task Force blacklist Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. This measure will block all international transactions with the country. European nations should follow the example of the U.S. and impose an embargo on Russian gas and oil immediately, not wait until 2030. All Western countries’ ports must deny access to Russian ships. ​​Russian oligarchs and their family members with ties to Putin should be sanctioned by Western countries; their assets should be frozen and their visas revoked.

Much more at the link above!

Finally, here’s a video about Horace the elephant at the Kyiv Zoo.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  4. 4.

    matt

    Is Israel trying to hurt relations with the US? This kind of tone deafness and wrong side taking is going to do a lot of damage.

  8. 8.

    terry chay

    Very interesting and insightful interview with a historian https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

    The only thing I disagree with is the conclusion. I think at the end of the day, the thing he points out as the “direction we are headed” is inevitable and, because it is unconscionable, he does a cop out.

    As a bully and a despot, unfortunately, the only language Putin understands is strength, and any outreach will be seen by him as weakness to exploit an opportunity to reposition and do greater harm.

  9. 9.

    Chetan Murthy

    @debbie: And if they can’t remember history, maybe they should remember we send them billions of dollars every goddamn year, money they need to defend their country, since they’re so goddamn busy making enemies of every neighbor.

  11. 11.

    sdhays

    @debbie: The thing to remember about Bennett is that he’s really awful, but he’s not Benjamin Netanyahu. And, as I understand it, that’s the alternative

    I wonder which way Israeli public opinion is blowing.

  14. 14.

    LivinginExile

    Fuck, I wish we could do more.  I don’t know why Biden has to announce what we’re not going to do.

  15. 15.

    sdhays

    @Chetan Murthy: But they’re not. They have never been friendlier with Saudi Arabia – they both agree they have to reign in Iran. Relations with Syria and Lebanon are no worse than at any other time. Relations with Jordan and Egypt are fine.

    If you meant the Palestinians, I don’t think Israeli’s count them as “neighbors”. To be a neighbor, you need to be considered something of an equal.

  16. 16.

    sdhays

    @debbie: Not just cash in, but really intrench his power. Just because he’s weaker, Bennett is better.

    But the political situation in Israel is still terrible. I haven’t read anything that makes me think there’s much hope for improvement.

  18. 18.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sdhays: I mean Syria, Iran, Lebanon.  To some extent Jordan.  And Egyptians have no real love for Israel.  I don’t think KSA and the UAE are actually friendly — it’s an alliance of convenience.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    Ukraine’s Rapid Response Tractor Force is watching your poor-ass armor, Lukashenko.

    I watched Despicable Me yet again last night, so this tweet is even funnier.

  20. 20.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

     

    @Ksmiami:

    A solid buck and a half of every gallon of gas you buy is a direct consequence of our government playing lapdog for Israeli expansionism.

  22. 22.

    eclare

    Is there a way for Poland to kick everyone out of that embassy, cut off relations?  Seems like Obama did something like that in Dec of 2016 with some Russian staff.

  23. 23.

    Alison Rose ???

    @sdhays:

    he’s not Benjamin Netanyahu

    I’ll take “Lowest of low bars” for $200, Mayim. (Or whoever the heck hosts it now)

    I mean, I agree with you, because fuck Bibi forever. But still.

  24. 24.

    Mike in NC

    Netflix recently added “Watchmen” from 2009. People either loved it or hated it. I’m liking it.

  25. 25.

    guachi

    In 2002, the last name of one of my Arabic teachers from Syria was Bairaqdar. When we asked him what it meant he said it was Turkish for “standard bearer”. So there you go. Now you know what the name of the UAV means.

  27. 27.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: IIRC he didn’t expel the embassy — just expelled a buncha “diplomats” spies and forced them to close several “outbuildings” (like that house in the countryside with all the antennas aimed at the NSA main site).  Poland could certainly expel a ton of Russian “diplomats”, sure.  But one of the reasons countries keep adversaries’ embassies open, is to keep lines of communication open: you never know when they’re useful to, y’know, re-establish peace.

  28. 28.

    Carlo Graziani

    I’d like to talk about the other “battlefield” for a moment — Russia under sanctions. As some (including me) believe, or at least hope, and as others feel unlikely, the war in Ukraine could actually end in Russia, rather by a military outcome in Ukraine.

    Here one finds a spectrum of authority and expertise (I particularly like Fiona Hill) with a variety of takes on Putin’s obligations, degree of control, degree of isolation, mental equilibrium, disaffection (or loyalty) from securocrats/military, and so on. It’s all very interesting, if confusing, and often contradictory.

    I think the point to keep in mind is that the sources of information accessible to media and Twitterati — even the best-informed people endowed with the most reliable intuition — are very poor, because the Russian state governance is rather opaque at the moment. So there’s a lot of Kremlinological tea-leaf reading going on which, filtered through the typesetting of the New York Times or the Chyrons of CNN and BBC and echoed through Twitter may look like actual information, when it’s really not.

    Western Intelligence agencies may have better reads on internal Russian processes, judging from the astonishing accuracy of their knowledge of Russian intentions — the hardest kind of intelligence — in the weeks prior to the war. As I’ve written before, I think it’s likely that they are exploiting the endemic corruption of Russian governance and the abundance of ready, untraceable funds in intelligence budgets to buy official sources in FSB and MOD, and possibly elsewhere in government. A reading of Intelligence history (Richard Aldrich and Christopher Andrew are particularly good authors on this topic) suggests that UK’s SIS is likely to have developed particularly good sources, but obviously the US seems to have done all right. Unfortunately for us, the Biden administration no longer has a motive to divulge that information, as it did to wrong-foot Putin in the weeks before the war.

    Connecting the dots, however, I would surmise that Western intelligence services still has hooks set good and hard in high-level Russian sources, and for once those services have literate, intelligent consumers of their product — a historical rarity. This is one of the reasons I feel it would be presumptuous to substitute my own judgments for Biden’s, even when I dislike the outcomes of the decisions coming out of the White House. Another reason, of course, is that I would be paralyzed by having to make such high-consequence decisions — if it were me, personnel working the White House laundry would need to be vetted for top-secret code-word clearances, to ensure that the volume of soiled presidential-monogrammed underwear being processed daily remained a state secret.

