(St. Mary’s Church in Killarney. Image found at this tweet.)
I want to focus on three things tonight that I think are important. Then I’ll do a brief update and then I’m racking out.
First, Russian officials have been ramping up the agitprop against their neighbors. Yesterday, the Russian embassy in Finland, tweeted this out:
Уважаемые соотечественники!
❗️ О случаях нарушения прав, дискриминации и разжигания ненависти по отношению к гражданам Российской Федерации и носителям русского языка просим сообщать в консульский отдел посольства по электронной почте [email protected] pic.twitter.com/RTlsHBOxt3
— Russian Embassy in Finland (@RussianEmbFinla) March 16, 2022
Here’s the machine translation:
Dear compatriots! ❗️ Please report cases of violation of rights, discrimination and incitement of hatred against citizens of the Russian Federation and native speakers of the Russian language to the consular department of the embassy by e-mail [email protected]
A day or so before that, a Russian general officer provided a rather eye opening interview to a Russian tabloid: Komsomolskaya Pravda. I’m posting the first tweet, then copying and pasting the remainder into a quote box. The screengrabs of the interview in Russian are at the thread.
A Russian colonel-general has given an interview to the tabloid KP. It's horrific, but gives insights on Russian goals.
Says police, FSB and prosecutors should follow troops into Ukrainian cities. And undertake "necessary" but "unpleasant" filtering to achieve "de-Nazification". pic.twitter.com/vu1ked3kld— Joanna Szostek ?? (@Joanna_Szostek) March 15, 2022
- As for negotiations he basically admits they are for appearances only. “We can’t not hold talks because we’d be accused of breaking diplomatic norms” he says. “We are holding talks in the hope of peace on our terms. But Ukraine is holding talks to drag out the fighting”.
- He does admit that the “special operation” is not going as Russia hoped or planned. Asked when it will end, he said he originally thought end of March. But now has doubts, because the enemy is like animals, “nationalists with nothing to lose” who will fight to the end.
- Couldn’t really be clearer that Russia’s aim is to purge Ukraine of Ukrainians. If you still think this is all about NATO, you have fallen for a Russian red herring. “De-Nazification” is Russian Orwellian Newspeak for getting rid of Ukrainians who refuse to think they’re Russian.
I think these are important windows into how Russian senior leaders, even if they’re not the ultimate decision makers, understand the war Putin has started by reinvading Ukraine. I also think they’re important to pay attention to as they, along with other agitprop that is being pushed within Russia and out to the world by Russia, is also intended to make everyone else especially jittery. Two nights ago I referenced Tom Nichols argument as to why the US and NATO need to do everything possible to avoid getting directly, militarily involved in the war for Ukraine. He has expanded his argument int0 an essay in The Atlantic. It is important to pay attention to in light of the increased Russian agitprop, threats, and provocations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is in trouble. Despite his limited gains on the ground in Ukraine, he is facing strategic defeat in a war that no one (including me) would have expected him to lose. The vaunted Russian army has turned out to be a hollow force whose major skill sets seem to be bullying its own conscripts and killing foreign civilians. The Russian air force has underperformed even the lowest expectations; perhaps Russian pilots should have spent more time getting training and logging flying hours instead of doing fancy maneuvers at foreign air shows. At home, Putin distrusts his own security services and is apparently purging some of his top spies. The Russian people are going into the streets, prompting the regime to arrest thousands. The Russian economy is in a deep freeze and is likely to stay there for years.
Only one military force in the world can save Putin from utter humiliation now: NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO intervention in Russia’s war on Ukraine could halt that country’s barbarous attacks. But it would mean war between Putin’s regime and the West, and this war would be such a gift to Putin that we should expect that he will soon do everything he can to provoke it.
The U.S. and Europe should resist such provocations.
Putin knows that the term NATO can still produce a visceral response in Russia. NATO is a traditional enemy—and one many Russians have blamed for their troubles in the past. NATO jets streaking over Ukrainian skies will silence at least some of the protests, and give Putin’s supporters a bigger cudgel when they widen the fascist beatdown of the last Russians who refuse to accept the war.
Inside the Kremlin, meanwhile, Putin could likewise use NATO’s intervention to move against any possible dissent or hesitation. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the U.S. Congress yesterday morning, Putin was in Moscow raging away on Russian television against those rich Russians residing abroad “who cannot live without foie gras” and who have now become “traitors and bastards” because they are “mentally” against Russia.
Many of those rich Russians living abroad are the children—and mistresses—of Putin’s inner circle. The Kremlin boss was thus firing a warning shot over the heads of his own sycophants as well as the oligarchs whose pursuit of wealth he has enabled: I expect your loyalty, and I know where you and your families live. A war with NATO would make such threats seem patriotic rather than paranoid. The odds of a palace coup against Putin are already low; the odds of such a move while Russia is at war with NATO are even lower.
Much more at the link above. Aside from the fact that it is nice to see him agree with me about the real meaning behind Putin’s televised diatribe yesterday, Nichols’ argument is the only one I find persuasive regarding why the US and NATO need to keep doing what they’re doing and not do more than providing humanitarian aid, military aid, and ratcheting up the sanctions and economic measures. Nichols’ argument here is not, we can’t assume any more risk because Putin will escalate right into nuclear war, though he does touch on it. Rather, his argument is don’t throw Putin a lifeline. Don’t give him a way out. And while I would still like to see the US and NATO assume more risk for humanitarian reasons, Nichols’ argument is a solid one that deserves to be seriously considered. Especially by those of us national security professionals who have argued for the US and NATO to do more.
The second and third items to highlight are after the jump.
The second thing we need to pay attention to is that early today a Chinese state backed news media outlet tweeted this out:
Russian troops have killed at least 10 civilians standing in line for bread in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian public broadcaster and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. pic.twitter.com/KEXH9V4OJL
— CGTN America (@cgtnamerica) March 17, 2022
James Palmer, the deputy editor at Foreign Policy, who used to reside in Beijing and has written a book on Mao provided the following analysis. Same as before: first tweet embedded, subsequent ones copied and pasted into a quote box.
guys, the shift on Ukraine has been visible in core Chinese media too – and in propaganda instructions – it's not just a foreign facing thing https://t.co/Nzrntqqj3S
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) March 17, 2022
- now THAT SAID the majority of second-tier content is still pro-Russian and social media is overwhelmingly pro-Russian. I won’t believe there’s a really serious shift – as opposed to just neutrality + anti-Western incentives – until that stuff starts getting shut down.
- Over the last week or so it feels like people have been swinging toward ‘Xi is going to help Putin!’ or ‘China is going to break with Russia on Ukraine’ over fairly small bits of information. Wait until we see action.
- otherwise I think the line for China is a narrow neutrality with a strong anti-Western bias more than a pro-Russian one
- this shift still isn’t toward condemnation of Russia as such, but toward reporting on civilian casualties and the war from a fairly neutral stance.
- it’s also been noticeable that – in official media at least – there hasn’t been a lot of *anti-Ukrainian* content. The villain is always the United States, with Kyiv portrayed as a victim or puppet at worst.
