Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

In my day, never was longer.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

It’s a doggy dog world.

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

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Let’s finish the job.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Update 18: The Ukrainians Are Holding, But the Russians Pounded Away at a Number of Ukrainian Cities All Day

War for Ukraine Update 18: The Ukrainians Are Holding, But the Russians Pounded Away at a Number of Ukrainian Cities All Day

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I saw this earlier today and it spoke to me.

(I found the political cartoon at this link, the artist, Yeva Hart who is Ukrainian, can be found at this link)

I want to start by highlighting three things, then I’ll put the read more tag in and get to the more update sort of stuff below the jump.

The first is this long, detailed interview of Stephen Kotkin. Kotkin is one of the most prominent historians of Russia, as well as a specialist in and biographer of Stalin. He was interviewed by David Remnick at The New Yorker. I want to highlight this portion of Kotkin’s remarks. Remnick’s questions are in bold:

This is the thing about authoritarian regimes: they’re terrible at everything. They can’t feed their people. They can’t provide security for their people. They can’t educate their people. But they only have to be good at one thing to survive. If they can deny political alternatives, if they can force all opposition into exile or prison, they can survive, no matter how incompetent or corrupt or terrible they are.

You know, in the Russian case, Navalny was arrested—

This is Alexey Navalny, Putin’s most vivid political rival, who was poisoned by the F.S.B. and is now in prison.

Yes. He was imprisoned in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. In retrospect, it could well be that this was a preparation for the invasion, the way that Ahmad Shah Massoud, for example, was blown up in Northern Afghanistan [by Al Qaeda] right before the Twin Towers came down.

You have the denial of alternatives, the suppression of any opposition, arrest, exile, and then you can prosper as an élite, not with economic growth but just with theft. And, in Russia, wealth comes right up out of the ground! The problem for authoritarian regimes is not economic growth. The problem is how to pay the patronage for their élites, how to keep the élites loyal, especially the security services and the upper levels of the officer corps. If money just gushes out of the ground in the form of hydrocarbons or diamonds or other minerals, the oppressors can emancipate themselves from the oppressed. The oppressors can say, we don’t need you. We don’t need your taxes. We don’t need you to vote. We don’t rely on you for anything, because we have oil and gas, palladium and titanium. They can have zero economic growth and still live very high on the hog.

There’s never a social contract in an authoritarian regime, whereby the people say, O.K., we’ll take economic growth and a higher standard of living, and we’ll give up our freedom to you. There is no contract. The regime doesn’t provide the economic growth, and it doesn’t say, Oh, you know, we’re in violation of our promise. We promised economic growth in exchange for freedom, so we’re going to resign now because we didn’t fulfill the contract.

What accounts for the “popularity” of an authoritarian regime like Putin’s?

They have stories to tell. And, as you know, stories are always more powerful than secret police. Yes, they have secret police and regular police, too, and, yes, they’re serious people and they’re terrible in what they’re doing to those who are protesting the war, putting them in solitary confinement. This is a serious regime, not to be taken lightly. But they have stories. Stories about Russian greatness, about the revival of Russian greatness, about enemies at home and enemies abroad who are trying to hold Russia down. And they might be Jews or George Soros or the I.M.F. and NATO. They might be all sorts of enemies that you just pull right off the shelf, like a book.

We think of censorship as suppression of information, but censorship is also the active promotion of certain kinds of stories that will resonate with the people. The aspiration to be a great power, the aspiration to carry out a special mission in the world, the fear and suspicion that outsiders are trying to get them or bring them down: those are stories that work in Russia. They’re not for everybody. You know many Russians who don’t buy into that and know better. But the Putin version is powerful, and they promote it every chance they get.

Kotkin’s description above is about Putin’s regime in Russia. But step back a bit and think about that description in general. Then think about the states in the US that have either a complete GOP trifecta at the state level – control of the governorship and majorities, if not super majorities in both chambers of the state legislature – and states where the GOP has a super majority in the state legislature giving them veto override power over their Democratic governors and thereby effective control of their states despite the Democratic governors. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Especially when this one party control has gone on for so long that they’ve also managed to capture the state district, appellate, and supreme courts. If the shoe fits…

Much, much more at the link above so do click across as it is well worth your time.

The second item I want to draw your attention to is this Twitter thread. Apparently there have been three more letters from an alleged FSB insider. While the tweet thread author believes he’s validated that this is the same guy as the author of the first letter I posted about last week, and that Belingcat’s Christo Grozev validated as legit, just keep in mind that this could all be a combination of truth, disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop.

Here’s the link to Sushko’s site where he has translations of all the letters released so far.

The third thing I want to highlight, once again, is that the Ukrainians must be able to hold to the north, west, and east of Kyiv!

There’s two different reasons for this. Kyiv is the geostrategic center of gravity in Putin’s whole reinvasion and war on Ukraine. As I’ve written, if he can take it then he will immediately bring in quislings, like Yanukovych, install them in place of the legitimate Ukrainian national, Kyiven oblast, and Kyiven municipal authorities to sign official looking, but bogus documents capitulating to all of Putin’s demands. Kyiv is also the conceptual or contextual center of gravity in Putin’s informational warfare campaign against Ukraine. Even if he took all of eastern and southern Ukraine and a chunk of northwestern Ukraine, but Kyiv holds, he can’t claim victory. And the reason for this is that the alternative history and mythology that he has embraced, that he has promoted, that he wrote that long boring essay on last year places Kyiv at the center of his bullshit narrative about the origins of Russia. As well as for his own mythology that he is somehow a 21st century version of Vladimir the Great, the leader of the Kyiven Rus who founded what would eventually become Ukraine. As long as Kyiv holds, he will be unable to claim the geostrategic and the conceptual center of gravity that is the objective of his war on Ukraine. So whatever the costs, the Ukrainian defenses in the towns, villages, suburbs, and bedroom communities to the north, east, and west of Kyiv must hold!

More after the jump.

As they’ve been doing the past several days, the Russians have increased their bombardment in the hours before dawn.

In Russian occupied Kherson, the Russian forces are trying to force the local leadership into capitulating similar to what I’ve described as planned for Kyiv.

The Russians also appear to be purposefully targeting facilities that store or supply food.

Given Ukrainian memories of the Holodomor, these attacks both increase Ukrainian’s food insecurity as they try to defend their homes and are also intended to have a psychological operations effect of demoralizing the Ukrainian defenders.

Here are some updates on Mariupol:

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Mariupol is pinned down in their offices/facility and are unable to both provide much relief or evacuate.

  • “There’s no electricity, water and gas supply. Meaning no means for heating. Some people still have food, but I’m not sure for how long it will last. Many report having no food for children.”
  • “People report varying needs in medicine. Especially for diabetes and cancer patients. But there is no way to find it anymore in the city. People are getting sick already because of the cold.”
  • “We keep the shelter, the basement, only for children and their mothers. All other adults and children above twelve they sleep in the office. It’s really cold. We still have some fuel for generators – so we have electricity for 3-4 hours a day.”
  • “We brought all the food that we have in our homes. We also visited the destroyed and damaged houses of our colleagues to pick up remaining food there. We will have food for a few days.”
  • “We found a way to collect some water. We still have some storage of potable water. When we run out of the stock, we will boil water from the stream. So we have comparatively good compared to others.”
  • “We have now approximately 65-66 people in our building. Plus, we also give a host to half of the people who are located in the same building. So their small children can sleep in the basement because people are afraid.”

