Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

The revolution will be supervised.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Update 39: Kyiv Has Held, But the Price Was High

War for Ukraine Update 39: Kyiv Has Held, But the Price Was High

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“– Hi honey. What is Dima’s shoe size? 18? I‘ve got him cool shoes, blue ones. Yeah, I guess Polish ones. Luv u.”

(By Iryna Potapenko & Olha Chorna; image and text found here)

Most of tonight’s post will be below the jump as it is video and imagery that has begun to emerge of the price paid to hold Kyiv.

Tonight’s post/update will not be pleasant. So if you are uncomfortable with this stuff, which is understandable and no one here will judge, you may want to either skip right to comments or just give this one a complete pass.

I’ll get back to the style of update with analysis tomorrow night. But right now, witness must be borne!

  • “You know that feeling when it hurts? I once fell in love with a boy, but he didn’t fall in love with me, and I thought it hurt. But it turned out that it hurts to see your mother die in front of you”, says 16 y.o. girl from Mariupol, a hell on earth 1/11
  • My brother keeps coming up to mom, saying, “Mommy, don’t sleep, you will freeze”. We will never visit her grave. She has remained in the damp and dark basement. We went to the toilet, slept, ate leftovers in the same basement 2/11
  • Once uncle Kolya caught a pigeon, and we fried it and ate it. And then we all vomited. Mom held on to the last, 3 days before our evacuation, she died. I told my brother that she was asleep and should not be awakened. But he seems to have understood it all. 3/11
  • …Our neighbor died, and we could not carry her outside, and she began to smell. When it got quiet uncle Kolya carried her out, and himself got killed on a trip wire. Mom cried a lot. After dad died uncle Kolya was the closest person. 4/11
  • … corpses stink so much. They were everywhere. I covered my brother’s eyes with my mother’s scarf so that he would not see this. While we were running, I nearly vomited several times. I no longer believe in your God. Had he existed, we wouldn’t have suffered so much. 5/11
  • My mom never, you hear, never did anything wrong. She went to church. Uncle Kolya quit smoking so that mom wouldn`t be nervous that it`s a sin. And your God took her away. The priest said my mom now serving God, but it`d be better if she were to serve him here, raising us.6/11
  • I hate russia. My own uncle is there. Do you know what he told me on phone today? “Katya? What Katya? Girl, I don’t know you. What war, what Katya? And then he wrote from the a burner phone,“Katya, do not write to me. It is dangerous for me and my family. Your mom is gone.” 7/11
  • I hate them! She was his sister!? How is that possible? … you know, I think that I will return to Mariupol. And I will live in the same place. And every time, on the same day, I will go down to the basement of a new house to lay flowers. 8/11
  • It’s also scary when children cry. You can’t be heard. These freaks searched for people in basements and killed them. Those who survived said that the russian military were able to rape children and the elderly, and even corpses. If there is a God, why does He allow this? 9/11
  • I don’t want to live anymore. We’ll probably be separated now. And I might not see my brother. What for? Why was this putin saving us? We lived well, we even bought a car. Uncle Kolya promised to teach me how to drive. They even burned the car. And the apartment is gone. 10/11
  • I want to die, but I can’t. … hug your kids! Otherwise, you may be gone, and they will not remember your smell. If I endure and later have children, I will be hugging them all the time “… Source: life.nv.ua/ukr/znamenitos 11/11

The rest after the jump.

This is not something new. The Soviet Army did this in WW II.

The Russian Army under Putin did this in Chechnya.

The word “zachistka”, which literally means to sweep, is the term applied to Russian cleansing operations. (Italics in the original)

The zachistka embodied more than a military practice, however. It was a mind-set. And this was exemplified in the proliferation of the word itself. In the same way that the term ethnic cleansing (etnicko ciscenje’) was coined in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the term zachistka found a distinct voice in the Russian popular vocabulary and in the official addresses and speeches of military and government personnel. By late 1999, the use of zachistka in the press and everyday speech had reached an infectious and alarming level. From September 1999 to 2005, zachistka appeared 787 times in the headlines of Moscow’s central newspapers in relation to the second war in Chechnya.4 In the text of the papers, it appeared 10,730 times. From the verb zachistit’, zachistka was used in the literal sense to describe the cleaning of pipes, the sanding or smoothing out of metal, the cleaning of paint or corrosion from surfaces,5 or the dusting away of sand and dirt to uncover archeological objects.6 It was also used to describe the sweeping up of objects – autumn leaves, snow, coal, or rubbish – into a corner. The prefix za suggests concerted movement and the stress is on cleaning up or cleaning out as the operative implication.7 Within six months of the beginning of the first Chechen war, however, zachistka was being employed by the Russian armed forces as military slang. It was linked euphemistically to the idea of cleaning out human beings – in this case, suspected Chechen rebel fighters and their alleged civilian supporters. No longer neutral or inoffensive, zachistka became congruent with the practice of gathering or sweeping, in the literal sense, Chechen men and women into fields, factories, or schools to be checked, detained, or executed, usually on the outskirts of a targeted village. In this respect, the idea of harvesting or cleansing the land is reminiscent of the metaphor adopted in Hitler’s Germany – that of volkische Flurbereinigung (cleansing of the soil), also adopted from agricultural terminology.8 Versions of the word were linked to the cleansing of space, not the human body as such – the “gentle sweep” (miagkaia zachistka), the “total sweep” (total’naia zachistka),9 the “continuous sweep” (sploshnaia zachistka),10, the “repeat sweep” (povtornaia zachistka),11 the “ethnic sweep” (ethnicheskaia zachistka),12 the ‘military sweep’ (boevaia zachistka),13 the “fire/artillery sweep” (ognevaia zachistka),14 and the “targeted sweep” (adresnia zachistka).15

The following two tweets have imagery that has been determined to be sensitive.

The text below reads: “Irpen, Gostomel, Bucha after liberation from the Russian occupiers.”

This was all planned and premeditated!

  • Anyone saying that Bucha is the result of brutalisation or rogue behaviour is wrong. This was the plan. It was pre-meditated. It is consistent with Russian methods in Chechnya. And if the Russian military had been more successful there would have been many more towns like it. 2/4
  • This context – in which the Ukrainians knew that there were troops preparing to perpetrate acts like this, with the Kremlin describing Ukrainian identity as an accident of history – also explains why Ukrainian resistence has been so fierce. They see the stakes as existential. 3/4
  • People calling for a specific response to Bucha are taking an atrocity out of its context. The response should be to ensure that Ukrainians can defeat the invasion through steady and systemic assistance. The volume and speed of kit delivered matters. 4/4

And, again, until this revenue stream is cut off, we’re not doing enough!

Russia’s economy has staggered through the first full month of the war with Ukraine but it may yet emerge with a sparkling balance sheet if some of its biggest trade partners don’t turn off the tap on its exports of energy.

