AP published an absolutely riveting firsthand account of the escape of two of the press service’s journalists from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which Russians have surrounded and relentlessly bombed for weeks. If you’ve followed the coverage of the war, you’ve likely seen the men’s work: they’ve published some of the most harrowing video and haunting photos of the carnage. Some of their work was featured in President Zelensky’s video montage when he addressed the U.S. Congress last week.
The men, video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Evgeniy Maloletkawho, say they were the last international journalists in the city. Ukrainian authorities told them they were being hunted by Russian soldiers, who were allegedly going to capture them and force them to retract their reporting on camera at gunpoint. Ukrainian soldiers helped them escape:
Suddenly at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: “Where are the journalists, for fuck’s sake?”
I looked at their armbands, blue for Ukraine, and tried to calculate the odds that they were Russians in disguise. I stepped forward to identify myself. “We’re here to get you out,” they said.
The walls of the surgery shook from artillery and machine gun fire outside, and it seemed safer to stay inside. But the Ukrainian soldiers were under orders to take us with them.
Go read the whole thing if you can. Saw this on Twitter somewhere: First they came for the journalists, and no one knows what happened after that.
I don’t know much about the Geneva Conventions and International Criminal Court, but I’m pretty sure targeting journalists to stop the world from documenting your war crimes is…a war crime — or should be.
Open thread.
cain
Holy shit – that’s insane. So glad they got out of there – and the soldiers helped them escape.
mainmati
Dictators and autocrats like Putin especially target journalists for death, doesn’t matter whether they are “international” or not. I hope they are safe now for sure.
different-church-lady
I have no idea why Putin thinks this shit still works in the 21st century.
Ruckus
different-church-lady
If you are a dictator who is trying to hide the truth – vlad – then you have to stop anyone who is trying to tell the truth, especially telling it publicly.
One doesn’t learn about life, openness and truth in the KGB, except how to rearrange it to something else.
Shalimar
@different-church-lady: The sad thing is that it worked just fine for him until the last 27 days.
Mathguy
@Ruckus: All for domestic consumption.
Miss Bianca
Just read that article. Damn.
columbusqueen
I have no words. I cried reading his account. Nothing but ice cold butchery for no good reason. May Putin rot in hell sooner rather than later.
Cacti
Targeting journalists or any other kind of civilian: War crime of the highest order.
Bombing, shelling, or otherwise attacking hospitals: War crime
Geminid
It’s significant that soldiers could smuggle the journalists out. The city must not be thoroughly surrounded. Russia may give up on taking Kyiv, but they need to control Mariupol to establish a land bridge from the Crimea to their territory farth east along the Black Sea coast. They might not be able to pull that off.
Chief Oshkosh
Snipers shooting at medics as they try to leave the hospital to rescue wounded. I hope the Russian conscripts learn the hard way that just “being a good soldier” is not a defense for war crimes.
lowtechcyclist
Remember when Dubya looked into Putin’s eyes and got a sense of his soul?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Those journalists have guts. We owe them for their reporting on this savage scene.
Chief Oshkosh
@lowtechcyclist: Good times.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
The Russians certainly control the roads well enough to prevent resupply or escape in mass numbers. The general consensus is that they don’t do well at all off the roads, and it seems that small numbers of people can get out by going off road.
A large off-road exodus would likely be noticed and bombed, though.
Cathie from Canada
What a story, and the bravery of these poor people is so incredible.
One thing I noticed here — the reporters seemed to be well aware in February that Mariupol would be a target in a war, but the people living there did not seem to grasp its strategic importance. So apparently they were not told to evacuate before the war began? I know Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government had reasons — save the economy, don’t cause a panic, etc? — for not setting up evacuation plans for their cities in January and February, but I wonder now how many thousands of lives were lost because of that calculus. Seeing those photos of the little children made me weep.
MattF
Eliot Cohen writes in The Atlantic that the war isn’t a stalemate— the Ukrainians are winning. Yeah, Cohen is biased, Atlantic Magazine is not a reliable source, and ‘winning’ is not the word I’d use here, even if Ukraine is doing much better than expected and Russia is doing much worse. I’m reluctant to commit an act of optimism, even if it’s, arguably, justified.
Betty Cracker
Deleted — asked and answered already.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady: It does work, right up until it stops working. Vlad’s gonna Vlad until he reaps consequences and for now, autocrats around the globe look on approvingly, taking notes.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
I think his main audience is people who want to believe Russia is doing right, not people who are inherently skeptical. He just wants to provide those people with a reason to discount anything they’re hearing from non-Russian journalists.
Uncle Cosmo
…and Vova looked into Dubya’s eyes and saw – whatever was hidden behind the latter’s head…
Roger Moore
@Mathguy:
Plus tankies.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: The journalists escaped in a large convoy of civilians through a “humanitarian corridor” that passed through more than a dozen Russian checkpoints before reaching Ukrainian-held territory. But we know lots of those convoys have been shelled, so they were lucky too.
trollhattan
@Cathie from Canada: Three-hundred thousand are trapped there and there is no meaningful path out of danger, because the Russians will not honor any of them. They will leave a route into Russia available and no Ukrainian fails to see the consequences of settling for that option.
If Odesa falls then Ukraine is landlocked. Hard to envision how they maintain an economy without their ports (which surely is one of Putin’s objectives).
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist: I remember vividly. I was running on a treadmill at the gym. I’m lucky they didn’t drag me out. I was screaming at the screen, “He’s a KGB agent, you idiot! He doesn’t have a soul!”
Cathie from Canada
@Roger Moore: Just something to keep in mind whenever we hear anything at all that purports to justify or minimize what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
The entire war is a war crime. Putin will not be forgiven for what he has done and neither will the Russian people as a whole — Ukrainians will hate them forever.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“I am passionately interested in an end to war, an end to overreliance on fossil fuels, a commitment to environmental goals and attacking oligarchs and crony capitalism. I therefore support Vladimir Putin in his special operation in the Ukraine.”
-by Dr. Saint HOA President Jill Stein of the Green Party (read her timeline)
MattF
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Jeeze.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
All those laudable objectives require funding.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Ah. So the Russians may have a tight perimeter established around the city after all.
trollhattan
@Uncle Cosmo: Funny how Dubya failed to see Putin for who it is and yet uttered “That was some crazy shit” (or whatever the exact quote is) at Trump’s inauguration. When Bush knows you’re nuts, you really, really must be certifiable.
Then of course, Vlad saw in Trump the opportunity of a lifetime to fvck with the West without any negative consequences. Played him like an accordion for four years.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@lowtechcyclist:
In his defense, people can change.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: It’s even worse than I remembered… C-Span:
I’m surprised he didn’t call him a “good Christian” while heaping that praise all over him.
Grr…,
Scott.
Lyrebird
My limited understanding is that they have a pretty big understanding of that, as the bloody tyrant tried to take that city back when he grabbed Donetsk and the other captured territory. Even since 2014… Seems like the average Ukrainian grownup has been awake to Putin’s threat for years, while the average American grownup? Some faintly aware, some very aware, and some cheering on his takeover tactics.
I’m certainly with you in despair: The deaths of so many children and the starving of a whole city, including its children?
I am also in awe. People who have decided okay, I am willing to die real soon in defense of my community.
S. Cerevisiae
I would not be surprised that the Ukrainians have prepared secret routes in and out, they have had time to anticipate the invasion and its their home turf. They might even be getting help from the local smugglers who exist in any city.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
I’ve been seeing more and more people use this word in the last couple of weeks (never heard it used before ever). Can you please define it for an old and apparently out of it woman?
mrmoshpotato
Was that before or after W decided to become a war criminal himself?
Lyrebird
@zhena gogolia:
May I add you to my list of key blog folks who would love to have been wrong, who’d been told they were being alarmist? G & T and Adam for instance.
This list means nothing, just sending appreciation and commiseration.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: Stalinists, originally, now applied to those who reflexively support Russia. From academics, like Katrina vanden Heuvel’s late husband Stephen Cohen, to younger “journalists” (fellow travelers) like Matt Taibbi, the odious Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey. The term dates back to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Because Putin’s another lazy ass fucker like Trump, so Putin is just going by Lavrentiy Beria’s, the loathsome head of the NKVD under Stalin, play book.
artem1s
Is anyone else having flashbacks to Berlin relief airlifts? I completely understand and support Biden’s decisions not to press NATO to close airspace or establish a no-fly zone. But doesn’t that leave their borders open for international humanitarian aid? I know Putin is crazy and wants to force the EU and NATO to react militarily and will point to anything coming over the borders as Western aggression.
But Stalin was crazy too and that didn’t stop the US from flying in aid to East Berlin.
I know I am no expert and believe that there is a lot happening that we don’t know about – just voicing my frustration and anxiety – trying not to fall into Putin’s obvious trap. :P
Captain C
@geg6: Originally, tankies were (British, IIRC) Communists who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the USSR in order to make sure that the former stayed in the Warsaw Pact orbit and didn’t try their own brand of Communism; many Western Leftists reasonably thought that sending in the tanks = imperialism = bad, regardless of who was doing it to whom.
Now it basically means an anti-US/NATO/Western illiberal (self-proclaimed) Lefty who’s fine with or outright enthusiastic about pretty much any atrocity or imperialist action as long as it’s committed by an enemy/adversary of the West. Tankies are loud online in inverse proportion to their numbers, their cluefulness, and their moral character.
Chetan Murthy
@Gin & Tonic: a little more color, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chief Oshkosh: Maybe the Russians will learn the hard way that soldiers have to come home one day and you don’t want them crazy with guilt.
trollhattan
This is kind of interesting. Hard to guess whether it will cause any Russian consternation.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Tankie
Lyrebird
@Lyrebird: Sorry “Donetsk” should be Donbas there
trollhattan
Leave Jill Stein aloooooooone!
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: I do wonder about the apparent re-emergence of Stalinism without the inconvenience of left-wing views. I’ve encountered a few Stalinists over the years and they’ve generally been sincerely delusional. I don’t think that’s true of the Putinist variants.
Kelly
Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov :
big if true
https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1505972650786672648
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Tracey has always been a clown, but these days, he’s flat-out unhinged.
different-church-lady
@Uncle Cosmo:
That would be if he looked into one of W’s ears.
Obvious Russian Troll
@trollhattan:
This isn’t to let him off the hook for it, but keep in mind that when Bush slobbered over Putin back in 2001 he had diplomatic goals. It’s rarely a good idea for one leader to publicly given his actual opinion about another. If he’d said something less jaw-droppingly stupid and awful (“I think we can work with old Vlad” or whatever) it’d be long forgotten.
Whereas his comments about Trump at the inauguration in 2017 may have been reasonably honest.
Gin & Tonic
@Kelly: Why do you say “if true”? Komsomolskaya Pravda is quoting the Russian defense ministry for that 9,861 number. It says that the Ukrainian defense ministry says 14,700, and I think this is meant as a debunking.
I suspect the number is greater than 9,861.
JCJ
@lowtechcyclist: Maybe W and Pootie can be cellmates after their war crimes trials
Captain C
@trollhattan:
Her Twitter timeline is an absolute cesspool.
Gin & Tonic
jonas
@lowtechcyclist:
Kind of like the time he said he liked to make decisions from his “gut,” as if that were some kind of tough thing to do. I so rolled my eyes at that because to be a good judge of people, or to have a “gut” that tells you the right decision requires having had to judge a lot of people and make a lot of decisions previously and learn what hunches work and which don’t. Bush had none of that. He was a lazy frat boy who sort of meandered through a series of “jobs” his dad (or dad’s connections) got him before being elected to a governorship with no real legislative power and then the presidency.
So of course he could chat with a manipulative creep like Putin for a few minutes and “see into his soul”. At least he didn’t fawn over him like a teenage fan at a boy band concert and tell the media he believed him over his own intelligence officials, but still…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I can’t believe I am defending Dubya, but that incident happened when little Vova was but a newb dictator, fresh off his first war of oppression in Chechena, so it’s not impossible Putin hadn’t gone full Howard Hughes loony at that point like now and Putin was still dealing with the world rationally.
brendancalling
@Cathie from Canada: Putin is leaving his people holding a 3 pound bag filled to with 25 pounds of burning shit.
The Ukrainians will NEVER forgive any of the Russians for this, ever. My ex still hates them for Chernobyl, and she wasn’t even born when that happened. She still hates them for the Holodomor.
Frankly, I hate them too. I’m not forgiving them either—after all, these are the folks that gave us Trump, meddled with our elections, and have now ensured a new arms race in Europe.
Fuck Putin and fuck Russia. I hope they all starve to death.
catclub
For some values of “country” that take Vladimir Putin as Russia.
also some values of “best interests”
WaterGirl
@geg6: Check out the War in Ukraine Lexicon that’s the first item in the list under WAR IN UKRAINE that’s in the blue category bar up top.
Here’s a direct link.
RSA
Security Council condemns attacks against journalists in conflict situations, unanimously adopting resolution 1738 (2006):
jonas
@artem1s:
Russia didn’t have the bomb yet during the Berlin airlift, but the US did. That checked Stalin’s ability to escalate the situation at the time and he had to let the allied planes reach Berlin. Consequently, he doubled down on his own atomic program, and the USSR tested its first bomb in 1949.
Baud
@RSA:
To be fair, that’s what Russia is doing.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: What is the point of that? What are they looking for?
VeniceRiley
This tweeter has the proof on Putin’s yacht:
https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1505942207030779912?t=NSiynlOO8bAJZavRd4BNWg&s=19
MisterForkbeard
@Cathie from Canada: The Ukrainians were pushing against a public perception of “Russia is going to invade” for a long time. I think they wanted to avoid a panic, but also make it so that if Putin backed down it wouldn’t look like “backing down”
Kent
Putin could have poured Russian arms into the Iraqi resistance and made things worse for the US during Bush’s wars. As far as I know they did not. At least not overtly in any systematic way. Russia was a prior supporter of Saddam Hussein but was equally threatened by Islamic extremism and so basically just stood by and didn’t intervene when the US invaded. As I recall, the Russians were also supporters of the Kurds.
So basically during Bush’s 1st term the US and Russia weren’t particularly opposed, at least on the issues of importance to the US at that time.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Apropos of nothing special at all, would sure as shit be great if Wikileaks could take five minutes out of their Assange coverage and mail some internal Russian traffic to a Substacker who’d promote it….
Baud
@VeniceRiley:
That’s …um…my yacht. I’d like it back please. Thank you.
Kent
I’ve met a few too. Basically delusional intolerant authoritarians.
The hard-core Putinists are basically the same except that the have replaced communism with hard-right Orthodox Christianity and hate. Some of the American variety think Putin’s invasion is justified because it will rid Ukraine of the horror of LGBT rights. For real. Carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities is justified because Ukraine didn’t sufficiently hate on LGBT people. And Putin is God’s hammer wielding out just punishment.
Obvious Russian Troll
@catclub: Yeah, it was bullshit. Like 99% of international diplomacy . (Although most international diplomacy isn’t that inept.)
This was in 2001 before 9/11. Bush likely wanted to keep Putin from interfering with whatever pretext for war with Iraq he and Cheney were already planning, so he was sucking up to Putin.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: It’s the “Scheherezade”, not the “PANTS OPTIONAL”. Are you sure it’s yours?
Chetan Murthy
@Obvious Russian Troll: By contrast, Uncle Joe had Putin’s number: https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-told-putin-he-had-no-soul-during-odd-kremlin-visit-2011-1600908
Kelly
@Gin & Tonic: If true
Cameron
@WaterGirl: I think they’re pretending to look for Nazis. Or they might be delusional enough to believe they’ll find some.
Kent
@Kelly: If 10K Russians have died and only 16K have been wounded then those numbers are seriously out of whack from the normal 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio of deaths to wounded that seems to be the norm in modern conventional warfare.
Either (1) those numbers are inaccurate and perhaps a LOT more have been wounded or injured than has been reported which is possible as it is probably a lot easier to not reported wounded and injured than it is to hide deaths.
Or (2) the Russians have far worse battlefield medicine than western armies and are doing 2 or 3-times worse at treating their wounded than the US does.
I suppose either or both scenarios are possible. But if they do have 10k deaths then they should have more like 30-40K wounded casualties, most of whom are out of action at least for a time period.
eclare
@Baud: You always make me laugh
geg6
@Captain C:
That’s why I never heard of it! It’s from Brits originally. My studies of Russia/Soviet Union (I had quite a lot of classes about the country) in college never mentioned the term. And I can’t be bothered with asshole Lefties.
PaulWartenberg
Everything Putin and his army are doing in Ukraine are straight-up war crimes. Targeting civilians ought to be an automatic arrest warrant issued from the Hague regardless of treaty. Every nation on the planet – even China – ought to be treating Putin as a goddamned criminal who should run for his life. I don’t care if he’s threatening nuclear retaliation: even he has to know that course of action will destroy himself.
trollhattan
@Baud:
If my key card gets me into the bar, then it’s my yacht.
Don’t worry; I’ll moor somewhere fun, then have parties on board. Can’t afford to fill the tanks to go anywhere, that’s for sure.
Maybe Sausalito. Jackals welcome.
trollhattan
@Kent:
What’s Russian for “Bullet, schmullet, it’s just a little hole. You’re fine, now grab weapon get back out there!”
Mike in NC
Surreal headline from USA Today: “NASCAR team owner donates 1M rounds of ammo to Ukraine”
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Nationalist tattoos.
trollhattan
Unbelievable, they just front-paged this at LGM.
Kent
Also military tattoos to the extent that soldiers are trying to blend-in with civilians and get out of siege areas that way. In a normal war soldiers would be held as prisoners of war while civilians released. And of course any Nazi type tattoos so they can parade them in front of cameras and show the Nazis that they have captured in Ukraine.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC: Did they specify for which side?
MattF
There’s a very big yacht that’s peculiarly difficult to figure out who owns it…
ETA: Looks like VeniceRiley got there first.
lashonharangue
@Baud:
I’ve read maintenance costs about 10% of the purchase price of a ship each year. Do you have that kind of money ($60-70 million) in your SuperPAC?
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: Damn, they’re slow. Some asshole posted about it in a comment thread here this morning.
Martin
@different-church-lady: Because it still works in the 21st century. How many journalists have fallen off of 9th floor balconies in Russia? How much accountability has Russia or Putin faced?
WaterGirl
@Cameron: Nazis get tattoos? I need to get out more.
PJ
@different-church-lady:
Because it’s worked pretty well in the 21st Century, or well enough, anyway. Think of all the obvious horseshit Putin has spread in the US, and which has been eagerly spread by the MSM, and the flood of misinformation which the right wingers and leftists believe and promote. I mean, they floated the Hunter Biden laptop thing again just this past week. There is a big audience out there that wants to believe the Russian atrocities are faked, the US is to blame, etc., and they would gladly believe and promote the gunpoint confessions of these journalists.
catclub
Lyndon LaRouchies!
Martin
@Kelly: As others have noted, the 10K is in line with a lot of other estimates. The 16K is sorta bullshit, but in a way I could buy it. Russia seems to be both somewhat unable and somewhat unwilling to deal with their wounded. The usual 3-4x ratio assumes you have the means and motivation to care for your wounded. If you’re sending troops forward without medics, well…
eclare
@WaterGirl: Big time. Lots of ink.
lowtechcyclist
@Kelly: So it’s still Day 26 of the war, and even Russia is admitting that they’ve lost over 26,000 soldiers to death and injury. And I guess that doesn’t count POWs and deserters.
The highest estimate I’d heard of the size of Russia’s invasion force was 200,000. So they’ve lost 1/8 of it already. That’s a lot.
I also wonder just how the remaining soldiers are dealing with that sort of chance of getting killed or injured. I’d be looking for a safe place to hide.
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: I surely hope that turns out to be true!
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
Can Sausalito handle such a large craft? I recall mostly high-end houseboats.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT Okay but I don’t have to have surgery because my respitory consultant and my surgeon were at crossed purposes. So I am going to have another scan in 3 months because this “mass” in my lung has not grown for 3 years and my respitory consultant thinks that the surgery is more dangerous than the mass is. (Thank god that I decided to go talk to my respitory guy before I went in for the surgery) I told the consultant that I know I am being selfish but I have trips planned this year Cornwall The Helston Floral Festival, been dreaming about it for 30 years in the US, The Edinurgh Tatoo and Loch Ness ditto. My Lung Cancer Nurse (bless her) said she would have made the exactly same decision, you have to live your life, whatever the result. “You go on your holidays girl, you’ve earned it”. I love the NHS.
PJ
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It was not a secret, at least to the intelligence establishment, which Bush must have been informed about (though probably didn’t pay any attention to, just like he paid no mind to “OBL determined to strike in the US”), that Putin had the FSB blow up several apartment buildings in Russia in 1999 to establish a pretext for his war in Chechnya.
Baud
@Litlebritdifrnt: I was wondering what happened. Thanks for the update. Glad you get to go on holiday.
Raven
@Gin & Tonic: I this true?
Raven
@Litlebritdifrnt: Good show!
eclare
@Litlebritdifrnt: Enjoy your trips!
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott: I believe he did say something like that somewhere in there.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
You wanted a concise history of Russia, and I ran across this (I ordered it myself):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521543231?ref=em_1p_1_ti&ref_=pe_4671130_629035950
lowtechcyclist
This is just off the top of my head, and from a position of great ignorance, but: it seems that the Ukrainians have blown up a shitload of Russian tanks. And when tanks get blown up, I’m guessing you get mostly deaths and not many (injured) survivors. So maybe an unusual ratio of deaths to injuries makes some sort of sense here.
eclare
@Raven: What is the source for that?
Raven
@eclare: A unitarian minster I know who is bemoaning the fact that brown people’s plight is being ignored RE Ukraine.
Mike in NC
Re Russian KIA: maybe when a javelin missile hits a truck or armored car, odds of survival are low.
Ruckus
@Kent:
It’s winter, there are boots on the ground but most of the deaths likely have come from blowing up tanks, trucks and the like. And it’s likely that this is a war that doesn’t use as many bodies. Also notice that since WWII a smaller percentage of solders have died than lived in most every skirmish. Also vova lies out his ass and everyone around him repeat those lies. No one will likely ever know. As an aside how many Russian citizens seem to actually want to die to steal Ukraine? Because I’d bet it isn’t close to 100% – or even 50%.
TonyG
@different-church-lady: I think that for Putin the threat of violence is the point.
Captain C
@trollhattan:
As per Google Translate (with a little tweaking from Yours Truly):
Пуля, шмуля, это всего лишь дырочка. Ты в порядке, теперь хватай оружие и возвращайся туда!
zhena gogolia
@Raven: Sounds like bullshit to me.
TonyG
@TonyG: This is off-topic, but I’m curious whether one of the posters with military expertise could offer insight into something that I find puzzling in this disaster: What’s going on with the Russian tanks sticking to nice neat columns on roads where they can be picked off and cause traffic jams? I thought that the whole point of tanks, ever since they were invented in 1916 was that they don’t need roads. Are these crummy tanks? Crummy officers?
CapnMubbers
@Raven: That “brown people” line is almost word for word from Jill Stein’s Twitter timeline. I looked after a previous comment above. Sickening.
Kent
It is mud season in Ukraine. They can’t go off road in many parts of Ukraine without getting stuck up to their axles in mud. Both Hitler and Napoleon made the mistake. What is astonishing is that Putin would do the same thing
You can google up a bazillion pics and youtube videos of Russian tanks stuck in the Ukrainian mud.
Calouste
@lowtechcyclist: There was a discussion on a thread last night about how casualties affect combat effectiveness. Omnes Omnibus posted
So the whole Russian invasion force is pretty close to getting into Amber. Individual units will most certainly already be at Amber and worse levels. I’d also think that if a unit is no longer fully combat capable, things are getting worse faster.
trollhattan
Montana is the new Mexico.
If anything can bring us together, it may prove to be universal hatred of Ted Cruz.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus:
I bet more than 50% are proud of other people dying to steal Ukraine as long as it isn’t them. Because that’s what happened in America in the early 2000s. War has an emotional pull. I was sucked in.
Over on LGM they’re talking about how they hear these stories of atrocities and on some sub-rational level, they kind of want World War III to start, even if it means the world burning in nuclear fire. Obviously there’s no moral equivalence between the sides but It’s the same emotional process.
eclare
@Raven: Obvs I defer to G&T, but I think he has said UKR does have right wing groups, just like every other country. But a lot fewer than we have right here in America.
So does this person think we should not do anything to help UKR?
Kent
Here is one of our local Nazis. Do you think there is any ambiguity to his body art? https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/21/northwest-jury-convicts-neo-nazi-triple-murder
Raven
@eclare: Dunno, I think it’s more general complaining about racial inequity.
Scamp Dog
@zhena gogolia: I remember having the same thought, “Putin’s KGB, he doesn’t HAVE a soul!”
Litlebritdifrnt
@Raven: I would just like to say at this point that the NHS is fucking brilliant, my doctors and nurses are brilliant. My nurse today gave us her cell number in case we have a problem that we need to talk to her about. I have no symptoms right now so everyone is like “lets just see” except for the surgeon who scared the fucking hell out of me. I have lived with this “mass” for three years and nothing has happened so right now I am going on my holidays that we already have booked and am going to live me damn life the way I want to. Fuck cancer.
J R in WV
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Good decision — my dad had a mass in his lung, all his doctors were Oh we need to get that out NOW!.. but it was a benign cyst, after they cut him in half to get to it.
Now you enjoy your summer!
Daoud bin Daoud
@brendancalling: The Holodomor may finally become as well-known as the Holocaust.
eclare
@Kent: All that is missing is a giant 88.
sab
@zhena gogolia: Is a concise history of Russia even possible? Nothing concise there. Always a thousand years of trauma, often as much by your own as by the enemy. And God knows the enemy could be awful.
Just saying.
Kent
De-Nazifcation is one of the bullshit excuses that Putin gave for this war of aggression and conquest. So of course the fellow travelers and Putin fan boys are all over that excuse.
The relevant question isn’t whether or not there are right-wing militants of various stripes in Ukraine. Every country has them, even Israel except that they don’t call themselves Nazis there. The relevant question is whether the government of Ukraine and civil society in Ukraine is infested with Nazis. And the answer is obviously not. Russia is a whole lot more fascist than Ukraine.
eclare
@J R in WV: My dad had surgery for colon cancer and died six months later. I have often wondered if he would have been better off, both in length and quality of life, if he hadn’t had surgery.
Calouste
@Kent: I think lots of people have these images in their head from the Gulf War or movies of tanks rolling along ten abreast across a flat desert. In most of the world, the terrain has too many obstacles, mud, rivers, steep hills, buildings, whatever not, to do that, and roads are the only option
eclare
@Kent: Yep. Plus I would argue that we have more, if not outright Nazis, at least fascist adjacent elected officials here.
Betty Cracker
It’s true that there have been horrific military atrocities committed against nonwhite people that get a fraction of the media attention Russia’s attack on Ukraine is getting from the US and (presumably) Europe. Syria, for one — same bad actor in that case, plus a local flunky. I don’t think pointing that out implies we should pay LESS attention to Ukraine but maybe more attention when other innocent civilians are murdered and driven from their homes.
I don’t think indifference to black and brown people’s lives is the only explanation for this lack of attention, though for some people it probably is. Every conflict has a unique context, and the fact that in this case the aggressor is Russia, which generations of Americans have been conditioned to regard as an enemy that has imperialistic designs on Europe, drives some of the attention. It’s a confirmation of long-held fears and suspicions.
Also maybe because many Americans have Eastern European heritage and thus personalize the conflict more. I don’t know. Social media and the immediacy of the conflict also plays a role, and Zelensky’s skillful handling of the media is a factor.
zhena gogolia
@Litlebritdifrnt: Sounds as if monitoring is the way to go. I’m hoping for the best possible outcome!
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Thanks!
Oh and about tankies, the Squad and BS are definitely tankie adjacent and beloved by tankies everywhere.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: And the fact that Ukraine is a sovereign democracy that did absolutely nothing to provoke the attack.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: Plus Russia has invaded a country next door to a NATO country. And, oh yeah, has nuclear weapons and a batshit crazy burn-it-all down dictator.
Calouste
@Raven: The rate things are going, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will cause more deaths this year than all other wars going on in the world combined. And that point might even be reached within the next month or two.
Miss Bianca
@Raven: My eyes just rolled so hard I’m afraid they might get stuck like that.
@Betty Cracker: thank you. I was trying to think of how to say what you just said, but then you went ahead and just said it, so I don’t have to say it. Which is awesome.
Kent
The last big tank war was really WW2. Stuff like the gulf war doesn’t really count because that wasn’t a battle among equals. In WW2, tanks were rolling over armies that still had infantry using horses for supply. Tanks have more or less been obsolete in conventional war for a long time. Air power makes quick short work of even the most robust modern tanks. That is how the US got away with using them in the Gulf War. They had total air superiority and it was mostly open terrain. And now infantry troops can take out tanks with hand-held weapons from 2 miles away which is 10x further away than the opposing infantry can reach with automatic rifles. So you basically have to have infantry out two miles ahead and on either flank in order to protect your tanks. Which defeats the entire purpose. And now with drones it is even harder for tanks to hide.
The Russians are learning this the hard way.
schrodingers_cat
Tankies are no friends of “brown and black” people, they use non-European peoples as a shield to deflect criticism.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
Worse than that:
Rasputitsa (Russian: распу́тица, IPA: [rɐsˈputʲɪtsə]) is a Russian term for two seasons of the year, spring and autumn, when travel on unpaved roads or across country becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions from rain or melting snow. “Rasputitsa” also refers to road conditions during both periods.
There were those (like me) who watched the temperature graphs in a few cities in Ukraine prior to the invasion, noticing temps well above freezing every day with a lot of sun for extra mud melting, and had premonitions of videos/stills of Russian tanks/trucks stuck in the mud.
The Russian military knew. They just couldn’t say no.
Calouste
@eclare: And Russia has a history of occupying a number of countries for more than four decades.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, but from the US’ point of view that was merely sleazy as opposed to dangerously insane and viewing reality like a fantasy LARP with Putin babbling about the Donbas being the cultural heart of Russia, or something. I half expect to see Putin do a speech dressed like a Viking. One can fault Dubya for setting the pattern of indulging Little Vova’s lies until Putin ended up believing them and now this shit storm.
What is really weird come to think of it was the NeoCons weren’t all over those apartment building bombings since war enteral with Russia is one of their core beliefs.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Your second graf tags something I’ve experienced with the Ukraine invasion: the restoration of Russia to its old role as the Soviet menace that dominated life from birth to the fall of the Wall. For a time it looked like a new world, one that even included a “peace dividend” as we supposedly embarked on demilitarization.
The old demons are all back.
re. your first graf, so little media leaks out of most of the world’s conflicts they’re not in most westerner’s consciousness. If anything, Ukraine is front and center like no war I’ve seen in modern times, Iraq and Afghanistan included because the media were minutely controlled during those adventures. To their credit, Ukrainians seem adroit at how media, especially social media, work
JaySinWa
@Baud: Sure just wire me the moorage, storage, maintenance, shipping and handling fees. I’ll get right on it.
Geminid
@Calouste: Also, tanks without accompanying infantry are more vulnerable to the enemy infantry’s antitank weapons. Russian infantry may be unwilling to leave their their vehicles to fight alongside the tanks.
artem1s
@Kent:
Also, thankfully, Putin doesn’t have any Ice-9.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: I think that’s her point.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
The West’s response has also been to send military weapons to Ukraine, and I have a feeling many of these critics would not the West to be sending military weapons to other hotspots involving non-white combatants
ETA: Probably the biggest “injustice” relates to private donations. Relief efforts for Ukraine will likely exceed those that help other victims of war and other, mostly non-white refugees.
Kent
This isn’t WW2. Fighting alongside tanks (and hiding behind them as you advance) no longer works when the opposing infantry can fire Javelin missiles from 2.5 miles away which is about 20x beyond the range of your own automatic rifles and machine guns. Effective infantry support for tanks these days means patrolling on foot 1-2 miles in front and to the flanks of your tanks which basically means fighting the whole war on foot like Civil War soldiers. Especially if you don’t have air superiority or close-air superiority like helicopters due to fear of Stinger missiles. US troops can direct precision-guided munitions from B-52s flying 10 miles high to take out enemy positions. I don’t think Russians have that capacity.
Ishiyama
Without a dramatic change in circumstances, this situation in Ukraine portends a larger war. That’s what Zelenskyy says, and I feel sure that military experts everywhere are war-gaming for the summer and fall.
There are some hoary aphorisms that come to my mind: “War is the continuation of politics by other means”; “Our cat has the longest tail”; “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead” (there are lots more, applicable as one wishes). I have a hunch that NATO wants Russia to exhaust its reserves in pursuing peripheral gains, such as the siege of Mariupol. Strategically, it is barely a stepping stone towards the desired goal, but the tactics employed are counterproductive on a larger battleground – i.e. the struggle over which side is labeled as “barbaric”.
Baud
OT
Juju
@Betty Cracker: I laughed out loud when I read the tweet that called Tracey a butter goblin. As far as I’m concerned that’s his new name.
Calouste
@Kent: Yep. And even though tanks are vulnerable to air power, planes and helicopters are really expensive, require trained crews, and are somewhat vulnerable to SAMs. But anti-tank missiles are cheap, easy to operate, and no more vulnerable than normal infantry.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I imagined it was like looking into a mirror.
Martin
@eclare: The US doesn’t have a lot of fascists, but we have a LOT of proto-fascists. They like fascist stuff, but they won’t identify as fascists. I mean, much of the GOP is now proto-fascist.
The difference is that proto-fascists don’t agree with fascism as a political ideology, but they’re willing to use most of the trappings of fascism to advance their ideological goals under a different name, and simply deny that they are fascist actions. Turning them into proud fascists probably isn’t going to happen, but they allow fascists to be more effective because they’re both proposing the same policies, but with different justifications.
In a lot of ways fascists are easier to deal with because they are under no illusions of what they are proposing. You can call them out on this stuff and they’ll say ‘yeah, that’s what I want’. The proto-fascists wrap their ideas in pseudointellecutal bullshit. They’re the people who will say ‘yes, I’m going to shoot you in the head, but I absolutely do not want to harm you, this will make you happy’. And when they pull the trigger and you die, they make up some excuse for why you died, and proclaim to be the victim because you didn’t become happy and be around to praise them for making you happy. Instead, everyone is blaming you for pulling the trigger, and that’s unfair. At least the fascist will admit they want you to die when they pull the trigger. They’re much more intellectually honest.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Yep. I had just graduated when the Berlin wall fell, and it really did seem like the cloud of nuclear Armageddon dread that had hung over my parents’ generation and then mine might actually dissipate. Oh well. That was nice while it lasted!
Kent
@Ishiyama: From a really ruthless real-politic point of view, having the Russians exhaust themselves and destroy both their economy and military and international standing in Ukraine is not a bad thing. Except of course for the Ukrainians.
So I expect there are probably some ruthless geopolitical types who are perfectly happy to see Russia destroy itself in Ukraine and are of the opinion that you don’t help your enemy when he is destroying himself. And for that reason they are probably encouraging the Ukrainians to hold out as long as possible whatever the costs.
eclare
@Martin: Good points.
Kent
@Martin:
Sinclair Lewis supposedly said: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”
Just because the GOP doesn’t use the actual word doesn’t mean they aren’t fascist to their fucking core.
TonyG
@CapnMubbers: Jill Stein. The Paris Hilton of fake “progressives”. Andy Warhol was only half-right. People still hang on long after their 15 minutes of fame have expired.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Some of the tankies are skeptical if not dismissive of Sanders and the “Squad.” The latter are called “sheepdogs” who round up credulous socialists to vote for the bourgeois Democratic party.
There is a power struggle within the Democratic Socialist of America. One faction opposes the party’s “inside-outside” strategy of pursuing power through running candidates in Democratic primaries. Working class Americans, they say, cannot find justice through a capitalist party. This faction, “Socialist Alternative, is itself pursuing an inside-outside strategy, trying to leverage its own DSA caucus to influence what they concede is the country’s largest socialist organization.
JaySinWa
Local reporter for Sinclair owned KOMO News apparently fired for unauthorized twitter fan boying Proud Boys and tagged KOMO News in the tweets. https://twitter.com/richsssmith/status/1505969422309068800
Calouste
@Baud: Ukraine is a democratic government that is being attacked by another state. I’m not aware of any other war of conflict that is going on at the moment where that is also the case.
Also, the US has been shipping weapons to what was the government of Afghanistan for about two decades to defend themselves against the Taliban. They just didn’t bother to fight.
Ishiyama
@Calouste:
When I played with toy soldiers many decades ago, I admired the bazooka carrier, kneeling with his weapon on his shoulder.
Another Scott
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’m reminded of a friend’s step father…. His doc saw a strange mass on his chest X-ray, was quite concerned and got a surgeon to look at it. The surgeon was convinced it was something very, very bad that required surgery. The step-father trusted the surgeon completely. Surgery was scheduled. Some gigantic incision that snaked all around from his front across his back was made, internal inspections were done and…
It was scar tissue (apparently from some time when he had the flu or something).
The surgeon was sheepish.
The step-father had pain from the scars the rest of his life….
It’s always, always good to get second opinions.
Best of luck!!
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
That time period was when the pivot to going to war with China was the neocons favorite thing. Remember the P-3 reconnaissance plane that was forced down in China?
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I could not care less. If BS and the Squad were not in the Congress actively badmouthing elected Democrats from their social media and media perches I wouldn’t pay them any attention either
If we elect more of these DSA clowns to the Congress between them and the MAGAs in Congress we would become completely ungovernable.
Martin
@Kent: Right, but you have to adapt your tactics to the situation. The solution to the problem is air superiority. When the Russians failed to get that, they need to adapt to that new reality. Yeah, infantry screen won’t necessarily stop a Javelin from 2 miles away, but it will stop an NLAW from 500 yards, or an RPG-7 from 300 yards away. The RPG isn’t likely to take out a tank, but it’ll take out an APC or a fuel truck, etc. So if you don’t have thermal or some other solution to spot those threats, you have to do *something* even if that is the WWII solution.
I mean, the US wouldn’t even dream of sending that armor in without air superiority. We’d have air scouting ahead for the tanks, even painting targets for them. This is why Russia is having so much trouble. When they failed at the key thing that allowed all other things to be possible, they should have stopped all the other things. They didn’t, and they just keep compounding that mistake over and over because nobody can tell the boss the truth about what’s going on.
In a way, it’s a bit silly of us to question Putin’s directives here when it’s clear he had no fucking idea what the reality on the ground was before he initiated the war, so why do we think he suddenly knows what the reality on the ground is now? Why aren’t the generals still lying to him, and the colonels to them, and the majors to them, and so on. This isn’t some tactical failing, it’s a cultural one. I don’t see any reason to believe that Putin will ever understand the economic, political, and military reality of what’s going on around him, because he’s created so many incentives to ensure that he doesn’t.
Jay
@Raven:
a bunch of “western” Ukrainian Nationalists embraced Nazism, both for it’s historic roots in Ukraine pre-WWII, WWII and resistance against the Soviets.
Pre-Maiden, they were just assholes and soccer hooligans.
During Maiden, being willing to rumble, they were key defenders against the hated State Security Forces, and became more organized, and internally and internationally connected.
During the ATO and afterwards, the due to commitment and morale, became some of the “best” defenders of Ukraine, became a militia.
Since then, the “Nazi” groups Pootie-Poot is ranting about, have become less Nazi, more Nationalist, and part of the regular forces of the UA.
So yes, there are Nazi’s in the UA, just like every Western military, and the Russian military, and yes, there were reach out’s to US/Western Nazi’s to come to Ukraine to fight for Ukraine. Not many responded as “Western” Nazi’s are mostly pussies and poseurs.
Martin
@Ishiyama: That was my favorite as well. He was sturdy and had a good base and didn’t fall over like most of the others.
Ishiyama
The Ukrainian government sees that their backs are against the wall. Russia has turned this into war of attrition and Ukraine is forced to play out this game, whatever the cost, or “meanly lose the last best hope” of democracy and freedom.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: I would probably be a socialist if there was a single organization in the country that espouses socialist viewpoints that wasn’t 100% coopted by capitalist oligarchs, chock full of absolute loonies, or both.
Tom Levenson
@Kent: Re no meaningful tank battles since WW 2The Yom Kippur War would like a word. As would the Indo-Pakistani 1965 war.
Martin
@Kent: I think it is important to differentiate between the two, because we keep falling to do that and keep getting kicked in the teeth as a result. The Klan were fascists. They were proud of their beliefs and actions. Did they lynch that guy simply because he was black? Yeah. They’ll say that. When they could no longer be honest about that, a lot of people determined that they went away. Nobody was calling for the wholesale slaughter of black people, therefore racism was over. But we know that they just turned into proto-klansmen. That’s what Lee Atwater’s confession is about. Once they turned into proto-klansmen, well, killing black people through healthcare or poverty or housing policy was just fine – good policy. Same outcome, generally even the same tactics, but they could reject the ideology of ‘whites only’ and loudly did, even though the policies were designed for that very goal.
The fascists will say it and then do it. The proto-fascists will oppose it, and then do it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
By far the best news of the day! So glad you will be able to travel, and I hope you’ll take lots of pictures for future OTRs.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Wowser. Putin can have him.
JaySinWa
@Raven: I saw some dubious tweets asserting that white nationalist / Fascist Americans were going off to Ukraine to get their jollies by fighting without regard to the issues at hand.
MSNBC has an article addressing this and an apparent split in the militant fascist groups on Putin Vrs Ukraine. Much of this plays into Putin’s deNazification BS.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/fighting-russia-ukraine-sadly-appeals-far-right-extremists-n1290901
ETA: There are another set of stories about a Texan conservative who has been in the Russian occupied territories in support of the wars against Ukraine running propaganda to the US.
Cameron
@Kent: Seems to me that the Nazis in Ukraine are a hell of a lot more of a threat to Ukrainian democracy than to anything Russian. It shouldn’t be too surprising if, after the Russians are sent home, the Ukrainian government encourages its extremists to take up a new hobby or leave.
Kay
LOL. She’s really a pro too. Perfect “attentive” face. For HOURS. She should get a medal.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: What did you think about the FX show, The Americans?
Cameron
@Kent: I like the updated version I saw a couple years ago: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in excess body fat and carrying a misspelled sign.”
Patricia Kayden
@MattF: Ukraine is winning in the public opinion sphere. Hopefully, they can at least force Russia to expend more resources than Putin expected. Slowing down Russia’s onslaught is a victory of sorts.
Betty Cracker
@Tom Levenson: My grandfather, who was a Southern Baptist preacher, was in Israel during the Yom Kippur War and brought back a Moshe Dayan pen for me as a souvenir! He (my grandfather) was kicked out of Israel for being a religious zealot, which is a pretty neat trick.
Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
By then the GOP started to become fellow travelers with Putin’s anti-gay, pro-Christian, capitalism with crime as the regulatory function. Putin has done a LOT of what the GOP want, and done it more openly. Pre-1991, the white christians still had control of both parties, so the arguments were different. The democratic party was still by default a white Christian party, defending white Christians. The rise of Bin Laden allowed the GOP to pivot onto a new bad guy.
There is a *world* of difference between Bill Clinton and Stacey Abram as standard bearer for the Dems. That means the biggest threat to white Christian supremacy is now inside the US rather than outside, so the GOP became more culturally aligned with Putin than with, say, Biden, which is why the t-shirts of ‘I’d rather be Russian than Democrat’ are proudly worn by the very guys who voted for Reagan as young adults.
eclare
@Cameron: LOL
terry chay
@MattF: I think it’s the difference between the images we see around Mariupol and the strategic reality.
The reality is the Russians have already established a land bridge, but they haven’t (and will not) be able to move their forces to new area. Killing civilians who are non combatants are just hardening the defense without any military or political gain.
But admitting that shines a spotlight that the brutal calculus is a strategic win is built on the bodies of those people. I imagine that’s why anyone is loathe to call this a victory for Ukraine. It will be, but at what cost?
Jay
@Cameron:
post Maiden and post Minsk II, organized Nazi groups have “threatened” Ukrainian Democracy. Their big problem is that most of them can’t get elected, and when they have called for mass protests, most of their most effective and hard core members preferred to stay in their trenches around Mariupol or raiding into the LPR lines, fighting for Ukraine and Ukrainian Democracy, , than going to Kyiv.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: What I’d heard is that a lot of American Nazis are crowing about wanting to go to Ukraine to join the Azov Battalion–and some of them have dreams of overthrowing Zelensky after they’re done with Putin. Of course, in 99% of cases it’s probably empty bluster.
lowtechcyclist
The Unitarian minister that Raven quoted:
@CapnMubbers:
Why is it sickening? If it’s a nontrivial part of one’s value system that all lives are equally valuable, then the attention paid to white lives over brown should be disturbing.
Not to mention, apparently impractical. Part of the reason this is hitting us Americans like a slap in the face is that most of us (myself definitely included) weren’t paying much attention when Putin pulled this same shit in Chechnya and Syria.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I made it through about 5 minutes.
Martin
@JaySinWa: There was always an effort to identify the cultural priorities of individuals in the Middle East. If your loyalty was religious sect/ethnicity/nationality vs ethnicity/religious sect/nationality then you get very different alliances and decisions that look very weird to people like Americans where for many of us, nationality is the top loyalty.
Putin assumes that being Russian speaking or Russian orthodox occupies the top rung. But Ukrainians have moved nationality to that top rung. So Putin thinking that Russian military will be welcomed because they speak Russian is a mistake, because they aren’t Ukrainian which is what Ukranians would have welcomed.
The challenge with the fascists is that they are *extremely* loyal to that top rung. Is that being Russian speaking, or ethnically Russian? Or is that being Ukrainian? Makes a world of difference.
US proto-fascists don’t have US nationality on the top rung. They cosplay as though they do, so the over the top flag displays and all that. And some of that is self-realized – which is why they make such a big show of it. But that’s why the GOP is so open to policies that weaken the US. They’d rather be in a defined white christian state like Russia than a multicultural America. But they can’t actually admit that. They want both, but if forced to choose it won’t be America.
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist: Chechnya was not a sovereign state.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: They define “American” as “white Christian.” That’s the basic trick.
Kent
@Tom Levenson: The Yom Kippur War was essentially a first world army fighting a third world army (albeit much larger). I’m not so familiar with the Indo-Pakistani war but I expect neither was a modern first world military in 1965.
In terms of battles between roughly equal sides like Normandy in 1944 or the eastern front battles between the USSR and Germany, we haven’t really had those since WW2.
And even during WW2, the allies made quick mincemeat of German tank columns on the western front, every time German armor congregated. The only reason the Germans had initial success with their Panzer divisions during the Battle of the Bulge because there was horrible weather. Once the skies cleared Allied air power took over and ended things.
That doesn’t mean tanks serve no purpose. But they are far from the weapon they were in WW2. These days they are mostly a coffin on wheels unless you have overwhelming air superiority.
debbie
@different-church-lady:
It’s gotta kill Putin that Ukrainians alway seem to be a step ahead of him.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Well, I was not endorsing Sanders or the Squad, nor would I. I was just pointing out disparate attitudes among lefties towards them.
Also, the fighting among DSA factions interests me just like this year’s Republican primaries interest me, in a rooting for injuries way.
Bill Arnold
@Ishiyama:
Was a two man team. One carried the tube and operated it; the other (e.g. my father in WWII) carried the rockets and loaded it. They were petite (60mm?) compared to current anti-tank weapons (and only worked on medium/light armor). (For one engagement my father carried 6 rockets, along with service rifle, ammunition, rifle grenades and regular grenades.)
The modern AT weapons are scary, and will only get more effective. Fear the day when semi-(worse, fully-)autonomous antipersonnel drones start being regularly deployed.
debbie
@Chief Oshkosh:
Those “humanitarian corridors” alone should guarantee convictions.
Kent
A lot of the hard-core ones are trapped in Mariupol. I expect a lot of them aren’t going to survive this conflict anyway.
In any event, I doubt Ukraine has a bigger problem with right-wing extremism than any other western country. You find these folks everywhere.
Martin
@MattF: Ukraine is winning. It’s a pyrrhic win, but it’s a win, because the loss is Russia overturning the Ukrainian govt, and that’s decreasingly likely with each day.
Winning doesn’t mean that Ukraine won’t suffer terribly. It won’t mean that millions might die. It just means that Russia fails in their goal and Ukraine has agency in how to move forward.
As for Mariupol, I think Russias goal here is to turn the city into a non-asset, something that Ukraine won’t demand to keep control of because it no longer exists. Ukraine wants a city, Russia wants a land bridge to Crimea and control of the Sea of Azov. Having a city there isn’t part of Russias goal, so by getting rid of it, it no longer has value to Ukraine.
Geminid
@Martin: I sometimes wonder of Stalin’s trial and execution of Marshall Tukashevsky and other Soviet officers in 1937 still casts a shadow on the Russian officer corps.
Martin
That’s what the Switchblade is. A grenade you can throw 6 miles and sit back and pick your target. Or a Javelin you can fire 25 miles. It’s no worse than other mentions apart from the fact that it gets in your head. Being a small target usually meant that artillery wasn’t aimed at you, and if you were far enough from them front, other infantry couldn’t reach you. Now they can.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat: Excellent self-parody!
debbie
@trollhattan:
Missed it this morning, but that’s absolutely tragic. How little has changed.
Martin
@debbie: Policies only matter if they can be enforced. If nobody can arrest them, then the policy doesn’t matter. The US and Russia have operated on this principle for a long time. It’s part of why we aren’t a signatory to the ICC.
Policies that aren’t enforced can actually undermine public trust, as in it’d be better if the policy didn’t exist, especially if it’s only enforced in a discriminatory way (see also: basically every law in the US).
debbie
@Calouste:
They also gave them enough money to build a new country. They couldn’t be bothered to stop the grifters from stealing most of it.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: Whatever, tankie.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Yeah, this is why Putin will double down, and double down some more, until there’s nothing – well, nothing conventional at least – left to double down with.
The scary part is that there’s too damn good a chance at that point that he might double down with tactical nukes or worse.
Tom Levenson
@Kent: Well, the Syrians deployed 400 T-62s against the Israeli Centurions, with a larger number of older Russian tanks also involved in the Golan Heights battle. So I’m not sure your 1st v. 3rd world army claim is correct, at least as far as materiel is concerned.
Geminid
@Tom Levenson: I was just reading about the October, 1973 “Yom Kippur” war between Egypt and Syria on one side and Israel on the other. Wikipedia told me that a couple days in Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was so alarmed by Syrian advances that he raised the possibilty of using Israel’s nuclear weapons to stop them. Being a woman, Golda Meir was more level headed and ruled out using nuclear bombs, at least at that point. Israel’s armored forces were able to turn the tables on the Syrians not long after.
Golda Meir was born around the turn of the 20th century, in what was then called Kiev. He family emigrated and she ended up studying to be a teacher at the college that became the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. When her husband-to-be proposed, Meir accepted on the condition they would “make aliyah” to Palestine. They arrived in the late 1920’s.
JR
@geg6: Stalinists, basically.
lowtechcyclist
@Cameron: Funny because it’s all too true!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this has probably been noted, but… “evolving intelligence”
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia: True, but I’m not sure what your point is.
Jay
@Kent:
they arn’t “trapped” in Mariupol, they are defending it and raiding into RU forces as far as 30km away. They have chosen to be there, and after Debal’tseve and Illovask, they know more about Russian treachery than anyone.
https://news.yahoo.com/boogaloo-boi-tried-join-foreign-143355587.html?guccounter=1
Ruckus
@Kent:
He seems to be a real sweetheart.
I may have misspelled that last word. Isn’t that how one spells fucking asshole?
Geminid
@Kent: I think that you are mistaken when you say that the 1973 war between Israel and allies Egypt and Syria was between “a first world” army and “third” world armies. But you would not be the only one to mythologize Israel’s military prowess, and to deprecate that of Arabs. Wikipedia has a very long, objective article on that war if you don’t believe me.
Miss Bianca
@Martin:
My God, you are so right about this. QFT
I have been trying to wrap my head around a timeline for the emergence of the scalding hatred and contempt for Democrats in rural areas like mine. I think you just gave me a framework for it.
Bill Arnold
@JR:
In online spaces, there has been a big uptick in people using the word to describe lefties who reflexively support China even when it is accused of bad behavior, e.g. the treatment of the Uighurs(/Xinjiang), or the state control over information, or the rapidly-more-capable state panopticon that will eventually (unless stopped and/or reversed) make dissent impossible.
The original tankies are minimum in their 70s.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat: You’re welcome.
Spanky
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, the counterstrikes would be lit!
By which I mean, very very dark.
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
That post disappeared pretty quickly from kp.ru. Not sure what to think about it.
Geminid
@Bill Arnold: That was some hazardous duty your father performed.
The first edition of the bazooka fired a 2.5″ rocket. At the end of the war a version with a 3.5″ rocket was produced. Word was that the 2.5″ projectile worked great against a tank- if you fired it between the tracks so it skipped up into the tank’s belly.
The key to the bazooka was it’s shaped charge warhead. Princeton physicist George Gamov helped design the innovative projectile. Then he packed up his slide rule and headed for Los Alamos to straighten out some problems one of Robert Oppenheimer’s teams was having.
The Germans captured American bazookas during the North Africa campain and adapted the technology to produce the feared Panzerfaust.
Kelly
A thought on the Russian casualties leak. Maybe nobody believes it is prudent to report their actual losses and those are the numbers reported to Moscow. Perhaps shaded down at every level as reports go up the chain of command.
Kent
There are thousands upon thousands of tanks scattered all across the third world from El Salvador to Mozambique. It doesn’t mean any of those armies would be remotely capable of taking on any equivalent sized NATO force. Mostly they get used for internal repression and putting down internal rebellions which is an entirely different thing. It is one thing to drive tanks into the town square of a village where the locals are protesting against land expropriations and abuses. It’s another thing entirely to use them to take on a modern military.
Gin & Tonic
@Kent: I’m choosing this post to reply to, because I was away for a while after raven’s question. But it may address some others’ questions.
Yes, there are some very right-wing nationalist elements in Ukraine. Just as in Austria, France, Japan, Russia, the USA and most other countries. One of the key differences with Ukraine is that none of their members hold any political power nationally. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the ultra-right parties won zero (0) seats. Bageled. Shut out. Le Pen, for instance is a political giant in comparison.
The “Azov Battalion” which every leftist in America seems to know about thanks to Russian propaganda was pretty well described by commenter Jay – it was first a bunch of football fans, then became very active during the Maidan revolution (it’s Maidan, Jay) then became a militia, which was quite effective, and eventually was absorbed into the regular armed forces. It is one of the most committed and effective battalions, and is now mostly engaged in defending Mariupol, where they are likely to die. Are they Nazis? Well, no, because the National Socialist Party ceased to exist a long time ago. Are they right-wing? Yes. Are they nationalist? Yes. Are they anti-Semitic? No. Are they “white supremacists?” Kind of meaningless in a country which is >99% white. Yes, they will use some symbology common to white supremacists, but ultimately, they are Ukrainian nationalists.
Are they (or have they been) engaged in training white supremacists from other countries? Right now, they’re kind of busy. A year or two or three ago? I don’t actually know, but I don’t see large numbers of, say, American white supremacists going to a country where they don’t know the language (although, as has been noted, there’s that clown from Texas whose name escapes me, who’s been working hard on the enemy side in Donbas.)
Historically this is more complex. I’m working on a guest post, which I may or may not complete, about the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.) This was a western-Ukrainian group formed in the 1920’s primarily to kick Poland out of western Ukraine, which eventually allied with Nazi Germany in an attempt to drive the Soviet Union out of Ukraine. Were they Nazis? Well, no, because Slavs were considered untermenschen. In fact, as soon as they declared an independent Ukraine (right after Operation Barbarossa) the Nazis sent all of their leadership to Auschwitz. But in the popular lore, they were Nazis, so their (sort-of) political descendants in Ukrainian nationalism are, in Russian propaganda, Nazis.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Litlebritdifrnt: Go you, I hope your trips are awesome. My awesome sister-in-law was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer late 2020. The location of the mets and the fact they are responding to treatment(chemo, etc) means she was able to keep working(which she enjoyed) and she took some of the trips she had been putting off. She’s feeling pretty good so far. I do like her “Shit I no longer have to Fuck with” list – examples: mammograms, pap smears, not telling the asshole at work to fuck off…
CapnMubbers
@lowtechcyclist: I was not clear; I meant the Twitter timeline as a whole.
Tom Levenson
@Kent: That reply is not germane to the question of the tank battles on the Golan Heights in 1973.
The significance of those battles was that between 1967 and ’73 the Syrian and Egyptian military modernized and adapted and came very close to inflicting possibly existential defeats on the IDF. This was not a case of Israel/Harlem Globetrotters rolling up the Washington Generals.
This is a silly debate: if you want to believe the age of the tank ended in 1944 or 45, have at it. I believe you are wrong and I’ve given examples, unpersuasive to you, but not to me, and I suspect some others, to suggest why you might be in error. I’m going to leave this conversation at this pass.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
thanks, Maidan, Maidan, a hundred more times and I will remember it.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Russel Bentley.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
I enlisted during Vietnam but I wasn’t sucked in by the romance of war, which I consider to be at absolute zero in any way you can define it. And in talking to my fellow sailors I’d say at least 90% of them felt the same way. Now I do know some who risked getting sent to war as a foot solder. One got drafted and sent to the army and then to army language school in CO, at which he did so well they kept him on for the duration of his 2 yrs. When I took my draft physical I watched a Marine sergeant take 1/3 of that day’s draftees to the Marines. Raven told me that he saw them take 1/2 of that days draftees. And that often meant a grunt in Vietnam with a life expectancy of 2 weeks in country at that time.
I was first in my class at the schools I attended in the navy and I did my job very well. I would have attempted to do the same if I had been drafted, no matter where sent or what I had to do. That didn’t in any way mean that I liked it or wanted to be there and I know from discussion with many people that I served with, at the VA, and that I know in civilian life, that I was not alone in that concept. Very few people want to go to war. Even fewer of them that did after actually going. Now my time was not all bad, I saw a lot of the world, reconfirmed how big of assholes some humans are, and survived reasonably intact. And learned to hate war even more.
Do you recall when the military kicked all the press out of covering the actual Vietnamese war, the fighting? They did that because many of the reporters found out what I already knew, war is fucking hell. You can die in an instant, you can die over time – which may be worse, and you can live with the memories for decades. Even fewer people think that is in any way good.
And yet, here the world is, once again involved in warfare, with citizens dying/being maimed for life, and solders dying/being maimed for life, kids dying/being maimed for life, all because some fuck named vlad is determined to be the biggest fucking asshole on the planet. Being one of the richest on earth and president of an atomic bomb nation wasn’t enough for him, he had to prove to the entire world how massive a fucking asshole with a ity bitty tiny dick he is.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Gin & Tonic
@Jay:
Link?
