(Victims of War by Sergey Grechanyuk)
I want to start tonight with a question in a comment from Brachiator from last night’s post.
Rather, his argument is don’t throw Putin a lifeline. Don’t give him a way out.
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.
First a housekeeping note before I answer. I’ve been scarce in comments the last couple of days and will be again tonight because I’ve got the stomach flu that is going around in the area. And as is always the case when I get any sort of flu or cold, it has gone to my sinuses. Before everyone asks: it is NOT COVID!!!! I took two at home tests, forty eight hours apart, with the first one four or five days into feeling horrible. They are both negative. I checked in with my primary care physician, he explains there’s a bug going around and it takes two to three weeks to run its course. So I’m muddling through, but don’t have a lot of energy to hang around and answer questions in the comments right now. I’m not ignoring you.
Back to Brachiator’s question via comment. This is, indeed the key question and problem. The purpose, or point, of war is to inflict more pain on your opponent or opponents than they can ultimately tolerate thereby leading to a successful termination of hostilities on the battlefield – victory – when the defeated side surrenders to end the conflict. Right now the Ukrainians are holding in the center of Ukraine. The Russians have seized additional territories in the south and east of Ukraine expanding on the Ukrainian territory they occupied in 2014. Additionally, by most estimates, Ukraine has taken out about 10% of Russia’s forces. Despite Ukraine’s successes the Russians still have the ability to hold what they’ve seized in the south and east, continue to use long range fires – from long range artillery and the Russian Air Force – to simply pound the Ukrainians into dust, and actually employ their naval assets that are currently sitting in the Black Sea off of Odesa.
Simply put, I do not know if the Ukrainians have the ability to inflict enough pain on the Russians to move beyond holding to winning. Let alone to drive Russian forces out of the occupied south and eastern portions of Ukraine including Crimea. I also don’t think at this point anyone has any idea what Putin’s pain threshold, if you will, is in regard to the very effective Ukrainian defense in the center of the country. As I’ve written in a number of updates, I think after the attempt to make a speed run to seize Kyiv and install his quislings failed, Putin quickly shifted his objective to “if I can’t have Ukraine, no one can have Ukraine” as evidenced by his just indiscriminately bombarding non-military targets all over Ukraine.
This is where we get to the heart of Brachiator’s question, as well as the strategic dilemma that faces the US and NATO. Getting more involved risks, as Nichols argues, giving Putin a way out of the trap he made for himself. Not getting involved means that there may be little to no Ukraine left when this is all said and done because the sanctions and extreme economic measures placed on Russia will have little to no short to medium term effects, and may ultimately not deter Putin even in the long term. It is unclear if the Ukrainians by themselves, even with all the weapons and munitions and equipment we’re sending them, will be able to hurt the Russians enough to make Putin say stop. The reason for this is that, as we’ve discussed in previous updates, Putin’s objectives are a jumble of mythological and pseudo-historical aspirations and grievances related to that mythology and pseudo-history and his interpretation of the actual past thirty years or so. Right now his context – the why of how he is making his decisions – is so alien to us that he appears to be acting irrationally when he is acting rationally within the context he’s created for himself and for Russia.
I wish I had a more positive analysis, but all I have is what I’ve had all along. The Ukrainians have smartly gone to an unconventional warfare strategy, which is working in the central part of Ukraine. The Russians have been able to hold and expand the territory they stole in 2014. The Russians are definitely not winning. The Ukrainians are definitely not losing. Beyond that, anyone who is certain how this ends is someone far too sure of their analytical abilities.
More after the jump.
I saw that several people were curious in the comments last night about a report that the Russians had not shelled anything in Ukraine in the past 24-36 hours. That report was apparently garbled. The Russian naval forces in the Black Sea off of Odesa had not shelled into southern Ukraine, but Russian fighter bombers were and are still flying sorties and Russian artillery – of all ranges – was and is still being employed. You’ll find that clarified in the DOD assessment from yesterday, which is below.
Here’s the most recent DOD assessment of the war in Ukraine, which is from yesterday:
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: There really hasn’t been a lot of changes to talk about. The only thing that I would highlight — more than 1,000 missile launches now. We have observed some, I wouldn’t call it increased, but continued naval activity in the north Black Sea off the coast of Odessa, but no shelling over the course of the last 24 hours that no imminent signs of an amphibious assault on Odessa. That’s really it in terms of changes from yesterday. We’ll start going with questions.
Bob?
Q: OK, hi, (omitted). Actually, on the very point you started off with, that there hasn’t been a lot of change over the three weeks, and with regard to Kyiv, just wondering whether the thinking is now that the Russians have either have been stalled or whatever word you want to use outside the city, does it seem that they are either satisfied or stuck attacking the outer areas of the city, and perhaps attacking into the city from that position, rather than trying to go into the city at some point?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I’m not sure I understood.
Q: Are they sort of stopped there? I think of it, you know, attack the city from — from a (inaudible)…?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: From a different direction?
Q: Yeah.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah, we haven’t that. Again, Bob, what — what we’ve seen is them approaching from the same avenues or axes as they have been trying to, from the north and northwest. And again, we still assess that they’re 15 kilometers away from city center; basically, no change. Now also approaching it from the — from the east. Again, those same sort of two lines that we’ve been talking about now for several days. We still hold them about 30 kilometers outside of city center. We still believe the Ukrainians are in control of that town called Brovary. No movement south of Chernihiv. Chernihiv is still what we consider isolated, but we’re not seeing any new line axis of attack on Kyiv, other than the fact that they continue the long-range fires into Kyiv, trying to wear the city down. But in terms of ground movement, they’re basically where they ‘ve been.
Q: You don’t conclude from that that they’re sort of stuck, and they’re — a breakthrough is just not in the offing for them, or are you awaiting them to resupply and that sort of thing?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It’s unclear what they’re going to do, what their next step is. It’s hard for us to know with certainty. They’re just basically where they were before. And again, the Ukrainians are putting a lot of effort into defending Kyiv, as you would expect them to do. And so it — it’s easy when we talk about them being stalled or being frustrated in that moving that — I don’t want to convey the error that this is some sort of static environment. There’s a lot of fighting going on. The Ukrainians are — they are the reason why they haven’t been able to move forward and it’s because they are very actively resisting any movement by the Russians. So it’s not like a stall mate, where both sides are just kind of camped out. They are actively resisting any movement by the Russians.
But again, the Russians have advantages in terms of the long-range fires, and they are continuing to use that in Kyiv.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It’s unclear what they’re going to do, what their next step is. It’s hard for us to know with certainty. They’re just basically where they were before. And again, the Ukrainians are putting a lot of effort into defending Kyiv, as you would expect them to do. And so it — it’s easy when we talk about them being stalled or being frustrated in that moving that — I don’t want to convey the error that this is some sort of static environment. There’s a lot of fighting going on. The Ukrainians are — they are the reason why they haven’t been able to move forward and it’s because they are very actively resisting any movement by the Russians. So it’s not like a stall mate, where both sides are just kind of camped out. They are actively resisting any movement by the Russians.
But again, the Russians have advantages in terms of the long-range fires, and they are continuing to use that in Kyiv.
Q: Hey, just two quick ones. Is the airspace still contested? Do you have any change in the number of sorties on either side? Has there been any change on that?
And then — and then secondly, on — oh, sorry, go ahead.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: We do still assess the airspace is contested. I don’t have a sortie rate for today. But we don’t — in general, we haven’t seen any major changes by either Air Force, in terms of how much they’re flying, but I just don’t have the numbers today.