    In any event, it could also be the case that much is uncertain even with that kind of access. The point (there is one) of this “epistemological” disquisition is that there is often a tendency, when confronted with a veil of this kind, to assume that it conceals strength, unity of purpose, and depth. What I learned from watching the collapse of the Soviet Union — totally unexpected by every credible analysis, predicted only by “stopped clock” millenarians who saw it coming every day since 1950 — is that often such veils lie, or help us lie to ourselves. When we have no real information, we fill in the void with what we think ought to be there. If we think “Putin cabal in total control”, that’s what we will find.

    There are enough credible, experienced Russia hands who saw that cabal come together since 2012 to now make an ostensibly persuasive case that the cabal is in control of Russia, of the FSB, of MOD, and of the nuclear codes, and that the cabal is impregnable. That case cannot be fact-checked now, by open sources. We’re blind. The case can be plausibility-sniffed, though.

    I smell something off. In the first place there are tens of thousands of people in FSB, in the military, in police, and so on who need to subscribe to the cabal’s outlook and take orders from and through it in order to make the machine work. They need to continue to do so under the stress of a fratricidal war, and of immiserating sanctions, without the motivation of an idealistic framework imbued since childhood, such as the CPSU once provided, and being far too familiar with reality to be taken in by the gimcrack-1984 Ministry of Truth news shows currently on Russian TV.

    The sociology of the cabal itself is a power-worship thing, organized on principles of veneration of strength and cunning. Such organizations forge bonds of steel when everything goes swimmingly, but suddenly develop loyalty issues when the future becomes clouded. Obvious examples that furnish useful models are (of course) Nazi officials scrambling to save themselves by late 1944, or New York Mafia families under pressure from FBI suddenly growing bumper crops of informers. Putin’s performance has been obviously inept, his every forecast gainsaid by events, his every move forestalled by the West, his predicted 7-day triumph over his new adoring province turned to ashes by a genuine universal popular resistance. He doesn’t look strong any more: he looks foolish. He has put Russia in clear and present danger, with a wrecked economy, an encircling alliance of enraged powers, and no obvious exits. Many people, most outside the cabal, possibly some inside, must sense danger, and wonder where their best personal opportunities lie. All those intelligence leaks are not, among other things, an indication of high morale.

    There is also recent history of the military resisting Kremlin overreach. In 1991, during the August coup against Gorbachev, the heads of the Air Force, the Navy, and the Strategic Rocket forces defied the Defense Minister and GKChP member Yazov, telling him that they would not obey any nuclear launch orders. There is not likely to be much trust between those services (according to William Odom’s “The Collapse of the Soviet Military”, the more technical services, with more “evolved” officers) and Putin’s cabal.

    OK, this is getting logorrhoic, sorry. My point is really this: The West cannot state explicitly that the objective of sanctions is “regime change” of course. But regime change is not an unreasonable latent hope, while we ostensibly exert pressure on Putin to change course. The West should keep up the pressure, while also offering some diplomatic exits — not at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty, or without consultation with the Ukrainian government, naturally. Some face-saving security guarantees are possible, however. Even Zelensky has said as much. And the more reasonable proposed exits Putin disdains, the more his panicked colleagues will be glancing down at their daggers, and calculating…

  29. 29.

    Gravenstone

    @Mike in NC: I had the biggest fucking grin on my face through most of that movie. So much of the dialogue throughout was taken verbatim from the source material. Yes, they made a major change in the climax but it was internally consistent with the world as built in the original comics and as such it worked for me.

  30. 30.

    sdhays

    @terry chay: That was a good interview. Thanks!

    It’s not that important, I suppose, but it irks me how everyone talks about “the Biden Administration” botching the Afghanistan withdrawal. That’s just the accepted narrative now.

    Three administrations oversaw the failure of Afghanistan. The Tramp Administration oversaw most of the withdrawal, and signed the agreement with the Taliban which left very little time. But the Afghan government collapsed a few months ahead of schedule (it really angers me that the people who kept us in Afghanistan for 20 YEARS don’t have to take any responsibility for that fucking failure!), so Biden screwed up? GTFO.

  31. 31.

    Ksmiami

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:  I want to stop subsidizing criminal horrible regimes through our oil addiction. I hope gas goes to its actual real price 7-8/bucks per gallon for all the middle eastern bs. Wars Etc. So we can ultimately abandon it. I barely drive and deliberately live in places where I can get practically everything I need on foot

  33. 33.

    Kattails

    Malcolm Nance was rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of MQ-9 reapers going to Ukraine, that they would scare the pilots shitless.

    Zuckerberg can go fuck himself.

    I’m going to go listen to some kind of lovely music.  Maybe the Flower Duet. 5″ of snow due tomorrow, the 4″ we got on Tuesday is mostly melted.  Weird sugaring season so far.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in NC: I am not a fan of the graphic novel. That said, visually it absolutely captures the art from the comic. The actors are good and do a good job. But since I don’t like the source material, my view is that neither the cinematography nor the acting could fix Moore’s story.

  37. 37.

    The Pale Scot

    So since Assad is sending troops and is not a member of the RU economic alliance, shouldn’t Nato stomp on the Syrian government with extreme prejudice? Airfields, military bases, especially the wealthy suburbs of Damascus where his support is concentrated. Clusters and incendiaries.

    Claim we evidence of bioweapon labs there and had to react immediately.

    What’s good for the goose et

    We’re trying to avoid WW3. The 3rd world needs stay out of this

  39. 39.

    eclare

    @debbie:   There was a clip of one of them, Sergei, from a couple of weeks ago being questioned by Putin.  Guy was visibly shaking.  At one point Putin told him, “Sergei, speak plainly.”

    Friend of mine and I agreed he’d fall out of a window soon

    I can’t link, but if you Google “Speak plainly, Sergei” you’ll get the clip.  Guy was terrified.

  40. 40.

    sdhays

    @The Pale Scot: Is Assad actually sending troops? I only saw that Putin intends to recruit “volunteers”. Regardless of NATO’s response, I wonder if Assad can really spare any part of his military to leave his country. Isn’t his hold still pretty precarious?

  42. 42.

    terry chay

    @sdhays:

    It’s not that important, I suppose, but it irks me how everyone talks about “the Biden Administration” botching the Afghanistan withdrawal. That’s just the accepted narrative now.