For all the hardships visited on consumers at home and the financial chokehold put on the government from abroad, Bloomberg Economics expects Russia will earn nearly $321 billion from energy exports this year, an increase of more than a third from 2021. It’s also on track for a record current-account surplus that the Institute of International Finance says may reach as high as $240 billion.

“The single biggest driver of Russia’s current account surplus continues to look solid,” IIF economists led by Robin Brooks said in a report. “With current sanctions in place, substantial inflows of hard currency into Russia look set to continue.”

The calculus may change completely, however, in case of an embargo on energy sales. And even without it, Russia’s oil exports and output are already falling, with the International Energy Agency predicting it may lose nearly a quarter of its crude production this month.

Still, the combination of a steep ruble depreciation and a higher dollar price for oil will generate an extra 8.5 trillion rubles ($103 billion) in budget revenue this year, according to TS Lombard.

“The Finance Ministry will use some of it to cushion the blow but cautiously, not to spark inflation further,” said Madina Khrustaleva, an analyst at TS Lombard in London. “It seems that all these sanctions will destroy the non-energy part of the economy. Russia will depend on energy even more.”

Much, much more – including multi-color graphs – at the link.

We’ll end with this because it is the only remotely positive thing I could find:

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    CaseyL

    If they can bear to experience it, I can bear to read about it.

    I have no words that can adequately express what I’m thinking and feeling. I want to see the Russian Army wiped from the face of the Earth. I want everyone who is still doing business with Russia to also be wiped from the face of the Earth. I want everyone who supports Russia to be wiped from the face of the Earth (including, emphatically, the Republican Party).

  5. 5.

    CaseyL

    Adam – I should have thanked you for posting this.  God only knows what it’s doing to you, and I want you to know how much we value what you’re doing.

  6. 6.

    bbleh

    Imagining that “we” — the armed forces of modern industrialized nations — were somehow “beyond” this kind of behavior seems akin to imagining that the American voting public was “beyond” overt racism as a primary political motivation.

    I guess I’m glad in one way we DON’T have this kind of detailed record from WWII, which after all wasn’t even 100 years ago.  What we have is bad enough…

    ETA, and yes, second (or fifth, or whatever) the thanks to Adam for the tremendous work.  This has become my primary source for concrete news about Ukraine, unlike, oh, EVERY major newspaper or video medium.

  7. 7.

    TonyG

    Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges and all of the other Putin apologists on the “left” support these war crimes. That should never be forgotten.

  9. 9.

    TonyG

    @bbleh: Actually there were plenty of detailed records from the Second World War.  I personally knew four Holocaust survivors (two from Poland, one from Romania and one from the Netherlands).  All our deceased now, but there were many such survivors living the the U.S. not very long ago.

  10. 10.

    Ishiyama

    At this point nothing less than total victory will meet the historical need. Grind the Russian military forces to dust, put the officers and politicians on trial.

  11. 11.

    Mike E

    @bbleh:

    I guess I’m glad in one way we DON’T have this kind of detailed record from WWII

    Actually, Nazi Germany kept nearly all of the receipts so, what’s old is not new again, sadly. Too.

    eta TonyG beat me to it

  12. 12.

    bbleh

    @TonyG: Yes, and horrifying enough! (I lived in a building with survivors for some years.  Mostly they didn’t want to talk about it, and I don’t blame them.  The hatred I saw in one old guy’s eyes … oh man…)  But the depth and reach of the coverage of Ukraine — notably including video evidence — is qualitatively different.  Imagine this times 100 or more!  And we have yet to see the full record of Ukraine, notably the recollections of victims.

    I don’t know, maybe we’d just overload …

  14. 14.

    Raoul Paste

    It is a horror to assimilate, but the whole world needs to have their nose rubbed in this reality.

    I have read these every night.  Thank you Adam and all the other content contributors

  15. 15.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    My inclination is that every sanction and war crime list should include every instructor, administrator and graduate of every Russian war college, staff school and training program, all the way down to the director of janitorial services. No safe haven allowed, no pleasurable travels.

  16. 16.

    feebog

    Thank you Adam.  I have been following but not commenting on your posts.  This is gut wrenching.  These people, from Putin on down need to be prosecuted.

  17. 17.

    Mike E

    @Raven: HBO’s The Pacific was based on that memoir, sure takes all the romantic glory out of consideration for any viewer of that series, a sobering antidote to Band of Brothers.

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    @Mike E: Yes, the atrocities of Nazi Germany were carefully documented, no question about that. Not only did the Nazis kept good records, after the war there were big efforts to collect information, for example, through recording survivors’ stories.

    But maybe what bbleh means is that the documentation of this war’s atrocities is being widely distributed via social media in real time? That feels very different about this war to me.

    ETA: I see bbleh typed faster than  I did.

    On a different note, I guess we can throw out that idea that if nations were bound together by trade, mutually dependent on each other for various necessities, peaceful coexistence would result.

  19. 19.

    Gvg

    We should not forget Chechnya. I don’t think we can do anything right now…but they experienced horror too. I don’t actually know much about them. Russia said they were all terrorists and I knew it was a frame up but I don’t know anything more. I don’t know if they have good leaders or anything, but nobody should have this happen.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    @CaseyL:

    If they can bear to experience it, I can bear to read about it.

    That may be, but I figured giving everyone a warning was the right thing to do.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @bbleh:

    I guess I’m glad in one way we DON’T have this kind of detailed record from WWII, which after all wasn’t even 100 years ago. What we have is bad enough…

    We most certainly have exceedingly detailed records from WWII.

  24. 24.

    bbleh

    @Ohio Mom: Yeah, we’re a visual species, and written recollections and static photos — not to mention statistics — just don’t have the punch.  Also, everybody’s got a camera now, not just journalists.  This is much more granular — and for me anyway, much more accessible.

    As to economic interdependence, there was a lot of trade within Europe, and between the US and Germany (Prescott Bush, ahem, sorry where was I?), and that didn’t seem to help much in the 1930s-40s.   But what MAY be different is the motivations of the leadership and their, ah, potential openness to persuasion.  Money may not prevent wars, but perhaps it can limit them.

  25. 25.

    marcopolo

    I’m in agreement with all the folks saying we need to give Ukraine everything they need asap to deal Russia as big a defeat as possible.  After the reports today, and I am sure more to come in the following days, I don’t seen how the citizens of Ukraine tolerate any Russian troops on their soil, how they agree to any territorial concessions to Russia.  After all, we now see what Russia will do with any of these places so victory is even more of an existential (as if that was possible) question of existence for them.

    On the good news side, the US gov’t has agreed to facilitate the transfer of older soviet/russian tanks from Eastern European NATO members to Ukraine:

    The U.S. and allies will work together to transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukrainian forces for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, The New York Times reported Friday.

    A U.S. official told the Times the tanks will enable Ukraine’s military to conduct long-range artillery strikes on Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, suggesting that self-propelled artillery vehicles — which bear some resemblance to tanks — are also being sent.