Q: And then on the naval activity, can you give us any details at all about – the — the naval activity in the north Black Sea? Like, what — what are you seeing?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I mean, we’re seeing — you know, we’re seeing several surface ships — about half a dozen or so surface ships off the coast, not far from Odesa. At least two of them are LSVs, amphibious ships, the rest are surface combatants. They are definitely at sea and not far from Odesa. But it’s unclear right now what their — we’re not sure what they’re planning to do. What they’re preparing to do. .
So we’ve got frigates, a couple of amphib ships, one mine warfare ship, again, not exactly clear they’re not — but we’re not seeing imminent activity that would indicate that they are about to launch an amphibious assault on Odesa. (omitted) one thing that they might do, could do is something ashore away from Odesa, not in the city proper, kind of like what they did in the Sea of Azov (omitted). But, again, we’re seeing some ships at sea off the coast, intentions are not clear right now.
Much, much, much more at the link above.
Here’s the assessment of the UK’s Chief of Defence Intelligence:
UK Chief of Defence Intelligence: “Russian operations have changed. Russia is now pursuing a Strategy of Attrition. This will involve the reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower. This will result in increased civilian casualties [&] destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure"
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 18, 2022
Which is what we’ve been saying here for the better part of the past ten days based on the open source reporting.
The Ukrainians have killed another Russian commander. This time Colonel Sergey Sukharev of the 331st Airborne Regiment. Sukharev is alleged to be the commander who ordered the Ilovaisk massacre in 2014.
It was the biggest loss of life in Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed separatists.
Hundreds of soldiers died as the Ukrainian army and volunteers retreated in a column from the eastern town of Ilovaisk on 29 August 2014.
Ukrainian veterans are adamant the Russian army was there, even though Moscow has always denied claims that regular Russian forces took part in the battle.
President Vladimir Putin has said merely that any Russians involved were volunteers following “a call of the heart”.
At first it seemed like any other operation against Russian-backed separatists, says Roman Zinenko, 45, a former soldier who served in the Dnipro-1 volunteer police battalion that fought in the battle of Ilovaisk.
The Ukrainian army had surrounded the town and their battalion had been ordered to “wipe out” the Russian-backed force.
But on 24 August, Ukraine’s independence day, they began receiving calls from relatives.
Ilovaisk was surrounded, Ukrainian media were reporting.
“We did not feel that, because the [Ukrainian] army held positions around the city,” he told the BBC. “On August 24, we even captured the enemy’s fortified area.”
But the next day, heavy mortar shelling began and the school they were using as a base was raided.
“We realised the enemy had reinforcements,” he says.
“At the time we could not imagine the scale of this entrapment. Our troops had surrounded Ilovaisk but all our troops were surrounded by the enemy”.
Negotiations were going on and a humanitarian corridor was being prepared for them to leave, they were told, and yet their withdrawal was repeatedly postponed.
Then, on the morning of 29 August 2014, came the command to gather and leave Ilovaisk in two columns.
“Nobody knew the routes,” said Roman Zinenko.
They began to move, they passed the first ring of encirclement smoothly but within a few kilometres their column came under fire.
“It was just a shooting range and we were the targets,” he said.
According to official Ukrainian data, 366 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the Ilovaisk battle.
The true figure may be at least 400, when you include soldiers registered missing or unidentified by their relatives.
Sound familiar? Exactly what Putin had Russian regular and mercenary forces supporting Assad do in Syria and exactly what has been happening for the past week to ten days every time the Russians agree to a temporary ceasefire to establish humanitarian corridors to evacuate Mariupol, Kherson, and other Ukrainian cities that the Russians have besieged, seized, and are trying to starve out. The strategy here is: commit war crimes, negotiate in bad faith to establish ceasefires and corridors for humanitarian relief, commit more war crimes by violating the ceasefires, then repeat over and over and over.
Over the past couple of days I’ve seen references that part of what enabled Putin is that President Obama failed to enforce his stated red line in Syria: that if chemical weapons were used, the US would intervene militarily to destroy or remove them. What all of these assertions get wrong is that the Republican majority in the House and Senate refused to authorize this. President Obama decided to let Congress, which demanded it needed to authorize the strike, have its say. Congress refused to provide authorization.
President Barack Obama went to Congress several years ago to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for US military campaign against ISIS, but the effort failed to gain traction amid weariness from lawmakers to vote on the war and disagreements over the details of the authorization.
Ultimately, Congress never took a full vote on an ISIS war authorization.
The Obama administration began striking ISIS in Syria in September 2014, which prompted congressional critics of the military action to call for Congress to vote on the war. Initially, the White House did not send Congress a war authorization, saying it was legally justified to strike ISIS based on the war authorization approved after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
But Congress began its own effort, and a war authorization was approved in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December 2014, when Democrats still controlled the upper chamber.
That effort didn’t go any further as the Senate switched from Democratic control to Republican control following the 2014 midterms.
In February 2015, Obama sent Congress a draft AUMF, which he said in a speech that congressional passage of the measure makes the US “strongest” in the fight against ISIS.
There were disagreements over the measure almost immediately, however, underscoring the difficulties in getting Congress to agree on what a war authorization should look like.
Obama’s draft authorization included limitations on “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” as well as a three-year window before it would have to be re-authorized.
The restrictions were a recognition that Democrats would insist on a clear scope for any war authorization, as well as concerns stemming from the Iraq War over the deployment of US ground troops in the Middle East.
But Republicans balked at those conditions, saying that they were opposed to limiting the military options of the commander-in-chief, for Obama or any future US President.
The disagreement, as well as Republicans’ skepticism of Obama, stalled the measure. By April 2015, then-House Speaker John Boehner was already saying Obama would not get an AUMF.
“Until the President gets serious about fighting the fight, until he has a strategy that makes sense, there’s no reason for us to give him less authority than what he has today. Which is what he’s asking for,” Boehner said.
Be nice if people would get their basic facts straight! Because not getting all the context here is basically creating a platform for more Russian disinformation and agitprop.
Of course a lot of the same Republican senators, as well as some newer ones, who killed the authorization in the Senate once they took the majority in 2015 are now once again voting against providing more assistance while publicly demanding a Democratic president, in this case President Biden, do more.
More than two dozen Senate Republicans demand Biden do more for Ukraine after voting against $13.6 billion for Ukraine
Thirty-one Senate Republicans voted last week against the $1.5 trillion spending bill to fund the government, increase U.S. defense spending and provide humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine. In recent days, many of them have clamored for more weapons and aid.
“President Biden needs to make a decision TODAY: either give Ukraine access to the planes and antiaircraft defense systems it needs to defend itself, or enforce a no-fly zone to close Ukrainian skies to Russian attacks,” Scott said in a statement. “If President Biden does not do this NOW, President Biden will show himself to be absolutely heartless and ignorant of the deaths of innocent Ukrainian children and families.”
Last week, Scott was one of 31 Republicans to vote against a sweeping, $1.5 trillion spending bill to fund government agencies and departments through the remainder of the fiscal year, a bill that also included $13.6 billion in assistance for Ukraine. Biden signed the bill into law Tuesday, saying the United States was “moving urgently to further augment the support to the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their country.”
After casting a “no” vote, Scott assailed the overall spending bill as wasteful, arguing that it was filled with lawmakers’ pet projects. “It makes my blood boil,” Scott said last week.
Democrats quickly condemned what they saw as glaring hypocrisy among the Republicans who voted against the aid but were quick to criticize Biden as a commander in chief leading from behind in addressing Ukraine’s needs.
