(Image by Olga Wilson; found here)
The BBC has reported that Russia has changed its theater commander in southern and eastern Ukraine:
I don’t think the Syria experience is going to amount to much here, but it is clear that the Russians have decided that what they had been doing – four component commanders in theater all reporting directly back to and being coordinated by Moscow – was not working. As a result, they’ve decided to streamline things. Given that this reinvasion is really Clausewitz’s maxim that war is politics with other means made real, I’m not sure that much of anything done militarily will make a difference. Putin is prosecuting a political, social, cultural, and religious dispute with his army, a little bit with his air force, and wee bit with his navy. Streamlining and unifying command is all well and good, but as we use to tell our students in Seminar 12 at USAWC: strategy cannot give policy that which policy does not provide.
Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian Obudswoman for Human Rights, has issued a number of statements today. They’re all on her Facebook. I was able to pull one despite not having a Facebook account. The other two are copied and pasted screengrabs from here and here (emphasis mine in the copy and paste in the quite box). Ms. Denisova’s reporting includes references to sexual assault, rape, and other brutalization of Ukrainians. So if this is the type of thing that really upsets you, you may want to skip over this section!
Russia’s occupying country kidnaps Ukrainian children.
Rashist media began to publish information about the initiative of the President of the Russian Federation to amend the legislation to organize an accelerated procedure for the adoption of children from Donbass.
It is reported that the State Duma is already working on appropriate amendments to the legislation, after which the replacement of the family for the child will be impossible.
According to various sources, more than 121,000 children have already been forcibly deported to the Russian Federation. These are both orphans and those who have parents.
It is now known that some of the children were taken by the occupiers from Mariupol to Donetsk and in the direction of Taganrog.
Russian invaders say they are orphans, but all orphans, including orphanages, were evacuated from Mariupol and centralized on February 24-25 during the first two days of the war.
Ukraine has no information that children who are planned to be adopted have the status of orphans or deprived of parental care.
Russia is repeating the scenario of 2014, when it took Ukrainian children out of the occupied Crimea by the so-called “train of hope” for their adoption.
Russia has been expelled from the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children’s Rights (ENOC) for abducting children from the Crimean peninsula.
Now racists, firing rockets and tanks at the homes of Ukrainian citizens, are killing parents and kidnapping our children in the occupied territories of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Such actions of the Russian Federation are a gross violation of Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that every child has the right to a name and citizenship, as well as the right to know their parents and the right to care, Article 49 of the Geneva Convention on Civil Protection population during the war, which prohibits forced individual or mass resettlement or deportation.
In addition, Article 21 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that adoption in another country may be considered only as an alternative means of caring for a child if the child cannot be placed in foster care or to a family that could provide for her or him upbringing or adoption in the country of origin.
I call on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Human Rights Committee, and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) to intervene to prevent the illegal removal of Ukrainian citizens from Ukraine and their subsequent illegal adoption on the aggressor’s territory.
I ask the Office of the Prosecutor General to investigate the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during Russia’s Military Invasion of Ukraine and the expert mission set up by the OSCE participating States under the Moscow Mechanism to take into account these violations of Ukrainian children’s rights, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
#ОБСЄ #OSCE #UN #ООН #GANHRI #Офіс_Генерально
го_прокурора_Ук раїни
Much more after the jump!
Here’s the latest map from the British MOD:
As you can see, not too much has changed. Though the Brits seem to be indicating that the Ukrainians are moving forces south through Zaporizhzhia and west from Mykolaiv towards the contested area north of Kherson.
Here’s the Pentagon’s background briefing from earlier today:
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: OK, good afternoon, everybody. I appreciate your flexibility today. I know normally, we do these things in the morning, but it’s just been that kind of a Friday, so we’ll get right at it.
Day 44. I know everybody’s interested in this missile strike on the Kramatorsk train station. Obviously, we are not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren’t responsible. I would note that they originally claimed a successful strike, and then only retracted it when there were reports of civilian casualties. So it’s our full expectation that this was a Russian strike. We believe they used a short-range ballistic missile, an SS-21, and we’ll leave it to local authorities to speak to the casualties and the damage. We don’t have perfect visibility into that.
Some of you may ask, “Well, why that train station and what was the reason?” We — as we’ve said before, we don’t have perfect visibility into the Russian targeting process, but it is a train station and it is located — if you look at the map, it’s located not very far from Izyum, just to the south, right on the edge of the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Donbas area. It’s a major rail hub, so I think I would just leave it at that. That — I think that says a lot right there.
As residents are beginning to return to Kyiv and some of the surrounding suburbs, we continue to see Ukrainians clearing the area of mines and booby-traps, but they — all the Russian forces are gone, as we said before. We believe that they are — these forces are transiting into and through assembly areas in Belarus and Western Russia to be refit and resupplied.
In general, we see some units making their way to Belgorod, and indications that some other units will be making their way to a town called I will butcher this, but I’ll spell it for you — Valuyki — V-A-L-U-Y-K-I, which is — which lies to the southeast of Belgorod in Russia. It’s right near the border with Ukraine and that northern part of the Donbas. We think that that area is going to serve as one of these resupply/refit areas for these troops, and we have seen indications that some units are moving in that direction as we speak.
As for where we’re seeing the fighting — continues in southern and eastern Ukraine, including near Kharkiv, still being fought over. Izyum, we’ve talked about Izyum now for many, many days; along that joint force operation area, again, that’s where this train station is, along the edge of that JFO. Obviously, Mariupol is still seeing heavy fighting, and we continue to see fighting around Mykolaiv, even though we don’t hold the Russians actually in Mykolaiv.
In the air, Russia’s sortie count, it came in over the last 24 hours at between 240 and 250, so roughly in line with what we’ve seen in recent days. The overall, overwhelming weight and focus of their strikes over the last 24 were on Mariupol and in that JFO, so clearly, they are focusing a large part of their strike activity on that eastern and southern part of Ukraine, again, in keeping with what we believe they’re going to try to do.
No significant maritime activity to speak to today. Let’s see — oh, and then on the missile count, we now have observed more than 1,500 missile launches since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And with that, we’ll get to questions, so Bob?
Q: Thank you, (inaudible). On the — your description of the Russian troops that are moving — some of which are moving toward the Belgorod area for refit and resupply, do you have any sense of how long a process that might be before they’re likely to be moved into the Donbas area in terms of days, weeks or longer?
And secondly, on the secretary’s announcement, his statement this morning about the S-300 that — actually, about the — the movement of the Patriot missile battery to Slovakia, are you in discussions with Bulgaria or other countries about making similar arrangements? Thanks.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: On the refit, Bob, we don’t know for sure how long this is going to take because some units are much more devastated than others. We’ve seen indications of some units that are literally, for all intents and purposes, eradicated. There’s just nothing left of the BTG except a handful of troops, and maybe a small number of vehicles, and they’re going to have to be reconstituted or reapplied to others. We’ve seen
others that are, you know, down 30 percent manpower, or even higher. And so it’s going to depend on — and I don’t want to speak for the Russians here, but it’s going to depend on the health of these units and what the Russians want to do to get them combat-ready again. I suspect that with some units, they’ll be able to move much faster than with others.
But I would say this: We believe that they have not solved all of their logistics and sustainment problems; that those problems did not just exist inside Ukraine. They existed outside Ukraine, and still do exist. And so our sense is that they will likely not be able to reinforce the eastern part of the country with any great speed. I know that’s not completely satisfactory. I couldn’t give you days or weeks. It’s really going to depend on the unit and how ready they are to get back into the fight. But we don’t believe that in general, this is going to be a speedy process for them given the kinds of casualties they’ve taken and the kind of damages they’ve sustained to their units’ readiness.
On the second question about S-300s, I would just tell you that we continue to have conversations with allies and partners who have these kinds of long-range air defense systems, and I don’t want to get ahead of that process.