    This could mean as many as 500-600 additional tanks for the Ukrainian army.  I’d assume one of the ways we would facilitate this is to guarantee to back fill these countries’ tank forces with US or other European tanks.  And according to this lovely (and fairly detailed) post on DKos on what the transfer of tanks from places like Poland, Romania, etc might entail, I’d imagine we might also be involved in helping to make any mods (like stripping stuff out?) to this armor that might be necessary for it to best be used by Ukraine (if you read this, who knew there were so many frigging variations on the t-72 tank?!?).

    Earlier today, Markos wrote an article on the difficulty of sending new weapons to Ukraine in the middle of a conflict. If Ukraine had actually joined NATO back in 2006, rather than having their movement toward membership sabotaged by Russia with a big assist from Paul Manafort, by now they not only have the protection that association would bring, but familiarity with a whole collection of shared hardware that made resupplying them in a crisis much simpler. That’s the whole reason that things like “NATO standard ammunition” exist.

    But to really drive home how difficult it is to just “give them them what they need,” here’s a look at a small portion of the T-72 tank family, and why even what seems to be a simple exchange can be harder than it looks.

    Last but not least, how can Russia continue to serve on the UNSC with the world knowing this is the kind of activity that they planned to carry out in Ukraine?  It just really makes a mockery of the entire purpose of the United Nations.  I don’t know how it would happen but I’d love to see Russia booted from their position and maybe replaced by India or Indonesia or someone (or maybe it could rotated) or maybe just see the entire foundation of how the Security Council works be fundamentally overhauled.  Yeah, have no clue how that might work.

    Anyways, thanks Adam for sticking with the nightly updates.  This has been a particularly grim day.

  26. 26.

    NYCMT

    The Russian Army used einsatzgruppen in 2022. Einsatzgruppen.

    My family is three fourths Yekke, and the ones who didn’t flee before the war experienced the process of bureaucratic annihilation, but my grandmother’s relatives in Galicia – in Rzeszow –  experienced Bruno Streckenbach’s Einsatzgruppe I. Streckenbach died free in 1977.

    It is likely that the perpetrators of the Irpin and Bucha massacres will be similarly immune to consequence.

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m just going to do a collective you’re welcome for those expressing thanks for my doing these posts.

    It has been monsooning and thunderstorming here since early Friday morning. I’m going to take my dogs for a drive as they’ve been cooped up for the past two days as I’ve not been able to walk them, just get them out between squall lines to do their business.

    I’ll try to check back in later.

  29. 29.

    marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman:  And alas, if history repeats itself, and I am betting it will, in a couple or three generations after every Ukrainian who lived through this war has died there will be huge contingents of folks (outside of Ukraine–don’t think they will forget) who will think it was all made up.

  30. 30.

    Mike E

    @Ohio Mom: I totally agree with you on that sentiment..social media is largely responsible for the mess we are in right now but, much like the older methods of communication, it can be a force for good from time to time. Propagandists are always with us, though, and their way works too often.

    Your point about trade is making fools of us all tbh.

  32. 32.

    jackmac

    A horrifying, rage-inducing account. Who will be held accountable for these atrocities?

    To Katya, the 16-year-old from Mariupal, I can’t begin to imagine the pain and loss you have experienced. I hope you — and many other Ukrainians like you  — may eventually find some love, peace and comfort.

    The entire world, including blissfully unaware Russian citizens, must hear the stories of Katya and others and learn and act on is being done in Russia’s name.

  36. 36.

    Mike in DC

    Shit, give Ukraine Tomahawk GLCM systems at this point.  Let them give a little pain back to Red Square. I’m only half-joking.  Ukraine needs to win, and it needs to be the greatest humiliation for Russia in the past 100 years.  Maybe the past 200!

  37. 37.

    marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: That was one weird effing meeting/group of people/article (yes all three).  I’m not sure exactly what to take away from it other than to welcome the Republican infighting between these Russian conspiracy kooks and the neocons.  And I guess the quotes from Vance, where he is kind of admitting that he just says crazy shit he doesn’t believe in all the time (which I guess is reality for a lot of R politicians but how long can you do that without starting to believe that crap); and how surprised that the first time he’s seen pushback is on downplaying what is going on in Ukraine made me shudder.

  39. 39.

    West of the Rockies

    Russia is a bully.  It needs a big, bloody punch to the nose that leaves it humiliated and on its collective ass.  Maybe then it will learn respect and humanity.

  40. 40.

    Mike E

    @Raven: my sister’s father-in-law served on a ship in theater, in support of the combat ops, and that was enough for him to not ever speak about it to anyone… he’s still with us, on his 2nd marriage, and planting his usual doubled vegetable garden for himself and for whatever the critters want to help themselves to.

  41. 41.

    mali muso

    If this thread is to be believed, genocide was always the plan. Horrifying.

    – Russia planned to easy-take Kyiv within 3 days, following by capitulation of Ukraine;
    – Russian army units were followed by thousands of riot police;
    – Russian army purchased 45,000 body bags and brought mobile crematories;
    – I am sure they planned mass executions for Ukraine.
    — Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) April 2, 2022

  42. 42.

    marcopolo

    @Mike in DC:  I guess the one weapons system I’d like to see given to Ukraine (that I haven’t heard anything about) would be some kind of land vehicle mounted anti-ship missile.  I don’t know what that would be but something like the exocet from the Fauklands War.  From everything I’ve read, adding western armaments (misses, bombs, etc…) to Ukraine aircraft involves lots of logistical and engineering challenges (which is one issue with the Mig fighter transfer–most of the Migs operated b NATO members have been extensively modified and cannot just be given over without work being done on them to make them usable for Ukrainian pilots and airframe mechanics).  Single use weapons (like NLAWs & Stingers) are much more easily assimilated into the day to day operations of the Ukraine military.  Maybe ground based anti-ship missiles are more complicated pieces of equipment than I realize.

  43. 43.

    kalakal

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m not in the least surprised by those vermin. Disgusted yes, surprised no.

    Maybe they should go and live in Russia if they like it that much*. After all that’s were most of their funding comes from.

    *I get a strange feeling writing that

  44. 44.

    Hangö Kex

    @Ohio Mom: 

    On a different note, I guess we can throw out that idea that if nations were bound together by trade, mutually dependent on each other for various necessities, peaceful coexistence would result.

    I’d like to think this isn’t an entirely lost cause, but it seems it needs to be combined with the idea of democracies not tending to have wars among themselves for best results.

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    Thanks for the updates, grim as this was. :|

  45. 45.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I have not consumed any actual mainstream news in weeks. I feel it was everywhere weeks ago but I checked out.  Is this being covered nightly or does it take a back seat to gas prices, inflation, and how unpopular Biden is?  Thanks, Adam.

  47. 47.

    brendancalling

    If I wasn’t a 51 year old man I’d sign up and fight myself.