“‘We should send more lethal aid to Ukraine which I voted against last week’ is making my brain melt,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Much more at the link above.
Same shit, different Congress…
While I’m not a tanker, I did deploy to Iraq with a tanker brigade and have worked for and with a lot of armor officers, so even if you’re not going to listen to Cole who is a tanker, trust me: DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!
Listening to this doofus is going to get people killed pic.twitter.com/Z90SPwdqFd
— Tom ?? (@TomHeartsTanks) March 18, 2022
- If Elon Musk and/or Jeff Bezos sends a single paintball gun to Ukraine, it will be definitive proof that they are insane and should be stripped of their wealth and catapulted into a volcano
- The way to kill a tank is with an ATGM, AT mines, incredibly large IEDs, maybe a grenade/Molotov if you’re incredibly lucky and the crew is stupid and rolling hatches open Shooting paintballs at a tank is an excellent way to end up turned into a fine pink mist
- You would have better luck shoving a comically-large rock in the gun barrel, like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade” You’ll totally die but at least a Russian tank crew will have a funny story to tell if they get out of Ukraine alive
- From the Vet Bro Coffee Co “journalist” tweeting his way through a war zone to White Nationalists trying to ship Ukrainian kids to the US to this muppet trying to sell copies of “How to Urban Warfare Gud”, this has been a truly bizarre time for grifters and their grifts
COL Spencer is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies and co-director of the Urban Warfare Project at the US Military Academy West Point. He is a light infantry officer in the California National Guard, so if you check his bio and see CA colonel the CA is not Civil Affairs, it’s California. He is a very smart individual with a lot of experience, but he has also been promoting the idea that the future of warfare will not just be in urban environments, but in exceedingly large metropolitan areas for the better part of a decade. I think he is overly attached to his thesis and it is now causing him to say things that make perfect sense within his paradigm and no sense outside of it.
Here’s President Zelenskyy visiting a very brave wounded Ukrainian teen in the hospital:
Here’s how she wound up in the hospital.
This is 16-year-old Katya. Her family came under fire from the Russians during the evacuation from Vorzel. She covered her brother Igor with her body. When Katya started bleeding, 8-year-old Igor got out of the car and started shouting Russians to stop.
Photo TV channel Ukraine pic.twitter.com/E3jiPfllsK— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) March 18, 2022
The Ukrainians have mounted a counteroffensive to relieve Mykolaiv!
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine—For weeks, Mykolaiv was on the front line. Russian tanks and infantry made incursions into the streets of the southern Ukrainian port city. Russian artillery blasted civilian neighborhoods. Now, with Ukrainian forces pressing a counteroffensive, the Russians have been pushed back and Mykolaiv’s 470,000 people are attempting a tentative return to normality.
Coffee shops and some restaurants are open again. Supermarkets have been restocked with fresh groceries. Bank branches have reopened. Municipal buses and trams run the streets. Mothers with children play in playgrounds as the sound of artillery thuds in the distance. Fresh tulips and roses are available in a variety of shades in a row of downtown flower shops.
It’s paywalled, but much more at the link above.
Putin held a rally in support of his “special operation” in Ukraine today. There’s video and commentary by Max Sneddon of The Financial Times in the thread below.
Remember, NAZIism here means anyone and anything in opposition to Russia and Russia’s interests.
Here’s the BBC’s reporting, as usual the rest of the thread in the quote box following the first tweet.
? This is the picture the Kremlin wants you to see: thousands of people who support President Putin and the "special military operation" in Ukraine, crammed into Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. We went there today and talked to dozens of people who attended… ? pic.twitter.com/RGgWL2fSej
— Will Vernon (@BBCWillVernon) March 18, 2022
- Many said they worked in the public sector (e.g. schoolteachers), and that they had been pressured into attending by their employers. One group of teachers, from a town near Moscow, were being told what to say to us by a woman who appeared to be from the local administration.
- One man, who works in the Moscow metro, told us that he and other employees had been forced to attend the rally. “I’ll be here for a while and then I’ll leave… I think most people here don’t support the war. I don’t,” he said.
- In comparison to opposition rallies, most people didn’t want to talk, be filmed or answer any questions. Some would cover their faces or put up their hoods when we said we are journalists. Many seemed embarrassed or ashamed to be there.
- Students told us they had been given the option of a day off from lectures if they attended ‘a concert.’ Some of them didn’t even know that the event was dedicated, in part, to support for Russian forces in Ukraine.
- There were doubtless some people in attendance who genuinely support President Putin and the “special military operation in Ukraine”, as the Kremlin prefers to call it.
Here’s a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty video report via their twitter feed on a Ukrainian couple that ran off a squad of Russian soldiers. This actually happened over a week ago, I saw the CCTV footage posted the day after it happened, but this is an interview of the couple that told the Russian soldiers to beat feet.
They’ve only been able to get 130 or so survivors out from under the rubble that is on top of the intact bomb shelter below what was the Mariupol Drama House out of an estimated 1,300 trapped there. Rescue efforts are ongoing. They are, of course, hampered by the fact that Mariupol is still besieged, under constant bombardment, and it is impossible to bring in specialized equipment and personnel to work the rescue operations.
I’m not sure where the footage below was taken, but it provides an idea of the complexity of these types of rescues:
The following is a translation of a post by a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana Zlenko about the situation in Mariupol.
The faint hearted should not read this.
Yesterday, at our own risk, we left Mariupol under gunfire. We stayed overnight in a field in a gray zone. It was freezing outside, thank God we are alive. We are alive to scream that everyone who stayed in Mariupol needs help!
— Roman ?? Sheremeta (@rshereme) March 17, 2022
- We didn’t have a humanitarian convoy, no one took us out, we ran behind cars under fire, we joined a group and taped “Children!” signs on our cars. I personally put my own son in the car to the sound of a rocket flying into the next yard. No one saved us, we saved ourselves.
- There is no connection in the city, no water, no gas, no ambulances. People with torn limbs bleed in their yards and no one can help them. These are peaceful people – our acquaintances and relatives. The dead are simply being covered by soil where they lay.
- Yes, we collected snow, warmed it on a campfire, and cooked macaroni. My family was in the bomb shelter of High School No 2. Three days ago a shell flew there and shattered some of the windows. A woman was wounded in her hip.
- She laid all night on the first floor of the high school asking for someone to give her poison so that she would not feel the pain. There was no one to take her to the hospital. Every day and every night there are fire shots, whistles, shaking walls and horror: Where will it hit
- Doctors from Hospital No 3 (the part that survived) work heroically: they perform surgeries, they save people. The woman with the wounded hip was taken by the Red Cross within a day. I pray for her to survive. Two shells flew into our building and two into our yard.
- My mother, Angela, and three brothers, Roman (16 years old), Vasya (11 years old) and Vladislav (9 years old), reside in a city-center building, on the fifth floor. My mother-in-law, Lyubov, and father-in-law, Anatoly, reside on the ninth floor.
- There are almost no shelters in the city left, no bunkers with ventilation. At best, people hide in basements. My mom’s building doesn’t have a basement. People need to be taken out – women, children, elderly people. Give us buses, a green corridor, make an arrangement!
- I pray for my loved ones, every Mariupolian, every Ukrainian soldier. The enemy came to us and left us no choice, but there is nothing more valuable than human life. This needs to end!