    I believe that this was said  in the context of Putin/Russia’s perception that led them into invading Ukraine. I do not believe the historian believes that “Biden botched the withdrawal” but is saying “Putin believes Biden/US botched the withdrawal and that was the sort of datapoint that makes the expectation of Ukraine falling in 2-5 days with a lightning coup seem rational, when in hindsight or with an honest/instead of subservient/fearful intelligence apparatus, it was absurd wish fulfillment.” His point is that a authoritarian dictator becomes a despot because, over time, everything becomes centered around them to the detriment/doom of the entire country. A cycle that has been repeated at least 5 times in Russia’s history.

    As I’ve said many times before the two salient things that changed to influence an invasion of Ukraine now seem to be

    • Putin holed up during the pandemic
    • Putin’s perception of the US withdrawal in Afghanistan

    If it isn’t obvious, while I don’t conclude what specifically about the second he gleaned, I don’t believe that any conclusion that results in an invasion of Ukraine was correct. I personally think if there is blame for that it belongs in the Trump presidency, and, in the larger scheme, I don’t think nation-building in Afghanistan was ever possible. Oftentimes it seems we give ourselves too much credit and provide no agency to anyone else. (The same goes for that stupid historian who blames the United States for Ukraine. It’s based on a hubris that assigns agency to the U.S. and none to the fact Russia was going to expand and invade it’s neighbors no matter what as they have done for 500 years now.)

  43. 43.

    Lyrebird

    First off, thanks again going to Adam for yet another information-packed update!

    @Carlo Graziani:  thank you for sharing your thoughtful commentary. I don’t know how likely it is that a good resolution will come from within Russia, but I also consider that something worth hoping for. it would be a moot point without the strength of UA’s military resistance, but without change in RU I don’t know how this can end.

    the tea leaves I have access to are just what I can see here and on DKos. I don’t think average citizens have a great deal of say in what R does, but I am amazed at the level of protest showing up – that any of it is showing up on TV, that so many thousands of people are risking arrest.

    Kamil Galeev is someone whose opinions are not armchair tea leaf reading like mine. I found the thread he put out about sanctions, found that interesting.

    From my armchair view, what you say about people glancing at their daggers rings true.

  44. 44.

    Sebastian

    Alright, a few Mud, Road & Truck maintenance observations here.?

    The BTR-82 tire treads in this video are the same as those on several Russian trucks captured with sh–ty tires by Ukraine. They may have the same flawed Chinese tire issues.

    Next, look at the road under the
    1/ https://t.co/P1P8qTddym
    — Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 11, 2022

    This confirms that UA drone strikes are getting more targeted. Bayraktar for SAM and Command Units, Punishers against Fuel Trucks.

  45. 45.

    terry chay

    @Ksmiami:

    I want to stop subsidizing criminal horrible regimes through our oil addiction. I hope gas goes to its actual real price 7-8/bucks per gallon for all the middle eastern bs. Wars Etc. So we can ultimately abandon it.

    That’s not how it works. Consider that when I was in school, it was generally incorrectly taught in US History (and still probably is) that slavery would have ended naturally “because the price of slaves was going up and slaves would eventually be too expensive to keep.”

    This doesn’t make sense from supply and demand. If the price is going up in a market economy, it must be because the demand for them was going up. This was the case: the stopping of the slave trade, technological advances like the cotton gin, and the move of it to flatter areas of the west (e.g. Texas) meant that slaves were becoming more valuable, not less.

    Eventually a grad student sat down and studied this thing to project when the slavery would have actually become economically infeasible. Her project was that it would have lasted at least until the 1960’s when mechanism might have made it cost inefficient.

    …

    Applying that to your point, the price of oil going up is a sign of increased demand (in this case due to low supply). While supply seems inelastic, it’s actually elastic because it can be substituted with other sources of oil (primarily) and other forms of energy (unfortunately secondary). In the former case, a high price makes things like shale oil feasible. In the latter (and more ideal case), we look into nuclear, solar, etc.

    High prices in this case naturally mean we are normalizing relations to other terrible states like Venezuela. From Guns, Germs and Steel we can conclude that these states aren’t terrible by accident. Because their fundamental wealth is unearned (e.g. it comes from the ground), it breeds a terrible state (similar can be said of modern day Russia, Saudi Arabia, perhaps even Texas, …). That’s the sort of outcome we can expect with a high price: more power and influence in already terrible states where their wealth and power emanates from oil riches.

    Ridding ourselves of our addiction to oil is such a conundrum that has no easy answer. I hope we can, but a high price is just as likely to entrench our addiction and exacerbate this problem as it is to spur us looking for alternative solutions based on industry and innovation, and not undeserved Jed Clampett-like luck.

  46. 46.

    Sebastian

    Alright, gotta have this here. Adam will probably make a special post, or post series, about this because this is SO in his wheelhouse.

    For anyone who hasn’t heard yet, there is a ‘mole’ in the FSB (=KGB), and they are writing letters. Four of them so far and they are hoo-boy! Vova has already raided the FSB and put some leaders under house arrest.

    #FSBletters

    ?I’ll be adding on to this thread as I receive further details, but we can get started. This info has been cross-verified from multiple sources. #FSBletters #theracecardriver
    — Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) March 11, 2022

  47. 47.

    terry chay

    @The Pale Scot: The whole success Russia has had over the last 15 years has been predicated on the natural asymmetry of actions available to “the West.”

    In other words, no, no we can’t do that to Syria, another sovereign country.

    (I get you are angry, so am I. I don’t want to entertain this stuff seriously and I think it’s too serious to do things in jest, no matter how angry I am at the prospect of the likely millions eventually killed in Ukraine.)

    Another way to consider this is the U.S. did exactly what you said 20 years ago using our power as the sole superpower combined with the world’s reaction to 9/11. The result was our invasion of Iraq and nation-building if Afghanistan.

    I would hope we learned from this lesson, and, unlike Putin who is just Stalin 2.0 who is just Peter the Great 2.0 who is just Ivan the Terrible 2.0, we can avoid it. If not, it seems the rise of Europe as a world power will hopefully mean that someone will remember and remind us of our march of folly.

  48. 48.