    I hope Russia never recovers from this, economically or diplomatically. Yesterday, I was talking to my old man about this whole shitshow, and we agreed Putin needed to be removed, dead or alive. I said I was more than happy to put him on St. Helena like Napoleon, but after this? I would prefer that he met an uglier fate. The gibbet, for example.

    The Russian people are going to feel this one for years. If airspace ever opens to them again, they will be welcomed as pariahs and orcs. The shame they’ve brought on themselves is enormous.

  49. 49.

    marcopolo

    @mali muso: This twitter thread as well:

    On Bucha: after my last meeting in Ukraine I was walking to the car when a senior Ukrainian security official, flanked by two General Officers grabbed my arm and said “by the way; the Russians have moved a unit onto the Belarusian axis who will lead the killings.” 1/4.

    Anyone saying that Bucha is the result of brutalisation or rogue behaviour is wrong. This was the plan. It was pre-meditated. It is consistent with Russian methods in Chechnya. And if the Russian military had been more successful there would have been many more towns like it. 2/4

    This context – in which the Ukrainians knew that there were troops preparing to perpetrate acts like this, with the Kremlin describing Ukrainian identity as an accident of history – also explains why Ukrainian resistence has been so fierce. They see the stakes as existential. 3/4

    People calling for a specific response to Bucha are taking an atrocity out of its context. The response should be to ensure that Ukrainians can defeat the invasion through steady and systemic assistance. The volume and speed of kit delivered matters. 4/4

  50. 50.

    mali muso

    @marcopolo: That Russia has a seat on the UN human rights council is just…totally untenable. I cannot imagine any kind of negotiation that Ukraine can accept that will leave any of their people under these monsters.

  51. 51.

    debbie

    Thanks again for these posts, Adam. Love the animal rescuers. Colbert had a clip of another guy driving a van filled with little kangaroos.

    I’ve seen worse tweets than what Adam’s shared here. Whether you like Twitter or not, we are all bearing witness to these crimes. No one (especially assholes like JD Vance) can say this isn’t something we shouldn’t be involved with.

    The GOP has to be made to pay for their support of Putin. We have to do more than we’re doing. We’re letting Putin do this. Russia and especially Putin must be stopped now, but even more importantly, they must be made to pay for these crimes. This time, we really need to mean it when we say “Never again,” and we need to mean never again for everyone everywhere. Otherwise, we’re as culpable as Russia and all the other horrible, horrible people in this world.

  52. 52.

    Kent

    @TonyG: Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges and all of the other Putin apologists on the “left” support these war crimes. That should never be forgotten.

    We should stop giving them any fucking oxygen.  It always pains me to see people breathlessly reporting the latest atrocity from Greenwald.  Just fucking ignore him and banish him from polite conversation.

  53. 53.

    LadySuzy

    I look at the numerous maps showing the Ukraine territory controlled by the Russians, especially in the South and the South-East… and I’m worried about what’s happening there.

    A few weeks ago, we had images of civilians protesting en masse in Kershon. I was reassured somewhat because it meant people were not terrorized and I assumed Russians didn’t use terror tactics and didn’t commit war crimes on a large scale (rapes, summary executions, mass deportations). But recently, who knows…  I’ve read that Russians were losing patience….

    I understand Adam’s statements that the terror tactics are not random but a policy. No question in my mind that in many cities and villages, civilian leadership has been harassed, arrested, kidnapped or worse. However, I wonder if the level of war crimes is somewhat proportional to the level of difficulty for Russian soldiers to conquer a territory. If they have suffered many losses, if they’ve had to fight very hard, the soldiers may have been more radicalized and may be more prone to make the civilians “pay”. Besides the Kiev region, the absolutely horrific reports of war crimes we’re hearing from Mariupol would be another example.

    I really hope that in the case of the South and the South-East, where Russians took control with less fighting, the level of war crimes has been significantly lower.

    Thank you Adam for all your work. And thank you for this very important post.

  54. 54.

    Tazj

    @kalakal: Yes, what she went through is horrifying. I hope one day her and her brother will find happiness and see Putin face justice.

  55. 55.

    Fair Economist

    We all knew the Russians were committing atrocities. But the scale and intentionality have totally shocked me. I agree with everybody else on this thread that the Ukrainians deserve all the help and assistance we can give, and then some.

  56. 56.

    Eric S.

    I’m more lurker than not but, Adam, I want to echo the thanks of regular commenters. I read every entry of this series no matter how painful. Adam, your efforts on these posts are extraordinary. I have no doubt they are a personal trial. Thank you for this effort and sharing your knowledge and insight.

  57. 57.

    wetzel

    These are not partying Texas songwriters but old Southern gentlemen Nashville writers, country and gospel, and my friend said they agreed it was a spiritual war and the responsibility of songwriters was changing to be more political. He told me about this living room group of songwriters recently, because I had fallen ten notches sending him a political song ten days before, and so maybe he wanted me to feel better. They are shocked at this war and shocked that Trump has been Putin’s friend. Propaganda cannot change plain facts.

    These are conservative people. A great political song is Proud to Be an American, and they wouldn’t want to hear why it’s just awful. These atrocities in Ukraine do not attach to them. Even the fascists in America are not guilty of these crimes. These crimes attach to the perpetrators and up the chain of command in Russia. I think it’s important to have a disposition towards war crime in that it can be assigned to specific people. These atrocities do not attach to Trump voters. These pictures are not for our politics.

    I told my friend the important thing would be for his songs to still matter because they give people delight. I’m  on cloud nine whenever he takes a song of mine, anyway. He’s been chasing country gold his whole life and that’s alright. This is too much to process. It’s just heart breaking.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    @mali muso: Do you remember a controversy with FIFA and Ukraine’s side in World Cup qualifying matches, where they had a slogan on the *inside* collar of their jerseys that FIFA found objectionable and wanted removed? That slogan was “ Volya abo smert “. Liberty or death. They know the stakes.

  65. 65.

    mali muso

    @Gin & Tonic: I recall the incident but didn’t know the details. Sending thoughts your way as I can’t really imagine having loved ones in the middle of this.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mali muso: Yep, I covered the riot police, the pre staged armored police vehicles for prisoners, the body bags, and the mobile crematoria during one of the updates in the first week of the war?

  67. 67.

    Bill Arnold

    @mali muso:
    From that thread. Google translate in Chrome works – English below is from google translate.
    .ru address so open at your own risk.
    New (1 Feb 2022) Russian standards document on mass disposal of human bodies. Just in time for Russia’s invasion of/war with Ukraine!
    https://docs.cntd.ru/document/1200180859#7D20K3

    NATIONAL STANDARD OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
    civil defense
    URGENT BURIANING[sic?] OF BODIES IN WAR AND PEACE TIME
    General requirements
    civil defense. Emergency disposal of the dead in wartime and piece time. General requirements
    OKS 13.200
    Introduction date 2022-02-01
    …
    1 area of ​​use
    This standard establishes general requirements for the organization and implementation of a set of measures for the burial of the corpses of people and animals who died during military conflicts or as a result of these conflicts, as well as, if necessary, as a result of peacetime emergencies.