- There is no food, no medicine. When there will be no more snow, people won’t be able to go out for water. Pharmacies, grocery stores – everything is either looted or burned. The dead are not taken out. The police recommends to open the windows and put the corpses on the balcony.
- I know you think you understand what’s going on, but you’ll never understand unless you’ve been here. I can now hear the sound of sirens and I’m not afraid. Earlier there was no power for 16 days in Mariupol so we weren’t warned before planes dropped bombs on us.
- I beg everyone to stop this! I don’t know what will happen next, but I pray that this will never happen again in any of the cities of Ukraine and the world. Nobody: a pregnant woman in the hospital who failed to give life because a shell fell on the hospital and killed her.
- They show you how buildings burn, but they don’t show you how people burn. Do I need to burn myself for you to believe that this has to stop?! I beg you to stop this!
- These 21 days changed everyone. Everything has changed! Nothing matters now, costs nothing, as long as everyone left in this Mariupol hell would not be shaken in fear and horror.
- P.S. I have translated this from Svitlana Zlenko’s post. Please share it for others to understand the horror of Russian war against Ukraine.
The Russian MOD released a briefing by video stating that the Ukrainians had mined the public hospital in Dnipro and intended to blow it up while the Russian Air Force flies sorties over the city. This is disinformation and agitprop, but it has the Ukrainians rightly worried that the Russians are going to bomb another hospital.
Slavutych, the city built for the evacuated workers from Chornobyl, has been surrounded, is cut off, and its citizens need food, water, and medications. The technicians that the Russians have trapped at Chornobyl who have been stuck on the longest night shift ever, are still being held hostage there. They are tired, overwhelmed, and in need of relief as well.
25% of the Ukrainian population has either been internally displaced or forced out of Ukraine as refugees.
Here’s reporting from a resident of Cherniv about what is going on there:
1.
If there were more photographers in Chernihiv, more people would know that the city turned into ruins. Not the whole city, not everywhere, but the suburbs and some districts have been destroyed. If up till now, people used to tell each other about shelling in Masany one night, then in Podusivka and ZAZ district the other night, in recent days every district has been shelled.
Since about 10 March, Chernihiv has been covered with thin smoke. It’s not just because of fires. There were bonfires. People were cooking food in their yards. At that time, most people remained without water, heat, power supply, or communication. The best situation was with gas, our apartment was lucky. But not everyone was so lucky.
I say “our apartment” but I do not mean my home. My house was damaged by missile wreckage in the first days. It was when the city outskirts where I live was shelled from the Ripky and Horodnya directions, from where Russian troops were approaching the city. So, I mean the apartment where I was sheltered thereafter. Nowadays, people, losing their homes are wandering with backpacks and sacks further deep into the city, which the Russians are trying to besiege.
I am most impressed by older women. They are still well-dressed with slight make-up.
2.
In the early days, many rushed to the villages around the city, believing that the Russians did not need villages. My friends and acquaintances went to Sedniv in the direction of Horodnya, literally to meet the Russians. Somebody went to Kyinka, right outside Chernihiv, in the direction of Kyiv. Both here and there, the poor people fell into traps. On the fourth day of the war, the Russians fired cluster munitions into Kyinka. There were only walls remaining of many houses, along with the deceased; deceased people and the hope to find any survivors under the rubble. The Russians invaded Sedniv on the evening of the first day. Since then, people have remained in their homes. The food soon began to run out. The Russians looted shops. One family from Sedniv, who was trying to get out of a nearby village by car, was shot dead. Eventually, the shooting of civilian cars ceased to be so unexpected. The same thing occurred in Ivanivka, in a village on the Chernihiv-Kyiv highway. The Russians herded people into cellars and placed their military equipment in their yards. Our connection with the villages quickly disappeared. Yet, we all have friends and relatives there.
3.
I returned to Chernihiv on 3 March. The moment we handed out the last cigarettes and passed the last entrance checkpoint, we were told to drive carefully. The centre had just been shelled. It was about noon.
It was an air raid on a residential area that resulted in several destroyed houses. The death toll was rising by the hour. Eventually, rescuers said that forty-seven people were dead. Not all people were in the house. Many people stood in line for medicine and food, and it was a time when pharmacies and shops opened for a short time. Our acquaintances were in one of the houses. They were saved by load-bearing walls and luck.
The Russians dropped at least eight unguided bombs on a residential area. Whole fragments have been literally broken away from the houses. The survivors moved in with relatives. My friend’s uncle and aunt said that they would board up the windows, fix everything they could and stay there for a little while more. Older people find it difficult to leave their homes. My uncle said that he had served in the Soviet army. When the Russians come to his house, he would like to look them in the eye. Maybe he would recognize somebody.
Of course, there were no military facilities around. I’m not sure if the Russians had hit at least a single military facility in the city. Except perhaps, they set fire to the abandoned airport near Chernihiv on the first day, which in any case has been destroyed for the past decade. And a police station. Apart from that, they do just the same as anywhere else: destroy schools, kindergartens, hospitals.
4.
Planes terrify the locals, mostly at night. Wooden planks were cracking in the house as they dropped missiles near us. Wooden Chernihiv is our pride. And our horror.
The outskirts of Chernihiv – often with one-story buildings – flare up like matches. Bombs demolish houses, leaving bare walls. We saw several photos of an unexploded bomb weighing 500 kilograms. We hoped that when it fell on us, we would not feel anything.
People move about in search of a safer place. Every night reveals that there are fewer and fewer safer places. My acquaintances, who were certain of their safety, remained in house without roofs, with demolished yards, with half the house or the whole house razed to the ground.
There is much more at the link above including pictures.
Here’s reporting by The Telegraph covering the effects on the war on young Ukrainians who have been wounded by the Russians.
A light sheet draped over the body of 15-year-old Masha Feshchenko, clearly showing the outline of a stump where her right leg had been amputated above the knee.
She had been walking with her mother, Sonia, and another girl in their home town of Polohy when a shell landed 10 feet away.
Masha’s right arm was also shredded by shrapnel and her shoulder broken. The blast left her deafened and she has not eaten for five days.
“I hope this picture will create a strong impression on people,” Ivan Anikin, head of intensive care at the children’s hospital in Zaporizhzhia, said, looking at Masha’s body as he encouraged the Telegraph to photograph her. “Most Russian people don’t believe these pictures.”
But he was sceptical that it would change many minds across the border.
Some of the medic’s many Russian friends and relatives have told him the pictures and reports of wounded Ukrainian children are fake, or taken from different conflicts in other parts of the world.
“It’s crazy. Maybe they can’t believe it,” he said.
Like many Russian-speaking Ukrainians, he has many friends and family members in neighbouring Russia.
Yet as the war has dragged on many Ukrainians have also accused their neighbours of either being blinded by Kremlin propaganda, or being simply unwilling or too fearful to see what is going on.
As the medic showed The Telegraph round his ward on Friday morning, some 600 miles north in Moscow, where Dr Anikin’s cousins live, Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally and praised his country’s troops as they pressed their onslaught.
Moscow police reported more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, seized from Ukraine.
“I hope this picture will create a strong impression on people,” Dr Anikin said looking at Masha’s body. “Most Russian people don’t believe these pictures. I would like to tell them stop killing our children. Stop shooting. But in my opinion, such a request will not be successful.”
In the corridor outside, Masha’s grandmother, Valentina Feshchenko, paced up and down and waited. The 69-year-old said doctors had told her that unless Masha started eating again soon, she would not survive. Masha’s boyfriend, Oleksiy, sat nearby. A hospital counsellor put her hand on his and offered him words of encouragement.