Most other international humanitarian organizations have just pulled out of Ukraine completely:

As far as I can tell from the reporting, the mayor of Melitopol is still missing/in Russian military custody. The Russian military scarfed up another citizen of Melitopol who was out protesting the Russian kidnapping of her mayor:

If you were wondering how Kharkiv is doing, it is not pretty:

Irpin:

Bucha:

Khmelnytsky Oblast:

Zaporizhzhia:

The reporting by The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and Axios about Israeli PM Bennett telling President Zelenskyy to surrender and capitulate to Putin that I highlighted last night has been pushed back by one of Zelenskyy’s senior staff.

Which then led to this:

I find it hard to believe that The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and Barak Ravid who covers Israel for Axios all got the story wrong, but until someone explains what actually happened in a way that doesn’t sound funky, I really don’t know what’s going on here. Other than Zelenskyy has now proposed direct talks with Putin in Israel. I doubt Putin will agree. Between his extreme fear and paranoia about COVID, the last thing he wants now is to be seen with Zelenskyy.

Russia decided to rattle some more sabers!

Here’s The Kyiv Independent‘s defense reporter dunking on Greenwald:

Your daily bayraktar doing what a good bayraktar does.

Whose a good bayraktar, you’re a good bayraktar!

Your daily reminder of why the economic sanctions and other measures are unlikely to work in the short to the medium term even if they manage to have a long term effect:

Here’s an excellent piece in The Kyiv Independent on Ukrainian evacuees:

While Ukrainian forces have, so far, successfully held off the Russian troops from taking Kyiv, the towns around the capital have become some of the most intense battlegrounds of the ongoing war.

Russia seized the outlying suburban towns with vehicles and infantry, setting up checkpoints and, in many cases, cutting off access to utilities, phone and internet access, and food.

The local civilians bore the brunt of the damage. Many remained trapped, in most cases for over a week, either because Russian forces wouldn’t let them leave or they were afraid of being cut down by Russian fire if they tried to flee to the safety of Kyiv.

Scenes of Russian troops firing at civilians trying to flee, with bodies piling on the streets of Kyiv’s northwest suburbs, have now become a horrific image of what Russia’s war brought to Ukraine.

As of March 9, the United Nations Office for Human Rights had recorded 1,424 civilian casualties, 516 killed, including 37 children, and 908 injured after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The organization believes that the actual figures are “considerably higher, especially in government-controlled areas.”

The past week has seen numerous attempts to move civilians out of surrounded or occupied areas through “green corridors” all over the country, the towns and villages around Kyiv being no exception.

But, as in many other parts of the country, Russian forces have selectively violated these corridors, either firing on the evacuees with indirect-fire weapons or shooting them point-blank.

For many, the road to safety was taxing, because of the trials along the way and the pain of what they had to leave behind.

The Kyiv Independent has gathered stories from people who fled the various towns and villages towards the safety of Kyiv.

Much, much more at the link above.

Finally, here’s another long thread from Kamil Galeev. This time on why the Russian military has been less than effective in much of its invasion of Ukraine. Click on the tweet to go and read the whole thread.

We’ll end with a little humor:

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

173Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    We gotta guy downstairs arguing for a “pre-emptive” strike but we all know that is not possible!

  2. 2.

    Mike in NC

    If Putin starts to use nerve gas or mustard gas on the civilian population, I have no clue about us facing WW3.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Bukharin

    That Galeev thread is amazing. He seems to be saying the Russian powers that be want a dumbed down officer corps and ill trained soldiers because an efficient professional army would be a threat to the state.

  4. 4.

    japa21

    @raven: Of course it is possible, just futile and impracticable.

    I am going to say something that is either incredibly stupid, or just unreasonable venting.  I don’t need to here how many people would die in a nuclear war.  The fact is, the US has already stated it is ready to deal with the consequences of a nuclear war.  We just are saying that the conditions haven’t yet been met to undertake that risk.

    And here is where my frustrations come into being.  Why is Ukraine worth less than Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia?  Because of a piece of paper?

    If I were Putin I would seriously question if all the talk about jumping to the defense of a NATO member wasn’t just a lot of hot air and try to pick off one or all three of the aforementioned countries.

    I am torn apart by what I am seeing in Ukraine and I don’t see how they can avoid losing Kyiv and that will just embolden Putin all the more.  Maybe I am all wet.  No I am not an expert in any of this and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night either.  But some day my grandchildren will ask me why we didn’t do anything to stop Putin in Ukraine, and I’ll have to say because we were afraid he would get angry at us and use nukes.

  5. 5.

    Gin & Tonic

    While it would be nice to believe that Sushko/FSB-whistleblower thing, if something is aligning with your wishes and sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

  7. 7.

    Kent

    @Comrade Bukharin: Yes, I was rather taken back by it.  Who knows how much of it is accurate.  But it is telling.  The idea of Russian gangs stealing from soldiers at military bases?  Astonishing frankly.  I worked for a spell around Fort Hood in TX.  The idea that gangs could intimidate and steal from troops at Fort Hood is just beyond laughable.

  8. 8.

    lashonharangue

    @Comrade Bukharin:

    In a podcast with Brad Delong, he also suggested scaling up targeted financial inducements offered to the RU military to defect.  Also to RU IT professionals to move to Central Asian republics and have jobs there. Not sure how practical that is.  His main point is broad based sanctions will weaken the regime less than more targeted ones.

  9. 9.

    JMG

    @japa21: I understand how upset you are and I sympathize. But you must realize one of the possible outcomes here involves you never having any grandchildren, or anybody else having any either.

  10. 10.

    Comrade Bukharin

    @Kent: Those criminal gangs have a long history. They pretty much ran some of the Gulag camps according to Solzhenitsyn.

  11. 11.

    japa21

    @JMG: Actually, I do have 6. That was more of a rhetorical statement.  But I do understand that is risk. But we have clearly stated we (the US and all of NATO) are ready to take that risk at some point. But the message seems to be, Ukraine isn’t worth it.

  15. 15.

    Timill

    @Comrade Bukharin: “Barr then explains the reason why Riose would have failed: had he been a weak general, he wouldn’t have had any success. Had he been a strong general, but the Emperor a weak man, then he would have gone after the throne. Cleon was a strong Emperor, though, so Riose could only project his power outside the Empire – but Cleon was a strong Emperor because he suspected anyone that had enough power to begin to rival his, so when Riose and Brodrig became too powerful, he had them both executed to secure his throne.”

  17. 17.

    Comrade Bukharin

    @dmsilev: It worked out well for the Finns, and led Hitler to say that you only had to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come crashing down.

  18. 18.

    Ignignockt

    We seem to be very hesitant in assisting beyond man-portable weapons and sanctions.  I understand the motivation.  But in previous proxy fights with the Soviets, both sides went far, far beyond those levels of support.  This despite a much larger number of nukes in play and a much more advantageous Russian position in central and eastern Europe. We shouldn’t balk at supplying UA with our drones or heavier weapons.  Putin isn’t going to lob nukes over SLAMRAAMs or Avengers operated by Ukranians.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Comrade Bukharin: Putin wanted a strong, modernized, refit, snd rebuilt military. The people below him wanted to skim as much as the money budgeted as they could get away with. Shuigo, the Russian Minister of Defense, isn’t a defense or nat-sec professional at all, he was a construction foreman. Instead of having a professional who knows what he’s doing, Putin put an unqualified guy from his inner circle in charge of the military.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    Repost from downstairs, a pointer to a (free) Financial Times piece about the real power-brokers around VVP:

    While people in the West are obsessed with the "oligarchs" it's not them who run the show under Putin but the siloviki, who are not amoral people just looking to enrich themselves but ideologues deeply committed to the idea of Russia as a great power. https://t.co/LIqFg6nMuq

    — Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) March 11, 2022

    True? Who knows. But an interesting read.