  68. 68.

    whomever

    @Gin & Tonic: Heck, look at the 2009 Georgian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.  “We don’t want no Put-In”, which was disqualified because it was pretty obvious what they were doing.

  70. 70.

    Sebastian

    God bless you for doing this, Adam. I cannot add anything now that others haven’t said already except for that I knew exactly this would come upon us.

    This is the repeat of Vukovar.

    Thank you so much for doing this Adam.

    To all of us: Don’t look away. Do not look away.

  71. 71.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Sebastian: IIRC, numerous units of Rosgvardia and OMON were identified prior to the invasion — their APCs and kit were different from the regular army (b/c not armor, they were primarily intended for control of civilian populations).  Riot police with a sideline in summary execution (remember those three OMON POWs who gave that interview, and talked explicitly about their orders to prepare for public executions?)

  72. 72.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    and the mobile crematoria during one of the updates in the first week of the war?

    In previous conflicts, RA mobile crematoria were believed to be a way for the RA to conceal losses, not try to hide genocide.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sebastian: I had several elementary school teachers that survived the Holocaust. One of the members if my doctoral committee survived Sarajevo. It is the least I can do.

    You’re quite welcome.

  76. 76.

    Kattails

    So Adam, hope the dogs had a nice outing.

    It’s the overt sadism of humiliating civilians that could leave me in a poisonous, sick rage if I let it.  The tying of someone’s hands behind their back to highlight their helplessness, before you shoot them. The raping. The cat and mouse shit with humanitarian aid and escape corridors.  Our most visceral, vivid concepts of heaven and hell probably arise from the desire to see corresponding karmic outcomes for people who have allowed themselves to be possessed by devils– or angels.

  80. 80.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Jay: 

    In previous conflicts, RA mobile crematoria were believed to be a way for the RA to conceal losses, not try to hide genocide.

    The plan was to win the war in a week. There would not be many dead RU soldiers in that scenario.

  81. 81.

    enplaned

    NATO has a rule – new members are supposed to be without border disputes. That, of course, has presented Russia with an opportunity, and so every likely new NATO candidate, whether Moldova, Ukraine (even before the last 45 days) or Georgia has a border dispute, directly or indirectly with Russia.

    Seems like maybe NATO might want to adjust this rule, because it’s been thoroughly exploited by NATO’s main adversary.

    After all, the EU admitted Cyprus as a member, and Cyprus has one heck of a border dispute.

  82. 82.

    terry chay

    @marcopolo: Why use DKos when an actual general can explain it better https://twitter.com/markhertling/status/1510341553520361472

     

    The donation of Soviet tanks (and artillery) is an interesting thing. A lot of people seem to demand, “Why didn’t they do it sooner?” One thing I gather is the answer to that and others who say that the drone and anti-tank weaponry means the tank is the next battleship are related.

    It appears that “tanks” are pretty much the only way a modern military has of going on the offensive on the ground. When Russia started to “dig in” north of Kiev last week, it sounds like that’s an admission that they had already lost, since what is the point of a tank that isn’t moving? Rommel, Desert Storm and the like have all shown this.

    So it seems to me moving from sending anti-tank weaponry and loitering munitions toward providing tanks, BMPs, artillery and the like means that NATO must think that Ukraine is ready to (or needs to) go on the offensive (or rather counteroffensive?).

    I guess we’ll get to see if Ukraine is better at combined arms than the Russians in the coming weeks.

  83. 83.

    terry chay

    @Jay: Yeah, that’s what I thought so too at the time. Now, though, this makes much more sense since all the intelligence points to Putin believing there was going to be no resistance. It reminds me about the Yellow Cosmonaut uniforms. Once Adam explained it was likely prepared to celebrate their victory over Ukraine, it made perfect sense.

    This remind me, the latest WSJ article mentions something about the U.S. providing intelligence to Ukraine about the plans to take Hostomel. Apparently Ukraine already flew out a lot of their large planes the day before and was planning to take off the worlds largest on the day of the invasion. They shot down 2 Russian paratrooper transports defending it. That alone must have be a huge intelligence win.

  84. 84.

    GoBlueInOak

    @Carlo Graziani: There are reports of children brung admitted to Ukraine hospitals with recto-vaginal tears. The oldest is 10 years old.

    We need to wipe the Russian government off the face of the map.

  87. 87.

    cazador

    Thanks again as always, Adam.

    Reading of the atrocities that are just coming to light in Bucha and Mariupol among others, I am struck that this war will have to have some postwar trials. How should the west start preparing for this? Based on the fecklessness we have seen so far from most if not all of the European and International community (US included to some extent) I think I would prefer to let the Ukrainians try Russian war criminals however they see fit as opposed to sending them to the Hague or elsewhere for “impartiality”.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    @GoBlueInOak

    Not in any way mean to imply it isn’t so but it has been historically demonstrated wise to exercise wariness of wartime reports involving young children and hospitals unless or until accompanied by independent corroboration.

  89. 89.

    James E Powell

    @NotMax:

    I was about to say the same thing, but for once scrolled down to see if somebody else already said it. No one here needs to be convinced that the Russians are awful & doing horrible things. We’ve seen the videos.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @CaseyL:

    If they can bear to experience it, I can bear to read about it.

    Absolutely.

    I really don’t know how to deal with the rest of your comment. I understand what you are saying and a small part of me agrees. But the rest of me really, really doesn’t.

    The have to be stopped, there is no question. I think that after seeing this that we should be helping in any way possible. Any Way.

    However, wiping people off the face of the earth, even for such egregious actions, I have a hard time with that. This is the concept of one person. He has help and likely the backing of the others who are extremely rich at the expense of the people of Russia. But not everyone in the country or likely even in the military actually would want this. This is a different country than ours, it has a vast history of shitty activity and repression by it’s leaders. And yes there are those who are extremely wealthy in our country, and yes some of our citizens are not treated well by their actions. But even there we aren’t anything like those in charge in Russia. This is extremely barbaric, at the very least, what Russia as a country is doing. And what the leader and his supporters are doing, using the name of the Russian people. But those people get no say in this. It is not the same as our country or our military. People die for opposing their supposedly elected leader. We vote in new people. It isn’t perfect here but it is far, far better for the average person. I guess what I’m trying to say is that yes this is about as bad as it gets but the vast majority of Russians are not responsible. As someone who has been in our military, during a war, I had to think about things like this. But as bad as I felt about that war and having realistically little choice to be involved in it, we didn’t do what the Russian powers that be are doing. Wiping Russia off the face of the earth would make us like them and we have to be better. At least I do.

    I don’t have an answer for you, I really don’t. I wish I did. But your answer isn’t the correct one, that I know.

  91. 91.

    piratedan

    and we’re at a crucible… we know that the Russians are killing civilians… at what point does this crisis provoke the US (or any other NATO member to act)?