    Ksmiami

    @terry chay: in the US, we actually have highly subsidized fuel prices that allow us to fill giant cars. These subsidies come as exporting guns etc to client crazy states in S. America and the Middle East. If the price of our military subsidies were included in the per gallon price points as opposed to opaquely included in our military budget, US citizens would pay a ton more and that would foster innovation

  53. 53.

    LadySuzy

    I’m sorry, but I have serious doubts that the Ukrainians will be able to resist the occupation easily. Looking at what’s happening in Kherson, we can see how barbaric the occupation will be.

    I’ve heard many American military people say over and over and over again that even if the Russians win militarily, they won’t be able to occupy Ukraine. I’m afraid the US assessment is just wishful thinking. When they tell us the number of troops required, it seems to me they base their calculus on projection: what would be the numbers necessary if the American Army had to occupy Ukraine. But the manuals of the American Army are of no use here. The Russians are far more brutal, and don’t apply any basic rule of war. So they won’t need as much people to control the population.

    Yes, Russia was eventually forced to leave Afghanistan. But Ukraine is not Afghanistan. For one, not the same geography. Second, Putin views Ukraine as existential for Russia. And finally, Putin is really brutal and evil; now that he sees the West won’t come to the rescue, his regime will perpetrate any crime necessary to maintain control.

    Sorry to be pessimistic.

  56. 56.

    Kalakal

    @sdhays: The ‘botched withdrawal’ from Afghanistan narrative really annoys. Biden inherited a 20+ years of failure and a withdrawal date. The only part he could be blamed for is the withdrawal operation itself  and that impressed the hell out of me. At short notice the US was able to evacuate over 80,000 people in 2 weeks from an airport in unfriendly territory 1,000s of miles from home with incredibly light casualties. That was an absolutely stunning display of logistical capability. If there was one lesson Putin should have learnt from that it was that US military capability dwarfs Russias.

    The eternal lesson that proping up corrupt, inept, unpopular regimes by military force means you only control the ground where your troops cast shadows is one every country forgets

  57. 57.

    terry chay

    @Ksmiami: That is a very simplistic and naive view of what is going on. I won’t refute it because we are in big danger of going off thread (war in Ukraine, the outright murder/war crimes against one of the largest European countries while the options of the west are limited), and I’d like to focus on that instead of the aftermath of why the West is addicted to oil.

    I’ll note that it is all modern civilizations, not just the West, and not just the United States that is trapped in this loop. Again, your argument assigns too much agency to the United States specifically as to how we got here. Consider that is the same hubris that breeds Putin thinking Ukraine could be topped in 2 days.

    (In order to not be a total contrarian here, I believe we don’t have to go so far as to price in our military, which eats the lion’s share of our federal discretionary budget, to price in the cost of oil to consider its cost. All we’d have to do is consider the cost of the roads our gas-burning vehicles roll on to probably almost double the price at the pump. I hope, in light of the sacrifice and likely destruction of Ukraine, we look into what caused it (indirectly definitely the addiction of the modern world to oil) and see how we can fix that to honor their sacrifice and learn that some costs costs are not just measured in dollars, and, in some way, are immeasurable)

  59. 59.

    debbie

    @Sebastian:

    From one of his tweets in that thread:

    The raids, criminal investigations, and the arrests have taken place officially due to some trumped up accusations by the Kremlin against the 5th Directorate of corruption & bribery. The cover story for the raids is so ridiculous I won’t even go into further detail.
    — Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) March 11, 2022

    (My bold.)

  61. 61.

    Librarian

    Trent Telenko is great on the technical stuff, but his political opinions are pretty right wing.

  62. 62.

    Ksmiami

    @terry chay: But it is inter-related. There’s a reason why countries that are built on extraction industries end up with mostly horrific governance. It’s easy to dig in the ground; it’s much harder to build a society that makes life better for most people. Hell; even in the US, we see a similar divide play out among states- West Virginia vs DC etc. If anything Putin’s psychotic attack is shining a light on the issue as never before.

  63. 63.

    terry chay

    @Kalakal:

    The eternal lesson that proping up corrupt, inept, unpopular regimes by military force means you only control the ground where your troops cast shadows is one every country forgets

    Amen!

  64. 64.

    terry chay

    @Ksmiami: 1000% agree with you. In fact, that was why I referenced Guns, Germs and Steel (its premise is that civilizations become dominant due an accident of location). I’m sorry if it came out as me disagreeing with you on this point.

    I also agree that we (The United States, the West, the modern world in general) need to take a hard look at the costs of this equation in light of what it has allowed Putin to do in Ukraine. He will not not win it, but he will likely destroy it, and in this way, that is on all of us because we enabled him through that addiction and exploitation of stuff created to protect our oligarchs.

    I don’t have high hopes, but I do think, in our rush to close off Putin’s access to this, the dismantling of some of our own avenues of kleptocracy may be a welcome byproduct. It certainly has shined a light on it as while leaks like the Panama Papers have always given us information, the real problem with this world is in a lack of analysis and understanding, not the lack of information. War in Europe after 80 years, has brought a clarity nobody could have predicted. I hope some good comes out of it.

  65. 65.

    The Pale Scot

    @terry chay:

    The invasion and the attempt of nation-building in Iraq  and Afghanistan was stupid Neo-con pro Israel idiocy. I’m not advocating invasion, I’m advocating punitive strikes. Fuck over Syrian’s and the Chechen governments military and political support structure, accuse them of WMD possession. That’s where RU is going, we should beat them to it

    Putin is calling in his markers. We can’t get involved directly in UAK. But we can point out to the secondary players that a conflict between nuclear power has costs.

    The gloves are coming off, RU needs to isolated.

    I’m not angry, I’m stone cold New Jersey

  66. 66.

    Sebastian

    @debbie:

    Oh, yes of course!

    I am flabbergasted by the letters. It is so much information to process, A part of me believes this is the West destroying Russia with their own weapon but that’s maybe too farfetched.

  67. 67.

    Ksmiami

    @terry chay: I love  Jared Diamond. Collapse is brilliant too. But yes we need to build a new model for the world that reduces oil and coal etc and defangs these horrid regimes. The stakes are too damn high.

  69. 69.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    MaKin@KiarKini 9h
    Replying to @christogrozev

    The video of Russian soldiers clubbing chicken to death was hilarious, sad and outragerous at the same time.

    This is what happens when you recruit soldiers from online Skyrim forums.