    “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    Heidi Mom

    @O. Felix Culpa: I’m surprised that the photos accompanying the article, of Putin meeting with his subordinates, were ever released to the press, as they so undercut his public image as a tough guy ready to take on all comers.  The man who’s all by himself at the far end of the table looks like a coward.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Reports of Lutsk being targeted. Way, way into western Ukraine, almost to the Polish border.

    NYT link.

    “I believe his aim is to reach the border with Poland — the NATO border,” said Serhiy, a surgeon who declined to give his last name out of fear for his security, referring to Mr. Putin.
    [snip]
    …On Friday, when the attacks occurred, an early warning system did not go off because the Russian rockets had flown “super slow,” said the mayor, Ihor Polishchuk. “I think this type of attack is to raise fear, increase the level of panic and to strengthen the position of the Russian Federation in possible negotiations with Ukraine,” he said.
    [snip]
    Ordinary citizens are also learning what it means to live in wartime. At a basement classroom usually used as a chess club, 19-year-old Artem Kovalchuk was showing civilians how to shoot a rifle.
    [snip]
    At the training session, people asked questions about how far shrapnel from a grenade could fly. Then they took turns learning how to load five bullets into Kalashnikovs. The weapons are from the 1960s and ‘70s — too old for combat, but usable for training.

    Mr. Kovalchuk said he also gives lessons about strategy, tactics, and first aid.

    His presentation was preceded by a talk from a psychologist about relaxation techniques and coping mechanisms for dealing with panic attacks.

    The classes are every day at 1 o’clock, said Yuriy Semchuk, a volunteer, and usually draw between 150 and 200 people every day. He was previously a coordinator in a youth center, where he organized lessons in patriotic education. Source

  25. 25.

    Chetan Murthy

    @japa21:

    But the message seems to be, Ukraine isn’t worth it.

    Please go to acoup.blog and read the article on nuclear deterrence.  I can’t paste the link — something’s borked with the site for me.

  27. 27.

    Another Scott

    @Ignignockt: I just saw a Kalitta Air 747 freighter listed as being out of Dover (but with no listed destination) land in Lubin, Poland on FlightRadar24.  I have non inside information, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were packed to the gills will stuff that will be moving east very, very quickly.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    The Castle

    Adam, I am old enough to remember the kerfuffle on this blog about how you were being too negative and a Debbie Downer.

    I said it then, I’ll say it again. Thank you for these incredible updates. I have learned so much and you have pointed to places where I could learn even more.

    It is a tragedy that there are so few American reporters overseas now, since the Cold War ended, and newspapers and TV reporting were gutted.  I feel very blind to the rest of the world.  Platforms like Twitter are useful, as are foreign news orgs, but those are a very fragmented way to get news. These aggregations with commentary are just great.

  30. 30.

    Martin

    @Comrade Bukharin: This isn’t uncommon. I know a surprising number of managers that seek out the dumbest, most incompetent people they can find because that protects them. Nobody to undermine them, their bosses are afraid to get rid of them because they’re the only marginally competent person around, and you can blame everything on the workers and they won’t leave because they know they can’t get a better job.

    Martin made a special point to go after these people. They’re an absolute cancer on an institution.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: The Estonian’s increased their border security this morning. I knew I forgot to include something. They’re clearly expecting something to happen. I’ll try to get that into tomorrow’s post.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    KyivIndependent news feed:

    22:31

    external Danilov: Lithuania to become Putin’s next target if Russia wins the war against Ukraine. Ukraine’s intelligence indicates that Putin wants to target Lithuania, according to Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Lithuania was the first republic of the Soviet Union to proclaim independence.

    Hmm… VVP’s always been a big talker.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  36. 36.

    Sebastian

    Thanks, Adam!

    Not sure what to think about the FSB letter guy. Almost a little over the top but maybe his brain is just shortcircuiting. The fourth letter almost seemed like a feverish brain dump.

    Ukrainians are doing the right thing with their drones, SAM, C&C, and unique artillery.

    As to Putin, Russia, and the sanctions: Putin is being really stupid about this. He wants NATO to attack him, which NATO cannot (yet) because of public sentiment. At the same time, the public’s sentiment is also “do something about the killing of civilians! Start WWIII” which forces NATO to lean on G7 to increase the economic screw on Russia.

    In other words, because Putin’s increased pressure on NATO has to go somewhere, it is going to China to stop trading with Russia. It might even lead to a “siege” of Russia by the world. I don’t think Putin has thought this through.

  38. 38.

    Sebastian

    @japa21:

    I know that worry can be paralyzing but I can tell you with confidence, there is no scenario where Russia takes Kyiv.

  40. 40.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Comrade Bukharin: Ex-Communist was still educated as a communist. Communists are all paranoid about “Themidor” the coup against Robespierre and resulted in a  young and hot Napoleon Bonaparte, hero of Toulon, taking France over. So, incompetent generals only.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    So, the Russian stock market is unlikely to reopen. I’m not sure they can because it would become a measure of how economically fucked they are. A lot of those assets have already been written off, because a market priced asset that isn’t traded has a value of $0. Nationalizing businesses will have long term consequences. 350 rubles to the dollar on the black market.

    China is openly supporting Russia, but economically they’re being pretty cautious so it’s unclear how much they can help Russia. The clean energy folks are really seeing the opportunity and pushing incredibly hard to transition to renewables now, and in a big way. China won’t mind that – they make a lot of that equipment.

    Unemployment in Russia is going to be massive. You start running down the secondary and tertiary effects of all of these businesses pulling out and it’s a lot of jobs. Tech just might avoid Russia as they do China now. Too risky to operate in country.

  42. 42.

    Ksmiami

    We need to punch Putin back. I still think it’s time to stop allowing Russia to set the terms of battle. They are the invaders, the criminals. Wipe them out by giving Ukraine everything that nation needs to defend itself and stop being scared of one man.

  44. 44.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Martin: ​
      No only that, but McDonalds just cut off access to shamrock shakes and oreo shamrock flurries at the most critical time of the year.

  46. 46.

    Martin

    I know Putin has ruined his ability to see the world objectively by surrounding himself with crooks and liars but this still doesn’t make sense. Yeah, you can push limits pretty far when you have a thousand nukes in your back pocket, but still, toward what end? I mean, a lot of the reasoning is just idiotic.

    It seems to me that Putin knows plan A isn’t working, and is positioning for plan B to produce one of two outcomes – either he can successfully WMD his way into a victory (even if just by threat) or he draws NATO into the conflict so he can show he lost to NATO rather than just losing to Ukraine. Losing to NATO is probably a significantly better showing for him than losing to Ukraine.

    But it seems pretty clear that Putin was not expecting the west to see Ukraine as an opportunity for containment. Very linear thinking on his part.

  47. 47.

    Urza

    @Ksmiami: If only it was “One Man”.  There’s a line of wannabe dictators probably thousands deep behind him.  And ones that would come along even if Russia got on a democratic footing for a bit.  All with ancient grievances going back 1000 years, and new ones just created today.  Much like Trump, they can get a following by airing those grievances, and have a population already primed with disinformation to accept it and rally around.
    The less we give them to work with the harder it is to rally the people.
    Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t fight, but it should be in ways that are hard to trace, hard to argue with even if you’re enmeshed in their propaganda.

    What we really need is investment in our own “factual propaganda machine” with the intent of always countering and shutting down the sources of disnfo around the world.  Sadly that work has to begin at home.  Our planet isn’t terribly likely to survive a few more centuries of people being easily manipulated by baseless rumors, and the human brain is not wired to accept facts over rumor.

  50. 50.

    Calouste

    The thread of attacking weapons convoys seems pretty hollow. If they do it inside Ukraine, it doesn’t change anything, if they try do it inside a NATO country, they probably get shot down before they can get to the target.

  51. 51.