- that means, for instance, very little of the “Avov Battalion/Ukrainians are Nazis” stuff – unless the US can be blamed for it. Here’s the one GT story focusing on it, for instance –
We’ll have to keep watching this and see what develops between the PRC and Russia as the reinvasion drags on. I will say that Xi has very little tolerance for sloppy and chaos. Right now Putin is the poster child for sloppy and chaos. I have long argued that a great deal of how the PRC leadership has conducted themselves since the fall of the Soviet Union is to do everything possible to prevent the same thing from happening in China. Not just because the leadership could lose their grip on power, if not worse, but because the fall of the Soviet Union was chaos personified. And this grates terribly on the neo-Confucian concepts of order that are woven into Chinese socio-political and socio-cultural dynamics. Again, we’ll have to watch and see.
The third and final item to highlight is this survey conducted by the Active Group, a Ukrainian social surveying and public polling firm. They surveyed Russians in Russia between 11 and 14 March regarding their attitudes to Russia potentially expanding its war by invading other European countries. There are two important things to keep in mind when looking at this data: 1) The Russians have been heavily propagandized by Putin, his government, the Russian Orthodox Church, and state controlled or supported news and popular media. 2) Given what is going on in Russia, many respondents may have been afraid to provide answers that were not supportive of anything Putin might do militarily. Even with these caveats, I’m highlighting it because it reflects the agitprop I started tonight’s update with.
86.6% of Russians tolerate and support the potential assault on the territory of the European Union, including: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and others as evidenced by the results of the sociological survey conducted by “Active Group”.
75.5% of Russians approve the idea of a military invasion in the next country and believe that it should be Poland. According to respondents, this is a logical continuation of the so-called “military special operation of the Russian Federation”.
Moreover, according to the survey, 75% of respondents tolerate to a varied extent the use of nuclear weapons by their government.
While only 13.4% of Russians have a negative attitude to the military invasion in other countries, 46% of respondents are absolutely sure that the Russian government should attack the EU, and 40.6% assume a permissible expansion of hostilities.
The three countries that according to the poll will be targeted by Russia are: Poland (75.5%), the Baltic countries, among which Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia (41%), Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (39.6%). In the survey, respondents had the opportunity to select several countries.
Only 25.5% of Russians strongly oppose the use of nuclear weapons. Among those surveyed, 40.3% consider a nuclear attack absolutely acceptable, and 34.3% will support such a decision to some extent by the Russian authorities.
Russia’s public opinion may be a marker of the Kremlin’s potential actions for the world community.
“The general impression of the poll is that Russians who have agreed to communicate with interviewers are aggressive not only towards Ukraine, but also towards the EU. Respondents either refuse to communicate after learning the topic of the interview, or declare their readiness to support and approve further Russian incursions into other countries”, – comments by Andriy Eremenko, founder of the research company “Active Group”.
Sociologists of the Ukrainian company “Active Group” decided to further explore to what extent is the Russian society aggressive. To answer it, a telephone (via the Viber messenger) survey was conducted according to the formatted methodology (the sample is representative according to the subject of the federation, sex and age of the respondent). Mandatory language for the Russian environment was used in the drafting of the questions. Thus, instead of “invasion” and “war” in the survey the word “special operation” was used, Ukrainian security forces were called “Nazis” etc. Of course, instead of “in Ukraine” it was said “on Ukraine”.
All the charts and further analysis at the link above. Given that this seems to overlap with another survey recently completed by Russian sociologists, this too is something we need to keep an eye on. If the results from these surveys are anywhere close to accurate, then the idea that Putin will be toppled internally is wish casting.
A group of independent Russian sociologists conducted a poll, in which it was found that 71% of Russians are proud of Russia's war against Ukraine. The results of the social survey are available to the Russian service of Radio Liberty.#RussianWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/kmp53tnQ1B
— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) March 17, 2022
Mariupol is still besieged, cut off, and slowly being starved to death!
From 50 to 100 air bombs are dropped on the city per day. The destruction is enormous, and according to preliminary estimates, about 80% of the city's housing stock is destroyed, of which almost 30% – can not be restored.#StopRussia #StopPutin
— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (@ua_parliament) March 17, 2022
The only good news out of Mariupol is that the bomb/blast shelter in the Drama House’s basement appears to have held and they have been conducting rescue operations all day to rescue the survivors of yesterdays war crime by bombing.
Italy has agreed to rebuild the Drama House once the war is over.
Here’s the UK’s Ministry of Defense’s update for today:
Earlier today President Zelenskyy let the German Bundestag have it with both barrels!
BERLIN — In a blistering speech to lawmakers in Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday accused politicians of failing to live up to their historical responsibility after the Holocaust — enshrined in the phrase “never again” — to secure peace in Europe.
Zelenskyy, a Jewish president of a nation deeply scarred by millions of deaths in World War II and the Holocaust, lambasted Germany for pursuing a policy of appeasement toward Russia in recent years and for prioritizing economic security over democratic values.
Amid heavy civilian losses from Russian bombardment, Ukraine insists that the EU must stop buying the oil and gas that helps fill President Vladimir Putin’s war chest. Germany, however, is the chief opponent to such a move, arguing that it has no alternative but to keep buying Russian energy.
That German intransigence helped spark Thursday’s bitter address, in which the president pulled no punches in his condemnation.
“After 80 years, something like this happens and I am telling you: Every year politicians repeat the words ‘never again’ and now we see that these words are simply worth nothing. In Europe a people is being destroyed. There is an attempt to destroy everything that is dear to us,” he said.
Speaking via video link from Kyiv, Zelenskyy criticized Germany for years of prioritizing business in Russia above defending Western values. Indeed, after the Russia annexation of Crimea in 2014, while the EU at large pledged to reduced its dependence on Russian gas, Berlin broke ranks and pressed ahead with the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, against fierce opposition from Ukraine and other allies.
“We have always said that Nord Stream 2 is a weapon and a preparation for the big war and we received the response that it’s about the economy, the economy, the economy,” Zelenskyy said. Berlin only put the pipeline on ice last month, just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Some steps were taken too late. The sanctions may not have been enough to stop the war,” Zelenskyy told the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, as Russia continues its lethal campaign of violence in Ukraine which has left thousands dead.
In his speech, Zelenskyy said that there was a new wall in Europe, built from bricks that represent Germany’s failure to properly stand by Ukraine’s side, with the Nord Stream 2 fallout providing the wall’s “cement.”
“The world may not have seen so clearly yet, but you are separated from us by a kind of wall. Not a Berlin Wall, but a wall in the middle of Europe between freedom and a lack thereof. And this wall is getting taller with every bomb that falls on Ukraine. With every decision that is not made for peace,” he said.
Another brick in the wall, Zelenskyy said, was Germany’s reluctance to let Ukraine join NATO.
He implored German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “tear down this wall,” echoing a speech delivered by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Berlin in 1987. Zelenskyy also channelled Britain’s war-time leader Winston Churchill during a speech to the U.K. parliament last week, and American civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., during his address Wednesday to the U.S. Congress.
Zelenskyy thanked German companies that “put morality over economic interests” and the people who have embraced the idea of Ukraine’s EU membership, but his tone remained one of profound disappointment and outspoken criticism.