Their home town, halfway between Zaporizhzhia and the besieged city of Mariupol, had been under attack since March 2, Ms Feshchenko said. “The Russians have been in this territory since then and they are shelling constantly.
“We are not the military. There are no shelters and there are no military objectives there. Why would you shell us? We don’t understand. “Please cover this for the whole world to see. I don’t believe that no one can stop this. Children are dying. Please stop this.”
The Ukrainian prosecutor general said earlier this week that 103 children had been killed so far in the war in Ukraine. Such a figure seems likely to be a significant undercount. A 13-year-old boy called Vova from Kyiv on Friday recounted being shot in the face during an ambush that killed his father as they tried to flee the capital.
Much, much more at the link, including photos.
You’re daily bayraktar:
Newly released video showing Ukrainian artillery strikes the Russian-controlled Kherson airbase directed by TB2 drone on March 15.
The video also shows Ukrainian artillery and Bayraktar TB2 drones pounding Russian equipment.#Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/5MK7vMYj3x
— BlueSauron?️ (@Blue_Sauron) March 18, 2022
And I think that’s more than enough for tonight.
Open thread!
Carlo Graziani on Russia and Ukraine
Winston
90 degrees in Lakeland today.
Winston
@Winston: I signed up for three refugees, no pets.
debbie
I’ll read this more closely in the morning, but I hope you feel better soon. Sinuses can be beasts.
susanna
Thanks, Adam. I feel good to be well-informed even though I try to distract and avert my attention from this shithole of a crisis. You’re appreciated for these explanations.
West of the Rockies
Feel better, Adam.
Villago Delenda Est
Can’t someone locate Rick Scott’s last horcrux and stick a basilisk fang in it?
NotMax
Dang those Floridiian biolabs!
//
Grumpy Old Railroader
F##king Brutal! But other important stuff is also happening. Big Rig Truck owners driving around DC Beltway because “masks.” Folks in my little corner of California are upset about affordable housing because “home values” and “those people.” We are so clueless and so screwed.
Omnes Omnibus
Is it Covid?
Sebastian
This was difficult to read.
piratedan
hearing that the Rep Senator from AK Don Young has died
Morzer
There are claims that Russian soldiers are resorting to self-mutilation so as not to serve in Ukraine. If true, and I suspect it is, their morale must be totally shot.
https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1504950017542533131
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s not, Adam’s been tested. Sinus shit still sucks swampwater, though.
SamIAm
It’s all so horrible.
Matt
We need to send a message to Putin in a language he understands. My suggestion: the J6 committee should have Steve Bannon waterboarded, right in the House, live on C-SPAN.
When they run out of questions for him, just keep pouring the water and rolling the cameras.
PsiFighter37
It’s hard to envision this going on for very long, but at the same time, Putin has clearly rolled the dice – there is no going back. Hard to see this coming to an end anytime soon, even if it means Ukraine gets bombed into the ground.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I know, but I had to ask. It was beyond my control.
Sebastian
Morzer
@PsiFighter37: I wonder whether the Russian army is capable of taking much more punishment – and if it cracks, what are the consequences within Russia?
Another Scott
While flipping through C-Span radio today, I heard some GQP guy (maybe Cotton) saying that Biden was “pussyfooting around” and needed to do more. They are shameless, as we know.
Thanks for these updates.
Get better!
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
Following up on paintball guy, there is this.
Sebastian
@Morzer:
I think we are seeing now US and NATO taking out Russian command and control. These guys are fucking idiots with unsecured phones trumpeting their locations for the world to see.
I have a hunch this will be over soon.
J R in WV
While we want Ukrainians to continue to fight for their freedom and Nation… this War Crime butchery by the Russians continues. Putinski intends to destroy the Ukrainian civilization one artillery shell at a time, women and children are the best targets.
It’s hard to believe that the Ukrainian people are able to continue fighting under the circumstances of continuing war crimes, but somehow they keep fighting on! Glory to Ukrain!
Winston
@Sebastian: Sadomasochism takes a tumble.
Lyrebird
I certainly agree that whether there will be any of Ukraine left is an open question.
I have to go sleep, but I will add a question: Could it be that the sanctions will help Putin in the long term, if the Ukrainian forces do not reach that level of inflicting enough pain militarily in the short term? Seems like the sanctions have had major effects in the short term, or why else would oligarchs flee.
Nichols’ concern about US involvement bringing Russians together to support the tyrant is certainly convincing. What little I know about German history between WWI and WWII suggests that having long-term sanctions might make support for fighting everyone else build up even more in Russia.
I am so very glad that Joey O’Biden is in the WH and not the puppet. I hope the Ukrainian forces can keep on and that the R forces do run out of missiles. Praying for Mariupol feels so inadequate but I will keep doing it.
Thank you Adam and best wishes for speedy recuperation!
marcopolo
@piratedan: Don Young who died on a plane flight between LA & Seattle earlier today had been the longest serving Rep (from AK) in the history of the House (50+ years). He was 88. When I lived in AK a quarter century ago I thought he was a crazy conservative asshole (though I guess w/ principles). The current crop of GOP congressional reps made him look like a thoughtful moderate.
CaseyL
Adam – thanks, as always, for your analysis and comment. All the more appreciated since you’re ill – hope you’re better soon, and get through the thing with your humor intact. (Intestinal bug, yuck. You know to keep hydrated, right?)
Winston
Winston
@Winston: Thank you Adam for your time to inform us.
PJ
@marcopolo: As a former roommate remarked upon the situation with his new roommate after I had moved out: “I went from being the drunken, irresponsible, sloppy roommate to being the uptight, sober, neat freak roommate without changing my behavior at all.”
Winston
@Winston: deleted
Another Scott
Speaking of NFZs, Biden’s effectively grounding civilian planes in Russia. AlJazeera:
Interesting.
Cheers,
Scott.
CROAKER
Four Know Major Generals dead. I know of three Colonels and a Major. Command structure is not looking too good. Hence the entrenching and lack of movement.
Additionally…
The Pale Scot
I commented elsewhere today, that in a couple of weeks the EU, and Germany specifically will not be dependent on RU gas, the UA can blow those pipelines up. If I was them would have already done it, fuck Germany. Then half of their hard currency goes bye bye. And I don’t see any reason not to torpedo oil tankers carrying RU oil. One ship and the insurance goes bye bye. Who? what? Where? Maritime insurers are very risk adverse. It will take a decade for the courts to sort out who’s responsible
BeautifulPlumage
Thank you Adam. Maybe take the weekend off to heal?
The fact that Russia is bombing western UKR cities is alarming. I suppose their stockpile of dumb bombs is enormous. I feel ragey with all this murder and destruction. Having these threads really helps.
randy khan
Adam, thank you so much for all of these posts. They are incredibly helpful to understanding what’s going on in Ukraine.
Winston
I think it would be appropriate at this time to move an aircraft carrier battle group into the Black Sea with a couple Ohio class subs. You know, to let Putrid know we’re serious.
Urza
I know its not workable, yet. But the world seriously needs a worldwide version of NATO. Every nation contributes troops and materiel. Any of them are attacked the entire force retaliates against the aggressor, even if it was a member nation. Having the entire world arrayed against them would stop Russia and China. Having a standing order to nuke the aggressors capital if any kind of nuclear or chemical ordinance was used, as well as making sure that any bunker they may be hiding in is nothing but a distant memory might be the only way to hold back a future despot. If they can’t have any gains and would lose their nation and people which ostensibly is what they say they’re fighting for, and it would encourage the people around them to remove them quickly if needed.