Tom Bowman?
Q: And do we — do you still believe that what the plan for the Russians is to continue to try to block the Ukrainian Army in by coming south or north along that axis and block them in?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: We still believe that one of their objectives is to fix Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Donbas and then engage them in combat to occupy the Donbas completely.
But they certainly — we believe another objective is to fix them there so that they can’t be used for the defense of the country anywhere else, including, you know, moving down towards the south. But again, I want to stress that right now we believe that the Russian locus of energy and effort is going to be in the south and in the east.
So fixing those troops there is a part of it but they have shown less desire now to go after further targets to the west. They are clearly focusing their efforts on the east.
Q: OK, great. Thanks.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yep. Felicia?
Q: Hi. Thanks. Is the number of troops in the east still about 30 battalion tactical groups? Has that changed?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: We actually think it’s — as I said, we think they’ve increased it now. So we believe it’s probably up over 40.
Q: OK. Thanks.
The rest of the Q&A is at the link!
Someone asked in the comments the other night about pulling Ukrainian forces out of Ukraine for training in the US. I replied that I’d seen an article that a group of Ukrainian soldiers had just completed a regularly scheduled – as in before the reinvasion – training assignment in the US, which is a routine part of our professional military education programs. Apparently they worked training on how to use the Switchblade’s in before the Ukrainians completed their course of training. Here’s the details:
The U.S. has trained a small number of Ukrainian soldiers to use Switchblade unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the “kamikaze” tactical aerial drones sent to the war-ravaged country as part of a military assistance package, according to a Pentagon official.
A shipment of 100 Switchblade UAVs, announced several weeks ago and supplied from U.S. military stock, arrived in Ukraine earlier this week, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday.
Kirby said he would not comment on the specific Switchblade variants sent to Ukraine, but said U.S. military officials were “going to keep talking to them and working with—and helping them get additional ones if they need it.”
The Switchblade system is not one the Ukrainian military typically uses, he noted.
“It is not a very complex system. It doesn’t require a lot of training,” Kirby said. “An individual could be suitably trained on how to use the Switchblade drone in about two days or so.”
A “very small number” of Ukrainian soldiers who had been in the U.S. for military educational purposes since last fall were trained to use the Switchblade UAV system, he said. “We took the opportunity to—having them still in the country, to give them a couple of days’ worth of training on the Switchblade,” so they could train others when they returned to Ukraine, he said.
Kramortask:
⚡️Railway station in Kramatorsk hit by a Russian missile.
Donetsk Oblast Governor says people were boarding evacuation trains when an Iskander missile hit near the main entrance.
Tens dead and injured, he adds. pic.twitter.com/HmnUmfkAg3
— Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa) April 8, 2022
A child's blood-spattered toy, suitcases, and charred cars littered the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on April 8 after a Russian rocket attack that struck when around 1,000 people were waiting for a train to evacuate them to a safer part of the country. pic.twitter.com/P8L2u6OJvZ
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) April 8, 2022
This child was killed by a #russian missile today at the #Kramatorsk railway station.
And three more + 35 adults were killed. About 100 citizens were seriously injured. Some lost their arms and legs. pic.twitter.com/4rLUBZWY4M— Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) April 8, 2022
If you’re wondering why the Russian missile had “for the children” written on it in Russian, Slava Malamud provides the context. For those who are not hockey fans, the picture on the left in the first tweet of the thread is Alex Ovechkin. Ovechkin is the captain of the Washington Capitals, as well as a major supporter of Putin.
This thread is for all the beautiful souls who want to enjoy their hockey in peace. For those innocents who just want to escape into the pure world of sports and appreciate their favorite athlete without all those nasty politics.
There is a straight line between these two images. pic.twitter.com/TufgjQoQxC— Slava Malamud ?? (@SlavaMalamud) April 8, 2022
- So, let’s go back in time for a bit, to 2014 when the picture on the left was taken. This was immediately after Russia had annexed Crimea and, drunk on its rediscovered imperial ambitions, started the war in Donbas. Except, back then, Russia wasn’t yet acknowledging it…
- According to Russia’s official narrative, Donbas had itself rebelled against the “Nazi” government in Kyiv. This was in no way true. Whatever separatist pro-Russian forces had existed in Donbas before, they were directly funded and controlled by Moscow. And in 2014…
- … Moscow had ignited the conflict by sending its operative “Strelkov” (real name: Igor Girkin), who had engineered the Crimea takeover, to organize an armed conflict, with a direct (though not officially acknowledged) involvement of Russian troops This is when the war REALLY started
- Russia had successfully managed to obfuscate this and to even blame Ukraine for the violence and deaths that occurred. To that end, it began a big propaganda push, called “Save Children From Fascism”, which distilled their lies into a simple narrative:
- “Ukraine is taken over by a Nazi regime that has decided to racially exterminate Russian speakers in the East. They are literally killing children in order to ethnically cleanse the region. Russia is a benevolent provider of humanitarian help to civilians and resistance fighters”
- This was the narrative that Russian celebrities pushed in 2014 and 2015. By far, the most famous of them was Alexander Ovechkin, the beloved whacker of pucks idolized in the US and Russia. He willingly and eagerly took part in a campaign designed to absolve Russia from blame, …
- … to place it on Ukrainians and to help Russia recruit volunteers to continue fighting in Donbas. Ovechkin slandered Ukraine and did his part to keep the embers of war burning. But he did more than that. He helped to entrench the “Ukraine is killing Donbas children” line…
- … in the minds of Russians. This is literally the No. 1 go-to propaganda line of Russian trolls and media pundits. This is what the Russian powerlifter said in her reply to Schwarzenegger: that Ukraine has been engaging in child slaughter for 8 years. This was done by Ovechkin.
- The horrible blood libel on Ukraine has permeated the Russian consciousness for 8 years, and the result is that Russian soldiers in 2022 are launching rockets at Ukrainian civilians, thinking they are retaliating for all those dead children. And people die.
- The missile that has killed dozens at the Kramatorsk train station today had the words “For the children” written on it. It was aimed to cause as many civilian casualties as possible. As vengeance. As terrorism. Russians have been radicalized by propaganda for 8 years.
- Many truly think they are fighting Nazism and saving or avenging children. Think about that the next time you are donning your No. 8 jersey and whooping it up in the stands. Athletes are not only athletes. When they lend their names to a cause, they exert a powerful influence.
Before we move on, I just want to take a minute to note the language in the hashtag on the sign that Ovechkin is holding up: “Save children from fascism”. One of the major elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory is that those that follow it and adhere to it are helping to save the children. In this case from a global cabal of liberal fascists who are trafficking children both for sex and to harvest a biochemical agent that doesn’t actually exist from them in order to prolong their own lives. These liberal fascists in the global cabal are, of course, the usual suspects in the fever dreams of the American conservative movement to the American hard right. We’re now seeing the same language come in to play with the proponents and defenders of the don’t say gay legislation in Florida and the other states that are pushing similar laws. In this case the save the children rhetoric is being merged with the eliminationist rhetoric that those individuals and organizations who oppose these vague, poorly written laws are either groomers of children for sex, pedophiles, or in favor of both.
The Russian disinformation campaign that Ovechkin participated in predates QAnon by about two years. QAnon, of course, was built on earlier conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, promoted by Russian adjacent useful idiots Agent Poso and the Mandrill Mindset, which specifically focused on accusations of pedophilia by liberal elites who are also fascists. Jonah Goldberg’s idiotic book is the gift no one wanted and that keeps on giving despite no one wanting more.
Finally, Malamud is worried his thread isn’t getting enough reach, so those of you on Twitter, please give it a retweet.
Mariupol:
The Azov Battalion is not giving up!