As soon as Zelenskyy finished, the Bundestag moved on to other, routine business. Which appears to have upset a lot of the members of the Bundestag, as well as German news media. Norbert Rottgen, a member of the Bundestag known for being a specialist in foreign policy, responded with this via tweet:
Today was the most undignified moment in the Bundestag that I have ever experienced!
The German press was equally unsparing:
“Undignified”, “embarrassing”, “ashamed of my country”, “we cannot even do fake support properly”. The German press on the German parliament’s reaction to @ZelenskyyUa‘s address is absolutely devastating.
President Zelenskyy is scheduled to address Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Sunday. He should have reloaded and upgraded his firepower by then.
The Russians killed 21 and injured an additional 25 in their bombardment of Merafa in Kharkiv Oblast. They targeted a community center and school.
It might these days be worth remembering that Russia occupied and annexed Crimea and tried to dismember Ukraine by creating a Novorossija statelet in its South in 2014 when Ukraine had neutrality inscribed in its constitution. It wasn’t of much help.
The French Foreign Ministry seems to have finally gotten a clue:
BREAKING: France’s Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian says Russia is only pretending to negotiate with Ukraine
Obligatory!
The Czech Republic has announced it can no longer accept Ukrainian refugees. It has taken in 270,000 of them. This is going to be a major problem going forward. One of the things Putin is trying to do in Ukraine is to recreate the dynamic he created with the Syrian refugee crisis. Overwhelm the EU countries welcoming the refugees in order to inflame nativism and nationalism that the extremist hard right neo-fascist parties and movements he funds in the EU states can then leverage to come to power and fragment the EU and NATO.
Now it's official – Kommersant confirmed Gavrilov resigned (his detention is yet to be confirmed).
Putin humiliated the director of the SVR, placed two FSB generals under house arrest and had Zolotov, the National Guard, to fire his deputy — in the three weeks of the war. https://t.co/jG2c1KaBWR— Andrei Soldatov (@AndreiSoldatov) March 17, 2022
Here’s the rest of Grozev’s thread that Soldatov is tweet quoting. Images and links in Grozev’s thread:
- The reason for the detention is unclear: per one source he was detained by FSB’s military counter-intelligence department over “leaks of military info that led to loss of life”, while two others say it was “wasteful squandering of fuel”, ahem.
- While it’s hard to guess what exactly the purge/reshuffling at the top of the siloviks will result in, one thing is clear: it’s doubtless that Putin recognizes the deep s**t this operation is in. I.e. it’s so bad that he changes horses in midstream – a big no-no during war.
- “Totally untrue, I just spoke with the general”, posts senior United Russia official Alexander Hinshsten. t.me/Hinshtein/1953.
- ..and now Russian media report he’s been fired.
Your daily bayraktar:
Okay, so here is a better quality video of the new Bayraktar strike. pic.twitter.com/gbWnwNX62D
— Arslon Xudosi ?? (@Arslon_Xudosi) March 10, 2022
Finally, I would not expect a positive, let alone a happy, outcome for Brittney Griner. The Russians arrested her back in January, three weeks before it was widely reported on in the US as the reinvasion was beginning. If US embassy officials in Russia have had no access to her since her arrest in January, she could be anywhere and in any condition. Since she’s LGBTQ+, and given Putin, his government’s, and Russian’s attitudes to LGBTQ+ people, I expect her treatment has been especially rough.
NEW on Brittney Griner: US State Dept. official tells me consular officials have not had access to her: "We insist the Russian government provide consular access to all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia, including those in pre-trial detention, as Brittney Griner is."
— T.J. Quinn ☘️ (@TJQuinnESPN) March 17, 2022
Open thread!
Grumpy Old Railroader
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
debbie
And what about the American on the space station?
RepubAnon
Firing and imprisoning (or executing) generals who fail in their missions dates back to Stalin.
Tom Levenson
Thanks again, Adam.
my take on Nichols argument: he’s creating a moral imperative to do everything short of direct NATO-on-RU confrontation. E.G: Transfer of drone munitions and a space from which to control them off Ukraine territory and off NATO’s.
But what do I know? I’m just a pj-clad blogger/pointy-headed eastern elite cadre.
Kalakal
The only surprise in that poll is that it wasn’t 100% in favour. If I were in Russia being opinion polled the last thing I’d do is express my opinions.
CaseyL
Adam, I’ve seen more than one Twitter thread saying the war is going so badly for Russia that Ukraine might be in a position to actually win it within the next few weeks; that the latest shipment of weapons from the US and Europe will be devastating to Russian forces.
Do you have any read on that?
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
He’s coming back to Earth with the Russian ‘nauts. Once on terra firma, though, I don’t know.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60755328.amp
Dan B
@debbie: Word is the astronaut would land in Kazakstan which is not part of Russia. I don’t know how that will shake out in reality. Putin could demand his extradition to Moscow.
jackmac
Adam, thank you for this and all of your updates. They are comprehensive and informative and help so many of us get better grasp on what’s happening.
BlueGuitarist
Thanks Adam!
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne: @Dan B:
Thanks.
PJ
A note on the refugees – 270,000, the number the Czech Republic is capping what they will receive, is 2.5% of their population (10,700,000). According to the BBC, Slovakia has taken 220,000, which is more like 5% of their population. Poland has taken in close to 2,000,000, which is also about 5% of their population. That’s a lot for any system to handle in a short period of time. European countries further west, and the US and Canada, will need to step up and help out. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60555472
Dan B
@debbie: You’re welcome and thank you for posting this story about these guys at Harvard who saw a need and created a solution.
Dan B
Duplicate…
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie: @Dan B:
What Dan B said.
Kalakal
Here’s the look on the bright side bit
The Russian army is taking an tremendous lot of damage from the light weapon systems NATO has flooded Ukraine with. The whole point about armored/mechanised units is their mobility, instead (in the north at least) they’re effectively paralysed, strung out on a set of limbs, desperately maintaining their supply lines, suffering death by a 1,000 cuts. There’s a distinct possibility of a large scale rout.
As heavier/longer range systems SA-300s, Switchblade 600s etc Russian rear echelon units will also come under increased attack, I don’t know how practiced Russian artillery is at shoot’n’scoot but I think we’re about to find out and an already hostile air environment becomes more lethal to them every day.
As for the reports of Russian troopships heading from the East it’s an eerie remake of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War in reverse where poor Admiral Rozhestvensky’s doomed fleet sailing over 20,000 miles from the Baltic to be annihilated at the Battle of Tsushima, between Korea and Southern Japan
General Ducrot’s comment at Sedan could be said by many a Russian soldier today .
Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés. (We are in a chamber pot, and we’re going to be shit on)
O. Felix Culpa
@PJ: A German friend traveled through the main train station in Warsaw last week. She said it was packed with Ukrainian refugees, everywhere. She’d never seen anything like it.
An increasing number of Ukrainians are going to Germany too, primarily through Berlin. I’ve seen scenes of them being welcomed at the train station, but space is limited in Berlin and volunteer organizations are scrambling to find places for the refugees throughout the country.