In a perfect world, all the nations in the alliance would then give up their own military as they wouldn’t need it for defense, spend just a portion of what they did towards the alliance. Not that we live in anything resembling a perfect world.
I see people saying Russia would have a chance with Putin removed. This may be true for a time. But those nationalistic tendencies crop up frequently. As Germany and Japan are aware right now. Or our own faction that wants the South to rise again. New methods to reduce the chance of it in the future, and to nip the warmongers in the bud need to be developed as a planet, or we won’t have much of a planet left when the next one is done.
BeautifulPlumage
@The Pale Scot: nice pipeline ya got there, too bad your’re not very good at equipment maintenance. Would sure hate to see a catastrophic failure…
BeautifulPlumage
@Winston: just having a little exercise with our NATO allies. Nothing to alarm anyone. It was planned last year.
Kent
Did not hear the news. I’m going to have to go look up this story. I too lived off and on in Alaska from 1990 to about 2003. Don Young was a conservative asshole, but his wife was native Alaskan and he was always more focused on old-school bringing home the bacon type stuff for Alaska rather than performative national bullshit like so many of the current crop. He also knew how to actually legislate which none of them have any clue about.
West of the Rockies
I’m sure looking forward to the Ukrainian army putting good use to the Switchblades and other incoming weapons. The sooner, the better.
Sebastian
Adam, please take care of yourself. This is a hard grind and we are only human.
Speaking of humans, I am reading this amazing thread by Kamil Galeev about the Napoleonic Wars and the poor young Russians in Ukraine. How we should bribe and lure the young Russian conscripts to defect.
They should offer those young guys an air bridge to Venezuela. Sun, sea, $25k cash, and guaranteed p*ssy. A 19-year-old does not have the prefrontal cortex developed to think further. And once they are there, post videos on Telegram for those that are still on the fence.
Sebastian
Sebastian
Remember the movie Hunt for Red October?
How did they trick the crew? “We are going for a tour to Cuba!”
terry chay
@Lyrebird: Sanctions are definitely more long term than short term.
I think it is still reasonable to assume that Putin’s support actually picked up after the start of the “special military operation,” it has in the past and it happens in the U.S. every time we start a war. Why not this time? The anecodotes/straw polling at a rally is in a urban center so of course they’re not supportive as Putin’s support skews heavily older and rural (sound familiar?).
However, I’ve saw a lot of people interviewed who supported the war and in the same breath they’d say something about how Putin will keep their pensions flowing. Freezing stocks from being traded, hiking interest rates to 20%, forcing foreign companies to trade dollars for rubles, and repossessing foreign owned assets are all basically covering a larger long term crash for short term stability. Those pensions will be cut AND the currency they are paid in worthless.
Furthermore, Russia has nearly no industry to speak of. Besides being a raw materials export nation, what little processing/value-adding they do is entirely dependent on foreign tech and foreign companies. That sort of complex value-add beyond extraction/agriculture cannot be done by an oligarch and you see that sort of thing, not just in Russia, but throughout the world. In fact, even that extraction depends on Western goods that are cut off.
See those John Deere tractors towing Russian tanks? What do you think is harvesting all these crops in Russia? Do you realize how complex those are and how much specialized parts and chips are needed to keep a modern machine like that running. They have the existing stuff and whatever they can steal from what was already there, but none of that is coming into Russia anymore. Furthermore Russia wasn’t expecting this to happen and didn’t prepare for this level of sanctions at all.
Ukraine issued a complaint that Bosche corporation broke the 2014 sanctions because all these captured Russian vehicles have dual-use Bosche tech in them. Russia’s entire military has been built in the last 8 years totally on straw purchasers illegally misrepresenting their military purchases for commercial goods that never existed. Now that is totally cut off and their vehicles they have are out of maintenance. Why are the advanced jets and T-14 tanks nowhere to be seen? At this point, the only conclusion is they don’t work, and what little that does is falling apart already.
Finally, they don’t really have more troops to throw at them. They are already pulling out of places like the areas they stole from Georgia in 2008 and are basically using all their Chechnyans to shoot their own soldiers to keep them from retreating. Demographically, they aren’t the Russia of the past with a ton of young Slavs strewn about the countryside to get impressed and thrown by the Czar into the meat grinder.
Even if they stave off the economic and logistical reckoning for years (my guess we are talking several months at best), the brain drain going on must be immense. I mean they probably lost most of their component corps in the 1990’s but at this point, other than the oligarchs (who I’d argue are the incompetent top unlike Ayn Rand’s wet dream fetish), the middle management, science, and industrial class probably is in Finland now. You can’t build a local industry without them.
…
The weakness of sanctions long term is if they’re toothless, or not enough, someone finds a way to work around them (kind of like the surviving Koch brother thinks he’s got it figured out right now). The fact is these aren’t toothless, they’re going to sweep up a whole lot of corrupt American and British oligarchs in their way to get at the Russian ones, and there is no easy way to get around them that doesn’t involve the country and business doing so YOLO’ing down with Putin’s Russia.
Why? Because we lost to them in 2008. We lost again in 2014 because our sanctions sucked. We lost again in Syria because the Republican Party got fully bought by the Russians. You don’t think, after they stole the U.S. election in 2016, there weren’t a whole lot of smart people who weren’t pissed by that shit and haven’t been spending the last 6 years thinking about every little nook and cranny these cockroaches would scurry into and build failsafes? All the while Putin, McConnell and Koch were relishing their stuff and fighting the last war (for example, building an even larger reserve in western currency that we cut off in a hot second).
I’m not saying Ukraine is magically going to turn this thing around tomorrow. I am just saying that unless China decides to throw their chips in with Russia (and have their economy crash further when they are already fighting off/about to fight off their largest COVID surge), the effects of the sanctions are a long term bomb waiting to go off.
…
My guess is all the olds are in denial of this which is why they support the “Z” shit in the face of their own children in Ukraine telling them they are huddled in the basement of a subway in Kyiv somewhere. Why? Because their very livelihoods are over if their children are right and they are wrong. We know who is right… and they will find that out too. The hard way.
Imagine the worst Trumpers you know and Trump was president. Now imagine if their shitlib children told them they’re is a financial reckoning but Trump told them that’s fake news. Who would they believe? Now what they’d be like when, four months later, it turned out the government cut off their social security, their savings is now worth $0, all the while their children are doing just fine without them? Right now the real Trumpers can keep saying that Trump won because there is no consequence in being wrong. Not so for Russia.
eddie blake
@Sebastian: no. more like, “the reactor is leaking, you’re gonna glow in the dark your skin is gonna fall of and then you’re gonna die, GTF off of the boat!”
in fact, it was announcing the missile drills on the atlantic seaboard and the trip to cuba that alerted the kgb cook that something was amiss
eta- one of connery’s greatest monologues. “once the west trembled at the sound of our rockets. now they will tremble at the sound of our silence.”
Sebastian
@terry chay:
You are spot on with the brain drain. A few days into the war Putin declared no draft or conscription for IT people.
White-collar is high tailing out of Russia as fast they can. There was a reverse flow into Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together and some mobility made their move, quite literally.
Sebastian
@terry chay:
There is a much bigger crisis coming down on Russia, way more biblical and feral.
Famine.
They fucked up Ukraine, they are fucking up the current harvest in Russia. I am having visions of Ireland.