    BeautifulPlumage

    I realize we’re treating the FSB letters as suspect, so maybe this is a moot question: I don’t speak/think in “analyst” so much of the translation has no context. Is there a translation from analyst-speak to layman?

  53. 53.

    dimmsdale

    Just wondering, what would it take for Ukraine to be able to be able to hit targets in Russia (e.g. missile facilities, artillery emplacements)? Is it even thinkable in the short term? (Just remembering the public relations value of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942)

  54. 54.

    Ksmiami

    @Urza: I’ve already come to the conclusion that Russia must be completely defanged and altered in much the same way we reorganized Japan and Germany. Adam and Tom Nichols haven’t gone there yet, but the country represents an existential risk to the world in its current nuclear form.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @Ignignockt:

    as many posters and posts have pointed out, we can only give the UA and UTDF forces, weapons they can use.

    NATO training missions focused predominantly on tactics, logistics, reconnaissance, Command and Control, combined arms, doctrine, and interoperability, ( for Ukraine’s contributions to NATO lead missions abroad), with a small number of SOF/SOF training on pre-Second Invasion supplies of small arms, unarmed drones and ELINT tech.

    A MIG-29 pilot can’t fly or fight and Avenger. A Bactayar operator, trained for 2 years in Turkey, won’t even manage to get a Reaper off the ground for months.

    It takes about an hour to train somebody up on a NLAW, and Ukraine already has people trained on their use, tactics and deployment. It then takes about 8 hours of classroom and field training, including live firing with practice rounds and a real round, to train up an NLAW operator to the point they are functional, not effective.

    We can only give Ukraine weapons they can use, right now, not months or years from now, and NATO stocks of Cold War Soviet weapons have long been drawn down, mothballed or upgraded with modern western electronics and systems.

    On the bright side, as the International Brigades embed with the UA and UATDF forces, with many of them NATO trained in Western Militaries, the amount of smaller, more sophisticated small NATO weapons can be sent.

    There won’t be any Patriot batteries anytime soon.

  58. 58.

    Sebastian

    @Another Scott:

    Yes, that 747 has a lot of yummy goodies going eastwards. Maybe gas masks.

    Galeev’s thread is amazing. Putin and Lavrov are terrified. They know they lost, they are hoping for a miracle.

  59. 59.

    Kent

    @dimmsdale:Just wondering, what would it take for Ukraine to be able to be able to hit targets in Russia (e.g. missile facilities, artillery emplacements)? Is it even thinkable in the short term? (Just remembering the public relations value of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942)

    There are a lot of Ukrainians who can pass as Russian.  I would think that infiltration and sabotage would be more likely and possible.  Blow up railroad bridges and take out equipment trains, that sort of thing.  How many rail lines are involved in hauling equipment to Russian troops in Ukraine.  Blow up a railroad bridge with a train on it and it will be months before it is operational again.  At least that’s what I’d be focusing on rather than trying to hurl missiles at sites in Russia.

  61. 61.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Ksmiami: 

    I’ve already come to the conclusion that Russia must be completely defanged and altered in much the same way we reorganized Japan and Germany.

    I don’t see China sitting still for that. They need a powerful ally to face off the USA.

  64. 64.

    Kalakal

    @Comrade Bukharin: He sidelined him after the war. He briefly commanded the Berlin garrison and was then sent to backwaters, first Odessa then Sverdlosk. He got his revenge after Stalin’s death when he personally arrested Beria

  65. 65.

    Halteclere

    A family friend from Slovakia had a grandfather who was high up in the soviet Union military during WW2. After the war he was forced to leave his family behind (don’t remember which country he was from originally) and move to Slovakia and start a new life.  According to this family friend, this was to prevent high up military people from using their social and cultural base to create a challenge to the state.

    So the State has never trusted the military.

  70. 70.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Kent: okayyyy, but the caption is amusing. Not sure of your point. I’m not the expert keeping track of current losses.

  72. 72.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Kelly: yes, saw that at the end of Adam’s post already. If there’s a reason you’re reposting I don’t get it

  73. 73.

    LadySuzy

    Unless Ukraine receives more military help, I don’t see how they can prevail military in the long run. Damn, how many thousands of bombs does Russia still have ? Enough to completely destroy the country ?

    The stories of Russian soldiers firing on civilians, and the bombing of food stores, is worrying to the extreme. The situation is becoming untenable. War crimes, genocide.

    I worry that many Russian soldiers, in the face of this fierce opposition, are becoming more and more like savages.

    I find it worrying, but not surprising, that the very tight circle around Putin is comprised of people who subscribe to the same ideology. They’ll double down.

    This is so tragic.

  74. 74.

    Winston

    @Winston:
    Which Countries Have Nuclear Weapons?

    1. Russia — 6,257 (1,458 active, 3039 available, 1,760 retired)
    2. United States — 5,550 (1,389 active, 2,361 available, 1,800 retired)
    3. China — 350 available (actively expanding nuclear arsenal)
    4. France — 290 available
    5. United Kingdom — 225 available
    6. Pakistan — 165 available
    7. India — 156 available
    8. Israel — 90 available
    9. North Korea — 40-50 available (estimated)
  75. 75.

    Jay

    @Kent:

    Russia has the largest railway forces in the world. Roughly 1/5th of the RUA is tasked with defending, repairing, converting rail lines, laying water and fuel pipelines.

    If the UA were to send SOF forces across the borders, they would probably be better off in the short term, targeting cross border Artillery forces , ( including Rocket Forces) and airbases.

    During WWII, the SAS and the SBS, allied with the LRDF’s destroyed more Axis AF on the ground, than the Allied AF’s did in the air, or ground.

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Castle: ​
      I am old enough to have been a part of those discussions, and I think you might remember that they were about a completely different topic.

  77. 77.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Adam L Silverman: and as always, I very much appreciate you taking the time to give us these posts. My understanding of events is much deeper because of the knowledge you share. Thank you!

  78. 78.

    Kalakal

    @Comrade Bukharin: It’s quite a lot factual. Stalin had definitely seen Zhukov as a rival and was egged on by Beria who even tried to get Zhukov charged with looting. In the power struggles in and around Stalin’s death Zhukov was appointed deputy minister of defense. When Beria representing the security state ( NKVD) made his bid for power Kruschev called on Zhukov knowing the army would follow Zhukov. In his memoirs Zhukov expressed great joy in how he physically pinned Beria.

  79. 79.

    Winston

    Balloon Juice is moderating my comments like Putin does that disagree? or don’t conform? Let’s hear Balloon Juice.

  82. 82.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Ksmiami: Well, China will not take its orders from the USA, nor will it smile on the USA’s plan to divvy up the planet.  It would still leave the USA as the sole Super Power which no combination of other countries dare challenge.

    China will want some viable partners

    [ETA]  “dare challenge” is a bit strong.

  84. 84.

    Martin

    @BeautifulPlumage: I’ll try a bit. Part of the backstory here is the assertion that an assassination squad was sent by Putin to kill Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians got tipped off by an FSB (Russian FBI-ish) agent which Ukrainian security then liquidated (killed).

    It’s unclear if there was ever any tip-off, or if it came from the FSB, but it’s a good bit of propaganda for Ukraine to try and get Putin to further distrust his own intelligence service. The upside is that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – it works either way. These letters both reference that dynamic and also might be part of the propaganda effort.

    This letter starts out talking about Putin arresting parts of the FSB for giving bad intel on Ukraine. I mean, yeah, they almost certainly did. But is that why they were arrested or does Putin think he has spies inside his agency? From Ukraine’s perspective, who cares, so long as Russia is eating itself form the inside out. There’s an assertion raised that Putin may believe that people in the FSB are leaking Russian military or supply convoy movements. This is kind of laughable because there are countless companies that will let you monitor a given region for a fee, down to near-realtime video. For a few dozen grand you too can monitor Russian convoy movements from space. Not to mention US and EU capabilities.