Dan B
@BlueGuitarist: What you said! Adams updates are brilliantly written and I have difficulty doing anything else when they are posted. They burn off some of the fog.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kalakal: Also the scoot part of shoot-and-scoot is hard when you don’t have (enough) fuel.
Rachel Bakes
Thank you Adam, for these updates. Can’t say they make me feel better but I am a Hell of a lot better informed for them every day.
sanjeevs
Russia edges closer to averting default as JPMorgan processes bond payment | Financial Times (ft.com)
Not worried about NATO. Not worried about nuclear armageddon. But the bond market….
YY_Sima Qian
I don’t really consume Chinese state media, but even the 2nd tier content is starting to shift. It used to be that the pro-Russian takes on social media & blogosphere were a clear majority, & the posts about inefficacies of Russian military a firm minority (though not censored). Comments used to be overwhelmingly pro-Russian. Now, the posts & analysis critical of Russia’s invasion & the performance of its military is only a slight minority, & comments derisive of Russian military performance & aggression is running close to even w/ the pro-Russian ones.
As I said before, I expect Chinese official messaging & popular sentiments to continue to have a strong anti-western (or rather, anti-US) lean, because they all firmly believe that great power competition w/ the US is by far the greatest geopolitical challenge China faces, & they are responding accordingly. Until that logic changes, the behavior will not.
On the other hand, if Beijing is preparing to distance from Putin, then it has to start prepare the population by making the Putin regime less sympathetic. Decade plus of propaganda has been pounding the message that China & Russia are comrades facing down US-led pressure, that they are simpatico on many issues. While the CCP regime is certainly capable to changing direction, since the alignment w/ Russia was driven by a confluence of interests, when the interests diverge the partnership will change. However, a lot of people in China may get whiplash, especially after the Xi-Putin bonhomie before the Winter Games. So, expect less sympathetic coverage & messaging wrt Russian actions going forward, but continued criticism of the US at every opportunity.
sanjeevs
@Kalakal: I see this like WW2 on steroids. The Germans had a larger army but smaller economy than the allies. Once the Germans were stopped at Stalingrad, defeat was almost inevitable.
After 3 weeks the Russians have been stopped already. The West can ramp up the arming of Ukraine hugely, Ukraine is not short of manpower and the Russian economy is crippled.
Bill Arnold
@Sister Golden Bear:
Also, it may not help much against drones.
Ruviana
Several days ago Ezra Klein (I know, I know) interviewed Timothy Snyder on his podcast. It tracks quite well with what’s here though he approaches it from the perspective of Putin’s understanding of Russian history. It’s worth a listen if you’re interested.
terry chay
@Kalakal: From a report I read it seems that their artillery is versed in moving after firing and are doing that right now. Artillery people have been saying that counter battery needs to be done immediately in any case, so I don’t think this changes anything. Really it sounds like the place to use long range artillery and missles are on the captured airports, anyway (there were two different airports struck this way).
Besides, it sounds like that doesn’t really impact Switchblades one bit.
hotshoe
So, the USA should be gearing up to accept more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, based on percentage of our population.
Problem 1) if I were Ukrainian I might prefer to sleep under a bridge rather than an ocean away from possible return to home.
Doubly so if I were a parent with small children whose remaining family had stayed to fight.
And having refugees leave Europe is an admission that Russia will succeed in annexing/destroying Ukraine, and that they will never have a home to return to.
Problem 2) even though Ukrainian folk (mostly) have white skin, and all of them speak better English than I do Ukrainian, you know how bitterly some USAians would resent being asked to help any kind of refugee. They’re not brown, they don’t speak Spanish, but “They’re coming to take our jobs”. Or whatever shit will be sent directly from the Russian propaganda machine into Texan ears.
Problem 3) getting the US government to help in some way. Well, that’s just about an unsolvable problem right there.
Is there any point to asking the USA to help, to do its fair share in this situation?
Winston
Ukraine and California+Nevada are similar in population and area. FYI.
marcopolo
Haven’t seen this mentioned but the latest press release from our DoD says there’s been no Russian shelling on Ukraine seen in the last 24 hours.
The press release adds the DoD is sure they have plenty of stuff to use left so don’t think perhaps they are running out.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about this stuff to know if this is just an operational pause or something else, just passing the info along.
mainmati
Just following Adam’s comments on the “Russo-Sino Axis” that is looking more than a little wobbly. Apparently, the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN gave an excellent anti-invasion and anti-colonial speech that may have gotten the Chinese a bit concerned. Their “Belt and Roads” initiative is a long-term infrastructure-led attempt to build friendly country alliances, especially in Africa but also South America. This is why they are now emphasizing Ukrainian national sovereignty and delicately trying to avoid being seen supporting genocide of the Ukrainian people. And, as Adam noted, sloppy and chaos is not what the cold-eyed Xi likes at all.
Reinforcing this shift have been a couple of Chinese foreign policy articles that essentially have argued for China dissociating itself from any support to Putin. These would never see publication without the highest PRC government approval.
West of the Rockies
Add my voice to the chorus expressing gratitude to Adam for these super-informative posts, as well as John, Watergirl, Anne, Betty, Tom, and everyone else (The Professor and Maryanne) for all their tremendous contributions.
Mallard Filmore
@SiubhanDuinne:
The astronauts land in Kazakhstan, not Russia. And —
“Kazakhstan does not support Russia or Ukraine — RT EN”
https://detv.us/2022/03/03/kazakhstan-does-not-support-russia-or-ukraine-rt-en/
Bill Arnold
@marcopolo:
That read as an absence of naval shelling. (It was ambiguous though.)
Kalakal
@sanjeevs: I can see your point. Despite all their successes the Germans were really punching air in Russia through 1942, moving deeper and deeper into a set of nooses at Stalingrad and trapped in a pulversing battle of attrition at Rzhev. On the surface in1942 they were looking good, sweeping all the way to the Volga in Russia threatening Cairo in Egypt, and inflicting enormous losses on shipping in tha Atlantic. By the spring of 43 they’d lost an entire army at Stalingrad and were scrambling backwards,in Egypt the El Alamein battles led to a total collapse and an 1,800 mile retreat to Tunisia and the Atlantic had turned into a death trap for U Boats.
The Russian military, in under 3 weeks, finds itself in a horrible position. Like the Germans after 1942 they’re flailing around, breaking things and murdering civilians. What they’re not doing is winning a war and their enemy is getting more and more sophisticated and effective means to attack them
It’s a horrible, murderous mess and an awful lot of death, pain and misery is being inflicted on a lot of people thanks to the megalomania of a twisted, bitter man and his enablers
gene108
@PJ:
The U.S., because of the oceans that separates us from the eastern hemisphere, has not ever really experienced a flood of refugees.
The U.S. will be very choosy about which Ukrainian refugees we let in. At best it’d be a lottery system with too few visas to make a big difference, and at worst it’d involve “extreme vetting”.
Also, 5% of our 330 million population would be 16.5 million people. The U.S. would never accept such a large wave of refugees.
Hob
I don’t understand the parts of this post that, almost immediately after mentioning why it’d be insane for any Russians opposing the war to speak honestly to pollsters, go on to say we should take the polls seriously as even a general measure of Russian public opinion. What?
Martin
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Yeah, it seems to me that’s the proper national security stance. Putin wants NATO in, then stay out.