Defenders of besieged #Mariupol are true heroes.Once a 500 k city is in ruins. 100+ k civilians stay blocked there. #Ukrainian troops fight for every inch of Mariupol. Have a look how they hit #Russian armored vehicle. So it be with every ??occupant on our soil. #GloryToTheHeroes pic.twitter.com/FdJcoaJBzo
— Emine Dzheppar (@EmineDzheppar) April 8, 2022
#Ukraine: Footage from #Mariupol showing a Ukrainian BTR-4E APC attacking two Russian T-72 tanks from the rear with a 30mm cannon. Apparently, both tanks received serious damage. pic.twitter.com/7ecGv5AwkK
— ?? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 7, 2022
Hostomel:
This letter was written by 9-year-old boy from Gostomel. He and his mother where fleeing in the city by car, but the Russians shot up their car. His mother was killed. The boy was helped out the car by another people.There is the translation of his letter on the right and it's ? pic.twitter.com/PJXr07JjIu
— Яна Супоровська (@YanaSuporovska) April 8, 2022
Bucha:
A 6-yo boy brings canned food to the grave of his mother who starved to death in Bucha. ??artist Aluona Zhuk illustrated the scene.
"This picture will never leave my mind. So I want the world to see it too. And start calling a spade a spade. It’s genocide, ?? genocide agnst ??" pic.twitter.com/udaKZCb6h1
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) April 8, 2022
Someone last night was asking about this Ukrainian video, which is an excellent example of Psychological Operations and Information Warfare:
Bloody hell this Ukrainian video needs to be seen by everyone pic.twitter.com/63LGOvSpQR
— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) April 7, 2022
GUYS! GUYS!!!!! IT’S FOLLOWING ME!!!!! WHAT DO I DO????
Hahahahaha! pic.twitter.com/CYt77wy2hb
— Michael Weiss ????? (@michaeldweiss) April 7, 2022
Obviously, DO NOT lead it back to your base!
I’m not a gamer, but I believe this is where I’m supposed to write:
Ukrainian Drone says: All your base belong to us!
I may or may not be aware of all Internet traditions…
Let’s end with this very, very, very good boy!
#Ukraine: The famous UA EOD dog, Cartridge, standing on a pile of UXO presumably left behind by Russian forces in #Kyiv Oblast. (He's perched on a stack of OF-843B 120mm HE-FRAG mortar bombs) pic.twitter.com/lYToGPL4H8
— Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ (@CalibreObscura) April 8, 2022
Open thread!
Splitting Image
I read this as “four competent commanders in theater” and was scratching my head as to what you meant.
Adam L Silverman
@Splitting Image: Component.
Now go back and read the rest of the post so you’re prepared for the quiz!
Fair Economist
Glad to see we’re finally seeing some heavier weapons being sent to Ukraine but it doesn’t currently seem like enough – 20 APCs from Australia, a couple tanks from Czechia, a SAM from Slovakia. Needs to be stepped up aggressively.
Gin & Tonic
Quick correction, you have Kramatorsk spelled incorrectly in your text above the Tweets.
Also, there’s a good note from commenter dr. luba a couple of threads down that explains the correct meaning of “for the children.”
A Ghost to Most
Thanks, Adam. One thing that this war should lay to rest is the idea that brave and determined people can’t defeat a militarily superior enemy.
debbie
I was thinking that “for the children” message was a snide response to the “children” messages painted outside that theater in Mariupol. ??♀️
TonyG
The Russian war crimes are not very intelligent as a strategy. They’re a good way to make sure that the Ukrainian military will keep fighting, will not surrender. The Russian military is deeply incompetent as well as criminally brutal.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Out of curiosity Adam; while just murdering civilians seems to be the only thing the Russian army is good at, is it possible the Russian were trying to interdict the Ukrainians repositioning their forces with that rail station attack?
Geminid
@Adam L Silverman: Is there reliable information on whether Turkey is supplying more TB-2 “Bayraktar” drones to Ukraine? I may not be looking in the right places but I can’t find any.
Old Many by the Sea
Is there a way to counter the propaganda in Russia? Or at least take their major media offline? I know we all think high-tech over here, but think about all the damage that regular old over-the-airwaves TV and AM radio has done to the US (and, yes, Rush is still boiling in oil while demons poke needles into his eyes), and apparently Russia.
Splitting Image
@Adam L Silverman:
I just finished. I figured you were opening with a joke since the rest was such a harrowing read.
Thanks for compiling all of this information every day, Adam. It’s exhausting simply reading it all. I can’t imagine living through it.
Ishiyama
I believe it is “all your base are belong to us”?
Fake Irishman
@Gin & Tonic:
Glad to see you back and commenting on these threads. Hope the family is as safe as possible.
Gin & Tonic
@Fake Irishman: Just posting a correction. Still no intention of commenting.
Dan B
Pivoting from the “for the children” to stories of children writing tributes to their mothers and leaving gifts on their graves brilliantly and tragically ties the emotional grip of this invasion to the data. Well done to weave the sorrow in with the big picture.
Fake Irishman
Agreed on the read as war as politics by other means. I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Poland in 1939 fighting on its frontiers because it thought the French and British might force them to make territorial concessions in a peace settlement if they withdrew and fought in deeper defensive zones. Of course the Soviet invasion two weeks after the German one would have wrecked that strategy too… which I suspect is weighing heavily on the minds of many Poles right now.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Should be fixed now. Thanks for catching that.
Fake Irishman
@Gin & Tonic:
fair enough. Still good to know you’re around and making helpful contributions for those of us who aren’t experts on Slavic languages or place names.
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Unless the person entering the targeting data either screwed up or is really bad at his job, the answer is no. They were clearly trying to prevent the Ukrainians from getting out of the operating environment ahead of the coming offensive. The more civilians in the way, the harder things will be for the Ukrainian army. The Russians want as many Ukrainian civilians in the way as possible. So they can be used as human shields, be terrorized, and through brutalizing them, be used to terrorize the rest of Ukraine.
Adam L Silverman
@Geminid: My understanding is the rest of the original order is somewhere in the pipeline.
Mallard Filmore
DailyKos has an interesting posting …
Ukraine update: The Battle of Kyiv was bigger than originally reported, and what about Kherson?
The forest fire satellite image shows a very large battle area when the Russians were pushed away from Kyiv.
Antid Oto
Really, you’re posting content about the sexual abuse of children above the jump, without a content warning? What the hell?
marcopolo
@Geminid: I saw somewhere today (I look at too many things to remember exactly where) that in the past few days Ukraine has taken delivery of another 12 to 24 of these lovely Turkish drones. If I somehow chance across it again I’ll post where it was.
dimmsdale
The last few days the Yale historian Timothy Snyder has been contending that the only thing that will stop Putin from his dreams of empire is a profound and complete defeat on the battlefield. I have not been used to thinking in these terms, partly because of the cautions about Putin using tactical nukes. Snyder’s of the opinion that the more likely Hail Mary from Putin will be cbw, and that whatever total military defeat Putin will suffer should come SOON–through, at least, massive inputs of military aid from the West, the implication being that we could all do much, MUCH more, if the fight over Ukraine’s future is as monumental and pivotal for world democracy as everyone’s claiming that it is. I don’t find much to quarrel with there, but I’d be interested, Adam, to know what the US could do additionally, that we’re perhaps holding back on (and recognizing that we’re undoubtedly already doing more than is being publicly claimed). What would it take from us and our European allies for Ukraine to be able to WIN in four to eight weeks?
Geminid
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I hope the TB-2s are being replenished even if Turkey and Ukraine are silent on the matter.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. And see, the station is near the Eastern Salient.
Geminid
@marcopolo: Great!
Adam L Silverman
@Fake Irishman: Because I’ve demonstrated such a mastery of English spelling over the years I’ve been writing here.
marcopolo
@Mallard Filmore: The war posts at DKos have been well done and very informative. The current update (Ukraine update: Cut off and isolated but against all odds, Mariupol continues to resist) covers what has been going on in Mariupol: I learned that the troops there had been being resupplied (like regularly every day) by a couple of choppers who were flying low and a route that the Russians were not aware of bringing in munitions and evacing wounded.