    If the US (or another NATO member acts… thinking Poland or perhaps any of the other Baltic states) decides that it can no longer stand aside and watch Putin leverage nuclear threats for continued atrocities…… can we sit by watch this unfold?

    I believe we know how this will be spun by our political opponents and those that will leverage any action into political gain, just as they would with inaction as an opportunity for criticism.  I no longer give a shit.  The West/NATO/US needs to act and we need to act soon.

    I hope like hell that there are people working furiously on multiple plans and multiple responses because I want to believe that we cannot let this kind of action go unchecked or responded to, to matter where it takes place.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @bbleh:

    We get daily pictures and updates. And almost as they happen, not even 24 hrs later. That didn’t happen in WWII and in Vietnam it did at first. What came next was a lot of people unable to turn the other cheek and the news reports were delayed and far fewer reporters/photographers were then allowed to film/report so that not as many citizens would protest. Yes the cat was out of the bag by then so it really didn’t change anything. Now I’ve not seen warfare up close and personal but I personally know a number who have and it is brutal and deadly and shitty. Seeing it does not make it better but it is still good for us as a nation to see this, to see what it looks like and how really, really fucked up it is. Yes, as a category of animals we have to change this concept because war rarely accomplishes what the people that start it want, even if they win. We are too populated a world and tens or hundreds of thousands die, even in a conventional war, as we see in almost real time.

    Greed of one man with too much power is the problem here and until we figure out how to fix that we will never be free of war.

  93. 93.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Kent:

    They seem to have picked up some lessons from the Germans.

    No. This is how they behaved when they took Berlin. It’s who they’ve always been.

  94. 94.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    Will ignoring greenwad make him go away? Or just get worse?

    I think one reason history can so often repeat itself is that we don’t shine enough light on assholes like him, to show how much of an asshole he and his type really are.

  95. 95.

    oldster

    Here’s a note I just sent to whitehouse.gov. You can, too!

    Dear Mr. President,

    Please give Ukraine more support, including planes, tanks, and missiles.

    I wrote to you last week to thank you for your brilliant handling of this crisis, and to ask you to provide the Ukrainians more lethal weaponry.

    Events in the last week have only made the case more urgent. The Russian re-deployment in the Southeast region makes it more urgent. Revelations of Russian atrocities in the last 24 hours have made it more urgent.

    And, the continuing displays of Ukrainian resolve and competence on the battlefield make it more urgent. If the US and Europe provide them with the weapons they need, then they can do what they must do: win this war, decisively and unambiguously.

    Your presence in the White House is a blessing in these times. I am so glad to have a wise, decent, and sane president instead of a corrupt, vain, and selfish one. I know that you are working hard to safeguard Western values, the NATO alliance, and the security of our own country.

    I think you can do all of those things, while also ratcheting up the provision of lethal aid. Please give them what they need to win.

    signed, [oldster]

  96. 96.

    matt

    I was just reading some online comments where a commenter suggested that a no fly zone be set up to protect Ukrainians from retreating soldiers killing civilians.

    I am really wondering how some people manage to tie their shoes.

  97. 97.

    Geminid

    Meanwhile, a ceasefire has started in Yemen. The two sides agreed to stop fighting for the month of Ramadan and the month after. Ships carrying relief supplies will finally be allowed into the blockaded port of Hodeida(?). This war has wrecked what was already the poorest nation in the Arab world, and an estimated 80% of the population relies on outside aid to prevent malnutrition or outright starvation..

    The war might not resume when the two months are up. Neither side could drive the other out of it’s strongholds even if they fought for another 7 years, so they might as well settle for a defacto partition and start rebuilding.

  98. 98.

    wetzel

    @cazador:

    Think of the role of a trial in keeping the public peace in a small town, to prevent revenge spiral between two families. Imagine if the law had taken the first Hatfield murderer in. The trial would have happened and there could have been peace, but there wasn’t justice, murder attached to the Hatfields and order broke down in a way never stopped. Or was it the McCoys? The Hague is where this needs to go, and people should try to speak in prose about it.

    In identifying with Ukraine, the world will feel the need to deliver retributive justice on ‘Russia’. These crimes will attach to innocent Russians. You see their guilt. You read their surveys. You see the crime ‘they’ committed, and what they see is what could happen to their own children and family. Atrocious violence and torture is the unconscious premise of their lives now in ways that it wasn’t a month ago. People think this is to ‘eliminate Ukrainians’? These atrocities are a demonstration for Russians of what will happen to them. They are trapped in a world where being a human being has become impossible. Their world is the future for our grandchildren if we don’t have better insight.

    The process at the Hague needs to insist that it is ‘the center’ psychically. It can’t wait until Nuremburg. Fascism is infecting through the atrocity exhibition. Our words about these horrors can’t escape the odor of their instrumentality. We are in a war, so we are looking at war as the answer.

  99. 99.

    NotMax

    @wetzel

    As you made mention of it,

    The former chief prosecutor of United Nations war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “Putin is a war criminal,” Carla Del Ponte told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in an interview published Saturday.Source

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I certainly would not equate the wars in Ukraine and in Yemen. While a defacto partition might be a suitable resolution to Yemen’s conflict for the short and medium term, partition of any kind is simply not an option for Ukraine.

    There is a rough similarity between the two countries in area. At ~240,000 suare miles, Ukraine is 10% larger than Yemen. The population of Ukraine is about 40 million people, while Yemen’s population is just over 30 million. That population is rated 2nd worst in the world for food insecurity.

  101. 101.

    wetzel

    Giambattista Vico thought he could find the beginning of ‘prose’ in the etymology of the word Jupiter and its relationship to justice or I could just be misremembering because I don’t know Latin. It goes back to the fat of sacrificial animals. That will hurt your noggin to think about! It’s in the prosody in Midsummer Night’s Dream.

    Or if I had a sympathy of choice

    War death or sickness did lay siege to it

    Where Lysander and Demetrius echo each other in complete assonance, echoing, the same, or in the prose at the end where Bottom is actually telling the story of Diana and Acteon.

    I find it incredible that Renee Girard, the author of Violence and the Sacred, taught how many people at Stanford? One thousand? Two thousand? Captains of industry in their silicon valley palaces. These are the creators of Reddit, Facebook and Apple. The partners at the consulting firms living in Dubai or now rebranded in Moscow. He might as well have been talking to a post. I remember what he found most distinctive about Stanford was that it was the one school where everybody likes to wear their own school’s sweatshirt. I can even remember feeling proud as a Freshman when somebody complimented the color of my cardinal! Lol. Renee tried to get me not to go to medical school by off-the-cuff telling me he did not think he wanted a job where he had to stick his finger in somebody’s bottom, but then I sawed my finger off with a table saw a few years later trying to build a condominium for my cats. If I’d gone to Emory, I might have had the chance to talk to the Dalai Lama, and then I could have gotten total enlightenment.