Marc
I really don’t understand the excitement over these 100 Switchblades, aside from the cool (?) name. They are literally small slow short range loitering model-sized airplanes with a simple-minded video guidance system carrying a hand grenade sized warhead. The version they’re getting can’t even penetrate minimal armor. Perhaps useful against fuel tankers and truckloads of conscripts, not much else.
They are the first step towards near future dystopian battlefields where swarms of autonomous AI-driven things fly around picking off any remaining soldiers (or children) lacking the appropriate transponders. I can hardly wait.
Argiope
I’m still incredulous on some level that all of this suffering has been brought about by the evil and ego of just one person reaching the wrong station in life. A living lesson in people being made to commit atrocities by believing absurdities. I get it cognitively but the rest of me is having trouble grasping it.
Democracy can be annoying as hell and slow to accomplish things, but we can get rid of tyrants. Get well soon, Adam—please take good care of yourself. Moral injury is a thing, and sorting through all of this horror can’t be easy. I appreciate all of your time, expertise and analysis and feel much better informed than I would be without these posts. But take a night off if you need it, ok? Chicken broth, rest, you know the drill.
JoyceH
Nothing is going to make Putin say stop. What’s going to end the war is the Russian PEOPLE saying stop. Think they wouldn’t? Maybe not yet, but soon. I was home with strep in 1991, glued to television, watching the unarmed citizens of Moscow face off against Red Army tanks. Enough body bags and legless sons come home, and this generation of Russians will get there too.
Dang, that’s the second time I’ve seen mention of the flu that’s going around. How widespread is it? I was tentatively planning to leave my cave and caper about in the sunshine for a bit before the next surge sends me back into hibernation.
Carlo Graziani
@Sebastian: Actually, I’ve been wondering about this. In part about the actual harvest, but also the various glitches that we’ve learned to shrug and say “supply chain” here when something expected disappears, or doubles in price overnight.
There are a lot of moving parts in the modern supply chain that turns “harvest” into grocery store goods. A lot of those seem likely to jam when industrial inputs become unavailable, or when money to pay for supply and labor fails to show up.
Is stuff already disappearing from grocery shelves? I assume some panic-driven hoarding must have happened.
Also, do we have any unemployment figures for, say Moscow?
It is fashionable for Kremlin watchers to say that “Putin doesn’t need to worry about sanctions or popularity”. But I remember a demonstration against the CPSU’s monopoly on power in Moscow in March 1991 that drew 500,000 people, panicked the party conservatives, and forced Gorbachev to back off from his attempt to force Yeltsin from the Duma, despite a mobilization of 50,000 MVD and Army troops.
This situation is nothing like that one, but neither does Putin have the kind of control that the Soviet Communist Party had. Things are not always as clear-cut as they seem, and a large, pissed-off crowd could potentially make some people think some new thoughts.
Sebastian
@Marc:
That’s the 300, there is a bigger model, the Switchblade 600.
https://www.avinc.com/images/uploads/product_docs/Switchblade_600_Datasheet_07192021.pdf
The point is not that it’s 100, those are for practice and to get 100 Switchblade tablets to the front.
The next shipments will be in the thousands to supply at least one hundred drone operators but more likely, many many more. Soon every regional UKR TDF unit will have one or two operators and a few dozen Switchblades.
Sebastian
@Carlo Graziani:
That’s exactly what the direction I was thinking, too. The system was already terrible under the best circumstances and now it’s experiencing a series of shocks.
Let’s see how many shocks to the Russian agricultural system we can find. I am simplifying this thought experiment down to the absolute basic: Wheat. Will there be enough bread? I know for the American jackals this thought alone must seem so alien but I know you are thinking the same thing, right?
… Jesus Christ.
Medicine Man
This is quite dismal, all the talk of famine in Russia. What worries me is that it may be accurate, that the only thing that will threaten Putin’s power is when the costs of the war are felt by the Russian people. Then we’ll see if the dictator can do anything to alleviate the suffering of his own people, or anything useful at all. What a mess.
Tehanu
@Argiope:
Same from me. I too really appreciate these posts.
Marc
Thanks, it’s not clear whether the 600 is in production at this point. About 20 years ago I had a chance to chat with Dr. Paul MacCready, the founder of AeroEnvironment. I was a glider pilot, the “speed to fly” formula he came up with in the 50s is still used to this day to determine optimal cruising speed for cross country flights. World champion glider pilot, designer/builder of the first successful human powered airplane, the 90s era GM EV-1 electric car, and the NASA Helios solar powered electric drone. Sadly, he died about 15 years ago, I’m not so sure he would have approved of the Switchblade.
rachel
@Medicine Man:
This dictator is a mobster, and they are not known for the ability ro do honest work.
Sebastian
@Marc:
My understanding is the 600 is classified. Adam will be the right person to comment on that, though.
If the 300 carries 300g of C4 or equivalent, then no artillery position, ammunition depot, supply truck, or officer’s tent will be safe as this thing can be directed to strike within inches.
There are simply not that many targets left to strike to be honest. A few thousand of those things, combined with infantry equipped with Javelins, NLAWs, Carl Gustavs, Stingers, high tech optics, and other stuff …
The Russian army is completely demoralized. Yes, their Guard units in the South and East are making some progress but how long until the entire cohesion breaks down? They are already traumatized by Bayraktars striking them at will from above. I’ve seen UA SOF with $40k night vision gear, every night Russians are dying without a chance to defend themselves, even see the enemy, the psychic toll must the crushing: you know you are in the wrong, in a war against civilians, and then you realize the gear you have is shit, the training you have is shit, and what was supposed to be a blitzkrieg turns out to be a war against a high tech army that’s like fighting some Space Marines from the future who you can’t even see.
Fuck, I’d shoot myself in the leg to get out of a situation like that.
This war won’t last much longer.
Geminid
@Sebastian: The possibility of widespread passive or active mutiny among Russian forces in Ukraine. There were early reports of isolated acts of mutiny like holing fuel tanks and desertion. I don’t know how far this has gone, but mutiny is something that could spread very quickly and officers may go along.
Kalakal
@Sebastian: As Lenin put it of the Russian armies mass desertions in 1917 “They voted with their feet”
H.E.Wolf
@Omnes Omnibus:
A Dangerous Liaisons reference? Nice!
David Anderson
@Winston: nope… Carriers and boomers are creatures of space….
Same deterring effect is achieved by deploying B-52s to England and F-35s to Germany
Another Scott
@Sebastian: That Galeev guy tells great stories. And makes a lot of sense.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gvg
I have read that Russia is having a sudden brain drain as their high tech and science people are leaving. I was wondering if that was really what Putin meant about traitors living abroad, not the children of the oligarchs, who are not that useful after all.
I hadn’t thought of famine in Russia, was just worried about famine in Ukraine as it is hard to plant and grow during a war. We are going to have to send food. Not just to Ukraine, but also places they normally supply. Can our government subsidize extra farming this year, quickly enough?
O. Felix Culpa
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for the reference I.D. I knew it sounded familiar, but couldn’t remember the source. :)
Halteclere
It would not surprise me if the US was publicly sending over a few Switchblades and other high-tech hardware as a cover for any special operations that the US may engage in Ukraine. If the US is actively hunting top Russian and Chechen commanders, and uses Switchblades to take them out, there is now a means of deniability.
This could also apply to may of the other hardware that NATO is sending over. Electronic surveillance and targeting won’t be tracked back to NATO, and any fragments of bombs, explosives, etc. can be plausibly connected to the equipment shipped to Ukraine forces.