    (Someone will get this joke. Maybe not you, but someone.)

  70. 70.

    terry chay

    @The Pale Scot: My points are that technically Syria is a sovereign country and the reasoning is the same even if the result (invading vs. bombing) is different. I don’t think it is relevant what level of bombing vs. invading is, either would really disempower us on the larger front (diplomatically, economically with respect to sanctions) where it matters (Ukraine).

    Also, these troops we are talking about, if they do materialize, are a joke. I’d be willing to bet there are more Georgian volunteers joining the Ukrainian side right now than whatever Assad can muster. Any soldier he sends is one less defending Syria against a future color revolution or Arab spring (which will occur as surely and inevitably as the our globe warms). As far as I’m concerned Syria is a failed state that has earned a brief reprieve because we decided to elect a Russian asset as our president in 2016, I can’t say the same for Ukraine.

    Finally, what Assad is doing is entirely rational. He was able to hold onto power because Russia was able to pound cities to dust when Trump pulled us out from the region. If Russia is humiliated in Ukraine, what do you think the lifespan of his government is going to be, or Kadyrov in Chechnya, or Lukashenko in Belarus. They may be puppets of Putin, or they may rationally realize that their days are few in number if Russia fails, it is two views that lead to the same outcome.

    I’d rather focus on where someone has a choice and chooses wrong, like Israel up top. While Assad, Kadyrov, and Lukashenko have no choice, Bennet and his party do. It is very revealing don’t you think?

  71. 71.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That convoy ambushing is fascinating to watch; back in the day when I was playing miniature war games the US army vets were swearing that’s Soviets would be fought and I though, “come on, who would be stupid enough to drive a line of tanks down a highway like in a parade?” and here it is.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @terry chay: If Assad sends anyone, it’ll be a bunch of foreign fighters on Syrian passports. This will include fighters from Mail and Chad, as well as Syria and some other places. Wherever Wagner goes, these guys also show up. Wherever Wagner is operating or Prighozin has business, these fighters get recruited.

  75. 75.

    piratedan

    as we have watching events unfold over the last two weeks there are some serious takeaways that we should note:

    1. Putin over-estimated the ability of his guys to execute his blitzkreig gameplan for regime change
    2.  He now knows what it’s like with having his own security penetrated to display his every move and options
    3. it’s amazing how much Russian propaganda fuels our issues at home with their troll farms
    4. as strange as it seems, it looks like a class war, those with the money and their abuse of it to get their way (not just in Russia) and democratic institutions.
    5. The end game and outcomes are all over the place, does Putin go with chemical or bioweapons? nukes? does he challenge NATO? Will he retreat or is he pot-committed and will continue to play out the hand?  How does he reconcile getting his ass handed to him by a former comedian and sleepy Joe Biden?
  76. 76.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Omnes Omnibus: I agree with LadySuzy.  Putin can simply depopulate Ukraine.  The limiting factor I see is if sanctions strangle Russia in time.

    For instance, their tractors which should have all locally sourced parts, are really shipped in kit form from a Czech factory.  How long do these tractors last without parts?

    And yet, Russian tractor АНТ 4135F isn’t Russian. It’s a Czech tractor Zetor Forterra 135. I wanna clarify, it is not a copy of a Czech tractor. It literally *is* a Czech tractor. Russian plant buys tractor kits in Czech Republic, assembles them and pretends they’re home produced

    Same for equipment to even extract oil from the ground.

    https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388

  77. 77.

    Calouste

    Regarding the FSB guys getting arrested:

    Assume you’re some high-up in Russia and you have news for Putin that reality doesn’t match the delusion he has created. If

    1. You tell the truth – you go to prison

    2. You resign to avoid that – you go to prison

    3. You lie, the truth becomes obvious a week or two later, you get the blame – you go to prison

    4. You try to flee the country, you get caught at the border – you go to prison

    5. You try to find people with the same conundrum and topple Putin – maybe you succeed?

  78. 78.

    Richard Fox

    Very foolish move in my view to arrest the underlings. I think back to the French Revolution, the way they toppled Robespierre. They all thought they were on the list for execution, so they collectively shouted him down and subsequently killed him. Used his own laws against him to do so, if memory serves. I wonder if something akin to this scenario plays out here. Time will tell. I truly wish we didn’t live in interesting times, regardless.

  79. 79.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    or that the plans themselves were agitprop intended to goad the Ukrainians into attacking the Belarusians. Or both.

    Or the Russian targeting sucks so much they missed an entire country

    Or Putin’s trying to bully Belarus into his war.

  80. 80.

    Kelly

    @terry chay: The New Yorker article is really interesting. Julia Ioffe also recommended it.

    So many peoples with centuries of history. Hard know enough to understand.

  81. 81.

    Calouste

    China is shipping humanitarian aid to Ukraine. First shipment has already arrived, second shipment is arriving soon.

    I don’t think that means they’re going to cut Putin loose, but they’re definitely doing some groundwork to create that option.

  82. 82.

    cain

    @sdhays:

    As I understand it .. there are a lot of Russian Jews who have made Israel their home and is in part why it has become more conservative.

    I suspect that if he wants to hold on to power he needs to keep those voters happy .

  83. 83.

    Jay

    I was reading a tactical/logistics/open source guy on twitter yesterday. He pointed out that RU forces can only effectively resupply by truck, 45km from a railhead, for a lack of trucks and Support Battalions.

    That the convoy is moving so slowly that now they are near Kyiv, is that forces are branching off to set up supply dumps, hospital facilities, artillery, etc, within that 45km of the city.

    That RU was set up to “blitzkrieg” outside of Russia no more than 90 km from a railhead, then hold.

  85. 85.

    Sebastian

    @terry chay:

    Wouldn’t it be ironic if Putin whispered in Trump’s ear to GTFO of Afghanistan, which he sort of did by forcing Biden to an accelerated withdrawal, which Putin then interpreted as weak and promptly stepped on the rake he had laid out himself?

  86. 86.

    Cathie from Canada

    I didn’t think Biden’s messages today were contradictory.

    The first was intended to make Putin think twice about ordering false-flag chemical attacks like Psaki was talking about yesterday. But when Ukraine supporters then started interpreting this as an imminent military escalation, Biden had to tamp down that eager speculation by making it clear the US does not intend to go to war against Russia unless NATO itself is attacked.