    I’m bragging on my school. It’s all I’ve got going for me on my tennis team. They’re all better looking, and they all have better cars.

  102. 102.

    wetzel

    These are my friends I’m talking about, the people I went to school with. I apologize. Our consciousness is like the surface of the ocean anyway, with the windsurfer you see far down from the Dish, and all of the thinking is happening outside of the visiospatial sketch-pad and phonological loop anyway! Between your hippocampus and cortex who are talking all night in delta sleep. Things might be coming clear to people right now from Renee’s teaching like they are for me because we are in a profound sacrificial moment. It’s important to see it anthropologically. The pure products of  America are going to go crazy because many fundamentalist Christians live within an archaic poetic eschatology. Michelle Bachman is the canary in the coal mine. This needs to get run to ground as a practical matter or we will all get blown up or get taken over by the Borg the 20th century created. You want to say it’s divine providence there is justice in the world, but that’s fascist too! It’s just common sense. Sorry @pollyanna from hell. I’m not getting any work done.

  103. 103.

    wetzel

    My poetic eschatology is archaic too! What I mean is that American fundamentalist eschatology is metastable in a way that could at times like these lead to widespread uncontrolled, disordered thinking that even John Forbes Nash could not encompass its phenomenology were it happening to him, or maybe that is the Methodist argument against the Baptists and why we don’t dunk all the way. I absolutely am certain that FSB does not have an analytical model. Their activities using spectacular violence for Soviet ends are metastable. They’re like an MTOR signaling signaling system out of wack, but at different level in systems theory, which is my justification for saying Putinism is malignant. It’s a biological analogy for the worldview of fascism, not the person. I’m sure Vladimir’s momma loved him.

  105. 105.

    wetzel

    I just remembered I got an ‘Incomplete’ in Violence and the Sacred! That happened in half my best classes. At Stanford they would just fall away like gum-drops and coca cola would come trickling down from above. I wish the whole world were Stanford University Lol. It’s a magical place. It’s easy to get disappointed in a university, which is just people going this way and that doing different things. It’s not a synedoche for anything.

  106. 106.

    wetzel

    Sorry to write another book. I don’t know where else to put this stuff. It’s just because I have to build something in WordPress universe which is like trying to paint with crayons and you only have 7 of the 12. Are the other work-at-home people having trouble? I’m having a hard time getting efficacy on my work because my thoughts are all on Ukraine.

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: That Swedish Air Force flight over Poland is significant. Sweden and Finland will go through the formalities of NATO membership some time in the next couple years, but with their strategic location and their close miltary cooperation with NATO countries Sweden and Finland are effectively part of the NATO alliance already. This helps secure their close neighbors, NATO countries Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

  108. 108.

    dimmsdale

    @Another Scott:  Yes. Fairly concentrated flight path, too. Some sort of surveillance, I assume, but on whose behalf and what are they looking at, I wonder?

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @dimmsdale: Those Swedish aircraft might have been there to look at something, but they definitely were there for the Russians to look at them.

  110. 110.

    wetzel

    I go fishing for bass when I’m not at the prison. I’m tired of being a jailor

    Gonna let the howling Tweakers hang where the Nazi’s nailed them

    More than anything I need to forget about Reidsville prison

    There’s nothing in the world so good as to spend your Sunday fishing

  111. 111.

    David Anderson

    @dimmsdale: The Swedes have been running routine surveillance circuits over Poland, the Baltic States and the Baltic Sea since January.

    I would be shocked if the intermediate processed data is not shared with NATO analysts (and NATO intermediate data shared right back).  NATO usually has a half dozen aircraft and drones up doing the same race tracks at various points.

  112. 112.

    wetzel

    The guys on my tennis team are better of tennis too, but now that I’m getting an old man game. I always think I’m about to get better, but I don’t seem to be very good at smart old guy tennis either.

  113. 113.

    dimmsdale

    @Geminid: @David Anderson:  Ah. Yes, that’s true too. I remember early in the invasion there was a drone circulating daily over the Black Sea; makes sense that because I could see it, it was MEANT to be seen–and that there’d be plenty of surveillance drones and combat aircraft circulating ‘up there’ with transponders off. I wonder if anyone is real-time chronicling the air war on all sides, the way Gens. Hertling, McCaffrey, and Hodges are tracking the ground action.

  114. 114.

    TonyG

    @Mike E: Both truth and lies are much more quickly and widely disseminated now than had been the case 80 years ago.  Both then and now there are many people who prefer to believe the lies.

  116. 116.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Wag:  @CaseyL:  Yes this is is so important, glossing over the horror won’t help stop it. Putin and his ilk needs to be opposed everywhere and by all means possible. Germany making itself into Russia’s energy hostage has been obviously so pollyannaish for 25 years, that I still can’t believe they did it. If it was another Russian disinformation campaign, then now it makes more sense how it happened.

  117. 117.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    One of the observations that struck me how the Russians own dead were mixed up with the civilians they had executed.  There is something seriously brain broke there when an army treats it’s own like trash.

  118. 118.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): Well considering history; it took 11 years for the Tsars to fall after the fiction of broke with the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. The Soviet Union collapses ten years after the fiction broke in the Afghanistan War. it will happen it’s just a slow process. Since there a lot of claims from Russian experts that the Russian army is little more than a goon squad to keep the population under control, it might be sooner than that now it’s shown the Russian army is paper bear.

  119. 119.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    there a lot of claims from Russian experts that the Russian army is little more than a goon squad to keep the population under control

    If true, that would explain both their miserable battle performance and their brutishness. I had read that about their paratroopers. Perhaps it applies to the entire Russian military?

  120. 120.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @O. Felix Culpa: I had read that about their paratroopers. Perhaps it applies to the entire Russian military?

    Blackhawk Down was observing one of the problems was how the Rangers would try to impersonate the Delta Force,  The Russian Paratroopers are considered the elite of the Russian army so it would make sense if the rank and file would be impersonating them.

  121. 121.

    oldster

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):

    Yes, it was another Russian disinformation campaign. And it had a two-pronged attack.

    Consider how Putin has weaponized refugees: first, you create a world-wide flow of refugees by bombing civilians in Syria or Ukraine. Then, you fund right-wing xenophobic anti-immigrant parties, in order to create chaos and discontent in the countries that receive the refugees.

    In the case of energy, Putin not only dangled cheap gas in front of the Germans. He also funded anti-nuclear activists to scaremonger them into turning off their plants before they were due to be shut down. I cannot give him credit for the Chernyobyl event, since that started before his watch. But he certainly did his best to feed the fear of it in Europe, in order to drive Europe away from nuclear power and back onto the addiction to fossil fuels.

  122. 122.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Kthug, as always the brute, throws shade on the whole “Russia laughs at sanctions”

    But there’s a mystery here. No, it’s not puzzling to see the ruble recover given such drastic measures. The question is why Russia is willing to defend its currency at the expense of all other goals. After all, the draconian measures taken to stabilize the ruble will probably deepen what is already looking like a depression-level slump in Russia’s real economy, brought on by surprisingly wide and effective sanctions imposed by the free world (I think we can resurrect that term, don’t you?), in response to its military aggression.