But that’s a hard position to live with. It might be the correct long term strategic plan for the US and NATO, but its a plan being paid for by Ukrainian lives, and Ukraine might remember that.
But at the same time, I’m not looking forward to a new North Korea with ballistic missile subs, and a few thousand warheads at their disposal. That turns into a very big can getting kicked down the road.
Gvg
How can Russia and or Putin think they can win against NATO when they are loosing to Ukraine? I get that it would unite them, but they aren’t losing JUST because of morale.
I agree we should not interrupt him making the current mistake, but it sounds like he is trying to make another one on top of it.
it would probably be easier to deal with a Putin less Russia afterwards if it was Ukraine that defeated him, than if it was NATO, because it would shake the populations false assumptions more and make them think. I really don’t want to occupy Russia and if it attacked NATO that is what victory would involve?
I think it’s quite possible that a propagandized population might not understand what nuclear war is at all.That is a problem which needs to be addressed long term. Radio free Europe needs to be modernized and aimed at overall education about a lot of things.
Morzer
@Hob:
I think the point is that we can’t assume that there’s anything like a majority against the war in Russia. Yes, the polls/surveys are not reliable in terms of their absolute numbers, but all the signs are that they somewhat accurately represent the majority opinion in Russia at this point.
hotshoe
@gene108:
Oops I misplaced a decimal when I said it would be more than 1.5 million.
But as you say, there won’t be more than a trickle into the USA anyway.
Morzer
@Gvg: “We had to nuke the village to save the village.”
Medicine Man
Whatever the accuracy of those polls, I think Adam is right that we shouldn’t be holding our breaths for a palace coup or somesuch to settle things. I find it easy enough to believe a solid majority of Russian citizens are solidly convinced of their own righteousness – through some combination of propaganda and cultural resentments.
Martin
@sanjeevs: It’s because the US allowed Russia to pay with dollars. The US need not continue to allow that. And this bond payment was pretty small. The next one is 20x larger.
But why worry about the bond market? With 12 trillion in negative yield bonds, seems like there’s more than enough capital out there willing to lend. So much so that we’re allowing the equivalent of the US GDP to sit around doing no work. And with a sizable economy taken off the table, there’s going to be a lot of capital projects needed to backfill their role in the world. Germany wants to get off of Russian gas? That’s a lot of wind turbine financing going to be needed.
PJ
@gene108: That was one of my points – that accepting 5% of your population in refugees is not a sustainable proposition
ETA: But every country in the Northern Hemisphere should be developing plans to accomodate even larger amounts of refugees over the rest of this century. Assuming we escape a nuclear winter now, we may be looking at a billion or more people moving from the global South to the global North.
Kalakal
@terry chay:
Thanks for that, useful to know. I think that ability may be seriously degraded by their dire fuel situation. Pretty soon they may reach the point of ‘do we move the artlllery or do we move the tanks?’ And as we both agree, switchblades render such measures moot.
gene108
@hotshoe:
It costs money to resettle refugees. Congressional Republicans will never allow it to pass.
Second, the U.S. has never done its fair share in any post-WW2 refugee crisis, including the post-2003 Iraq refugee crisis we created.
As a (supposed) land of immigrants, the U.S. has become very stingy in allowing people to freely immigrate here.
marcopolo
@Bill Arnold: dunno, though I admit the idea that no shelling was happening seemed like something that would get more coverage so maybe that’s right.
Martin
@Kalakal: I don’t think shoot and scoot matters all that much here. Most of the 1500 vehicle losses the Russians have taken appear to have been to portable rockets. I mean, if you let a Ukrainian soldier with a big fucking rocket sitting on his shoulder within 30m of your tank, not a lot of good ‘scooting’ is going to do for you. And I’ve seen a lot of videos of just that.
And another thanks for Adam’s work here. What a bunch of treasures we have.
Lums Better Half
Another issue would be how would a million refugees get to the US? Walk? Take a bus?
Old Man Shadow
If a Russian troop crosses into Poland or the Baltics and isn’t defecting, it’s game over for Russia. If a nuke launches, it’s game over for all of us.
marcopolo
@PJ: yeah, climate change enforced migration in the next 10, 25, 50 years is going to dwarf all previous mass population movements.
PJ
@Lums Better Half: I don’t think even a small fraction of the total number of refugees are going to make it to the US. But this is something the West needs to have a discussion about now, because the longer this war goes on, the more Europe is going to be overwhelmed.
gene108
@PJ:
I know it’s not sustainable suddenly have your population increase by 5% because of refugee influx.
I just put it in context of the U.S. population, and how the U.S. never really has had to deal with this sort of refugee crisis at its borders.
PJ
@marcopolo: It will be the biggest global migration since 1492 and its aftermath, and there is no reason to think it will not have similar cultural, economic, and political repercussions.
RaflW
@PJ: I heard the other day that Temporary Protected Status only applies to Ukrainians already in the US. Refugees who arrive after Putin reinvaded don’t (for now, anyway) get that automatically.
We should be welcoming 1,000,000 Ukrainians, if they want to come here. (or whatever upward number is necessary)
I of course am a flaming liberal, and my mom was an immigrant, so I think we should have quite sizable and flexibly accommodating immigration policies.
Winston
@Lums Better Half: I don’t know but if a NATO country would find it cheaper to fly them to Florida, I have room for a family.(no pets)
PJ
@gene108: But we will need to deal with even bigger refugee crises in the future. We should be dealing with, and planning for this now. I know Republicans will do their best to stop anything dealing with immigration, but this is not going to be a temporary problem, it’s going to be a permanent condition and the sooner we figure out how to manage it, the better off every one will be.
Aussie sheila
Thank you Adam for your incredibly informative posts. Much better than the oz news sources, shame on them.
I am however anxious about all the official US hullabaloo made of the weapons systems being sent to UR. Why does the Biden admin publish lists? Wouldn’t it be better to say nothing and let the stuff do the talking? Doesn’t such publicity forewarn the Russian military?
I am beginning to think that the UR army may be able to defeat the Russians, simply by fighting them to a stalemate. Once that happens, an invader has nowhere to go but home or desertion. Fingers crossed.
marcopolo
Not sure if we should totally base our guesses of many Ukrainian refugees wind up here in the US on say Iraq or or Afghanistan or Syria. The average Ukrainian looks a lot more like an average American than a refugee from those other places and we being who we are in the US you know shit like skin color plays a large role in how open armed we’ll be.
PJ
@Winston: I think Cole has a couple of free rooms, too.
Kalakal
@Martin: You’re right about the tanks but I wasn’t referring to the poor sods in the T72s and BMPs, shoot’n’scoot is an artillery thing to escape counter battery fire. The artillery should be miles to the rear of the poor conscripts getting immolated in the AFVs by Ukranian anti tank rockets and hence out of range of those rockets.
Martin
@Gvg: Well, there’s two scenarios:
Politics is an important aspect of war. That’s especially true at the end. Putin would much rather lose to NATO than to Ukraine, and we’d much rather he lose to Ukraine than to NATO. How many Ukrainian civilians are we willing to sacrifice to get that outcome? Putin is trying to find that out.