Laura Too
Adam, hope you scan the comments when you have a moment today so I can say get well soon! Please take care of yourself. I read your posts and all the comments way later than they go up. They are all so valuable and I learn so much. Plus it makes me not feel so alone knowing that others feel the same way.
Laura Too
@Gvg: I have friends who farm. Fertilizer is up 40% over last year. I think some of them won’t be planting as much. It is setting up to be a perfect storm in a really awful way.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Do these people not know you at all? :-)
Sometimes a thing must be said.
WaterGirl
@PJ:
That is so perfect in every way.
MomSense
The Ukrainian artist I follow has been posting photographs, footage, and interviews constantly since the first day of this war. They have been getting more difficult every day as the Russian attacks have shifted to civilian targets. I started following her several years ago when one of her photographs appeared on my feed. It’s devastating to see this happening to Ukraine and it’s also devastating to see this happen to her, to see her change. We have had several conversations via dm about how she is trying to preserve a bit of her artists heart to keep it open and able to see beauty and wonder. She feels lost now after what she has lived.
Hopefully Ukraine will survive this, but they will be changed forever and I’m grieving for what is lost. Last night after heartbreaking images she showed some of the Russian propaganda ads that are currently running in Russia and I just couldn’t believe it. Of course it is exactly the kind of bullshit propaganda that you would expect but it just enraged me. One ad had sort of ordinary people in a park wearing winter garb with kids in handknit hats with pompoms and people of different ages and social strata (all white of course). Then this long line of men in black gear that sort of looked like police riot gear all ran into the park in formation. Then they were all linking arms with the people in the park in a Rockettes sort of kick line fashion with the camera in close to see the people all smiles. The camera angle all of a sudden is above and they are in a fucking Z. I’m sure my description doesn’t do this Justice. The combination of the faces, the symbolism, the music, the fucking Z that doesn’t exist in the alphabet except as a symbol for this war – after seeing parents sobbing over dead children – I just lost it. Our media hardly showed us these scenes from Syria, from so many wars. The reasons why are a discussion we need to have at some point. Right now though our focus has to be on eliminating this fucking ethno nationalist, authoritarian movement in Europe and in the US. There can be no civility, no normalizing it, no shrugging it off. It is the enemy of humanity.
Alce _e_ardillo
@Winston: Black Sea is too small an area for the subs. They need space to be effective.
trnc
Is this one of the reasons Biden says we won’t take direct military action? Because he would need congressional authorization, and if he doesn’t get it, that emboldens Putin even more?
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: Heartbreaking.
Madeleine
Adam and our expert commenters: though I shouldn’t, I stay awake every night to read Adam’s post and the comments, return to comments first thing in the morning, because you provide the best information and understanding available about this war against Ukraine. Tired but well informed. Thank you so much.
Kalakal
@Winston: Definite nope, nothing the carrier can’t do that land based air in Europe can’t do more easily at far less risk. NATO has a lot of airfields and a lot of air defense systems there.
The boomers should stay well away, hidden in the depths of the oceans.
WaterGirl
@Kalakal: Plus, that would be poking the bear at a time when we need the bear to be more stable, not less.
I think you mean nothing the carrier “can do” not can’t do? If so, I can fix that.
RaflW
@Another Scott: “some GQP guy (maybe Cotton) saying that Biden was “pussyfooting around” and needed to do more”
Cotton should be run thru the gin for such blatant bullshit. But I’m sure he’ll be invited on all the shows anyway
eta: @trnc As long as there are no appreciable consequences for Republican duplicitousness (which would require, among other things, shaming and shunning) we’re gonna have this idiotic Kabuki.
Kalakal
@WaterGirl: Agreed, an unnecessary risk, achieving nothing.
Yep, you’re right ‘can do’ is a lot clearer, thanks
Lyrebird
@terry chay: probably too late, but I really appreciate your laying that out.
RaflW
@Carlo Graziani: Are there basically any western journalists still in Russia? It seems to me most left within days of the don’t say war law with the 15 year prison penalty passed.
Obviously local inhabitants would know if thousands of people showed up in a city square, blocked traffic, etc. But the near-total suppression of non-state news I’d think makes both the protest awareness internally and outside the new iron curtain difficult.
I’m sure there are smart Russians using VPNs, but that’s going to be a modest proportion of the citizens.
Someone else mentioned brain drain migration. I wonder how long Putin will tolerate easy exit for Russians? Is there reporting on changes to exit policies? Not having commercial flights to basically any non-RF destinations may impact that too, though I suppose once one manages to get to something like the airport in Sochi, you’d have to cross into nearby Georgia and then move on. (This assumes you have sufficient hard currency, of course.)
brantl
@piratedan: He was an asshole, who in the last few years of more extreme assholes, almost looked sane, lately.
brantl
@Matt: That much dissolved shit would leave a big stain on the capitol’s floor.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
It’s probably OK to start casually using the word “Zwastika”.
Sebastian
@Another Scott:
Damn, he does. I am learning so much about the conflict, the region, and history! There are so many things I should know, like the Napoleonic Wars, but am now seeing with new eyes.
I have started to work myself through all his threads.
trnc
@RaflW: Thanks. Yes, that’s a given, but I’m curious if anyone thinks that’s one of the reasons Biden is absolute on not getting the US involved directly. Mind you, I understand the non-political reasons for not putting boots on the ground, but I’m curious nonetheless.
Sebastian
@Halteclere:
That is exactly what is happening. Little Green Men swings both ways.
Ukraine most likely has the world’s highest density of berets and balaclavas. I invite you to follow down on this path of thoughts:
I do not have to tell you how mighty the clarion call of history sounds, we are all collectively feeling it. Now imagine you are a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, British Marines, German GSG9, or any other special forces soldier in the world. You are the best at what you do, all your training, skills, and personality are naturally pushing towards initiative, action, focus, and results. You are not the type to sit around and wait for commands, you voice your concerns to your officer, why there is no action, why aren’t you out there fighting, but so is your officer because he is the same as you, just politically smoother, and so is his boss, and so on. There is a cascade of human intention and will pushing forcefully in one direction, so strong it’s almost palpable.
You have all these hyper-alpha-type personalities who know that they can go through the Orcs like a hot knife through butter and they will voice this to leadership, they will plead to let them be set loose.
Imagine how many fists are clenching a knife so tight the fingers might leave imprints in the handle’s steel. That’s what we are talking about here.
On the other end, you have politicians who want and must do something. The moment politicians and military leadership are in the same room and look into each other’s faces and the politicians hear from the brass that their men are ready and eager to go and at the same time they want and need something to happen, there is really nothing left to stop that.
So yes, I believe you are very right, there is most likely a shitton of Special Forces operating in Ukraine.
Sebastian
@Bill Arnold:
I will from now on.
trnc
I’d like to hear that intelligence has picked up chatter from as yet unknown sources about a weakened Russia and when the right time would be to walk into Moscow, whether that intel actually exists or not.
eddie blake
@Winston: ssbns can strike from deep and hit anywhere on the planet. why would you a) announce their presence when their whole purpose is to maneuver in stealth and shower their targets with multiple independent warheads or precision strike missiles and b) announce their presence in the shallow narrows of the bosphorus, making them billion-dollar targets?
debbie
First I’ve heard of this:
So horrible for them.
Sebastian
@debbie:
Konzentrationslager. KZ.
WaterGirl
@debbie: That is horrible.
debbie
@Sebastian:
Shamefully, I needed to Google Translate that. ??♀️ But you’re absolutely right.
debbie
O/T, from WWII: