We start tonight with a request from our antipodean archeologist commenter The Mighty Trowel:
I know there are all sorts of worthy fundraisers, but this one is pretty small and comes directly from my colleagues in Ukraine who are trying to keep their flagship archaeology journal alive: Arheologia is the journal published by the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine – they’ve already invited submissions from archaeologists outside Ukraine and now they’re trying to pull together $4500 to pay the Ukrainian copy editor/translator and to fund a new laptop for the web person who is a refugee in Germany. It’s a small bit of defiance in a war where people are dying daily, but clearly one close to my heart.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-ukrainian-journal-arheologia
I can vouch for all the people involved in this fundraiser and working with the journal.
If you’ve got a bit extra in this month’s funds, please consider sending them the way of the Ukrainian archeologists to keep their publication up and running.
As I expected after all the reporting, then clarifications, then clarifications of the clarifications regarding the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations yesterday, President Zelenskyy has now clarified things. Again…
"We will not give up anything. And we will fight for every meter of our land, for every single person," Zelensky said.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 30, 2022
My interpretation of the ongoing negotiations is that Zelenskyy and his team know that Putin isn’t negotiating in good faith so no matter what they suggest will eventually get rejected. They also know that they need to look like they’re at least attempting to be reasonable. As a result, they’re just going through the motions with the negotiations while they continue to defend Ukraine against Putin’s reinvasion.
As I expected and mentioned last night, the British are note willing to provide bilateral, binding security guarantees to Ukraine equivalent to NATO’s Article 5:
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab says his country isn’t ready to become a guarantor of Ukraine’s independence as part of Kyiv’s proposed peace deal with Moscow. “Ukraine is not a NATO member,” he said.
The Germans were somewhat more positive, but still quite ambiguous about the idea:
Germany has ‘general willingness’ to give security guarantees to Ukraine. However, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit did not specify would the guarantees include military assistance.
Much more after the jump!
Earlier today The New York Times reported that US intelligence has assessed that Putin has been willfully misinformed regarding events in Ukraine.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been misinformed by his advisers about the Russian military’s struggles in Ukraine, according to declassified U.S. intelligence.
The intelligence, according to multiple U.S. officials, shows what appears to be growing tension between Mr. Putin and the Ministry of Defense, including with the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who was once among the most trusted members of the Kremlin’s inner circle.
Speaking in Algiers, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken acknowledged Mr. Putin had been given less than truthful information from his advisers.
“With regard to President Putin, look, what I can tell you is this, and I said this before, one of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or who have the ability to speak truth to power,” Mr. Blinken said. “And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.”
In a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, a Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said that the Defense Department believed that Mr. Putin has not had access to an accurate account of his army’s failures in Ukraine.
“We would concur with the conclusion that Mr. Putin has not been fully informed by his Ministry of Defense, at every turn over the last month,” Mr. Kirby said.
“If Mr. Putin is misinformed or uninformed about what’s going on inside Ukraine, it’s his military, it’s his war, he chose it,” Mr. Kirby said. “And so the fact that he may not have all the context — that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that’s a little discomforting, to be honest with you.”
Other American officials have said that Mr. Putin’s rigid isolation during the pandemic and willingness to publicly rebuke advisers who do not share his views have created a degree of wariness, or even fear, in senior ranks of the Russian military. Officials believe that Mr. Putin has been getting incomplete or overly optimistic reports about the progress of Russian forces, creating mistrust with his military advisers.
Much, much more at the link.
I want to highlight one part of the reporting from above, which I think is exceedingly important:
“If Mr. Putin is misinformed or uninformed about what’s going on inside Ukraine, it’s his military, it’s his war, he chose it,” Mr. Kirby said. “And so the fact that he may not have all the context — that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that’s a little discomforting, to be honest with you.”
This is an excellent way to frame this assessment. Putin has agency, he has used his agency, he put these senior leaders in place, he empowered them, he decided to invade, this is, regardless of what they’ve told him, on him. Otherwise you wind up with stripping Putin of agency and removing his responsibility for the reinvasion of Ukraine, for the war crimes, for all the destruction.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former President of Estonia, has the right take on this:
Are we really going to fall the centuries-old "good Czar, bad boyars" routine?
We saw it with numerous czars, with Lenin, with Stalin, and now once again.
The subtext: "this wouldn't be happening if he only knew."
Forget about it. https://t.co/TJlvRTXjQN
— toomas hendrik ilves (@IlvesToomas) March 30, 2022
Who would be the target if it's an info op? To what end?
It just sounds wishful if not exculpatory
— toomas hendrik ilves (@IlvesToomas) March 30, 2022
Kirby’s, the Pentagon spokesperson, framing is correct. Provided that’s the framing we maintain, then this assessment and its disclosure is fine. If that framing falls away, then President Ilves concerns are more than warranted.
Mariupol:
.@ICRC confirmed the Mariupol warehouse was the org’s but said no team on the ground, no other info. “We distributed all of the supplies from the warehouse earlier in March… No ICRC staff have been at the warehouse since 15 March, and we don’t know how it’s been used since.” pic.twitter.com/Jc9S7ez8rg
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 31, 2022
Russian forces in Ukraine have forcibly deported the staff and patients of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, sending more than 70 people to Russia, the city council said. It’s at least the second hospital to undergo that fate, with more than 20,000 people now sent to Russia against their will, the officials said.
The Russians are confiscating identity documents from people who are taken out of their city, the Mariupol City Council said on its Telegram channel. It says the Ukrainians are being sent to filtration camps and then dispersed around Russia.
Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime for an occupying power to deport people to any other country or territory during an international conflict.
The city council’s version of events hasn’t been independently verified by NPR or other Western media. On Tuesday, Russia’s defense ministry acknowledged it has taken tens of thousands of people out of Mariupol and other parts of eastern Ukraine — but it characterized that action as an evacuation of refugees from a dangerous area.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Russia is returning to tactics last seen during World War II. He added that the city and Donetsk Region Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko are creating a database of deported Ukrainians to ensure they can return.
The Russian tactic has also caused indignation because some people would rather stay in Mariupol rather than be sent to Russia, despite the terrible conditions in the city that’s been under siege for weeks, Kyrylenko said in an interview with the independent Belarusian TV channel Belsat.
Much more at the link!
Chernihiv:
⚡️Mayor says Chernihiv under 'colossal attack' after Russia pledged to halt assault.
“They actually have increased the intensity of strikes,” Vladyslav Atroshenko told CNN. He said that a ‘colossal attack’ on central Chernihiv injured 25 civilians on March 30.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 30, 2022
Kharkiv:
One of the journalists asked me what was the worst thing I saw in this war. Children's shoes scattered from the explosion in this kindergarten. pic.twitter.com/EmfoPaf1gk
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 30, 2022
Irpin:
#Irpin after #Russia’s liberation operation. This is pure destruction. pic.twitter.com/iJM5zM8d2I
— Lesia Vasylenko (@lesiavasylenko) March 30, 2022
Here’s an update on the Russian troops I mentioned last night that were mucking about in the Chornobyl zone without adequate radiological protection or, as reported, even knowing that Chornobyl had melted down and the entire area is irradiated. Debunked by Cheryl Rofer!
The following thread is tough going and I’m sure it may be triggering for some of you. I’m posting it because I think it is important not to look away, but some of you may need to for self care reasons and that is more than okay!
Frankly I cannot tweet all the terrible news we are getting in Ukraine every day. Each day, more and more personal stories of people who were killed, raped, tortured. All normal people, looking like next-door neighbours. It makes me feel sick, fills me with so much anger and hate
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) March 30, 2022
- I retweet what other people tweet because these personal stories are important, they give a meaning to the numbers and statistics. Victims need to be remembered and perpetrators must be brought to justice. But it’s just too much pain and my instinct is to cowardly try to avoid it
- The stories about rape are the most gut-wrenching. Only those confirmed today: about a woman in Kyiv region whose husband was killed and she was gang-raped by Russian soldiers. And about another one in Mariupol, raped repeatedly in front of her 6-year old son. She didn’t survive
- And then, there are reports of teenage girls as young as 11 or 12 who have been raped. As a woman and as a mother, I feel literally sick when I read this. Russians’ cruelty has no limit. And it is surreal that mass murderers are still selling gas, oil and have their hands shaken
If you like Ritter Sport chocolate, it’s time to find an alternative. I love the dark chocolate marzipan, but it is now verboten!
Ritter Sport refuses to pull out of Russia citing possible ‘serious effects’ for the company. However, remaining in Russia brings worse effects, such as a fatal damage to reputation. Stop sponsoring war crimes, Ritter Sport. Save your brand’s name and profits. #BoycottRitterSport pic.twitter.com/cx0t3KNAHV
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 30, 2022
Before we finish, I want to address something that came up in a comment posted early this morning to last night’s update. The comment was regarding fascism and in one part the commenter inquired if Christianity was intertwined with fascism. The answer to that is yes. Hitler coopted both the German Catholic Church and the German Lutheran Church by appealing to its most extreme elements and emphasizing the historic anti-Semitism that both denominations had engaged with for hundreds and hundreds of years. Not every Catholic cardinal, bishop, priest, nun, or lay person fell for the NAZI message, just as not every Lutheran minister or lay person did, but Hitler and Goebbels and others leaned very hard into the worst elements of the two dominant Christian denominations in Germany, as well as other parts of Europe that the NAZIs conquered. I’ve even seen NAZIism actually referred to as “Dark Christianity”. Mussolini and his national-syndicalists, despite really not being racist fascists like the NAZIs until Hitler forced his hand, also made significant common cause with the Catholic Church. During Franco’s long dictatorship in Spain, he too cultivated the most extreme elements within the Catholic Church – both clergy and laity – for his own benefit. Franco’s actions led to the creation of Opus Dei, which have been a revanchistly dogmatic nuisance everywhere they’ve set up shop, not least of which in the US with their headquarters in DC (long led by a sexual molester of a priest close to Bill Barr, Leonard Leo, Antonin Scalia, and other notable conservative/traditional Catholics in positions of secular political power). In Chile, Pinochet also cultivated the extreme, traditional elements in the Church just as Franco had.
There is nothing intrinsic, other than perhaps centuries of anti-Semitism and in the case of Catholicism and the Orthodox denominations an emphasis on hiearchy, that makes Christianity in any of its denominations and/or sects specifically more amenable to fascism than any other religion. Judaism had Jabotinsky and Meir Kahane and is now plagued by his devotees like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. It also, of course, has the Netanyahus, who are themselves Jabotinskyites. What we tend to think of as political or politicized Islam has a number of similarities to fascism.
The polytheistic religions are not immune either. Japan leading up to and through WW II was clearly enthralled with a very Japanese equivalent of fascism that incorporated the traditional religious elements of emperor worship. The juche concept of the Kims in North Korea is, at least, fascist adjacent in its understanding of the North Koreans as the cleanest race. And I don’t think many would argue that the Hindu nationalism espoused and practiced by Modi and his followers isn’t a form of fascism as well.
I’ll leave that there.
Let’s finish with this, which TaMara sent me and asked me to include in tonight’s post:
My Dad is in a care home and his house has been empty and silent and sad. No longer! A lovely Ukrainian family from Khmelnytskyi, which is roughly mid-way between Lviv and Kyiv, have moved in. Now it's full of children laughing and some guarded hope. A tiny gleam in the darkness.
— Ashley Pharoah (@AJPharoah) March 25, 2022
Open thread!
Carlo Graziani on Russia’s New Strategy In Ukraine
lurker
website seems to think I am the first commenter…skeptical on that count … thanks for update, regardless of the specific contents
marcopolo
As the or one of the folks who sent the link to Adam re the Chernobyl radiation stuff I feel it is my responsibility to point out that Cheryl Rofer has pretty much debunked this using, err, hmm, scientific knowledge and understanding about radioactivity, half lives, how much radiation you need to be exposed to to get sick…you know, all the stuff that I haven’t the slightest clue about when I read the darned story and said, wow, you can’t make this stuff up–‘cept maybe you can.
Mea fucking culpa lol
Okay, now who is going to debunk this story about 300 Russian soldiers from S Ossetia who deserted and hitchhiked home cause they (rightly) figured out they were just meat for the grinder?
Thank you for the update Adam.
LivinginExile
I understand the average Russian may only have access to State TV. I find it hard to believe Putin doesn’t have access over the internet to any news that we do. He bloody well knows what is going on.
lurker
@marcopolo: have not seen the Rofer tweets (go Cheryl!), but the story seemed iffy from the start. If they are potentially going to get sick, that I can believe, but the idea that driving around the site would get you a lethal dose right away, while you could work on site, even with protective gear, does not wash with my recollection of the physics and biology involved…
ETA – driving around there without protection was still stupid, just not likely to be lethal so quickly…
Carlo Graziani
On US intelligence attribution of Putin “knowing”:
In my opinion the Biden administration is still experimenting with the new concept of publishing intelligence to play mind games with Russia, just as they did in the run-up to 24 February. In this case they are sowing dissension between MOD, FSB, and the Putinist Chekists in the Kremlin, by putting out a leaked view that is obviously intended to be interpreted as sourced inside the latter.
Since at this point the Russians have to assume that Western intelligence has their entire securocracy wired, this story is guaranteed to absolutely enrage every military officer and FSB analyst who thinks the real story is that Putin would not listen to reason when they were telling him that his plan sucked.
Which is to say, the game plan is still to invite them to put him on the Beria retirement plan.
lurker
@LivinginExile: there’s availability of resources, and availing one’s self of those resources. He may be so full of himself that he either does not read contrary sources, or does not believe them. /s He’s a busy man, others can read the internet for him s/
Mallard Filmore
“In Peru, Pinochet also cultivated the extreme, traditional elements in the Church just as Franco had.”
He was in Chile, was he in Peru also?
Psych1
Thank you Adam, another good post.
Pragmatic Idealist
Anti-Semitism runs very deep. Martin Luther wrote a book, “On the Jews and Their Lies” in which he demanded that the rulers burn all Jewish homes and businesses and throw them out of the country. I’ve never been able to determine if Kristallnacht was on Luther’s birthday by chance or design but they reprinted Luther’s hateful screed and adopted its policies. The Final Solution only went forward when the conquest of Europe made it impractical to expell the Jews.
marcopolo
@lurker: Well, the story was the soldiers were digging trenches and inhaling that dust (not just driving/walking around) so irradiating themselves from the inside out. But Cheryl’s comments about how radioactive the soil is now vs the amount you would need to ingest/be exposed to to get sick would make it highly unlikely for acute radiation syndrome to have occurred.
Ishiyama
I remember reading a thick book about propaganda that identified the weakness of a propaganda-supported regime as being susceptible to equally false counter-narratives. All in order to push the right emotional buttons in the target audience.
Chris T.
Isn’t that like killing your parents and then saying “have mercy on me, I’m an orphan”?
Adam L Silverman
@Mallard Filmore: Brain fart on my end of things. Thanks for catching that I’ve fixed it.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris T.: Yes.
kindness
Putin knows what is going on. I do believe Putin share’s Trump’s view that he can create his own reality and make it so just as a force of will thing. In Putin’s authoritarian world, it could be easy to do. Trump on the other hand did it because he is delusional and his will is shit.
kalakal
In the 30s Europe was littered with Christofascist movements from Portugal to Rumania, from Finland to Greece. Spain even had National Catholicism. In some cases eg Slovakia and Greece they were the ruling party. In several ways the Nazis were sui generis amongst fascist movements
Regarding Putin and his misinformation. It may well be the case that part of this is the US playing headgames but that doesn’t change Putin’s guilt. He chose to start a war, no one forced him to do so.
lurker
@marcopolo: yeah, was aware of the story about digging trenches in general. It still seemed pretty iffy. It’s not like radiation/radioactive material is going to penetrate into the ground in a massive way, or somehow diffuse into the soil. Now, get a concentrated source into groundwater, and then you have a real problem, but even there, the issue is not doing the digging.
Inhalation is a classic way to get radioactive problems that gradually get worse over time, and lead to all sorts of subtle long-term problems. But inhalation leading to severe problems right away would mean that site was much more challenging to deal with than everything else about the situation over the past 30-some years suggests. Don’t move there, but walking in the woods is not instantly fatal, just foolish.
lurker
@Mallard Filmore:
@Adam L Silverman:
They are both on the same planet. After that it is all just details…
Martin
I’m team ‘Putin is being lied to’, but I don’t think it changes whether he would have invaded, but maybe how he would have invaded. If not, it means that Russia was in pretty dire shape before entering the war, because they’re going to leave in very dire shape no matter the outcome.
Kattails
@LivinginExile: The man is swimming in money, even with the sanctions. He bloody well has access to outside news sources 24/7. If he doesn’t avail himself of them, or discounts what he’s seeing from a surround-sound multiplex theater’s worth of independent data, I find that even scarier, as in barking mad.
I mean, I have to check the air intake on the lawn tractor all the time b/c rodents. Couple of days ago found the chewed-out husks of acorns. You know, get out the wrenches, remember which socket was the right size, take off the screen, clean out the scraps and mouse turds. If Vlad truly doesn’t have agency, his own monumental self-aggrandizement coupled with paranoia must have left his brain pretty much in that kind of state.
TheMightyTrowel
Thanks for posting the GoFundMe, Adam! Looks like they’ve crossed the line and are fully funded (all monies over $4500 will go to supporting print publication when that’s possible again). A couple of colleagues and I are pulling together a short paper on some of our material that’s relevant to Ukraine to submit to them but great to see them supported in other ways. Archaeologically, Ukraine is incredibly important. It was and remains a crossroad between the steppe and western Eurasia, between the continent and the Black Sea and between northern and southern Europe. People met, mixed, and experimented throughout prehistory and ancient history in the area that is now Ukraine – and the records they left are extraordinary. My colleague Flint Dibble (yes, that’s his name – his dad was also an archaeologist!) made a great twitter thread yesterday highlighting some of the most significant elements of Ukraine’s archaeological record.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking of serial failing. So what exactly does Putin expect to happen to his “Screw you Western Libertard, my war goal was always the Right Bank of the Donbas” if Putin turns the Right Bank of the Donbas into some post apocalyptic wasteland? Beyond the sheer humanitarian horror of it all, that’s just going to be a bleeding ulcer in Putin’s Russian Empire 2.0 if he gets his wish.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If I can’t have it, no one can.
Adam L Silverman
@marcopolo: I removed it. Though I’ve seen Army CBRN officers argue it is possible and plausible.
Bufflars
The amount of news and outside information that world leaders (choose to) get is actually sort of an interesting question. TFG famously had cable news on all the time, but I assume that was mostly just so he could see himself on TV, plus his schedule was ridiculously bare for a US President. If you’re a normal leader with a normal busy schedule and are getting the PDB or a foreign equivalent, how much need and how much spare time do you have to be reading diverse newspapers, news websites, etc? I’d guess it would actually tend be fairly limited.
azlib
Adam Is correct about Hitler coopting the Catholic and Lutheran Churches in Germany and other churches in occupied Europe. There were also at the same time some very brave religious leaders such as Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis and Norbert Capek who died at Dachau.
Carlo Graziani
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This reminds me of the line in the classic graphic novel “Watchmen”, in the jail scene where the mild-looking but terrifyingly psychotic character Rorschach, who has just fatally maimed a prisoner (who was attempting to shank him) with boiling fat from a deep fryer, calmly announces to the other, horrified prisoners: “You don’t understand. None of you understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You are locked in here with me.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, War Plan Belisarius to reunite the Roman Empire. “The Goths hold Rome, so I will get even worse barbarians, the Lombard, to conquer the Goths and destroy Rome” So Putin is now doing Roman Empire 3.0 cosplay.
PIGL
it’s so great that that archeological go fund me appeal was so quickly successful. That’s a good thing you did.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman:
Cheryl points us to another thread which ends with:
There are so many layers to what is going on over there, and we’re all (people around the world) peeling them back in nearly real-time. It’s an amazing thing and pretty much unique in warfare, I think.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Bufflars: There is an apocryphal story about JFK wherein he was wont to call up low-level staffers in the State Department on various desks, to find out what the real skinny was on various world issues. I remember reading about this story, as being in contrast to modern Presidents who tend to accept what they’re fed by their intelligence and briefing apparatus.
PIGL
it’s so great that that archeological go fund me appeal was so quickly successful. That’s a good thing you did.
@Bufflars:
Mallard Filmore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I have seen a YouTube video that claims east Ukraine has a buried treasure of large oil deposits.
oldster
“There is nothing intrinsic, other than perhaps centuries of anti-Semitism and in the case of Catholicism and the Orthodox denominations an emphasis on hierarchy, that makes Christianity in any of its denominations and/or sects specifically more amenable to fascism than any other religion.”
There’s nothing that makes Christianity more amenable to fascism, other than anti-Semitism, hierarchy — and surprise.
And fear. Nothing other than anti-Semitism, hierarchy, surprise, and fear.
*Among* the elements that make Christianity more amenable to fascism are anti-Semitism, hierarchy, surprise, fear, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical —
I’ll come in again.
oldster
@Carlo Graziani:
“In my opinion the Biden administration is still experimenting with the new concept of publishing intelligence to play mind games with Russia….”
Exactly my thoughts, too.
And I love to see it.
I hope that Putin is hunting for moles and looking over his shoulder at every trusted advisor. And I hope his inner circle is shrinking rapidly with every execution.
StringOnAStick
@Martin: I read a Twitter today that posited that Putin had to invade something because things are falling apart with increasing speed and failing socially in Russia and he needed a war to rally/distract his citizens. It is an interesting thought, that there’s so many ticks sucking the life out of their economy and that, coupled with their demographic decline was making the Jenga tower too wobbly to maintain the status quo.
As the wealthiest guy in the world, Putin decided to use that money to support right wing politics and chaos throughout the world, rather than ensure his people could live a good enough life that they wouldn’t be facing demographic collapse, but no, he’d rather just kill.
Wapiti
@Bufflars: I agree with this. There are only so many hours in a day. A leader trying to get good information from the internet or television is wasting time.
But if Putin (or any other leader) threatens everyone who brings him bad news… well, he won’t get a complete picture. And then, as Sun Tzu says, he’s likely to lose if he knows neither his enemy nor his own position.
Another Scott
Germany’s far-right split by Russia-Ukraine war
https://p.dw.com/p/498WX
[ womp, womp ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Dan B
@marcopolo: So the most damaging radiation is “low” but what if you stir up radiatioactive elements and inhale them? It sounds like you will be poisoned slowly and inevitably killed. So the seven busses may be fake but I’d like to know, when the fog of war clears.
piratedan
@StringOnAStick: that’s the appeal isn’t it? If I can’t have it, there’s certainly no reason YOU should have it.
no morals, no ethics, just ID and EGO… I get what I want and the rest of you are here to ensure that my whims and desires are enacted upon.
To me, I have a great fear that this overwhelming narcissism means that those that he throws into the fray to deliver his wishes don’t really matter any more than those that he sends them to fight against. They aren’t people, at least people that have any importance to him, so they’re expendable. If they are indeed expendable, how they die, in combat, via chemical weapons, via nuclear weapons doesn’t even rate it’s own column in the spreadsheet, if he’s even bothering to “keep score”.
THIS is what keeps causing me sleepless nights and since there is no obvious solution set available to us, the supposed end game is not something that comes to mind.
206inKY
That’s absolutely correct about the complicity of the Catholic and German Lutheran churches with fascism across Europe, most obviously in the case of Franco’s Spain, the strongest parallel to Putin’s alliance with the Russian Orthodox church. But Hitler’s chief race theorist for his entire time in power was Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic German from Estonia who was educated in Moscow and rejected the Jewish origins of Christianity. He dabbled in paganism and various esoteric ethno-religious origin stories. The popularity of Norse mythology among American white supremacists is straight out of the Nazi playbook, as is Putin’s nonsense about the Rus. Z is basically a fusion of every variety of mid-century fascism.
Adam L Silverman
@oldster: You do that!
Kent
This is 2022. I cannot possibly believe that Putin is isolated and uninformed. I expect he has a hellaciously fast internet connection and state of the art monitors and can view whatever the hell he wants online.
This is a man who seems well-read and educated and is in tune with western cultural bullshit like JK Rowling being anti-trans and getting “canceled”. That is the sort of shit you pick up by spending hundreds of hours on Twitter, not from intelligence briefings.
He has to know what the hell is actually going on. His survival depends on it.
Where he seems to have fucked up is in over-estimating the capabilities and readiness of the Russian Army. But that was something everyone seems to have done both within and outside Russia.
Adam L Silverman
@206inKY: Yep. This stuff is basically a post on its own including all the occult stuff.
oldster
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ll have to do that — I still have to list the nice red uniforms.
Dan B
@Kent: And people will latch on to what they want to believe. Putin may believe what his fear ridden advisors feed him. The internet is full of total fictions. Putin has to be able to negotiate that.
Kent
@Dan B: Oh sure. He may be the crazy uncle who picks up all the MAGA and anti-vax bullshit on the internet. Who the hell knows.
My only point is that I doubt he is information-isolated and dependent on what his advisors feed him. This isn’t the time of Stalin when leaders were actually dependent on intelligence to inform them. I expect he has complete and un-curated access to whatever he wants on the internet. Who the hell is going to censor and filter that?
Jay
@marcopolo:
crapload of Medack Pocket veterans are on disability.
digging trenches in low radioactive iron ore.
beckya57
@Adam L Silverman: still says Peru. Great post otherwise.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@StringOnAStick: “What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.” That’s how Vyacheslav von Plehve sold the Russo-Japanese affair, and oddly enough, that turned into a comprehensive catastrophic clusterfbeep that got the ball rolling on the Russian Revolution.
On the flip side, a long time ago, my dad had a secretary who had come from Russia, and who related an old proverb from there: “never celebrate the death of the Tsar.” Putin remaining in power is untenable for the rest of the world, but we have to be prepared for him to be replaced by someone or something even worse.
bjacques
@TheMightyTrowel: I had the very good fortune to see the exhibit on Scythian gold, on loan from Ukraine, at its very last stop, the Allard Pierson archeological museum in Amsterdam, on just about the last day. Last I checked (you’d know better than I) it was still in the museum basement, because the Maidan Revolution broke out around then and Russia’s occupation of the Crimea, Luhansk, and Donbas made repatriation difficult. The workmanship was exquisite and I learned about the eastern extent of the Greek empire.
Adam (and Carlo), thanks for keeping the updates going. About that religious fascism, some Malaysian Buddhists are feeling left out. Also, I have a very good friend whose late mum was a good friend of the founder of Opus Dei. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but my friend is a good egg if somewhat conservative.
One question: Doesn’t an orderly retreat—er, redeployment following local victory—require fierce rear-guard action from troops who can expect not to be abandoned to their fate? And another: What’s to stop Ukrainians bogging down convoys retreating from Kyiv like they did the ones advancing toward it? OK, one last, probably for G&T: Is there any advantage to or desire for Zelenskyy and the government announcing amnesty for all but the most hardcore rebels in the Russian-occupied regions if they change sides? A lot of of those folks must be having buyer’s remorse, what with the gangs (perhaps also declare a bounty on them) and may be wondering how Russia can take over their pensions while under sanctions, and it would sow distrust among the Russian occupiers.
Frankensteinbeck
I absolutely believe that Putin’s people are lying to him. They lied to him hardcore in the run-up to the war, painting a ‘we will be greeted as liberators’ picture. Putin fires and arrests even his top people when he doesn’t like the news. Why would they stop lying?
Of course he has internet, but he’s a paranoid narcissist asshole thick with a propaganda mindset. He’s going to search out good news and be naturally dismissive of bad news.
But, he will be aware of bad news, especially US government statements. Tension is building up, and his inner circle are approaching a ‘him or me’ crisis, and they know it.
I don’t think any of this is ‘If only the Tsar knew’ stuff. His staff have had to tell him things are going slower than expected. I’m sure “Then reduce their cities to rubble” and “relocate their population” type orders are straight from the top as his reaction to those reports.
I admit, the large scale kidnapping confuses me. There aren’t enough to matter to Russia’s population problem. They’re not being used as hostages. I’m having to chalk it up to racists having bizarre obsessions.
Frankensteinbeck
Hmmm. A thought: The relocations could be a result of lying to Putin. The military gets orders to deport the troublemakers and leave the loyal citizens to cement control of captured cities. There are no loyal citizens, but the military has to make a show to keep Putin believing Ukraine is conquerable, it’s just going slowly. Terrifying lightly armed dissenters is what Russia runs on, so feeding Putin information altered to fit that dynamic would be the best way to keep from falling down an elevator shaft onto bullets.
lowtechcyclist
As Brad DeLong used to frequently say, “The Cossacks work for the Tsar.”
When I was reading these reports yesterday of Putin being badly informed, I didn’t even think about agency. Of course the agency is his: he’s the ruler who does things that make people afraid to tell him things he might not want to hear. If he’s misinformed, he’s the one who created the environment where people wouldn’t tell him bad news.
And of course he’s got quite a track record of conducting wars in this manner. It’s not like he’d have had a change of heart this time, if he only knew.
No, my takeaway was that this demolishes the whole notion of Putin being particularly smart or canny.
Because even if he’s not going to give up the level of brutality that makes his advisors unwilling to tell him the bad news, there’s the whole fucking Internet out there. If in freakin’ 2022 he isn’t using the Web to find out the things that his generals and advisors are afraid to tell him, then he’s none of these things.
Of course getting surrounded by yes-men is an occupational hazard of being a brutal autocrat. In past centuries, there wasn’t a whole lot a brutal but canny autocrat could do about that. But there is now, and Putin’s clearly not doing it. That’s really not very bright.
sab
All those Ukrainians relocated to Russia, scattered away not near each other or family. Humans are resilient, but what a thing to live through.They left husbands behind.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: Right now I think the czar is fighting the cossacks and he is not winning. But labelling as such is out of date and more importantely quite wrong.
Gvg
If the top down, shoot any messenger of news that contradicts my preferred worldview, is widespread in Russia then none of the subordinates could or did have an accurate view of things before the war. They can’t change that without a radical shakeup. The fact that the need accuracy doesn’t mean that they can get it. I am saying, that I don’t think it can be just Putin and his ministers, it also the ministers/generals and their subordinates. Then add in the stress of the war and we have a disaster. So that is good for us but brings on another problem in that they are still making bad choices off of GIGO.
I suspect they are all dismissive of news from us, they think we are the liars all the time. So even though Putin can read our news, he won’t believe it. We know we are closer to truthful than Russia, but they don’t.
debbie
@Martin:
I think this whole “I didn’t know, I wasn’t told” line is totally bogus. Putin overreached, drunk on his own excellence, and is now using his own staff as scapegoats.
J R in WV
@marcopolo:
Yes, I think today the main danger is from inhaling dust associated with radioactive particles causing lung cancer or other cancer in the body. As a mineral collector I have read several articles about the ways to have specimens, the most dangerous are the acicular forms of tiny needles, or soft or brittle and likely to shed tiny respirable particles small enough to lodge in your lungs and gently irradiate things for years to come?
Regardless of the technicalities nothing good comes from working in even a mildly radioactive and dusty environment! Think of the miners of uranium and their increasing likelihood of disease over time.
I’m agreeing with Cheryl here — any danger is probably long term, and exists wherever thr poor guys shed dust on their comrades, medical staff or officers, until they are decontaminated.
Geminid
@Gvg: The discussion of Putin’s awareness of the real story of his invasion prompted me to find out whether French President Macron was still talking to Putin on the phone. Reports early in the invasion were that the two spoke every day.
But I got sidetracked by reporting on the upcoming French Presidential election. The first round is ten days away, on April 10. A runoff is scheduled for April 24, in the (likely) event no candidate receives more than 50%. The good news for Macron is that he has a substantial lead; the bad news is that right winger Marine le Pen has gotten separation from the other challengers.
Mr. Melancthon, the Communist Party leader is in 3rd place and complains that Le Pen keeps poaching working class voters from his working class party. The France24 article I read noted that the French working class “Vote Populaire” used to be staunchly Communist, but has turned increasingly right wing in recent decades.
So I never found out whether Macron and Putin are still talking. If they are, I suspect that any practical effects are marginal, at least in the short term.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
There is an FSB leak sending letters to our press that says Putin is misinformed in exactly the way Bush was with Iraq. Putin told his people to tell him that he could conquer Ukraine. Every level down the information chain told their subordinates to confirm it, or else. So they sent back to Putin lots of reports about mythical Russian-supporting Ukrainian groups and how weak Ukraine is. There is no exculpating for Putin here. No one is leading him. It’s a culture of yes-men going “Absolutely, Mr. Putin, Sir, you’re right that being evil war criminals will work!” And like Bush, Putin has surrounded himself with evil bastards who want the same thing and believe most of what they’re saying, because their subordinates are lying to them.
Plus, think about how the lying about their own preparedness works. Corruption. The mechanic isn’t going to tell his boss that he only did half the maintenance days and took the others off. His boss isn’t going to tell his boss that he didn’t buy as many tires as he got money for and pocketed the extra, so some of the tires are out of date. That boss isn’t going to tell his own boss he bought cheap-ass tires instead of the good ones and pocketed the extra…
Imagine an entire culture of that in every branch of the military and everything else.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
I just don’t understand Putin’s motivation for demanding to be lied to about everything. Is his whole “return to Czarist Russia” also insincere? Could he have seriously thought that being lied to by everyone would end up with the country in a good place? This is psychology that I can’t even begin to figure out.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
Understandable or not, it’s common in the super-rich and powerful. There’s no shortage of precedent for it. I think it comes from a combination of “I am a genius so anyone who tells me what I think is right must be wrong” and “I will get rid of everyone who doesn’t give me what I want, so I’ll only have people who deliver” except instead, you get people who lie that you’re right and that they’ve achieved what you ordered. Plus, anyone at lower levels who knows better knows they are in trouble if they don’t lie to their bosses. It builds on itself until you get this.
debbie
With so much at risk! I miss that emoji pounding its head against a wall.
Ladyracterinok
@azlib:
Bonhoeffer and others started and were members of the confessing Church group that said their first shows of allegiance was to God and Christ and not to Hitler or the Nazis
As I recall and those who wanted to become Lutheran pastors had to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler no
lee
From the twit machine:
Seven busses packed with Russian soldiers suffering from Acute Radiation Syndrome arrived to #Belarus from the #Ukrainian #Chernobyl exclusion zone. Source: member of public council of state #Ukraine agency of exclusion zone Yaroslav Yemelyanenko via Unian news agency.
https://twitter.com/mrkovalenko/status/1509278005469847574?s=21
BC in Illinois
@azlib: @Ladyracterinok:
The references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer are on point. I have the 16-volume set of DB’s Works on my shelf. I read through them — while following along with Volker Ullrich’s 2-volume biography of Hitler [Ascent/Downfall]. To read of Bonhoeffer during the 1930s is to see him always in the minority, a part of a breakaway movement, a “Confessing Church” against the self-proclaimed “German Lutherans.”
DB was, in many ways, heroic and faithful; the church at large was not.
Morzer
@Geminid: I believe the French politician is Mélenchon. Melanchthon was a Lutheran theologian.
Brit in Chicago
@Chetan Murthy: No doubt the intelligence services here just get it wrong sometimes, but far more salient are the cases where they have been put under pressure to come up with certain wrong answers. (This happened during the Vietnam war, but more recently it seems most obviously under W and TFG.) In the intelligence services are really given free rein, I’d be inclined to trust them. They certainly seem to have given Biden good information about the approach of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
debbie
@lee:
Now, that is something Putin should definitely be angry about.