Brachiator
I understand this. A war with NATO would let Putin appeal to loyalty and to nationalism.
But what will make him reverse or halt his invasion? He seems grimly determined not just to occupy parts of Ukraine, but also to force Ukrainians out and to replace them with Russians.
And I understand that the Ukrainians will fight on. I wish that there was something that might entice Putin to abandon his vile dream for something everyone could live with.
Lums Better Half
@Winston: I agree; it’s just that we are talking many thousands of flights, which would be a very massive effort by itself.
Kalakal
@Martin: Bleak but accurate.
Martin
@gene108: I think that’s the wrong angle. There’s actually a decent chance you could get the GOP to accept Ukrainian refugees if you sell it as a way for the US to increase its stock of white Christians, which is such a glaring problem for the GOP that Fox News is out there telling people to step up the baby-making.
They don’t care a bit about the cost of resettling them. But they’re convinced that white christians makes more Republicans. They only oppose refugees now because the ones showing up haven’t been white Christians.
oldster
Thanks for the write-up, Adam — super valuable as always.
Did a digit get lost here in the cut and paste?
“…I’m highlighting it because it reflects the agitprop I started tonight’s update with.
[box]
6.6% of Russians tolerate and support the potential assault….”
The original source says 86.6%, I believe.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I don’t see that Putin wants to lose to anyone.
Also, there are Russians bravely showing that they have not bought into Putin’s nationalist yearning. Does this provide an opportunity for someone to topple Putin?
Omnes Omnibus
I saw a thread today on MilTwitter that made an interesting point. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link so I will summarize. What we are seeing Ukraine is the result of the Ukrainian getting their targeting down to 8 digit coordinates over the past eight years. They have every crossroads, every bridge, every place that could be used as an ambush, targeted. They have set up observation posts and pre-positioned weapons and ammo. IOW unlike most armies that train for general things, they have been training for exactly this thing.
gene108
@PJ:
I am in agreement with you. I’m not sure how we plan, with Republicans opposed to all forms of immigration.
It’s another “what would you like for dinner dear? I’m in the mood for Italian”.
Dear’s Reply: “I want tire rims and anthrax”.
Calouste
@Lums Better Half: The UK government is giving people 350 pounds a month if they host Ukrainian refugees. I think that’s for a family, not per person. It costs at least that much to fly someone to the US, so money would go quite a bit further if they stay in Europe. It would be good for the refugees if they have family in the US or even just Ukrainian communities that they could go to. Not that I think they should carry all the burden, just that it would be better for the refugees if they end up in an environment that has some elements that are familiar to them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Shoot and scoot is an artillery tactic. Those guns aren’t within 30m of Ukrainians with missiles.
Mallard Filmore
@Omnes Omnibus:
And having SFB in the White House gave them 4 to 5 years to prepare before Putin invaded.
Martin
@Lums Better Half: Well, we managed to evacuate 140,000 Vietnamese and resettle them to the US. It’s not that hard to do if we have the will.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mallard Filmore: They have been doing it since 2014.
hotshoe
@Lums Better Half:
Consider seizing and repurposing the oligarchs’ mega yachts for transport.
Nah, not a real solution, but wouldn’t it be a great thumb in the eye of those Russian assholes!
Even just one cruise’s worth of emigrants …
cain
@Grumpy Old Railroader:
“Please proceed, Governor.”
PJ
@Martin: If.
It will be a hard lift, given Republicans. The best case scenario is if the Russian Army collapses, the war is over in a couple of months, and refugees can start returning in, I don’t know, six months or so. If we can sell the immigration as just a temporary thing, maybe it would work.
gene108
@Martin:
Republicans do not approve of all white Christians. There are plenty of non-conservative non-crazy non-fundamentalist white Christians in this country, and Republicans do not accept them at all.
I don’t know if Ukrainians can come off as right-wing religious Christian fundamentalists, because I get the feeling to American conservatives they would come across as “cosmopolitan Europeans”, who’d import radical communist beliefs like efficient passenger rail service and socialized medicine into this country.
Look at the average Ukrainian, they are all basically bilingual and many speak English and other languages on top of Ukrainian and Russian. Speaking more than one language is the sort of cosmopolitan thing that conservatives resent.
Also, a large portion of the Republican Party, led by Stephen Miller, are opposed to all immigration into the U.S., whether it’s legal or illegal. They also oppose birthright citizenship.
PJ
@hotshoe: When people talk about, “Well, where will the reparations to the Ukrainians come from if the Russian economy is in shambles”, I think about the oligarchs’ billions sitting in accounts in the US, the EU, Switzerland, offshore . . .
https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/russians-have-up-to-213-billion-stashed-in-swiss-banks/
Brachiator
@gene108:
I agree with your sentiment that anti immigrant sentiment could bite the GOP in the ass. We already see that the Tory government in the UK is actually dragging its feet with respect to refugees. The British people are warmer, but not enthusiastic.
Sister Golden Bear
@Morzer: Also, even if people don’t believe the answers they’re giving to the surveys, it’s a window into what they believe they need to say publicly. And if you’re not sure if anyone else also secretly opposes the war, it’s hard to be the one who sticks their neck out first. Whether it’s a street protest or a palace coup.
cain
@Martin: it should be easier to since they are white and likely conservative as well. The GOP would be happy to have future GOP voters.
@Martin:
coin operated
+1 on Adam’s excellent posts.
Also, +1 on Tom Nichols excellent article. Putin could eradicate his entire military in a skirmish with NATO and come out the victor in the minds of the brainwashed Russian public.
Gotta say…I *do* love that every country in NATO is sending advanced weapons systems and they’re not being the least bit clandestine about it. I’ve seen reporting that the Russians in the north and east of Ukraine are scared shitless of the drones. Send more…and let the whole world know they’re coming.
Kelly
Yes that is very interesting. I have no military experience but the longer I think about this the more of an advantage it seems.
J R in WV
If Putinski loses to NATO he stands in The Hague as a war criminal, sentenced to (a short) life in prison. If he loses to Ukraine, same, just a different prison, in Siberia!
I hope Ukraine beats RU like a drum, which seems likely with modern weapons and high morale! As a long time pacifist it feels strange to be rooting for a side in a war, but Ukraine was attacked for no reason
ETA: Thanks, Adam, for keeping us updated on this horrible situation!
Martin
@Kalakal: Oh, but it’s not. 35 self propelled artillery units taken out so far. Some by drones, a lot by NLAWs and whatnot. A bunch more captured or abandoned. All told about 10% of what they committed here.
Ukraine isn’t having much trouble reaching a fair bit of that artillery.
Calouste
@Omnes Omnibus: Somewhat related, and something you know more about than me, but I have the feeling that the Russians are fighting the previous war, where the country you’re invading didn’t have drones and webcams and traffic cameras and people with cell phones everywhere, that can report on every movement with a very accurate location miles behind the actual frontline. I assume that’s how Ukraine got those four Russian generals. They thought they were in a location where they were hard to spot, turns out that was no longer true.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Any sources for the numbers of self-propelled artillery taken out by NLAWs?