    And a running theme of the letters is the author speaking in one voice as how leadership reasons things, and another in how he reasons them. That’s not easy to capture in the translation.

    Anyway, the letter suggests that the FSB know this war is a lost cause, and the economic sanctions are crippling (as an analyst, yes, the analysts generally take the morale hit first because we see the results before we present it to leadership) so the FSB, knowing this can’t be fixed are investing their energy in shifting blame so they aren’t the next ones marched out to the polonium mines.

    There is then a description of how the FSB told Putin that there were plenty of civilians ready to overthrow their European aligned politicians as soon as Russian forces rolled in. And that just didn’t happen, like at all. Leadership assumes the FSB is either utterly incompetent or has been infiltrated by spies. The analyst notes that this is the logical result of Putin insisting on certain results, and the folks between Putin and the analysts demanding reports that say what Putin wants to hear. But leadership can’t admit this, Putin can’t admit this, and his subordinates would have to admit their complicity in this to point it out.

    The analyst notes that this inevitably has to collapse. At some point the story needs to be reconciled with reality. You can fake that for a LONG fucking time, so long as everyone is invested. Was the military modernized? Yeah, all of these reports say they were. What’s not stated is that a lot of money was allocated to modernize it, that money went away and receipts were produced, and enough of that equipment was produced in some form to be visible in the annual parade, but everyone from top to bottom got to put some of that money in their pocket and almost all of that stuff either never happened or got sold off to the black market at first opportunity.

    Were there Russian supporters in Ukraine? Some. Some even voluntarily. But there’s also a difference between someone who is supportive of a Ukraine with closer ties to Russia and someone who is supportive of a Russian rocket attack on their home. That’s hard to capture in polling, but if the boss wants to see strong numbers there, they can be produced, and after a few rounds of editing by the bosses up the line, who knows what that report actually says.

    In short, Putin thought this would be a cakewalk because everyone lied to him, because you don’t have a career unless you lie to him (this is a common problem among leadership in the US as well – witness Trump, and probably Zuckerberg as well). And now that it’s all going wrong, it can’t be Putin’s fault for demanding everyone lie to him, it must be spies or incompetence. The head of the FSB is now caught in the middle. He’s screwed. He did want Putin demanded and now needs to pay for the shitty result. (Similar dynamics these days everywhere from Intel to Boeing to GM).

    This letter reads pretty accurately. And I don’t find it at all difficult to believe that an analyst wrote it, but honestly if I knew Russian, I could have written this letter. They aren’t revealing much that couldn’t be gleaned from the outside, or that the US or Ukraine wouldn’t want to project is happening inside. IOW, there’s no predictive power to the letters to test regarding their authenticity.

  86. 86.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Winston: 

    If Russia were to be taken out premitively, what would China do?

    My guess is something similar to what they did for North Korea in the early 1950s.

    I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the UN armies stopped 50 miles from the border with China and said “Alright NK, what’s left is your country.”

  89. 89.

    Martin

    @Calouste: I suspect they’d target something like the Turkish shipments of UAVs as they go over the Baltic Sea.

    Remember, Russia has already shot down a passenger plane without any consequence.

  92. 92.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Martin: thank you! The two voices aspect was not clear and very confusing/ contradictory. I had gleaned some of the gist about rosy reports being further gussied up as they went up the chain, but I was missing context & clear detail.

    I appreciate all of you here who are giving us the POV from your expertise/knowledge/experience.

  93. 93.

    Medicine Man

    @Mallard Filmore: Counter argument, based on events since the turn of the century.

    Any combination of countries that wish to challenge the USA will have the USA as an unpredictable but powerful ally against the USA.

  96. 96.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Medicine Man: Right, but China won’t accept any USA plan to carve up the world.  I’m not sure they will accept a failed state as a neighbor, so I expect close cooperation with Russia.

    China’s economy is in a bit of a bind with the real estate bubble blowing up and taking other sectors down at the same time.  It will be interesting to see how much they can afford to let Russia drain them.

  97. 97.

    Martin

    @LadySuzy: Consensus is forming that Ukraine has got this. Maybe just barely, maybe at the loss of a LOT of civilian lives, but they have this.

    Now, that requires a certain moral isolation. The Ukrainian military need to fight their fight and not be baited into doing dumb stuff. That means being able to overlook a city being bombed if that city isn’t a key objective. You may have to let Russia do what they want with it. Another way of looking at it is that every bomb Russia uses on a school is one that isn’t being used on Ukrainian soldiers and equipment.

    Right now Ukraine likely has more equipped soldiers than Russia does. Many are territorial forces, and untrained, and likely not terribly effective, but they’re fighting for home and family so they’re likely determined. They have enough Stinger and other anti-aircraft missiles to take down every plane Russia has. They have enough anti-tank weapons to take out every armored vehicle Russia has. It may be Ukraine winning by attrition, but that’s still a win. Not a great feeling win, but still a win.

    And we haven’t really seen any kind of insurgent effort out of the Ukrainians. That will likely come once Russia tries to spread their forces out. They don’t have remotely enough troops to hold the country.

    The number of people leaving the country has slowed in the last day or two. There’s been a suggestion that more families are relocating to the west of the country, but since Russia is making so little progress that may be safe enough.

  98. 98.

    Bill Arnold

    @Martin:

    This is kind of laughable because there are countless companies that will let you monitor a given region for a fee, down to near-realtime video.

    Also, Russia is very very corrupt, and you can buy Russian government (or local government) ground-level surveillance video and similar information on the open market, for not much money. (Not much money (thousands to tens of thousands of dollars) will buy a full dossier on most people (not the top) in Russia,. Bank transactions, phone metadata, movements, etc.)

  99. 99.

    Winston

    @Bill Arnold: Maybe just “The day after” or “Testament” would do for you. What is you’re estimation of what our country would be like under totalitarian ussr/nazi/ control and what would you be willing to sacrifice for children not to be under that?

  100. 100.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Winston: What is you’re estimation of what our country would be like under totalitarian ussr/nazi/ control and what would you be willing to sacrifice for children not to be under that?

    Most people probably reject your assumption that we have a binary choice between totalitarianism and all-out nuclear war.  I certainly do.

  101. 101.

    Martin

    @Mallard Filmore: China wants to replace Russia as the US counterparty. It already has economically, just not militarily. We’re in the process of crippling Russia so badly that they cannot remain in that role.

    And it’s not the US divvying up the planet. Another counterparty here is the EU/NATO. The US has their hand in NATO as well, which keeps the EU from being more than an economic counterparty.

    China would prefer that Russia be a vassal state to them. So not really loyal to Russia.

  104. 104.

    Medicine Man

    @Mallard Filmore: Equally big problem for China is that the USA isn’t 100% driving the opposition to Russia at this point. Russia’s naked belligerence has pushed the US and Europe into tighter cooperation, which is really something China needs to not happen.

    If Xi is hoping to inherit an equal partnership in a new multi-polar world order, Putin has really f**ked over his timetable.

  105. 105.

    Bill Arnold

    @Winston:
    Those are works of fiction.
    How about this recent alt-history, by somebody who knows the subject matter:
    The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States

    Also, you may not realize that I share Adam’s opinion (approximately) about the desirability of thoroughly dismantling the current Russian government. (Since their 2016 US election interference, for me. 2020 me: “For sure Putin has been way overconfident for years, and he and Russia are a lot more vulnerable than they believe”)

  108. 108.

    Sebastian

    @Comrade Bukharin:

    Oh that is very true. It’s how they operate. You can only imagine how intelligent and competent people feel in such a system.

    Now imagine all these idiots in charge, a command structure where there is no professional NCO corps, where soldiers are kept in the dark, have no initiative or are allowed to have any, where everything is decided in a planned economy kind of way, top-down (by idiots), no experience nor processes of complex operations, and robbed of all resources.

    That’s the Russian Army.

    I think we should plan a counter-offensive with the UA forces. The Russians don’t even know what’s going on, have lost contact with entire divisions.

    Bomb the shit out of artillery positions with cruise missiles and have UA move into the space immediately. While gaslighting the shit out of Putin, exactly as in that reverse funnel post.

  109. 109.

    Martin

    @Winston: I’ll throw my two cents in here on Omnes’ side.

    All of the people you are afraid of are losing. Russia is losing to Ukraine. They certainly aren’t going to even take Lithuania, let alone Germany or the US.

    And within the US, the GOP is losing. Locally they’re winning (Texas, Florida) but nationally they’re losing. That that’s only going to get worse for them as the nation diversifies.

    Relax. I get that it feels bad, but you’re giving them credit they don’t deserve. They aren’t that powerful, and they’re failing.

  110. 110.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Martin: 

    China would prefer that Russia be a vassal state to them. So not really loyal to Russia.

    Right. At this rate the loyalty flows the other direction. If I was China, what would I want?

    1) colonize Siberia economically, as changing country borders is dangerous right now.
    2) prevent Siberia from becoming a bandit wasteland
    3) keep the Russian nukes under some kind of state control

    It will take some level of support for this to happen.

    China wants to replace Russia as the US counterparty.

    Yep. And the god I don’t believe in has pushed this opportunity on China before they are ready.

  111. 111.

    Martin

    @Medicine Man: I would argue that most of what we’re seeing is being coordinated by the US, but not decided by the US. I don’t think there’s anything here that EU/NATO nations haven’t had veto power over, which is why the alliance is strengthening. Biden is letting the US take a more supporting role.

    And that makes sense if avoiding escalation is the goal. It’s why Poland could send MiGs to Ukraine but the US can’t. Poland doesn’t have nukes. The US does. But Poland didn’t want to take the risk.

  112. 112.

    Ksmiami

    @Mallard Filmore: No one has to order anything… things fall apart. What will be clear to China though is that an unstable neighbor with nukes and a mafia government is a threat to their own country as well.

  113. 113.

    Medicine Man

    @Martin: Oh yeah, the US almost certainly is coordinating. My main point is that the EU is motivated all on their own; this is not a US project with the President waving around carrots and sticks.

    Things would probably work better for China long-term if the EU were dealing with Trump-style buffoonery (and getting sick of it).

  114. 114.

    Martin

    @Mallard Filmore: China has a lot of other problems. Their economic strength is overstated by the west. Their goal of technological balance with the US has failed, and they’re now stepping back from that goal. They don’t know how to replicate that model. For that matter, neither do states outside of CA.

    And China is currently VERY committed to maintaining their Han supremacy. I’m not sure they even know how they would build a multi-ethnic empire.

  116. 116.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Ksmiami: Right.  China will not accept the first offered suggestion to resolve all this.  It will take some massive negotiation.

    I thought you were saying the USA would not object if China moved their northern border up to the Arctic Circle.

  117. 117.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Martin:

    And China is currently VERY committed to maintaining their Han supremacy. I’m not sure they even know how they would build a multi-ethnic empire.

    Tibet and also the Uyghurs come to mind (but not right away).

  118. 118.

    Sebastian

    @Martin:

    China is allegedly in the middle of their very own real estate investment megascam bubble. The whole thing might come crushing down all of a sudden.

    One thing I am wondering though are all those Syrian refugees in Europe. Why aren’t they volunteering to fight in Ukraine against the Russians who bombed them out of their country?

  119. 119.

    piratedan

    it seems like we’re going to watch a re-shuffling of the existing world order and the concerns that will follow, i.e. removing nukes from a totalitarian failed state, said same for chemical and bio-weapons.

    The next couple of decades (should we all survive them) may see the advent of democratic nation states prevailing and after we beat back the fascist threat, we have to pivot and clean up the planet before we wreck it…..

  120. 120.

    The Pale Scot

    @Kent:

    The idea of Russian gangs stealing from soldiers at military bases?  Astonishing frankly.

    It is. But the officers are getting bakshish, there isn’t a NCO class, there aren’t any gunnies or warrant officers that would say fuck this. Almost everyone at these bases is waiting to get away after 2 yrs, there’s no institutional memory. The Korean and Vietnam vets I grew up around would have hopped on a M113 and shot shit up.

    This is not a Soviet Army with an ideology to enforce cohesion. It’s a mob of kids rounded up and handed guns. 6 months in the UAK, they’ll be different.

  122. 122.

    Sebastian

    @Martin:

    When I am looking at Russian demographics, the levels of alcoholism, the coming famine, the low birth rates, their young men being shredded, burned, or frozen to death in Ukraine … there might be 140 million Rus -today- but not necessarily that many in a generation.

    This bullshit adventure might cut them down to German size of around 100m.

  124. 124.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Martin: I hope you are right, but Siberia is sparsely populated.  Moscow would have to loose control of its provinces for this to be a concern.

    It might take a few successful takeovers for China to covet the rest of Russia.

  125. 125.

    Winston

    @Martin: I’m one of those kids that practiced duck and cover and went into the hallways. Did you do that? When the bell was ringing?

  126. 126.

    Winston

    @Winston: Because, if you were there, then you would wish we had fired first. So excuse me if I think you don’t fucking know what it feels like and and a lot of others here. The bell is ringing.

  127. 127.

    Sebastian

    @NotMax:

    You know, I wonder what’s going on. Barely anyone is masked but vaccination rates are not that high? Or are COVID infections and death just a rounding error due to the overall situation?

  134. 134.

    Winston

    @opiejeanne: Think about our children. I don’t care about me; we don’t have that much longer to live anyway. Should they live under  a Russian regime/

  136. 136.

    Winston

    @Winston: How did you feel about it then? I can tell you I felt what the fuck did I ever do to deserve the Russians nuking me.

  138. 138.

    CROAKER

    So since this a War in UK Thread I will post war stuff.

    I only play “toy soldiers” when they are KIA they go back in the box and the shelf.

    I realize each of these numbers represent human beings that said please read this only if your comfortable:

    I am not going to count planes, tanks and automobiles – so if your interested you can follow the reports from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

    The Russian Army has committed somewhere between 120 – 125  Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs). Think of these combined arms units:  Mechanized Infantry, artillery, air defense, logistical support units (engineers etc being lazy here).

    The last estimate I saw indicated 95% of the BTGs had crossed into Ukraine so I will use approximately 120 BTGs.

    The total Combat Strength of the Russian Army is around 170 BTGs. Think about those numbers 120 and 170.  That is 70% of the Combat Strength.

    As of 3/12/2022, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Brigadier General Kyrylo Budanov had indicated the following:

    18 BTGs have been rendered combat ineffective

    13 BTGs have been completely destroyed in action 

    Those numbers mean 31 BTGs are now no longer fighting in Ukraine

    That is a 25% loss of the Russian BTGs in Ukraine.

    Not sure – Adam perhaps can better say, but if this goes another two weeks Russian forces will be routed.

    I can do the unit math and cross reference planes, tanks and automobiles but it is kinda not the point of this.

  140. 140.

    bjacques

    @Winston:

    Probably dead thread…

    Well, I’ll be 59 in a couple of months, so “Duck & Cover” was over by the time I got to Kindergarten. There was probably no point anyway; I lived near one fat industrial target that was also downwind from at least two military ones, so it would have been OH SHI— for me. Honestly, me and my fellow dumb, white suburban friends thought WWIII’s aftermath would be like Mad Max, Ark II or Earth 2, which looked pretty cool. Most of us outgrew that.

    But, since the fantasy best case involves tens of millions of dead Russians of any political persuasion or none, a first strike is unthinkable. Every day a nuclear exchange is avoided is a good day and one that isolates him more. The US and NATO are not the only parties having to revise calculations for every red line Putin crosses; even if the global South thinks it’s not their fight, the wheat, oil, and weapons markets say otherwise.

    We’re supposed to be smarter than Putin, so we have to help Ukraine (and, eventually ourselves) beat him by thinking with our brains and not our dicks or adrenal glands.

  141. 141.

    Sebastian

    @CROAKER:

    To be perfectly honest, the prevalent emotion is a grim acknowledgment that all the data was indeed right and all our estimates, which seemed outlandish at first, were pretty much spot on.

    25%

    And they haven’t entered the cities yet.

    On February 25th I made a bet that the Russian Army would be defeated in the field by March 15th. I might have been off by a few weeks.

    If this continues along this trajectory, and IMHO it will only accelerate, then Russia will lose another 25% or more in the next two weeks or less.

    This is a death knell.

  142. 142.

    Geminid

    The story of Israeli Prime Minister Bennett advising Ukrainian President Zelensky “to surrender”  seemed to rise and fall in 12 hours. As first reported  Friday by the Jerusalem Post, an unnamed Ukrainian official complained that in a recent phone call Bennett had recommended Zelensky accept terms Bennett was conveying from Putin that would amount to a “surrender.” The report had Zelensky responding to Bennett, “I hear you.” Bennett’s office denied that this was the case.

    Saturday morning the Jerusalem Post reported that one of Zelensky’s top aides, Mikhail Podolyak, had also denied that this story was true. My theory is that the unnamed Ukrainian official of the first report iwas Mikhail Podolyak of the second report, and that he was playing bad cop/good cop with the Israelis.

    The Ukraine government generally has been pressing every country it can for more material and moral support. The fact that the unnamed official “and” Podolyak were giving an Israeli newspaper these accounts tells me that Zelensky wants more material and moral support from Israel, and at the same time still sees value in having Israel as a diplomatic conduit to Putin.

  145. 145.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Geminid: I think that the proposal of Jerusalem peace talks is psychological warfare on Zelensky’s part. Zelensky is expressing his desire for a future peace in a notable way, even though he knows that the Russians will not agree to an acceptable cease-fire so long as Putin believes he can gain advantage on the battlefield.

    There is a bit of wry humor in Zelenky’s Jerusalem gambit. Here we have the most violent war Europe has seen in seventy-five years. What better place is there to work out a settlement than the crowded, disputed capital of Israel, a nation that since 1956 has been in at least five wars with it’s neighbors, some of which are still going on.

    In any event, I do not think that Zelensky and Putin will ever be in the same room together, or even the same town. Their Foreign Ministers have met once in the Turkish city of Antalya, with the facilitation of the Turkish Foreign Minister. That’s probably as good a venue and format as any for finalizing a durable ceasefire, when the time is right. In the interim, the mid-level talks held at the Belarus border hopefully will continue.

  146. 146.

    raven

    @japa21: I’ve spent about 62 of my 72 years thinking, when I die, it really doesn’t matter if everyone else in the world dies too.

  147. 147.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     

    if something is aligning with your wishes and sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

    Words to live by, not just in this situation, but in general.

  149. 149.

    Ken

    @Aussie sheila: How has this guy taken up so much bandwidth here with such irrational and callous bleating?

    Do you watch the series What We Do in the Shadows? In the episode “The Return”, the energy vampire Colin Robinson shows how he can feed via social media by irritating people. I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no — decide for yourself.

  150. 150.

    Sloane Ranger

    In regard to the Russians taking Kyiv. This is far from certain and the longer Ukrainian forces hold out, the less likely it becomes.

    But, even if it happens, and Putin’s fantasy of bringing Russia’s spiritual progenitor back into the fold occurs, providing Zelinsky and enough of his government get out and can relocate to a location in Western Ukraine I’m not sure it matters in the wider course of events.

    Putin can install his Quislings but the Ukrainian people, the army, the US and NATO will continue to recognise Zelinsky as the legitimate President of Ukraine. During the Nazi invasion of Norway, Norwegians didn’t care that Parliament was meeting in the lecture theatre of an agricultural college about 100 miles north of Oslo or the Cabinet room was the back parlour of a farmhouse and the King was signing off on decisions in the bedroom of the same farmhouse. Legitimacy is about who people choose to follow, not by whether they occupy the traditional state buildings in the national capital.

  152. 152.

    MomSense

    One of my best friends has been working for the UN UNHCR and UNICEF for decades.  The last 15 years she has been in Africa doing child protection.  I remember her telling me she doesn’t need doctors without borders she needs assassins without borders.  There are some truly evil people in this world.  I keep hearing people try to understand Putin as if his decisions are rational.  He’s just evil. Whatever humanity he may have had (perhaps it was just the ability to fake emotions) is long gone.

  153. 153.

    Gin & Tonic

    New York Times journalist shot and killed by Russian troops in Irpin. They intentionally fired on his car as it was leaving a checkpoint.

    Brent Renaud(?)

  154. 154.

    MomSense

    @Sebastian:

    Russia losing isn’t an option for Putin. He will use biological/chemical/nuclear weapons against Ukrainian civilians. I hope I’m wrong but you have to look at this from his perspective. He is the guy that when the courts and law enforcement finally step in and protect a battered spouse, he will find a way to murder her.  That’s who Putin is.

  155. 155.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    I saw a tweet earlier today which I can’t find now where Putin is talking about the apartment building bombing that led to the second Chechnyan war. It’s just his head and shoulders, and he’s standing before a black background. There are English subtitles, so I could follow along with what he was saying. His eyes were dead, absolutely dead. Even when he spoke of the inhumanity of the bombers, his face remained frozen without the slightest furrow of his brow or a narrowing of his eyes. He is a fucking sociopath.

  156. 156.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    Exactly.  He has two impressive adult daughters he never sees.  His partner (the retired gymnast) has been living in Switzerland with their four children for 7-8 years.  He never sees them.
    I’m sure his Sochi palace is well equipped so he can survive whatever biological chemical or nuclear fallout may happen and he does not care at all if he is the only human left alive at the end of this.  Actually he probably wants a few humans left to serve him and that he can boss around.  He doesn’t even try to maintain the pretext of human emotions anymore. He doesn’t have to.

  158. 158.

    JR

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Took a while between Thermidor and Napoleons ascension. It was highly improbable, requiring spectacular corruption and incompetence by the Directors of the “Republic”. Of course if someone with that disposition and capability came to power in Russia we would all be very fucked.

  159. 159.

    Another Scott

    @Sanjeevs: Thanks for the pointer.  Lots of “on the one/other hand” verbiage, but that sounds authentic.  He’s also predicting things that happened months ago, like NATO being stronger and more united. So, lots of filler.

    China clearly has an out, and they mentioned it at one of the first UN meetings after the invasion – Territorial Integrity.  The path for them is clear, especially given their demands about Taiwan.  They just don’t want to decide until they absolutely have to.  And it is weakening their standing with the world, because people are seeing that dictatorship leads to dangerous choices (VVP) or paralysis for fear of sticking one’s neck out on the wrong side (CCP under Xi).

    Supply chains are going to get shorter and be drawn back to the west, and China’s economy is going to grow more slowly in the future. Slower growth is bad for the CCP because there are still vast numbers of poor people in the country…

    Thanks again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  162. 162.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Halteclere: It was Soviet policy that when senior military & naval officers retired they could go anywhere they wanted in the CCCP except Moscow, Leningrad, or Kiev[1], for fear they would use those connections to plot coups.

    One of the interesting side effects of this was that officers who’d had a taste of the good cosmopolitan life flocked to Riga. As a result the population of Riga at (resumed) independence was majority Russian[2] but that created less friction than did the smaller fractions[3] remaining in Estonia or Lithuania. The Rigan Russkies had on the average more money and some class, and kept a fairly low profile; the Estonian Russians, in particular, were the ones who had nowhere to go in Russia and no skills to sell once they got there.

    In September 2001 I walked through Paldiiski (home of the former Soviet submarine school) and later, some of the poorer districts in Tallinn (from the Presidential palace back to Raekoja plats (the town square), and TBH I have never felt more at risk on foot in Europe before or since. Not that the people were overtly unfriendly, but you could see how beaten down they were[4] – ten-storey walkup blocks of flats, some burned out – and I became acutely aware that (among other I carried) a US passport might be worth an awful lot to some of them. In Tallinn I could’ve waited for a bus but just kept walking as if I knew where I was going; in Paldiiski after a quick look-around I retreated to the mostly-deserted rail station and waited 90 minutes for the next train back.

    (ETA: The only two times I have ever been approached by a “lady of the evening” in over 30 trips to Europe was in Tallinn. Two successive nights. Both Russian. I enjoyed the initial conversations and passed on the rest.)

    [1] Then-current spelling in the non-Ukrainian world; put down that chainsaw, G&T!

    [2] IIRC Latvia’s population at the time was 45% Russian, Riga’s 55%.

    [3] IIRC ~35% in Estonia, ~20% in Lithuania.

    [4] Despite what appeared to be good-faith efforts by the Estonian government to ameliorate the misery when they were strapped for resources.

  163. 163.

    Bill Arnold

    @Sebastian:
    Russia’s COVID-19 death statistics are lies, by about a factor of 3-4. The excess deaths statistics (using official Russian statistics from another part of the government) have made this quite clear, and e.g. moscowtimes has been reporting the excess deaths numbers along with the much much lower official numbers.
    Furthermore, in roughly July 2021, they started making it blatantly obvious that the numbers were faked by dramatically and obviously reducing the variance of the daily death stats. (This was obvious to anyone looking at their statistics. I noticed, and am not a statistician.) No idea why; perhaps to test the credulity of the west. As a result, they went into this with some western journalists more aware that the Russian government regularly lies.
    Underdispersion in the reported Covid-19 case and death numbers may suggest data manipulations (Dmitry Kobak1, February 11, 2022, medrxiv)
    We additionally tested all 85 Russian federal regions as well as all 60 public health jurisdictions in the USA. In Russia, 82 regions out of 85 were flagged for underdispersion, with many regions showing statistically significant underdispersion during long periods of time, much longer than twelve weeks that we obtained for Russia as a whole (Figure 2). This suggests that data tampering occuring at regional level may become invisible at the country level, and also that a separate mechanism may have been implemented in Russia in August-September 2021 to maintain the number of reported deaths just below 800 on the federal level. In contrast, for USA jurisdictions, not a single one showed underdispersion

  164. 164.

    Bill Arnold

    @japa21:
    Frankly, you cannot emotionally empathize with the scale of human dying and misery associated with a global thermonuclear war, and are normal human cognitive biases are are making you confused by the several(many) orders of magnitude differences in scale.
    How many zeros are in the number of people that you personally would be willing to kill to prevent the death of a billion (or 2-4 billion) humans worldwide?

  165. 165.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Bill Arnold: I wonder if they “bioweapons labs” kerfluffle is preparation by Ptui!n and his cronies to blame the poor performance of the Russian forces on rampant COVID and the rampant COVID as a biological-weapons attack by US/NATO, in an effort to justify an escalation in the ways and means of fighting, e.g.: Hey, there’s a bioweapons lab right where we think Zelinskyy is holed up, let’s carpet-bomb the shit out of it…

  168. 168.

    Bill Arnold

    @debbie:

    I saw a tweet earlier today which I can’t find now where Putin is talking about the apartment building bombing that led to the second Chechnyan war. It’s just his head and shoulders, and he’s standing before a black background. There are English subtitles, so I could follow along with what he was saying. His eyes were dead, absolutely dead. Even when he spoke of the inhumanity of the bombers, his face remained frozen without the slightest furrow of his brow or a narrowing of his eyes. He is a fucking sociopath.

    A large number of people, including many in Russia, believe Putin rode to power by himself making those bombings happen; that they were a false flag operation by the FSB (IIRC)..

    He’s insane to be playing this card. (Off to look into this.)

  169. 169.

    debbie

    @Bill Arnold:

    If you have the time, PBS’s Frontline documentary, “Putin’s Way,” is worth watching.

    Did you know, when he first got his post-KGB job as Vice Mayor of St. Petersburg, the first thing he did was commission a documentary about himself titled “Power.” Talk about showing people what you are!

  171. 171.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m only one man… And Iran decided to shoot a dozen missiles into Erbil near the US Consulate. I can only do updates on one war at a time!//

    Wait… what happened to the tecno-military stratigist, able to multi-thread a different war with each lobe of his brain.

    1. Yeman
    2. Ethiopia
    3. India / China
    4. India/Pakistan
    5. Russia/Ukraine
    6. Russia / NATO

    I’m sure I’ve left out a couple. But you have multiple advanced degrees, years of tactical and strategic experience at many different levels of operational tempo … I’m leaving stuff out again,.

    I’m not a historian, no experience of actual warfare [ my time in the USN was all as an E2, because I had a year of college, I was avoiding being drafted into the Marine Corp and going to the Nam. I kept my head down, did what I was told as far as legal  orders and got out ASAP ] .  I did get a grip on how easy a totally  unimportant military asset can slide into not-prepared-for-readiness while on a 1944 sub tender supporting the USN’s last Squadron of diesel submarines which were assigned to protect the gulf coast from the Ferocious Cuban People’s Navy. There/s still a quite nice Naval Air Station which ‘m sure can control those killer Cubanos.

    Thanks so much, everyone, for all this compiled and discussed information and data about current military events, which will be likely to become Military History soon if people have time to write histpry. if those writings sutvive, if ink is available, if anyone remembers how to read. I’m serious about the history we are watching. I have to keep my sick humor setting on high to avoid self harm, like a circuit breaker with a longer-than normal break down period.

  172. 172.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    New York Times journalist shot and killed by Russian troops in Irpin. They intentionally fired on his car as it was leaving a checkpoint.

    I wonder, is there any chance this might change the FTNYTimes editorial policy of supporting fascists everywhere — especially in NYC?

    How many Times staff knew and liked the murdered reporter?

    How many upper level managers knew the murdered reporter?

    Or will it be reported as the “fog of war — just an accident, so many loaded guns around, sometimes they just go off while aimed at a nearby car, right?    Right?          Sure!!

    Had to be deliberate if they had just gone thru a checkpoint. I wonder how high up a decision like this was made? Someone had to think it was a good idea for their RU Army troops to eake out a Times reporter, or perhaps any US reporter, or even any reporter from west of Ukraine. Or just a pissed off soldier…?

  173. 173.

    wetzel

    Persuade the billionaires to buy up all the Tornadoes, F-16s and Mirages they were decommissioning around the world anyway for the F-35, and snap together a dozen Foreign Legion Squadrons piloted from Air France, United, Delta and Lufthansa, if those companies could be persuaded to give volunteer pilots unpaid leave with experience in those jets. There must be a thousand fighter pilots in the airlines of the world. They could be in the air today protecting Mariupol with overwhelming air power.

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