    But, but pundits who TOTALLY don’t have lucrative RT commentator gigs are telling us the sanctions are pointless! Why, I can here them now “Krugman is a secret communist”.

    Actually, I have seen a serious argument the real point of the sanctions is to accelerate the Russian brain drain.  You know, the flight of the actual Russian elite who run Russia and not the totally NOT gay from being in an out of prison mobsters turned businessmen who exploit these people.

  123. 123.

    Liminal Owl

    @wetzel: I really appreciate your post at #98 (and actually wrote something vaguely similar long ago, in response to Reagan’s “Star Wars defense” speech).  The posts after that are maybe too much under the influence of Renė Girard; could you possibly elucidate, with decreased eschatological poesy?

    FWIW, the friend at tbe time who introduced me to Girard’s writing was very much a Reagan Republican. And she and her husband tried matchmaking me with Tom Bethell, ugh.

  124. 124.

    Another Scott

    @oldster: Dunno.  The Greens have never been big players even in Germany.  (Yes, they have been important parts of coalitions at times, like now).  Sure, VVP is always throwing rocks in gears, but it’s easy to believe that Germany opposition to nuclear is a home-grown issue.  It’s been argued about for a very long time and the majority opposes it.

    CleanEnergyWire.org (recognizing their agenda – everyone in the nuclear debate has an agenda):

    When looking at the individual political parties, both Green Party and SPD are against using nuclear power. In the conservative parties (CDU/CSU) there are voices who say that Germany should have phased-out coal before nuclear and not both at the same time. “If the issue is considered as important as I think it is, the order in Germany was wrong. First to get out of nuclear energy and then out of coal. That is now history. But the path was wrong,” CDU-CSU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet said in summer 2021.

    Only the right-wing populist AfD is in favour of new nuclear power stations.

    AfD has clearly been supported by, and supportive of, VVP.

    World-Nuclear.org:

    In June 2000 a compromise was announced which saved face for the government and secured the uninterrupted operation of the nuclear plants for many years ahead. The agreement, while limiting plant lifetime to some degree, averted the risk of any federally-enforced plant closures during the term of that government.

    In particular, the agreement put a cap of 2623 billion kWh on lifetime production by all 19 operating reactors, equivalent to an average lifetime of 32 years (less than the 35 years sought by industry). Two key elements were a government commitment to respect the rights of utilities to operate existing plants, and a guarantee that this operation and related waste disposal will be protected from any “politically-motivated interference”.

    It seems like they were going to continue to be phased out either way (either in 2022 or 2025).

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  125. 125.

    West of the Rockies

    @Liminal Owl:

    I find Wetzel’s comments intriguing and would sign on that I’d welcome a bit less literary artifice.  But I’d like to hear more, too, of what he has to say.

  126. 126.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Geminid: It will be a great relief for the war in Yemen to pause for a while. It has been the greatest humanitarian disaster of the past decade (until Ukraine, but the atrocities in Yemen do not make the news).

  128. 128.

    Hob

    @LadySuzy: Unlike Gin & Tonic who said your comment indicated “rose-colored glasses”, I didn’t see you as trying to minimize anything, but only as wondering why in some areas the war crimes had been so much worse than in others. If that was your point (and if it turns out to be actually true, bearing in mind that information is spotty and it may be that they were equally terrible everywhere), there’s certainly precedent for already-brutal armies being much more brutal in areas where they’ve encountered more resistance, regardless of whether they had taken significant losses or just hadn’t won as quickly as expected. The My Lai massacre took place in an area that US forces had tried and failed to capture in the previous month, and the company that committed the massacre had very recently taken their first heavy casualties. That doesn’t at all diminish anyone’s responsibility, and it doesn’t mean there weren’t also plenty of places where similar crimes were done with no such factors, and it doesn’t mean anyone in Ukraine would be safe if they immediately surrendered. Just that in any group of people who have it in them to do such things, there will be a lot of the kind of asshole who’s highly motivated by ideas like revenge and hurt pride and “look what you made me do”, and so in situations where they’ve had less opposition such people can be somewhat less likely to unleash their full awfulness. But that may not be very meaningful when the baseline is already horrible.

  129. 129.

    Hob

    @Another Scott: Yeah… I’m very skeptical of claims, whether in Germany or in the US, that opposition to nuclear power can’t really be about the things the opposers say it’s about, but must be driven by either 1. total ignorance of the issues and a lack of concern about climate change(*) or 2. foreign influence. Whether you agree with their evaluation of the issue or not, it is a serious issue that deserves to be argued on the merits— and it’s not remotely true, as some current nuclear proponents would have it, that the concerns have been decisively disproven long ago and are only taken seriously by silly hippies and dupes.

    And yes, I realize that this comment may be taken as a challenge for every pro-nuclear person to pop up and tell me I’m an idiot and rehash the same two or three arguments I’ve read on this subject the last 100 times. That’s fine, if at least they want to lay out the basis for those arguments. Not so fine if they just want to go on about how everyone would clearly agree with them if it weren’t for the hippies and the Russians.

    (* This has become one of the leading variations on the popular theme of “I’m on the left, but there’s this one issue where the rest of the left is totally stupid and they have no valid point of view at all, and anyone who’s a rational person like me obviously agrees.” Like, there will be a discussion related to climate change and inevitably a couple of people will try to steer it to “Of course nuclear power would save us but the stupid anti-nuke crowd is against it for no good reasons at all”, and not even bother trying to actually argue that case, but just act like everyone with any sense already knows. Unfortunately Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money recently dropped a fine example of this, stating haughtily as a fact that New Yorkers had absolutely no reason to close the Indian Point plant, that it was all just NIMBYism; when someone tried to argue that it was necessary for several reasons, Lemieux’s entire response was “It wasn’t. Not at all.” I may be a bit biased here since 1. I lived in New York for many years and 2. my least favorite thing about LGM is that they love to make sweeping judgments about how people in places the bloggers are not very familiar with are being NIMBYs— a phenomenon that’s certainly real, but that’s no excuse for ignorantly lumping together for instance the self-interested behavior of landowners in San Francisco with the very justified grassroots anti-gentrification-and-displacement movement in San Francisco. I’ve long since given up trying to argue that one with the bloggers and commenters there, who almost universally are just quoting from stuff they’ve read and have no personal experience in the area.)

  130. 130.

    LadySuzy

    @Hob: Thank you for articulating my point much better than I did. That’s exactly what I meant.

    I also wonder if other factors like the type of unit in command in a specific city, their provenance, and the personality of the people in charge will make a difference. Especially since the Russian Army is so disorganized.

    We just have to hope that not every occupied town or village has seen atrocities on the same scale as what happened in Bucha. I’ve read they’ve killed every man between 16 and 60.

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