Ruckus
@Litlebritdifrnt:
@Another Scott:
When I had cancer the VA did a biopsy first. Then an MRI and found out that the tumor was bigger than they thought so they did a second biopsy and then a radioactive CT. The CT was to check for cancer cells in bone. They covered all the bases and had a very good idea what was what before any treatment or surgery was attempted, what was the best course of action and could make very specific recommendations about treatment. I notice that many places will not go that far and go surgery first, questions later.
I’m glad that you have healthcare professionals that don’t want the first thing to be surgery because these days that often isn’t necessary. I went through 9 weeks of radiation treatment, which is now done in 10 DAYS. Oh well, better safe than sorry.
Geminid
@Ruckus: I know someone about your age who enlisted in the Navy because he did not want to serve in Vietnam. A few weeks in, the Navy told him he would be a medical corpsman and serve alongside Marines in Vietnam. Fortunately for Clark, he had been raised in a Christian Scientist household. He rediscovered his faith and avoided service as a medic.
I certainly would not judge him for this. I never had to make the choices my elders did. I was young enough to be in the second lottery class, and the few of us who drew a low number were exempt from service in Vietnam.
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist:
You said:
It’s not “the same shit” because Chechnya had not been recognized as a sovereign state, let alone for the preceding 30 years. It was shit, but not the “same shit.”
Lyrebird
If part of the problem is that so many people weren’t paying attention before, how is it now an injustice that more people are paying attention to this conflict now?
There’s plenty of injustice out there, but part of why the Americans that WERE sickened by what happened in Syria couldn’t DO much is because of that puppet that Putin helped install in our White House. Quite a few people on this blog and in the US Military itself were paying attention.
Failing to respond to the current war will not bring back any people back to life from earlier wars. Doing whataboutism right now, which the minister may be doing, takes time and attention away from a war on an Eastern European country that has from all indications come further away from anti Semitism and anti Muslim hate than most of its European neighbors.
How many Jewish presidents has the US had so far? How many US towns have put out videos saying “the churches and masjids of West Gulfiana welcome you!”?
burnspbesq
@Raven:
He’s not entirely wrong. Yemen has been a shit-show for years. But none of the players there have nukes, so it’s kind of an order of magnitude less scary.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
They announced the lottery drawing in place of your local draft board making the decision, seemingly based upon your family position – could be a positive for you, or your skin color – we all know how that worked 50 yrs ago, 2 days after I enlisted. My birthdate was picked 15th and as the draft physical was a scam I would have been drafted, 1A. And yes I know it was a scam because they drew blood and had you pee in a bottle and did not put any markings on either when they put them in the cart. They didn’t know who any sample belonged to.
We had a commenter here on BJ who also joined the navy and 2 weeks after he got out of boot camp he was on an RPB, river patrol boat, as forward machine gunner. Fella I knew after the navy was stationed on a sister ship to the one I spent 2 yrs on that did go to Vietnam. They had an interesting experience, one of the guided missiles they fired at a NV jet, circled around and went in between the exhaust stacks. Didn’t hit the ship but did cause a lot of underwear to suddenly have a brown tint. I never had that experience. I feel better for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: No. This war does not and should not teach anyone anything about the viability of armor in modern warfare. Armor has never been effective unless it is used in conjunction with infantry and artillery/close air support. This has been known since WWI. The Russians are not coming close to using their armor correctly for reasons that many people have enumerated many times. Also, the advent of the better anti-tank missiles moves the needle a bit, but I am sure that people even as we speak are working on new forms of reactive armor or future tanks may be smaller and faster. It always goes back and forth.
I have a feeling I should bookmark this comment to save having to type it again and again.
terry chay
@lowtechcyclist: Spoken like someone who has no idea what a “tactical nuke” is.
J R in WV
The Associated Press is an old and established news organization, a not-for-profit corporation whose members, newspapers, TV stations, other new orgs, pay dues to support the AP which exchanges news between members and also has its own reporters. It has declined in the number of reporters and importance since the Internet has had an impact on the news biz.
My Wife was an AP correspondent for more than 30 years, was one of the early women to work for The AP, and had to put up with a lot of shit from fellow staff and management. She wound up a union officer and organizer alongside her AP job. She has PTSD without ever covering a war. Floods that killed dozens of people and erased towns. Prison riots were perhaps the worst. Lucasville Ohio still gives her nightmares. Industrial disasters, mine explosions, chemical gas leaks, collapsing concrete towers at a power plant at Willow Bend…
These guys in Ukraine, they have more courage than lots of Marines, not to put the Marines down at all. News reporters hear of a toxic release at a plant with evacuations ordered, and drive towards the plant. Crazy, but there they are, doing a really hard.
Wife is doing well in the hospital. She moved again, to a ward with less intense care needed. All good, though the higher level of care yesterday was really nicer. Still a couple of days before she gets out, I expect. The hospital is still strange, not crowded, halls are quiet, things seem less bright. Her room today was at the end of a hallway, the nurse at the station told me “Past those glass doors at the end of that hall.” It was small, always was a single bed room, very quiet. Private.
terry chay
@Omnes Omnibus: ++ to your reply. A tank is not a battleship, and never has been
But the person you are replying to keeps moving the goalposts wrt what constitutes a tank battle, so whatever.
Gin & Tonic
@J R in WV: I am happy to hear that your wife is doing better.
sab
@J R in WV: My BIL was a reporter for years. In the good years he had a national byline. Mostly just an arsehole asking rude questions. ” What do you make` ” We would say none of your fucking business. and then he would pretend to be hurt. Pretending to be hurt was his stock in trade.
Origuy
A few days ago, I linked to a video about the history of the Ukrainian flag by a guy named Hilbert. He has two other videos relevant to this discussion.
What is the Azov Battalion?
Who are the Pro-Russian Separatists of Ukraine? (Donetsk and Luhansk)
Omnes Omnibus
@terry chay: There have been a number of people over the past few days who have made similar pronouncements with a similar level of expertise. It’s the internet.
Gin & Tonic
@Origuy: When within the first 30 seconds of the “Azov” video he refers to what began in 2014 in Donbas as a “civil war” I immediately discount anything else he may say.
Kalakal
@Kent: Aproximately 5,000 tanks were used in the Yom Kippur war, the majority of them were T62s ( at the time still in use by the Warsaw pact) and Centurians ( at the time still in use by the UK). About 1,000 modern combat aircraft were use, as were modern SAMs and AT missiles.
Both sides were well enough equipped and trained to have given any military on earth pause. It was very much a tank war using up to date equipment between roughly equal sides and if you don’t think 5,000 tanks counts as major I can’t imagine what does
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Had a day off, so I got to read and comment.
I will google it when I get a chance.
Just to let you know, IDC, They are fighting for Ukraine and democracy. Dual citizenship, Chechen refugees, don’t care.
they are fighting, for Ukraine, for democracy, for “Western” values.
Slava is there. I like Slava, he’s my friend and a good guy.
?????????
Andrya
@Martin: Maybe this is a minor point, but a majority of Ukrainians are not “Russian Orthodox”. Eastern Orthodoxy has a concept called “autocephaly” which means that a national Orthodox Church is self governing. In 2019 the lead bishop of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, declared the Ukrainian Orthodox “autocephalous” meaning they are no longer under the authority of the Moscow Patriarch. (I will refer to the newly independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the “Kyiv Patriarchate”.) The Moscow Patriarchate, and the Putin regime, were very angry about this. The Moscow Patriarchate actually broke from the Ecumenical Patriarch, which as best I understand (I am Catholic, not Orthodox) is unheard of.
There is a serious freedom of religion issue here. In Russia, the Putin regime overwhelmingly favors the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). There have been arrests and other legal sanctions for Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. If Putin’s war succeeds, non-Moscow Patriarchate groups are at serious risk.
According to Wikipedia, religious affiliation for Ukrainians is as follows:
28.7% Orthodox Kyiv Patriarchate (independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church)
12.8% Moscow Patriarchate (Putin’s favorite Orthodox Church)
23.4% Orthodox Christian without further clarification
11.6% Protestant or nondenominational Christian
10% Catholic (this total combines Latin Rite and Eastern Rite Catholics)
2.5% Muslim
0.4% Jewish
Plus smaller amounts of Hindus, Buddhists, and Pagans. I don’t include atheists/agnostics because as far as I know they are not persecuted in Russia. (If I’m wrong about that, please correct me.)