Alas, that ended on the 4th when a Russian patrol equipped with manpads saw them and shot them down.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: We need to drop the artificial distinction we’ve been making between defensive versus offensive weaponry.
Adam L Silverman
@Antid Oto: Though not an intentional omission, that’s on me. I’ll put the warning up now. Thanks for catching that.
marcopolo
@dimmsdale: The two possible outcomes I see most often thrown out (by folks who seem to know of what they speak) include this fairly quick (like a few months) decimation of the Russian forces and a subsequent decisive Ukrainian military victory, or alternatively, a return to the previous borders/boundaries prior to the invasion and a long long long stalemate that only ends when Ukraine is rebuilt and has a robust economy and good standard of living and the breakaway parts of the country want in on that and beg to be able to rejoin ala East Germany rejoining W Germany. I think the third alternative that would make everyone happy would be something happening to Putin & whoever takes over having so much shit to deal with internally that the war effort in Ukraine cannot continue–but this seems a little wishcasty.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
Adam, thank you for these daily updates. You said that you are not working on this or you would not be able to post here. On the one hand, I am grateful to have access to your expertise. On the other, I think someone somewhere should be making use of your talent to synthesize, pull threads together from the past and present, and extrapolate outwards.
Btw, wanted to pass this along to you if you have not seen it. It’s so important to capture these stories from Holocaust survivors. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60919445
Social media is telling us some of the stories of the people in Ukraine. So much more still has to come out and it’s going to be horrible.
Calouste
@dimmsdale: The US DoD said today that they think Russia is at about 80-85% of their strength at the start of the invasion, with a number of units basically annihilated. And they don’t have a heck of a lot to show for it in terms of objectives captured.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Ukraine has been close to starting production of Bayraktars in Ukraine. At least some of the ones they got from Turkey have Ukrainian engines.
I don’t know if they actually are producing them in Ukraine now or not, but it’s been in the works.
Cheers,
Scott.
marcopolo
@Geminid: @marcopolo: Here’s the info on Ukraine’s new Bayraktar drones.(article is dated today)
Edited to add: upon rereading this perhaps these new ones are smaller versions of the TB2?
Adam L Silverman
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): Thanks for the link and the kind words. I’d love to be on a funded line working on this, unfortunately it is unlikely to happen.
Dagaetch
This is an unimportant question, really, but I’m curious. Why is the Pentagon briefing on background only? We’re getting a transcript of their exact words, what difference would it make to know who is delivering it?
Ruckus
@Antid Oto:
It would be better to hide the truth?
So tell me why that would be better?
Because I sure can’t see that hiding an extremely ugly truth from plain sight makes anything better.
Small kids are being kidnapped, women and children are being raped, tens of thousands are being killed because they were alive, and entire cities are being bombed and burned and you are worried that it might upset someone.
IT FUCKING SHOULD UPSET EVERY FUCKING HUMAN BEING ON THE FUCKING PLANET.
Carlo Graziani
I agree that “Syria experience” plus $4 buys you a latte at Starbucks. One lesson we can all take home from the past 7 weeks (and was in nerd materials on RU army prior to the war) is that the training at all levels is ad-hoc, and certainly not what anyone would design for a “Special Operation” at this scale.
Given the fact that it is now clear that Putin must have been planning this idiotic caper for at least a year, the amateurish nature of of the enterprise is kind of breathtaking. Bringing in a general who ran brigade-level ops in Syria as a solution to a problem at theater level, with the logistics fucked beyond any hope of retrieval, well, OK, Vladi, that must have been a good situation room meeting.
Adam L Silverman
@Dagaetch: On background allows the briefer latitude to speak more freely than the DOD spokesman or another defense official on the record would have.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Including a warning is not an unreasonable request. I should’ve included one to start with.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I was writing my comment and hadn’t seen yours. But I stand by it.
I’ve seen the after effects of war, the damage to the living, up close at the VA. Men decades later are dysfunctional to a major degree. Men I knew having just come back from the middle east, about as far gone as possible. Vets killing themselves at 22/day. Watch a show on Netflix called Resurface. It’s about the suicides and a way to stop them, how to get past the dysfunction of war
And that dysfunction is absolutely not limited to soldiers, the people of Ukraine are going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives.
Dagaetch
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. I still don’t really get it, this seems like a circumstance where the official spokesperson could easily be saying the same thing, but it doesn’t really matter I suppose.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo Graziani: He’s been running the Russian occupied southern area In Ukraine for six years and is the most senior of the generals running the Russian occupied areas in southern and eastern Ukraine. And all the more junior ones also served in Syria.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: I understand completely.
dc
Deleted.
Yarrow
I see that European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen visited Kyiv today and met with Zelenskyy. She indicated that Ukraine’s application to join the EU will be expedited.
In somewhat related news, the French Presidential election begins on Sunday and Macron isn’t doing all that well. It will most likely go to a second round election and Le Pen looks to be doing shockingly well in second round polling. WTF, France?! Have the French learned nothing from TFG here and Brexit in the UK? Le Pen is buddies with Putin. If she wins it’s not going to be good for France and it’s not going to be good for Ukraine.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Carlo Graziani: The flip side based on what Adam has posted is how effective US military training/advisors can be. Look how impressive and professional Ukraine’s forces have been. I’m sure other nations are noticing.
Rocks
@Calouste: Combat units are commonly said to be ineffective when they have dropped to 50-69% of their constituted strength. If this can be applied to whole armies, it sounds like the Russian army is about half way there after just six weeks of combat.
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman: Correction acknowledged.
However, the Russian Army has been treating Syria as their maneuver training ground, rotating brigade-scale units in for what amounts to realistic, but ad-hoc training, bearing no relation to the operation that they are carrying out now in scale, weapons, tactics, terrain, or any other realistic training metric. So I guess I’m saying who gives a shit about this guy having Syria on his resume.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Yarrow: Read an article that many Europeans are choosing Canada for higher education over the UK. Apparently Brexit has made UK universities much less attractive. The UK bloodied its own nose. Does France really want to walk that path?
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: I have not forgotten that I owe you an e-mail reply. It’s just been a busy week.
West of the Rockies
So we’re supposed to feel sad for the three Russian soldiers shot dead on the road after possibly surrendering. I’ll put that on the list after the thousands of murdered Ukranian citizens, the stolen children, the raped women, girls, and evidently boys.
CaseyL
@Yarrow: That might explain why Macron has been a little wishy-washy about the war. He’s the only European leader that I know of who keeps meeting with Putin. Public opinion in France may be more divided than elsewhere, though I have no idea why.
Adam L Silverman
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): It also helps that tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, marines, and now members of the Territorial Defenders have rotated into and out of combat with the Russians in Donbas over the past eight years. The last numbers I saw were 80,000 out of 200,000 or so of the personnel Ukraine currently has under arms have this combat experience.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: No problem. Hope all is well.
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): The UK has made it really difficult for Europeans to go there for things like education. Can’t blame them for going to Canada.
If France elects Le Pen it’s going to be a mess for NATO and the EU and it will definitely affect the sanctions on Russia and most likely negatively affect help for Ukraine.
Medicine Man
Have the French somehow forgotten that Le Pen is Putin’s little buddy? I suppose it doesn’t help that Macron has looked utterly foolish in the face of Putin’s aggression; he comes across like he cannot believe what he is seeing and is acting accordingly.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: All good, just one of those busy weeks.
Another Scott
@Yarrow: Brexit is a continuing disaster, but the UK voters don’t seem to care.
(via IamHappyToast)
Cheers,
Scott.
Yarrow
@CaseyL: Le Pen has been running on cost of living issues and hasn’t emphasized her connections to Russia. Macron apparently has been running a poor campaign – in fact hasn’t been campaigning much at all until the last week or so.
Peale
@Medicine Man: I do not for a moment ever believe that the French are immune from wanting to be friends themselves with Putin. They have the internet. Who knows what they’ve been reading on the internet.
Yarrow
@Another Scott: That’s not really true. Brexit is polling very poorly and polls indicate that if voters were given the chance to vote again on the referendum it would fail by a large margin.
There have been several by-elections in constituencies (like districts in the US) that have been held by Tories for years and the Tory candidates lost. Outside of the by-elections the voters haven’t had much chance to make their feelings known because there haven’t been any elections. There will be some in May – local elections – so we’ll see what happens then.
As for the long delays on the M20, yes that is due to Brexit. It’s not being covered a lot on the UK news and when it is they aren’t mentioning Brexit as a cause much at all. You have to dig to find out what’s going on and not everyone has that kind of time.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: Absolutely–the distinction always seemed a little fig-leafy to me.
By the way, Adam, thanks as always for your posts–these are particularly good and absolutely needed. Along the way you seem to have assembled quite a salon here of smart, well informed commenters too. I assume you know the discussions run well into the following morning! Thanks, everybody!
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: I think the French will do the right thing when push comes to shove, but Macron’s poor showing right now means that it will be be people voting against Le Pen and not for him that will save him in the end.
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Kind of like the last time, then.
Medicine Man
@Omnes Omnibus:
Inshallah.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Aren’t you the optimist? aLePen has tried to recharacterize herself as little madame diversity and tolerance. Almost as amazing as TFG passing himself off as a business genius.
Jay
@marcopolo:
it’s a hand launched Company level, man portable recon and surveillance drone.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/new-bayraktar-uavs-spotted-in-ukraine.html?m=1
dimmsdale
@marcopolo: I wonder, given the human horrors Russia has unleashed (and let’s not forget the ones we don’t yet know about), if those options actually go far enough. One tweet I saw the other day went “the only issues needing to be discussed between Putin and Zelinskyy are a) the reduction in the size of Russia’s army, b) how much Russia pays Ukraine for restitution, and c) the number of Russian officers to be turned over to The Hague for trial.”
Russia’s economy could justifiably be looted out of existence to pay for what they’ve done to Ukraine, and the old photo of Mussolini hung by his heels has some resonance today. With satellite and cell phone data it should be possible to identify MOST of the war criminals and butchers, down to grunts in the field. But for that kind of accountability to happen, Russia would have to suffer a massively humiliating, very public defeat of a magnitude I’m not yet seeing being talked about. What would it take from the allies to supply Ukraine with enough weaponry, training, and support to bring THAT kind of defeat about?
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
Japan announced it’s expelling 8 Russian diplomats and plans to phase out Russian oil imports. It’s also tightening sanctions. Japan depends on oil imports, so this will require some retooling in its energy strategy.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14594454
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: This sure as shit isn’t going to help her.
MomSense
Rape, kidnapping, targeting civilians, torture – I don’t have words for what I’m feeling. Please tell me they will be prosecuted.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: We can only hope. Current polling isn’t encouraging.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Yarrow: I feel like I missed something because didn’t Ukraine say that joining the EU was off the table or am I confusing that with NATO membership?
@dimmsdale: I don’t know how it happens, but there has to be accountability. Russia can’t go back to how it was, and pretend this was a blip in the timeline and we’re all comrades. However, a destabilized rogue nation on its borders is not what Europe needs. It isn’t about regime change, it’s about reprogramming the entire population.
Yarrow
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): I think that was NATO.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Yarrow: Thanks!
mdblanche
@Yarrow: Merde. What is wrong with the world?
gene108
@dimmsdale:
To defeat Russia at the level you are discussing would require either an invasion of Russia itself, like Germany in WW2, or an unconditional surrender by Russia, like Japan in WW2, and an occupation to rebuild Russia’s government entirely.
Ukraine alone doesn’t have the capacity to inflict those kinds of losses on Russia, and doubt other countries want to send troops into Russia.
I think once Putin croaks there maybe a chance at reform, because I don’t think he’s setup any kind of succession plan.
dimmsdale
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): It does. I’m reminded of Eisenhower’s order that all the respectable, reality-denying “good Germans” in the village surrounding one of the death camps be trucked to the camp and forced to help stack the bodies. For that level of reality to hit the Russian populace would seem to require a wholesale regime change that’s maybe a little unlikely (sadly), but it might help shift Russian public sentiment toward accountability. A decisive enough Russian defeat, plus some very stringent surrender terms, might render Russian public opinion irrelevant, however.
oldster
“It is not a very complex system. It doesn’t require a lot of training,” Kirby said. “An individual could be suitably trained on how to use the Switchblade drone in about two days or so.”
It is issued to the Marines, after all.
(Runs and hides.)
The larger Switchblades have an 80 km range and a Javelin warhead. Enterprising troops with a few dozen of these could reach out into the Black Sea and touch some of the missile-launching ships. I don’t suppose you could sink a ship with them unless you got very lucky. But a few hits on the missile system and a few hits on the bridge would distract their attention for a bit.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: Actually that was me on the front page regarding the only things to be negotiated.
Chetan Murthy
@gene108: Modern Russia is an empire: a prison of nations. I wonder whether the only solution is for Russia to fall apart, and for other nations to attempt to domesticate the bits ….. some doing better than others. So maybe the European Russia parts could be shepherded-along by European countries, etc.
But I don’t see how a Russia that stays in one piece can avoid reverting to type. It’s too big to re-educate.
Adam L Silverman
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): They didn’t say either. The Russians said the Ukrainians had agreed to not join NATO, demilitarize, and declare neutrality.
Chetan Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Right. The most that Zelenskiyy has said is “OK, so you don’t want to let us in: then how will we construct a system that will guarantee our security?” AFAICT he hasn’t for one second conceded that UA is giving up on accession to NATO.
ByRookorbyCrook
I think this Starcraft quote is more appropriate to the drone footage. “I’m in ur base, killing all your doodz”
Thank you Adam for compiling this every day. It is an invaluable resource to every jackal and lurker.
I can not even process the ineffable evil of bombing a rail station to prevent civilian refugees from escaping conflict. The casual cruelty of labeling all the ordinance with ‘For the Children’ is beyond evil.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: Ha! Shoulda remembered. I knew it was from SOME unimpeachable source or other!
dimmsdale
@gene108: Well, I suppose you’re right. I fervently hope the US and the allies can get Ukraine as close as possible to the point, though!
Jay
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/08/ukraines-iron-general-zaluzhnyy-00023901
GoBlueInOak
@Another Scott: Totally unsurprising. Hungary should be proof positive that a tinpot fascist can run a country’s economy into the ground and the angry pisswad of voters will still reward them as long as they keep beating the hate drum loud enough.
Ksmiami
@ByRookorbyCrook: apparently Putin wants this to be a proxy war against the West et Al. I say fine FAFO… wipe the Russian army out
GoBlueInOak
@Yarrow: Average French voter has the same attention span as any other average voter – that of a flea. Entire world seems to just want to put Covid in the rearview mirror and be pissed off that food and gas prices are suddenly painful.
Same dynamic is on track to flatten Dems in November, regardless of what they do between now and then. Its all in the hands of the Fed, some oil sheiks in the Middle East and the autocrats in China pulling the on/off switch in the factories.
Carlo Graziani
@Jay: That article is a great find.
bjacques
I recall from a few years ago Marine Le Pen having gay friends, much to the consternation of her niece, Marie-Marechal, who was working the other side of the same street, bringing in joyless, more-Catholic-than-the-Pope voters. I guess diversity is allowed, among *white* French people.