Brachiator
@coin operated:
The Russian people might support a war against NATO, but aren’t there plenty of signs that Putin has to stifle dissent and lie about what is happening in Ukraine?
I am not sure that a brainwashed populace is backing his play.
Martin
@Brachiator: Put doesn’t want to lose to anyone. That’s probably out of his hands at this point though. Sure, he’s keeping his foot in it, moving troops from Georgia, etc. He’s not given up on the win here, and it’s unclear if he’s getting any better intel from his guys on how the war is going than he got before the war started, but his pivot to blaming an internal 5th column sure looks like he’s gearing up for a loss. But there are different kinds of losses.
Kalakal
@Martin: That’s not the stuff pulverising Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Mariupol and the other southern cities. The destroyed and captured stuff is,from the videos, in large part organic artillery for the armored columns stuck on the road(s) to Kyiv. The Russians seemed to have expected a victory parade and the forward units deployed in hopelessly vulnerable formations and are got, and are getting shredded. The stuff further to the east and south has switched to grind mode and that artillery will be well back, well guarded and properly deployed. A fair amount of it is in Russia
Jay
@Martin:
a bunch of the RU mobile artillery, ( GRADs, Nona’s, Etc) along with a bunch of mobile air defences, have either been taken out on the road, captured or destroyed when abandoned.
UA and TTD units are raiding the roads. Saw a Nona, taken out the other day. The “raiders” had a camera drone, a silver SUV, and an NLAW, or two. They passed the Nona, on the main toad, ( that was driving alone), pulled into a side road, smoked it when it passed by.
The UA has been very coy with Bactayar footage.
A lot of what is hitting Mariupol, is intermediate range rockets, and cruise missiles from inside Russia.
Aussie sheila
@Martin:
But as soon as the UKR forces stop the Russian advance, Putin has lost. Once an army can’t advance, they are either immobile(easier to pick off at their opponent’s leisure), or they retreat, ie go back home.
I am more optimistic about the chances of the Ukrainian people now than I was at beginning of this.
Jay
@Calouste:
RU command secure comms rely on cell service. It masks and encrypts the comms, while masking the phones position. The RU forces have been taking out the 4G cell towers to deny the Ukrainians rear area communications, The result has been that they have to use “plain text/open language” and their positions can be triangulated in seconds with a laptop by anyone tapped into the metadata on the older cell services.
Oops.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oryx tracks and confirms losses, but does not document the how they were killed, abandoned or broke down. They do track what get’s “captured”,
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1
( finally spelled it right).
Jay
@Aussie sheila:
RU in several places, have changed their tactics, ( eg, Mariupol), bypass and surround the “hard nuts”, keep pushing to link up with RU Forces on a different axis, and pound/starve the “hard nuts” into submission with indiscriminate/targeted terror strikes with airstrikes, cruise missiles, intermediate missiles and long range artillery, often over the borders in Russia and Belarus.
Where they failed in their air assault/thunder runs, they are now fanning out from the columns, trying to set up HQ’s, ammo dumps, Field Hospitals, fuel dumps, artillery and air assault bases, laggers, etc, for a grinding war of attrition.
It’s not close to having been decided yet.
Kent
Regarding these 40,000 so-called Syrian fighters.
Can anyone with military experience weigh in on how absurd that is? Are they trained in any of the tactics and equipment that they will encounter in Ukraine? Can they speak Russian and communicate with other air and ground forces? Can they operate in cohesive units? Can they do anything at all in an modern, conventional military operation? Can they act as replacements for Russian casualties in Russian units? What are they actually supposed to be doing?
It all sounds rather Soviet-esque and sort of like sticking rifles in the hands of raw recruits and pushing them into battle in Stalingrad where they mostly got ground up. It wasn’t the cannon fodder troops facing the Germans on the banks of the Volga that won Stalingrad. It was the 1 million fresh troops spread across various Soviet armies that conducted the encirclement of the Germans 50 miles away from Stalingrad during Operation Uranus by mostly rolling over poorly trained/equipped Romanian armies guarding the German flanks.
Sebastian
Thank you for carrying the torch, Adam. This is excellent as always.
Regarding the refugee situation, this is a little bit different than other crises as the refugees are almost exclusively women and children. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to organize a “Summer in America” for the kids and their mothers.
Would be a massive public relations win, hundreds and thousands of planes bringing (white) children and women to America, temporarily, while their fathers and husbands are fighting the Russians.
Sebastian
@Medicine Man:
This will be decided like Afghanistan: by the number of funerals and grieving mothers.
Jay
@Kent:
they are not SAAR regulars, being recruited. They are pro-Assad and former anti-Assad militia members.
They are experienced with Soviet/Russian weaponry, are good at urban fighting tactics, raiding and quelling local dissent with brutality.
I doubt that there are 40,000 or will even be close to 10,000.
Combined arms in an open or urban environment, not so much.
Word is is that Kadyrov and his Chechens aren’t on the front line any more, (after their previous decimation),
they are filling the former NKVD role of executing deserters, those RUF who retreat, and terrorizing the Ukrainian civillians populations in occupied Ukraine.
Noskilz
@Aussie sheila: Since the administration’s goal is to get Russia to leave Ukraine, I think publishing what they are sending is meant to both address complaints that nothing is being done and to intimidate Russian forces with the fresh hell headed their way if they stay. It has to be at least a bit disheartening to be a Russian official or officer and see the laundry list of lethal aid that is on its way – and since every major news service will pick the story up, the word will get around one way or another.
Geminid
@Jay: Three days ago the Times of Israel had an article about the purported 40,000 potential Syrian recruits. It sounds like the motivation is poverty; these men are desperate to leave a country whose economy has been shattered by years of civil war.
Russians will have to carefully watch any Syrians they bring in. It sounds like they’ll be prone to desert. One prospective recruit was quoted: “We are tired of the hunger…I will leave Syria and never come back. After Ukraine, I will go to Europe.”
Jay
@Geminid:
most of the “Syrian Volunteers” recruited have 11 years of experience of switching sides based on ammo, weapons, a few bucks and food.
Personally, I think, like RUF use of “Chechens”, it’s more “psyche” than military effectiveness.
Wagner doesn’t have a great record of actual combat effectiveness, except against civilians.
Dirk Reinecke
@Omnes Omnibus: They aren’t supposed to be within 30 miles, but one of the big problems with the BTG is that they don’t have enough manpower, and as a result cannot really establish firm zones of control. So the front lines are really interpenetrated.
bjacques
Thanks, Adam, et. al. for this amazing daily roundup. Two questions: one serious, the other facetious.
How secure is Lukashenka against a palace coup motivated by the likelihood of Putin demanding Belarus also send its sons into the meat grinder? The possibility of Belarus changing sides attacking Russian missile batteries from the rear must be occurring to Russian planners, even if they won’t say it out loud.
If Ukraine were to declare they won’t join NATO, why not turn around and join a military alliance with Finland, Sweden, Moldova, Georgia, the provisional governments of Belarus and Kazakhstan and—why not?—Mongolia, plus whoever they could peel off from the CSTO. If Russia were worried about being encircled *before*…
Call it something like PUTO, because if you’re going to troll Vova, go large or go home.
”What? We only said we wouldn’t join *NATO*!”