    My own hope is that somehow Putin can be persuaded just to declare victory and leave — maybe Zelenskiy would let the break-away provinces remain allied with Russia, and maybe also let  Crimea go. Then let Putin strut home to boast about how he won, even though most of the sanctions will stay in place so Russia’s economy cannot recover until it dismantles its nukes.  And NATO can help Ukraine to arm to the teeth, so Russia will never try to get away with anything like this again.

  87. 87.

    Ninedragonspot

    @Calouste:

    The Chinese government is shipping a about $800K of aid to Ukraine.

    Taiwan is shipping more than $10 million.  

    To me, the assistance offered by the CCP looks more like a calculated insult than a gesture of empathy.

     

    @Calouste:

  88. 88.

    Geminid

    @cain: Bennett is not reacting to Israeli public opinion about Ukraine and Russia. Israelis largely support Ukraine. There is a large Ukrainian-Israeli population, and some are Israeli Defense Force veterans who are returning to Ukraine as fighters.

    Bennett is reacting to the Russian military base in Northwest Syria, and the advanced SA-500 missiles that give Russia control over Syrian airspace and, for that matter, northern Israel airspace. That Russian base has been a strategic thorn in Israel’s side since 2015, and there is not much they can do about it. Unlike Israel’s immediate neighbors, Russia is a country that can hurt Israel worse than Israel can hurt it.

    So Bennett is compromised as a mediator. President Zelensky knew this when he asked for Israeli help early on, just like he knew it when he expressed his appreciation for Bennett’s efforts after Bennett returned from Moscow last weekend.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    Here is an interesting commentary on the Ukraine situation, purportedly by an active FSB analyst. The Twitter thread starts here, with comments from other readers, and the full translation of the piece is here. (Note: There is a lot of backing and forthing about how legitimate this document is and where it comes from.)

    One takeaway is that (supposedly) the attack came as a surprise even to (elements of) the FSB, so their advance analysis was flawed—pro forma hypothetical. Much more at the links.

    I can’t say what guided those in charge to decide to proceed with the execution of this operation, but now they are methodically blaming us (FSB). We are being scolded for our analysis. [. . .] Most importantly, no one knew that there will be such a war—it was concealed from everyone. For example—you are being asked to analyze various outcomes and consequences of a meteorite attack [Sushko: Here he most likely means the West’s sanctions]—you research the mode of attack, and you are being told that it’s just a hypothetical and not to stress on the details, so you understand the report is only intended as a checkbox, and the conclusions of the analysis must be positive for Russia, otherwise you basically get interrogated for not doing good work. So you have to write that we have all necessary measures available to nullify the effects of a given type of attack. We are completely overworked. But then it turns out that the hypothetical has turned into reality, and the analysis we’ve done on that hypothetical is total trash.

    We have no answer to the sanctions because of this.

    No one knew there’d be such a war, so no one prepared for these sanctions.

    It’s the flipside of the secrecy—since everyone was kept in the dark, how could we prepare for it?

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @Sebastian: Right now those batteries are well protected by Russian air and ground forces. That could change because of this war, but no one is betting on it.

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    @sdhays:

    I agree completely. And, in light of all the things that could have gone wrong during the actual evacuation, it was—not without costs—a success.

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    @terry chay:

    What you say is true, but it is an axiomatic talking point among Republicans that Biden botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

  96. 96.

    Geminid

    The rain has started here in Greene County. It may end with a little snow.

    It could be all snow at Camp David. I’m sure Joe Biden will be working some but I hope he gets some quiet time in front of a fire. Maybe with his grandkids. Tomorrow sounds like a good day to make a snowman.

    And I’m really glad we don’t have to worry about any of our troops or diplomats in Afghanistan.

  97. 97.

    JWR

    @Steeplejack: It’s also an axiomatic talking point among our “Liberal Media”. Christine Amanpour couldn’t settle on the best word to describe the withdrawal: “Catastrophic.” “Bungled.” “Botched.” Or, and this was my favorite… a “Debacle.”

    But it’s weird. The other day, the exit from Afghanistan came up on some program I was watching, and the video they showed was one of nice, neat, orderly lines of people waiting to board the planes, and not the usual video, the one showing people crawling all over, and falling from, a single plane.

  98. 98.

    Warblewarble

    Protect the home front. The war is not only in Ukraine every Russian misinformation gambit is being recycled by Fucker nightly and fed to the goobers, then fed back to be used by Russian state media to deceive people in Russia . Time for a no fly  zone on Fox Noose propaganda. LORD HAW HAW WAS HANGED.

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @JWR: And in current Afghanistan news, Al-Jazeera reports that the Iranian and Afghan governments are in talks on a plan to finish construction of a rail line running from Iran to the western Afghan city of Herat. It’s part of a project that would eventually create a rail link running from China to Turkey.

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @debbie: The criticism of Bennett was made by an unnamed Ukrainian official. Now, at least according to the Times of Israel, Michael Podolyak, a top Zelensky advisor, has been tweeting about the phone call in question. Podolyak is denying that Bennett advised Zelensky to surrender.

    I can’t seem to bring up Podolyak’s tweets, but I think the story will be more widely reported today.?.

  103. 103.

    trnc

    After the war ends, is there any way that Russia can be made to pay reparations for the damage they’ve done in Ukraine, or that oligarch money can be seized and used for that? Also, I certainly hope that all sanctions will continue for quite some time afterward. Russia shouldn’t be able to get back to business a week, a month or even a year after carrying out atrocities.

  104. 104.

    ObedMarsh

    @Cathie from Canada:  Yes, I think that this is correct.  The statements were not contradictory, for the reason that you noted.  The other issue is that chemical and biological weapons don’t know what borders are.  Even if used very locally, the very presence of these weapons in a warzone bordering NATO members is very dangerous to NATO.  Accidents always happen even in peacetime, much less in war.

  105. 105.

    lowtechcyclist

    The senior U.S. defense official said Ukraine still has 56 operational jets in its arsenal and has been flying them just five to 10 hours per day. Points to that as one reason the Polish proposal to send Polish MiG-29 jets to Ukraine by way of the U.S. government was scuttled.

    The other reason, directly contradictory to this one, was that giving them a few more of those jets would be a major escalation.

    I’ve had it. Just send them the motherfucking jets.