(A Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, played that card in the wake of 9/11 against a shaky government coalition. He was gay and picked up Moroccan rent boys, while campaigning that the famous Dutch tolerance was wasted on Islamofascists. His party did really well, but he was assassinated a few weeks earlier…by an unstable clerk at an animal rights organization triggered by Fortuyn’s support for factory farming.)
Macron antagonized French working class voters from the beginning by trying to dismantle the sacred Loi du Travail, and many of his other reforms have been regressive. He’s also been around a long time, and with no credible mainstream opposition left or right, this is the result.
I just hope that Macron has been as cautious with military support for Ukraine, as he has been morally, economically, and diplomatically, only so that Ukraine won’t be materially worse off if Le Pen wins. NATO and Five Eyes will have to see whether Le Pen has her national security saboteurs waiting in the wings like Trump and Bolton did, and plan accordingly.
I hope this new general’s experience fighting insurgencies, in occupied Ukraine and in a Syria with total control of airspace causes him to seriously underestimate a unified and well-supplied Ukrainian army *that expects him* even as they try to take the war to the occupied areas.
Thanks Adam and Carlo (and Sebastian—where did he go? I hope he’s OK). These threads have provided the highest quality analysis, aggregation, and links to further reading.
Carlo Graziani
@dimmsdale:
In point of fact, nearly a billion dollars worth of Russian state assets are currently frozen in accounts under the control of Western Central Banks. By Russian standards, that’s actually a lot of money. This doesn’t even count “Oligarch wealth”, just the cash that the Russian government Jeenyuses thought they could use to sanction-proof themselves by converting to hard currencies, while forgetting who would actually control those assets when the war broke out. Honestly, these people can’t even piss in a straight line.
The point being that all of this frozen wealth is subject to being seized, and converted to war reparations. In principle, there is no reason that the equally frozen Oligarch money could not also be thrown into the pile as well, as a rather large laignappe (I have not seen an estimate of the size of that pile, but it’s pretty big too).
One reason to hesitate, however: we are only (!) 7 weeks into the war. By the time we are a few months in, cataclysmic shocks due to various sanctions, including export controls and capital seizures and revenue losses, will likely manifest in massive political instability in Russia. Western long-term interest is in the immediate take-down of Putinism, and in the fostering and nurturing anti-Putinist politics in Russia.
This is going to mean that if Putin is pushed out of a window, and some kind of alternative emerges that the West can work with—Navalny, say, or some equivalent, even someone who does not profess to love all our values, but doesn’t embrace the historic Russian Imperial destiny, and tries to find some path to Russian democratic prosperity—then forgiveness, however difficult, and distasteful, is going to be the price that we pay to make the world whole. Because a normal Russia behaving as a normal nation with normal politics (unlike the near-psychotic menace we have now) would be well worth the price of rebuilding Ukraine ourselves.
Splitting Image
@Yarrow:
Actually, in the short term, this is probably a decent poll for Macron, assuming that, as in the U.S., the olds will show up to vote and the young voters won’t.
In the long run, however, 56% of 18-24 year olds being fascist-curious is a very big problem.
Carlo Graziani
@bjacques: I have to confess some considerable ignorance concerning current political conditions in France. This is going to matter a great deal very soon. At a moment such as this, I would have expected Le Pen’s chances of success to be declining, rather than increasing. Could you comment on the political circumstances in France, with context for people who might need a bit of background?
Carlo Graziani
@Splitting Image: An important caveat is that polling errors nowadays are essentially impossible to calibrate using historical data, because of radical shifts in polling methodologies and in response characteristics over demographics over time. The meaning of polls is also different in Europe from the US—everyone is automatically registered to vote, so the “likely voter” model doesn’t work the same way.
Having a lot of polls to average and weigh, 538-style, would be a bit more informative, but,well, in a close election you still might as well flip a coin.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Carlo Graziani: This may be a dead thread, but wanted to ask. I get what you’re saying and history is filled with unpalatable compromises reached for the sake of some goal. That said, is it really possible to change the top and expect that we can move forward? There has to be a reckoning with the truth for the population and it has to be embedded in their education system or we only buy ourselves a short time until the next Putin wannabe comes along.
Edited typos
Uncle Cosmo
I get really really uneasy when I consider that as the endgame of this war approaches, the survival of civilization might come down to Russian nuclear commanders refusing to a man to carry out orders from a vengeful, solipsistic, possibly terminal Vozhd who if he can’t have his way is just as happy to watch the world burn.
I’d be far more sanguine about how this is all going to shake out if I knew that
Then – accounting for the near-inevitable fuckups that might not account for one or two launches – the world might stagger back to its feet after no more deaths in a single afternoon than it endured in the 6 or 8 or 14 years of World War II.
(Helluva thing to be thinking about at 4 AM.)
bjacques
@Carlo Graziani: I have to admit my information is a bit old and mostly based on chatting with French friends and expats there over the years. I live in Amsterdam so I follow Dutch and British politics, mostly, with general impressions of the European scene in general. On the other hand, the French military and intelligence services, which seem to still enjoy a deeper national prestige than in the US, may thus be less vulnerable to meddling by political amateurs. I don’t follow French politics nearly enough to know whether Le Pen has outright traitors like Lt Gen Mike Flynn able to do any damage to France’s national interest.
I was here in 2002, so I remember when an older friend, an avowed Communist, tearfully voted for Chirac in the runoff, so maybe French voters will still do the right thing in 2 weeks. They seem able to like protest votes in the first round and important votes in the runoff. And that’s 2 weeks for Macron to take this more seriously and stop dicking around. Playing nice with Putin is pleasing nobody when Le Pen is the goblin’s real friend.
Geminid
@bjacques: There seems to have been a rightward shift among working class French voters. I read of the French “Communist” party leader Melanchon(sp?) complaining that his party had to sweat to bring in a working class voter while Le Pen collected many with ease.
YY_Sima Qian
I am saddened/frightened that the younger demographics in France are preferring Le Pen. However, entrenched inequality from decades of neoliberal dogma has really dampened the optimism & hopes of the younger generation in many parts of the world. Often it has been the far right wing populists taking advantage. Here is hoping the left wing rises up to the occasion, or the next few decades will be really dark.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Macron’s party seems to be Liberal in a classic sense: essentially capitalist, accepting of globalism, socially liberal, with “big tent” aspirations. That is not too different from the Democratic party of the U.S., which is essentially liberal in the classic sense and popular sense also. Similarly, I see critics from the left more and more singling out “liberals” as their enemy, like conservatives always have.
The French electoral system potentially makes a “red/brown,” or leftist/fascist, alliance more politically effective. In the U.S. there is more of a binary choice between liberals and conservatives. However, I think that an independent candidate like former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard could pull in quite a few votes from either end of the spectrum, especially with someone like Peter Thiel backing a popup “horse shoe” party independent. This might be done in 2024 or 2028 to spoil Democratic chances.
dimmsdale
@Carlo Graziani: thanks for your reply, and for your comments in general, which I’m very much appreciating on a daily basis. Seven weeks!???!! That’s really all it’s been, which I find hard to believe, partly because the scale of human suffering, and the (to me) seemingly whiplash changes in the fortunes of this war, make it feel more like a decade or two.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I don’t consider Tulsi Gabbard “left”, but a charlatan, & “red-brown” alliance will only result in brown domination. Left-liberal alliance still makes more sense, but the classic liberals need to marginalize the neoliberals, & take left’s critique of the current order that is far too deferential to the interests of capital, left needs to be ready to make compromises practice politics to achieve the possible. Otherwise, with the intense economic dislocation in the coming years & decades (from the pandemic, at least partial economic de-coupling, great power competition, Anthropogenic Global Warming, etc.), populist extremism will take full advantage.