Jay
coin operated
@Brachiator:
Has there been any time during Putin’s reign when stifling dissent wan’t practiced on a regular basis? There’s a reason Russians are afraid of windows in tall buildings.
Morzer
@julianborger
Antonius
Thanks Adam. Could you comment on the juxtaposition of “don’t throw Putin a lifeline” and “almost everyone in Russian thinks this a glorious war and that seems unlikely to change” ? Is the daylight you see there that Russians are afraid to take any antigovernmental opinions and therefore there IS a chance Putin will be deposed?
Barney
FWIW, the translation of the quoted Chinese tweet is:
“CCTV suddenly stopped being the sounding board for the Russian army, and became the sounding box for the Ukrainian army, and found that Russia was about to end? Is Sino-Russian relationship as strong as a rock made in China? Is Zhao Zhanlang going to change his denunciation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?”
Gvg
One comment about getting the GOP to accept Ukrainian immigration because they are “white christian leaning conservative”, keep in mind there are a fair number of Jewish Ukrainians, and well enough accepted that the President isn’t the only one in government. I think the republicans might not see it the way you are assuming. I think there are some other religions too, but I am not sure.
p.a.
Can/is the USG, EU, I hesitate to say NATO, put/ting pressure on Belarus to split them off from aiding Russia? Actual neutrality, as I assume a pro-Ukraine position is a bridge too far.
PSpain
2 things.
On Russian public opinion 1420 on Youtube is very intresting to see how Russians deflect answering questions now and it was not that way eveb a year ago. Very Soviet responses and to me show those support numbers are not reflective of the situation. At least with Urban dwellers.
Here in Spain we are getting many Russians and Ukrainians showing up every day. My Real Estate agency gets about 5 Ukrainian families a day who came here on their own. On the public side a youth hostel up the street is already full with Ukrainian refugees and the Government is working on more temporary housing in hotels and resorts.
Even here far from the conflict it is difficult to house so many people quickly. I cant imagine how tough it is in Poland.
debbie
@Martin:
There’s a third scenario: Putin is disappeared. There is no way he can be permitted to resume his life before the war because you know he will be back at some point, angrier, meaner, and better armed. This has been building up in Putin since the Soviet Union fell apart. He won’t be retiring to tend to his garden.
debbie
@gene108:
Is the thinking all Ukrainians will want to make the U.S. their new, permanent home? I’m not seeing that at all. You don’t fight for your country like Ukrainians are fighting, and then just up and relocate somewhere else. When it’s safe, they’ll return to Ukraine. Why we wouldn’t give people shelter and why we would rather bitch about their presence is about as un-American as a person can get.
Barry
@Kalakal: “The artillery should be miles to the rear of the poor conscripts getting immolated in the AFVs by Ukranian anti tank rockets and hence out of range of those rockets.”
If they are strung put on the roads, ‘rear’ doesn’t mean much.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: The US Nazi right is actually rallying in support of the Azov Battalion (some with fantasies of overthrowing Zelensky for a fascist Ukrainian government after they’re done with Putin). So there are ethnonationalist-right turds on both sides here.
It kind of reminds me of the way that US neo-Confederates were passionately anti-Nazi, though you’d expect the opposite.
prostratedragon
The Russians are not the first to use their wealth to buy indulgences by way of sports and the arts. Consider for a moment Carnegie Hall and the David H. Koch Theater. However …
“How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London”, The New Yorker:
The better to exploit the legal systems and other aspects of the target society.
“It’s Artwashing,” The Guardian:
The sanctions should make this kind of propaganda harder to sustain.
Kalakal
@Barry: The stuff pulverising Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Mariupol and the other southern cities is not strung out on the roads That stuff, further to the east and south has switched to grind mode and that artillery will be well back, well guarded and properly deployed. A fair amount of it is in Russia
Sloane Ranger
OFCOM has withdrawn RT’s licence to broadcast in the UK, saying it’s not a fit and proper provider and citing their reporting of the invasion as evidence. It will be interesting to see how this plays out long term now that their viewers/listeners won’t be getting their daily fascist fix.
lowtechcyclist
A question I came in too late to ask yesterday, Adam:
Yesterday you seemed to be arguing that the Russians continuing to fight, bring up reinforcements, commit war crimes, etc. while negotiating was evidence that they were negotiating in bad faith.
I don’t get it! Is there some International Code of Honor with respect to war negotiations that you don’t keep up your normal conduct of the war while negotiating for real? I mean, sure, they were negotiating in bad faith (this is my surprised face), but I don’t see how the Russians’ military conduct while negotiations were taking place adds the least iota of proof to that.
p.a.
@prostratedragon: a twist on “we will sell them the rope that will hang us.”
coozledad
I’ve noticed a distinct uptick in the automatic weapons play among our neighbors here in rural Person County (Semora). I wonder how many of these fucks could be working directly with Russian oversight, or at least with the assistance of the dark web. It wouldn’t take much money or effort to whip these yahoos into a little Manson Family size operation. And I think that’s what any operation here would look like: shooting up a few liberal/ atheist households on the assumption that local law enforcement is on the side of the righteous.
zhena gogolia
@Morzer: It’s a dictatorship with no freedom of media. So big surprise.
zhena gogolia
Russia is not going to have a revolution. Just forget about it. They HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE ENTIRE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Their last revolution went very badly, and they know it.
Geminid
The JCPOA negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program were “paused” some days ago when Russia raised objections to western sanctions on them. A way past this roadblock may have been found. An article in Wednesday’s Washington Post headlined “Russian comments raise hopes for return to stalled nuclear talks” lead with:
A State Department spokesman said that “nothing additional” had been offered to Russia but that it was “logical…that we would not sanction Russia’s participation in nuclear projects that are part of a full return to the JCPOA.”
There are still unresolved differences between Iranian and U.S. negotiators, the main one apparently being the U.S.’s listing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.
topclimber
@marcopolo: Do you think Tucker might welcome help in combating white replacement shortfall in Blanquita America?
ETA: What Martin said at 1AM.
Matt McIrvin
@PJ: Simultaneously there are people worrying about the First World running out of people. Well, there they are. They’re… just mostly not white.
Most of the few remaining countries that still have exploding populations are in Africa. So the world population is going to be blacker going forward, and the obvious way for the Western world to sustain itself through the 21st century is to welcome these people if they migrate north. But you know we won’t.
RaflW
@Martin: Which is why, though I’m loathe to say it, Dubya Bush was correct. He had the sense to seek out Hispanic Catholics. The party then selected the proponent of “Mexican rapists” lies, so the outreach has been less robust for a while.
Calouste
@Kent: Another question is, does Russia have halal MREs for 40,000 Syrian mercenaries? They might run into some insubordination, if not outright mutiny, if they don’t.
Carlo Graziani
@Jay:
Cruise missiles seem like an awfully expensive and wasteful munition for a terror strike requiring essentially no accuracy. Am I misunderstanding the weapon category? Or could this be misreported?
A few days ago, I was looking for some kind of rough census of inbound ordnance at Ukrainian cities, to get an idea of what is being launched from where, in what quantities, towards which targets. I had no success at all. It looks as if you scored some sources. Could you share them?