  106. 106.

    newtons.third

    The question that I have is:

    For how long does Putin have to control the information space in Russia?

    When information that runs counter to the official Russian version becomes available in Russia, the likelihood of the entire narrative that Putin is weaving can fall apart increases. To keep that from happening, all access to outside information will need to be restricted. Restrictions of information that used to be available lead to questions as to why those are necessary. Sharing the losses that the Russian soldiers have taken will need to be limited as well. Anything that runs counter to the official narrative will need to be suppressed. And in a country where information was previously available, that will be noticed.

    I don’t see a way out of that trap for Putin. Unfortunately, it will likely take months to years for that to take hold.

  107. 107.

    O. Felix Culpa

    I don’t know how much credibility Francis Fukuyama has these days, but this article is interesting: Preparing for Defeat (which is not what it sounds like). I fervently hope he is right.

    ETA: The opening lines of his analysis:

    I’ll stick my neck out and make several prognostications:

    1. Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine.

  108. 108.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: ​

    Al-Jazeera reports that the Iranian and Afghan governments are in talks on a plan to finish construction of a rail line running from Iran to the western Afghan city of Herat. It’s part of a project that would eventually create a rail link running from China to Turkey.

    That would be pretty cool, actually!
    A rail line like that needs a cool name. Let’s see: since it’ll be new, I’m sure it’ll be a high-speed rail line, so it’ll be fast, and it’ll be traveling through the East. Hmmm…maybe Orient Express? ;-)​
     

    ETA: Seriously, if and when they finish that, it’ll be on my bucket list.

  109. 109.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mike in NC: Ugh. Add me to the “I hated it” category. With the accent on the “gory”.

    ETA: I never managed to make it through Moore’s original comic, either, and have come to realize that the only work of his I’ve ever really liked was his stint on Swamp Thing. 

  115. 115.

    Carlo Graziani

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Wow. Thanks for the Fukuyama article. Whether or not he’s right, I agree with every point he makes, and feel that I must be somehow channeling his thought.

    “The End Of History” appears now to have been a profound misreading of that moment, but it was nonetheless a profound book. Everyone misread that moment. If we hadn’t, we might have noticed the growing populist revolt against democratic enlightenment earlier, tied it to global anxiety driven by the global losers of the smug Davos-set consensus that passed for a global architecture, and done something about it before we got to Trumpism. Blaming Fukuyama alone for that error is unfair. He was one of the few people who was at least trying to understand what the future portended. Almost everyone else was on intellectual cruise-control.

    Coulda-shoulda-woulda. Here we are now. We should be grateful to Zelezny for reopening our eyes, and reminding us what our political inheritance is really worth before we threw it definitively in the trash.

  116. 116.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Carlo Graziani: Doomscrolling Twitter on Ukraine occasionally has its uses. :)

    I thought Fukuyama made a compelling argument, but I’m just an internet opinion-haver. It’s somewhat comforting to know that others whose analyses I respect regard it well too.

    Time and facts on the ground will tell us the degree to which he is or isn’t right. I hope, for the sake of Ukraine and liberal democracy, that he is on the mark.

  117. 117.

    Carlo Graziani

    @zhena gogolia:

    You are very kind, and I do appreciate the validation.

    I’m a physical scientist, with wide interests and some decades of wide reading, as well as some experience at being forced to mark beliefs to market, as Adam likes to say. I also have a circle of academic historian friends who are sharp, tough, experienced thinkers with sensitive bullshit detectors, and being able to get together with such people for serious discussions of world events on a regular basis is a wonderful tonic, especially for someone wishing making sense of dark times.

    This happens to be a clarifying moment for me, because the incredible events of the Ukraine war have really sorted out a number of confused “how did we get here” threads that I’ve been struggling with for the past few years. Together with that clarity, I feel an urge to write some things down. But as I don’t really have a lot of outlets for this material, lately I’ve been using (and, I hope, not abusing) the comments to Adam’s incredibly helpful and cathartic aggregating war posts, trying to stay on-topic while bringing in perspectives from readings (some in the comments themselves and links therefrom), discussions, and reflections.

  122. 122.

    Kalakal

    @Carlo Graziani: I remember the way ‘The End of History’ was lauded at the time. I have to say I thought Fukuyama was wrong at the time, both in his too tight fusing of culture and economics, like an old Marxist he didn’t pay enough attention to factors such as tribalism, religion etc, and in that the corporate friendly free markets he saw as having triumphed was now the only game in town.  

    The West has built up an economic stucture massively reliant on oil, the loss of control of that supply, began with  the collapse of colonialism and was  cemented by the formation of OPEC. Here was and is an  increasingly large factor determing history that Fukuyama ignored yet both the Saudis and UAE are subscribers to liberal democracy nor communism.  

     

    BTW would also like to join others in saying that your posts are very good indeed

  123. 123.

    swotdfish

    I rarely post here but often read.  Just want to thank Adam Silverman for these outstanding updates on the situation in Ukraine.

    Seem to have misspelled my username, which should be swordfish.

  124. 124.

    Kalakal

    @Kalakal:

    yet both the Saudis and UAE are subscribers to neither liberal democracy nor communism.

    hmm missed out an important word there

  125. 125.

    Raoul Paste

    @Carlo Graziani:  iIt was generous to share that backstory.  Many reading this thread comment infrequently, but have a keen appreciation of insight and good writing.   Valuable contributions.  Thanks

  127. 127.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Kalakal:

    Your critique of “The End of History” is cogent, and there were a number of people who were unhappy with the cultural “struggle for recognition” argument at the time, Hegelian history being in bad odor among academic historians.

    I would say now, however, that we do have the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, and can actually begin to tell a coherent story about what was really wrong with the argument, with one bookend at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the other about to be revealed with the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

    That story, in my opinion, has to do with the smug, self-satisfied triumphalism with which the West interpreted it’s victory over the Soviet Communist challenge. In a phrase, you could capture that response by “now all that remains is for everyone else in the world to get as smart as we are, and then everyone will get rich”.

    For lack of a better term, I’m calling this the Davos Consensus, and it took the place of an actual mindfully-constructed international architecture to replace the now-obsolete one created by the West to manage the Cold War. The trouble with that smug consensus is that it systematically failed to acknowledge the growing global class of losers that it created, through unchecked corruption, political instability, brushfire wars (and larger wars, such as the Iraq catastrophe, which destabilized the entire Arab world), currency crises, stock market crashes, a financial crisis straight out of the 1920s, newly weird weather making parts of the world harder to live in, global pandemics preceding COVID-19 (swine flu, avian flu , ebola), and massive, massive income inequality, growing to levels dwarfing 1920s records.

    In my view, all this instability, unpredictability, and misery created a unifying global phenomenon: anxiety. Which was noticed and parasitically exploited by demagogic political leaders with no commitment to democratic enlightenment values, or interest in submitting their own leadership to rule of law. Anxiety is very useful to such politicians, as it is easily convertible to tribal grievance and hatred, and from there into power. Initially, the national circumstances of the advent of these politicians were so different from one another that it seemed ridiculous to assimilate them:

    Milosevic…Berlusconi…Orban…Putin…Modi…Bolsonero…Salvini…Le Pen…Farage…Trump…

    By the time we get to Trump, however, it’s futile to argue that these cases are all sui generis. Something is up. Despite the fact that all these populist demagogic challengers to the social values of democratic enlightenment arose in totally different terroirs, there must be some common thread that unites them.

    I believe that the thread is the Great Anxiety that was created, and systematically ignored, by the Davos Consensus.

    In a sense, that’s my problem with contemporary critiques of FF from the 90s. Read today, they don’t appear to me to be any more prescient than “The End of History”, because I don’t recall a single one predicting that the next challenge to our values would arise largely due to our internal disaffection from those values.

    Because I kind of think that’s what happened. We lost the thread. We forgot what we really believed in while we were concentrating on getting rich. We got too embarrassed to talk about “freedom” when right-wing dickheads started using that word as a slogan on their “We’re Number 1!” foam fingers. We allowed ourselves to be intellectually cornered into defending “capitalism” (as if that were really the point) instead of liberty. And we wondered how it all turned to shit in 2016.

    Then suddenly, Zelezny stands up, the most unlikely of teachers, in this most unlikely of teachable moments, and shows everyone what liberty is, what it means, what it’s worth, and what it costs.

    And what a lesson! Germans decide they’d rather be free than rich! Finns want into NATO! US right-wing radio audiences want to know where to send money for supplies to Ukraine! Suddenly the scales have fallen from everyone’s eyes. Zelezny found the thread for us again. We remember, now, how to be political idealists, and worthy heirs of the enlightenment, rather than utility-maximizers, running scared from the discontents of reason.

    I hope Zelezny is awarded a Nobel peace prize, even though he is a war leader. For the service he has performed for us, he deserves to be remembered as one of the great political figures of our times, one of our greatest. I will always be grateful to him.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    @debbie:

    The Russian Embassy in Lisbon. Two neighbouring houses are projecting the blue and yellow onto its facade. The ambassador is reportedly “apoplectic”.

    Apoplectic used to describe what we call today a “stroke” or neurological accident. One can only wish he was that angry~!!~

  129. 129.

    Kalakal

    @Carlo Graziani:

    That story, in my opinion, has to do with the smug, self-satisfied triumphalism with which the West interpreted it’s victory over the Soviet Communist challenge.

    You have hit the nail on the head there. I remember being euphoric watching people flooding through the Berlin Wall, tearing it apart with crowbars and sledgehammers and in the following months being appalled as the Warsaw Pact economies were replaced by Thatcher-Reagan supply economics and privatisations, the same that caused so much unrest & misery in  the 80s in the UK ( by an irony rioting against those policies were to lead to Thatcher losing office within 6 months).

    Throughout history nearly all states, societies that collapse have done so because of internal rather than external threats. In essence elites progressively take more and return less until the gulf in inequality, opportunity and social mobility mean that the society collapses, sometimes because it can no longer respond to external changes, sometimes via revolution

    As you rightly put it they lose the thread and you’re right, currently globally that’s where we are. A similar thing happened in the inter war period, authoritarian Fascist movements sprang up all over the place, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, Mosely, Szalasi, Codteanu, La Rochelle etc. in all cases were supported by the elites who saw them as a useful tool against dimunition of their wealth and power. Atrocities were committed, eg  Guernica, Dachau. Countries were invaded eg Abyssinia & China. Finally Hitler overstepped the mark, too much light was shone and the elites could no longer  control the popular revulsion at Fascism and at an awful price Right Wing Nationalism was put back under a stone, though not destroyed.

    Anxiety is a good word for our malaise, I grew up in the 60s &70s and there was plenty to ba anxious about, wars hot and cold, inflation, terrorism but somehow I felt, despite all the evil, the world was making progress.

    The last few years not so much, the elites are becoming more powerful and blatant than ever, our systems more corrupt, our judges and politicians more obviously bought.

    And yet, thanks to remarkable example of Zelensky and the Ukranian people, like you, I feel there is hope. The world can now see where the banal evil of creatures like Putin leads. The mendacity of his enablers like Trump, Farage, Le Pen and the corrupt spinlessness of hacks and grifters like McConnell and Johnson and is results are there for all to see.

    It has come at a terrible price that will increase but more people and realising what we have lost the thread and that we can get it back.

    If anyone ever deserved a Nobel prize it is Zelensky

  130. 130.

    Zelma

    @Carlo Graziani:

    I think your analysis is right on the mark.  The problem is that I am worried that too many of the elite are willing to surrender our liberty for their wealth.

  132. 132.

    Ryan

    So question.  I heard an argument, I think from the PM of Estonia, that the longer this conflict stretches out, the more strain the NATO alliance suffers.  Because from the perspective of the Baltic states, they need for Putin to lose, whereas for most other members, deconfliction on any reasonable terms is acceptable.  The argument makes sense to me, but I wanted to run it by a group of experts.

  135. 135.

    J R in WV

    @Carlo Graziani: ​
     

    … I don’t really have a lot of outlets for this material, lately I’ve been using (and, I hope, not abusing) the comments to Adam’s incredibly helpful and cathartic aggregating war posts, trying to stay on-topic while bringing in perspectives from readings (some in the comments themselves and links therefrom), discussions, and reflections.

    Be careful Carlo, people have wound up on the front page for less!

    I hear the pay is lousy, but the company is fun…!!

    I also like and enjoy your material, keep up the good work.

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