Argiope
@Ruckus: I’m late to this thread and always appreciate your posts and wisdom, so please hear the following in that light: survivors of sexual abuse *also* face higher risk for suicide and having their lives ruined, and asking for a warning to avoid or prepare for PTSD triggers isn’t because of snowflakery or refusal to see the horrors of war.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Your analysis of the end result of a “red/brown” alliance is true. Your analysis of the neccesary reckoning that Democratic liberals must make with neoliberalism also rings true. I think that the party is doing this now, albeit slowly. We have to assert a new model to succeed in the short and long term against the radical, reactionary Republicans.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: It’s actually it my analysis. :-) I have been following Van Jackson on twitter, an international relations scholar & former Obama DOD official, a self described Socialist Democrat that was formerly classic liberal. While his analytical frameworks can be too reductive at times (as IR theorists tend to be), but I think his is an important alternative voice to the “Blob” of conventional wisdom that pervades DC & NYC (& London, Brussels, Paris & Berlin).
Not sure how he ever ended up in the DOD, given his ideological leaning.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: The Dems have been slowly reducing the influence of the neoliberals, but not nearly fast enough, & losing Congress in Nov. will be disastrous. For instance, the compromises that Biden’s CDC has been making on prematurely lifting basic COVID related mandates (such as no longer mandating masking on flights, allowing people who test positive onto flights), w/ obviously am considerations to capital & electoral interests of Nov. I don’t think these actions will help Dem’s chances.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Gabbard does not easily fit into a left-right axis. She has a contrarian stance that appeals to some people on “the left.” Poor Matt Taibbi, subject of a earlier and derisive BJ post, flails away in this “contrarian” position now. This posture does not neccesarily attract that many people, but if expressed as anti-elitism it can gain traction.
The Republican party has already incorporated the “rightwing” radical populists into it’s coalition. That’s why I think an independent candidacy by someone like Gabbard would be propelled by conservative money, with the intent of peeling voters away from the Democratic coalition.
wetzel
I have almost gotten myself initiated into the community of cardiology patients. I went back to the Emergency Room, this time Emory Dekalb. Maybe we are making the jump from Purgatorio to Paradiso! Not there yet! Seeing my primary care doctor on Monday. I’ve seen him one via Zoom. It’s interesting how the unorthodox approach freed his medicine, I think. I like the guy!
I was once arguing with his staff that it was unethical to withhold a referral (for another family member; they weren’t really going to withhold it, they just needed to do their shakedown). Anthem has made the mistake (how could she be denied when you put this doctor on her card?). The office manager said that Anthem was the one who was at fault, and I said ‘But Anthem doesn’t have the doctor patient relationship’ and the doctor, who had been surreptitiously listening in, broke into the call immediately. We had a good conversation. I like the guy!
I can’t write much today because I can feel it elevating my sympathetic nervous system. Resulting vasoconstriction produces chest pain. It’s better to know what’s happening. I’m drinking decaf!!! It’s alright!!!
I wanted to respond to a couple of points from other threads from these posts trying to understand Putin’s War. I think I have found a good co-writer, maybe. I’m really fortunate in a friend from school. It’s good to reconnect with old friends no matter the impetus.
I’ll go find the reference eventually, but one commenter suggested ‘carnography’ instead of ‘pornography of violent spectacle’ It’s exactly the right word. I’m not going to look and see if it’s in the OED. I hope not because if it is a new word, it fits the thought, and so I’m really grateful for that.
FSB are catastrophic phenomenologists. The missile strike with ‘for the children’ and today the videos circulating of twitter rape of Ukrainian toddlers by Aleksey Bychkov are programmatic. It is designed for the propaganda effect on Russia itself. Russia will want the purge by the time it arrives.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about a thing in a prior thread the pollyanna from hell had to say about biological analogies and systems theory. I think systems theory messed itself up with the vertical ‘levels of organization’ approach. The point is to represent supervenience and emergence, but the verticality of the form of imagining, that chemistry rises from physics or that the biological is a lower system level than the social. It’s more productive for my own thinking to think of ‘systems levels’ as a manifold pluralism you access in existential phenomenlogical facticity through instrumentation. Don’t think too hard! It will give you a heart attack!!!
Thank you the polyanna from hell!!! I am beginning to think I am your soldier child!
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Agree. Isn’t Gabbard thought to be a useful idiot for Putin?
Geminid
@wetzel: Is there any bass fishing in prospect? A nice day for it. I should be at a river or lake myself.
Carlo Graziani
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat):
Well, I was suggesting a possible future that is not exactly merely “change the top”, but rather a political earthquake that has the effect of at least temporarily discrediting Putinism. In the event that such a future should appear possible, I am arguing that we should (1) be intellectually prepared to recognize such a once-in-a-century opportunity for what it is, and (2) return the favor of 2016 election interference by putting our thumb on the scales of internal Russian politics, in a manner calculated to put Putinism underground (or at least cripple it).
I can’t scry the future any better than anyone else. But having nodded sagely at historical-economic condemnations of the vengefulness with which the Allies treated Germany after WWI, I’d be dismayed to see the same sort of thing happen again.
And I also know of prominent policymakers who claimed, prior to 1945, that the character of the German people contained some diseased element that would never permit Germany to become a peaceful democratic nation. Fortunately they were wrong.
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian:
Should be “It’s actually not my analysis.”
Damned iPhone autocorrect!
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: My personal in-skull neural net autocorrected the one in your iPhone.
wetzel
@Geminid:
V1
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 there, where the Nazis nailed them
If anything I need to forget about Reidsville prison
There’s nothing in the world so good as to spend your Sunday fishing!
In the prison I bring the inmates their water, cheese and Wonderbread
I’m the woman with the processed loaf deliveries for the dead
Me and my fellow haulers tend the mad condemned and vicious
In the cells below the prison where they sleep down with the fishes
Into the furious lashing of batons the Mexicans come running
More heedless than children’s brains splitting rancid in the Summer
I could go to Pennsacola, but it’s Bill you act like you know me
Bill you sorry son-of-a-bitch what do you think you owe me?
Remember all the pregnant months my aching swollen body
The pregnant woman in the bed you did not find erotic
A pregnant woman needs her man to be like Florence Nightingale
She needs a good man anyway to make carrying a baby less like Hell
You never loved me that’s the truth, and you didn’t want our baby
Lighter than a bob-cork dancing waves inside my belly
They call the waves of the ocean the eternal rollers of victims
Ten nights in the hospital. I don’t miss that stupid prison
Sweeter than the flesh of honeycrisp apples to a little child
The greenish water of the lake has gotten in my coconut hide
And washed me all those spots of White Claw Candy Apple
And vomit, tipping my rod and reel and spilling my fishing tackle
She washed my face and hair for me and the old lake started strumming
The air was like a concert hall. Dragonflies were humming.
Vibrating the lake, croaking frogs on its resonating gong
And there I was in her gentle arms rocking on her song
Ch
There’s a straight line to a goal
Hanging from the end of a fishing pole
You follow it down and there’s the hook
There you’ll see where the worm is stuck
Shuffling off its mortal coil
Maybe the fish will eat it all
And leave you with an empty pail
Nothing to say. No story to tell
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Gabbard is thought to be a Putin puppit among on-line Democrats. Her profile in the general electorate is that of one of the lesser also-rans in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary. Gabbard is articulate and a “looker.” These qualities, along with her status a a former Democratic Congresswoman, could make her a good independent spoiler candidate in a Presidential election.
Geminid
@wetzel: Your mention of Pensacola made me think of Fort Pickens, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. It’s right offshore of Pensacola. My campsite there had it’s own concrete machine gun nest that now functions as a planter.
One of the benefits of Fort Pickens Park is that it has a small bayside fishing pier. The park’s admission fee allowed me to fish from the pier without buying a Florida licence.
Carlo Graziani
@Carlo Graziani:
Speaking of in-skull neural nets, mine was obviously suffering from random drop-out last night. That should obviously have been “…nearly a trillion dollars…”.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: I’m probably missing an important qualification, but much, much more than $1B has been frozen.
NBCNews put the total at at least $285B in March. And there’s been more recently ($6B frozen by Switzerland).
Cheers,
Scott.
wetzel
@Geminid:
Fort Pickens is a great tip. On the Gulf Coast we like Appalachacola state park. My wife and I camped there thirty years ago. The raccoons there are geniuses.
We like Amelia Island for Florida because it’s not always trying to overstimulate. My opinion of the Gulf Coast is that if you want to compete with the ocean for the attention of vacationers, then don’t make stupid architecture. Pennsacola is better than Panama City.
Maybe the barefoot bubba crap is why Florida coast beats the California coast for family vacation by a mile. Finer dining has nothing frying properly.
Oh well. It’s the broiled platter for dad.
@Geminid:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Apparently the Russian Airforce is using 70 year old bombs for their attacks now
https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1511812712887689224?s=20&t=zT8iA2T0v2pPX4giCXL9LQ
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: I blame that shot of Knob Creek, neat. It’s my end-of-the-day soft landing. Yeah, that was it.
The numbers that I recall, summed over all the Central banks that froze Russian government assets, were closer to 1 trillion dollars. Don’t remember the source now. NBC’s look like actual data, though.
Geminid
@wetzel: Fort Pickens is my favorite campground east of the Mississippi. It’s a long way for me, so I go more often to Huntington Beach State Park, 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach. That one is a favorite for birdwatchers. The park is named after a son of 19th century railroad warlord Collis Huntington. The younger Huntington kept an 8,000 acre estate that was given to the state after he died. The racoons there are pretty bold.
Mount Pisgah Campground, on the Blue Ridge Parkway south of Asheville, is in some ways nicer than Fort Pickens. The southern Appalachian Highlands are wonderful. But there is no flat hiking, which is my kind of exercise.
Tybee Island, off of Savannah, Georgia, has some nice flat walking, and Alamosa, Colorado, has a ton. No campgrounds, though.
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: This page confirms the NBC figures, although the state assets there only add up to $281Bn.
On the other hand, the French Finance minister claimed that the figure was about $1Tn on March 1. And in late February the NYT was reporting that Russia was being blocked from accessing over $400Bn in foreign exchange reserves.
I think part of the issue is my own admittedly foggy understanding of banking and finance. Looking more carefully, it may be the case that “foreign exchange reserves” are deposits that should be accounted in a different category from “assets”, the latter being what NBC adds up.
the pollyanna from hell
@wetzel: I have some technical questions I would like to take off-thread with you; Watergirl has my email address. For example, phenomenology and “transcend meta-stability” could be clarified.
I do not work as philosopher or anything else. I was a sheetrocker with a late math degree, that did not progress into a career. Business algebra student hate to be lectured by a mystic philosopher. I am more curious about wisdom than about ethics. I define wisdom as a better way to live. It took me a quarter century after I flunked out of philosophy grad school to realize that I am more curious about foundations of thought than about foundations of knowledge.
“As-if” phenomenology seems like a way to avoid metaphor and narrative.
J R in WV
@MomSense:
If the Russian genocidal troops remain in the Ukrainian theater of war, they will probably be killed in combat with the UK heroes.
Obviously survivors should be prosecuted eventually!
wetzel
@the pollyanna from hell:
Hi there. I will contact you. I’ll try to answer the questions publicly, though, because somebody might say ‘hey, I wanted to know what the heck is phenomenology too!
Sorry to disappoint, but a dictionary definition of phenomenology is not satisfying. It will be something like ‘the study of experience’. Phemomenology meant something different for Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Each was in a successive generation. Husserl was Heidegger’s teacher.
Heidegger doesn’t use the term ‘phenomenology’ often, although it was an important word for Husserl. For Heidegger there is a sense in which it is taking Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’ as a premise. For Heidegger, there is the ‘thrownedness of being’ You can’t get beyond it like Descartes implies. Who is it that is looking and who is thinking?
You could say Heidegger’s Being and Time shows the existential structures of human phenomenology. It was influential to the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers and Gestalt Psychology. ‘you could say’. I hate the idea of having to justify interpretations of Heidegger because he is so careful, even though the general agreement in analytical philosophy is that Heidegger is full of shit. Being and Time is the foundation in continental philosophy.
Human beings exist in their phenomenology. Seeing this is existentialism.
‘Meta-stable’ is an important word in biology. If you picture an open, dynamic system in biology thermodynamically, you will see that structures are often in what are called ‘kinetic traps’. It looks stable at room temperature, but if you raised the temperature and cooled back down, the system re-aggregates as something else. The same system has found a different free energy minimum. We are moving between metastable states. The true thermodynamic minimum would be for all the proteins to be hydrolyzed, ie. free amino acids.
I believe totalitarianism in China and Russia will see itself as meta-stable until the West is also totalitarian. The existence of the West (in the phenomenological sense as non-Russian thinking) makes their state meta-stable because symbolic consciousness can spread and lead the state to drift to find a different meta-stable state or become revolutionary.
The analytical apparatus in both Russia and China is responsible for the ‘state’. Meta-stability reflects a bad job on their part. The state should not be evolving stochastically in fits and starts under foreign propaganda. This produces identity crisis in the bureau. Genocide is the mechanism it will use to reconstitute itself and also deliver us to totalitarianism.
In a thermodynamic model, this is spontaneous. You can see it if you ask, could I reverse it? Which direction is more likely? Totalitarianism may be irreversible if it becomes global, which is the point for China and Russia.
I think it is good in academic philosophy to have people to break your ideas for you. I don’t have any credentials. Credentials have a positive value in philosophy, because you know the person did philosophy in a social setting for a number of years, but that’s about it.
I think it’s good to have somebody playing ‘advisor’ or ‘teacher’ even though you have your own ideas. Relying on credentials seems prima facia inimical to philosophy, where every argument needs justification. A credential is an argument for ethos. It attaches it philosophy the individual ‘career’. Philosophy is social.
Let me try to find words and ground an argument in truth. If you have that spirit, you are a philosopher. That’s how I go about it. I’m not afraid to fail. I’m willing to look like a jack-ass. I don’t know anything beforehand. That’s the key to my way about it. I have enough of a method, I can play philosophy, and now I can have philosophical experience. I hope some things of value come out of it. The next step for me is to try to make my writing more accessible. If the reader doesn’t understand, what is the point.
I will write to you! Your questioning and poking actually made me feel like a human being. I’m not anybody. If you have a philosophical temperament, you get pretty beaten down in modern life, but I think that was always the case until they made a Philosophy Department. We will let you philosophize as long as you stay out of our business!!!!!!
wetzel
@J R in WV: Troops are never genocidal. They may be murderous.
Geminid
@wetzel: I also have questions. For instance, do you use live bait, artificial, or both when you fish for bass?
Asking for a friend.
J R in WV
@wetzel:
I hardly know what to say to this. A genocidal state performs its genocidal mission via its troops, no? The Nazi SS were aimed at the genocide of lessor specimens of homo sapiens, like Gypsies, Jews, Good Germans with Downs, etc, etc.
Of course they were deranged, also genocidal.
What about the Russians killing randomly in Ukraine? Just murder, or focused murder aimed at exterminating the Ukrainian culture? Kidnapping children taken to Russia, since the Russian birth rate is below the replacement rate for the population?
That’s pretty much the definition of genocide…
debbie
@J R in WV:
They’re the instruments of genocide. They do the actual genociding.
wetzel
@J R in WV:
A state commits genocide. Individuals commit the crime of murder. The difference is a matter of law. Your righteous indignation has you calling for retribution all over the place here. That is understandable. It is the intended effect of the spectacle. Stay with plain language. Respect the law.
Ishiyama
@wetzel: