(Image by Olga Wilson; found here)
British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, paid a visit to President Zelenskyy in Kyiv today. Which I’m sure made his security detail just thrilled!!!! Here’s the video of their press conference, which includes English translation for President Zelenskyy’s remarks:
And here’s video of the tour of (parts of) Kyiv that President Zelenskyy gave to Prime Minister Johnson:
This is one of the greatest videos the internet has ever seen. pic.twitter.com/fZ2R0OT51W
— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) April 9, 2022
Here’s the latest update from the British Ministry of Defence:
And here’s the British Ministry of Defence’s latest map:
As you can see, not a lot of change from the one I posted yesterday.
And here’s the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s operational update for today.
The operational update regarding the russianin vasion on 18.00 on April 9, 2022
2022-04-09 19:00:00 | ID: 67200
The forty-fifth day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to a russian military invasion continues.
The russian federation continues its full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine. The russain enemy continues to carry out preparatory measures to intensify offensive operations in eastern Ukraine to establish full control over the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The main efforts of the russian occupiers are focused on the capture of Mariupol and the offensive near the city of Izyum. There is still a high probability that the enemy will involve sabotage and reconnaissance groups to carry out sabotage of transport infrastructure.
The enemy continues to launch missile strikes on civilian targets throughout Ukraine.
No significant changes in the composition and position of the enemy’s troops were noted in the Volyn, Polissya, and Siversky areas.
In Slobozhanshchyna, the russian enemy continues to partially block the city of Kharkiv. In order to covertly move the occupation units in the Kharkiv oblast, the enemy is carrying out electronic suppression of cellular networks. In order to increase the number of troops, up to two battalion tactical groups of the russian enemy were moved from the Belgorod region to the Shevchenkiv district of the Kharkiv oblast.
The russian enemy continues to provide storm in the Donetsk direction. The main efforts of the russian occupiers are focused on taking control of the settlements of Rubizhne, Popasna and Novobakhmutivka. At the same time, the russian invaders continue to strike at the settlements of Vuhledar and Novoselivka Druha. They are trying to resume the offensive in the Novotoshkivsky, Stepny and Marinka districts.
In the South Buh direction, the occupiers do not stop trying to keep positions and borders on the administrative border of Kherson region
Ukrainian defenders are defending themselves and are gradually pushing back enemy troops in certain areas.
Let’s win together! Glory to Ukraine!
Much more after the jump!
Yesterday, before his trip to Kyiv, Prime Minister Johnson stated in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Scholtz that Britain would only be sending defensive weapons to Ukraine:
Instead, the U.K. will send £100 million of defensive military equipment to Ukraine, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, and another 800 anti-tank missiles.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 9, 2022
Today, however, we finally got confirmation from a legitimate, non-pseudonymous source – Politico’s defense reporter – that Britain is, in fact, sending harpoon anti-ship missiles to Ukraine:
NEW: confirming the UK is sending Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Ukraine. Huge move, can do serious damage to Russian warships.
— Paul McLeary (@paulmcleary) April 9, 2022
So there seems to be some confusion on just what counts as offensive versus defensive weaponry and weapon systems. And, of course, the additional financial and military aide that Johnson promised to Ukraine today during his visit is in addition to what was referenced at yesterday’s press conference. Given that Slovakia is sending a S-300 air defense system and the Czech Republic is sending tanks and armored vehicles, your guess is as good as mine as to what the distinction is between offensive and defensive weapons in this policy that the NATO members have developed. If I had to guess, it is anything that can be used from within Ukraine to defend Ukraine, but would not be of much use if Ukraine decided to try to attack across the border into Russia.
The Australians are also sending Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine. The Bushmaster is basically the Australian version of the MRAP.
The Australian Government confirmed on Friday that it has provided further support to the Government of Ukraine by gifting 20 Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles, including two ambulance variants, to aid the Government of Ukraine’s response to Russia’s unrelenting and illegal aggression.
Australia’s response follows a direct request from President Zelenskyy during his address to a joint sitting of the Parliament of Australia on 31 March 2022.
The Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicle was built in Australia to provide protected mobility transport, safely moving soldiers to a battle area prior to dismounting for close combat. The Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicle is well suited to provide protection to the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers and Ukrainian civilians against mines and improvised explosive devices, shrapnel from artillery and small arms fire.
The 20 vehicles have been painted olive green to suit the operating environment.
Additionally, a Ukrainian flag is painted on either side with the words “United with Ukraine” stencilled in English and Ukrainian to acknowledge our commitment and support to the Government and people of Ukraine. The ambulances will have the traditional red cross emblem.
The Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles will be fitted with radios, a global positioning system and additional bolt-on armour increasing their protection.
Pictures of the Bushmasters at the link.
The Ukrainians have put up an interactive web site to document Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine and against Ukrainians.
While we’re on war crimes, I’m going to post one of the most heinous ones I’ve seen or heard. I’m not posting the audio/video or the link to it, just a very basic description and the picture of the perpetrator who has already been identified by the Ukrainians and I’m sure is on their high value target list. This is UNPLEASANT SO IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF HORRIFIC CRIMES PLEASE JUMP TO THE NEXT SECTION!!!!
A Russian soldier named Alexei Bychkov has posted a Telegram video in which he rapes an infant. The cruelty is beyond what many of us think is possible.
This will continue to happen as long as Russian gas is pumped into German cars.
— Gary Shteyngart (@Shteyngart) April 9, 2022
This is the Russian soldier, Alexei Bychkov, who has filmed himself raping a Ukrainian child. https://t.co/FNsWwplyjN
— Slava Malamud ?? (@SlavaMalamud) April 9, 2022
The translation from the tweet that Slava Malamud is retweeting is:
!!! Attention. Russian serviceman Aleksey Alexandrovich Bychkov. Pedophile and rapist. Films the abuse of children and throws it off to his friends and colleagues.
FOR THOSE JUMPING TO THE NEXT SECTION; THIS IS THE NEXT SECTION!!!! NOT THAT IT IS A LOT LESS GRIM!
Bucha:
The Bucha mass grave yesterday.
The police and forensic experts had exhumed nearly 20 dead bodies, including 2 military.
In total, the pit has nearly 67 bodies that will be identified, examined, and buried again. pic.twitter.com/yWF79d6zXA— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) April 9, 2022
#Bucha, Apple Street.144 Russian soldiers set up a real torture chamber. Survivors said, Chechen HQ was there. They shot people in the face, burned eyes, cut off body parts, tortured adults, kids.Authorities found 360 bodies so far, incl 10 children,ombudsman said.#BuchaMassacre
— Alexander Khrebet/Олександр Хребет (@AlexKhrebet) April 9, 2022
Kharkiv:
Now I am often asked whether there will be a new attack on Kharkiv. The answer is yes. For 45 days, there was not a single day when the city was not shelled. Will Russia succeed this time? The answer is no. Ukraine is more prepared, but we need more weapons to stop the aggressor. pic.twitter.com/vxWc5Q1n9h
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) April 9, 2022
Makariv:
⚡️ Mayor: Russian troops shot 132 civilians in Makariv.
Makariv Head Vadym Tokar added that 40% of the town was destroyed by shelling. Makariv, a town of 10,000 people 50 kilometers west of Kyiv, was liberated by Ukrainian Armed Forces on March 22.
?: @AnnaMyroniuk pic.twitter.com/XqvjrotrqM
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 8, 2022
Chernihiv:
Visited Chernihiv today with my colleague @AnnaMyroniuk, the city and its suburbs are severely damaged by Russian air strikes.
The Mayor says 700 people were killed during siege.
Read our story soon in the @KyivIndependent. pic.twitter.com/4FHIgjB729
— Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa) April 9, 2022
Today our reporters went to Chernihiv, a regional capital in northern Ukraine, that was besieged for 21 days while being heavily bombarded.
This is our @mrsorokaa speaking from the sites of Russian attacks: pic.twitter.com/c0DDGiR12c
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 9, 2022
Luhansk Oblast:
The #russian army again bombed a tank with poisonous nitric acid. This isn't the first time that they are poisoning people in #Luhansk region.
Now we need more weapons to protect our people not only from shelling, artillery & air attacks but also from chemical weapons… pic.twitter.com/YqYAbYknhr
— Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) April 9, 2022
Mariupol:
“Sometimes hope returns to me. But sometimes it leaves, and I think that we are all going to die,” says Anastasiia Kiseliova, a 40-year-old mother of three, as she walks through the streets of Mariupol, voice-recording herself on an iPhone.
“The city is gone,” she adds, her voice trembling. She bursts into tears seconds later.
Kiseliova’s hometown, Mariupol, once populated by nearly half a million Ukrainians, was razed to the ground by the Russian army. Ceaseless bombardment and shelling didn’t leave a single building untouched, local authorities said. Thousands have already been killed by Russian attacks or even starvation and dehydration, as Russia’s blockade left the city without any utilities, food, or water.
Despite Ukraine’s continuous efforts to evacuate Mariupol citizens, over 100,000 civilians remain trapped in the city.
“Every day and night we have spent in the cellar,” Kiseliova says in the video, a few seconds after a round of explosions is heard in the background. “We cried, prayed, and really wanted to survive.”
She will later pass those recordings to the Kyiv Independent during an interview arranged at a Lviv-based beauty salon, where she took her children for skin treatment after finally escaping Mariupol. Her daughter, 17-year-old Kristina, developed acne after experiencing trauma and stress. Seven-year-old Kostya, the son, had irritation on his hands for all the same reasons.
Kiseliova’s district of Mariupol, Prymorskyi, was under attacks from day one, when Russia launched a full-scale offensive against Ukraine on Feb. 24.
“Schools, apartments, private houses, they dropped bombs on everything,” she recalled.
Together with her three children and other family members, Kiseliova spent a week in a cellar under her house.
A large missile hit their property, sliding under the house, but not exploding. Another missile hit their neighbors’ yard. The family made a decision to leave, driving over to Kiseliova’s parents.
For two weeks, her husband, who is working abroad, thought that his wife and children were dead. All communications in the city have been shut since early March, meaning that many thousands of Ukrainians with friends and family in Mariupol have no way of knowing if they are alive.
All over Ukraine, the Russian military showed no mercy to civilians and civilian infrastructure, deliberately targeting populated areas.
One time, when around a hundred civilians lined up for bread near a local shop, a missile hit right into the crowd, killing an unknown number of people, Kiseliova said. She saw three dead bodies.
Trying to escape Mariupol on March 17, Kiseliova joined a column of civilian cars that moved towards the outskirts of the city. For hours, she drove her three children, as well as her oldest son’s girlfriend, to safety, maneuvering between unexploded missiles and hundreds of mines that were scattered through roads and fields.
At all Russian checkpoints, soldiers seemed to be extremely polite first, Kiseliova said. “They offered us water and bread, as if to make themselves look like liberators.”
Her daughter Kristina quickly corrected her.
“But they smirked,” the girl said. “They laughed at us.”
The next day, as evacuating cars carefully moved through a mined field just outside Mariupol, near an abandoned village of Kamianka, Russians shelled the convoy.
“They shelled cars that had signs that said ‘children’,” Kiseliova said. “One car was burned down, five people were injured. One girl had surgery performed right in the field.”
After crossing into Ukrainian territory, the family eventually made their way to Lviv, a regional capital in western Ukraine that has become the main destination for internally displaced Ukrainians flocking from the east, south and north.
Much, much more at the link!
The Azov Battalion is not going to give up Mariupol:
#Ukraine: A claimed Russian mortar position was hit in #Mariupol by Azov fire, leading to the detonation of ammunition and the destruction of two trucks. pic.twitter.com/J77Q6KqJJP
— ?? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 9, 2022
Chornobyl:
From The New York Times:
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — As the staging ground for an assault on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one of the most toxic places on earth, was probably not the best choice. But that did not seem to bother the Russian generals who took over the site in the early stages of the war.
“We told them not to do it, that it was dangerous, but they ignored us,” Valeriy Simyonov, the chief safety engineer for the Chernobyl nuclear site, said in an interview.
Apparently undeterred by safety concerns, the Russian forces tramped about the grounds with bulldozers and tanks, digging trenches and bunkers — and exposing themselves to potentially harmful doses of radiation lingering beneath the surface.
In a visit to the recently liberated nuclear station, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, wind blew swirls of dust along the roads, and scenes of disregard for safety were everywhere, though Ukrainian nuclear officials say no major radiation leak was triggered by Russia’s month long military occupation.
At just one site of extensive trenching a few hundred yards outside the town of Chernobyl, the Russian army had dug an elaborate maze of sunken walkways and bunkers. An abandoned armored personnel carrier sat nearby.
The soldiers had apparently camped out for weeks in the radioactive forest. While international nuclear safety experts say they have not confirmed any cases of radiation sickness among the soldiers, the cancers and other potential health problems associated with radiation exposure might not develop until decades later.
The earthworks were not the only instance of recklessness in the treatment of a site so toxic it still holds the potential to spread radiation well beyond Ukraine’s borders.
In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.
I’m not a nuclear physicist, chemist, and/or engineer and I certainly don’t play one at Balloon Juice, but I’m just going to say that that would seem to be bad!
Much more Russian stupidity and/or carelessness in regard to Chornobyl at the link.
Once again our Antipodean antiquities aficionado, The Mighty Trowel, sent along this interesting article about trying to preserve Ukrainian heritage – from sites to actual items – while the war is ongoing. This is the English translation she provided as the original is in Ukrainian:
He saves Ukraine’s cultural heritage from the bombs
Until just over two years ago, archaeologist Fedir Androshchuk lived in Sweden. Now he is in war-torn Ukraine to stop valuable museum collections from being bombed.
“In my world, it would be strange to resign because it is a war. Someone has to organize and lead protection measures and evacuation ”.
It writes Fedir Androshcuck, director of the National Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, when Magazine K reaches him it is via Facebook. He’s traveling. His whereabouts are secret – just like the details of his mission.
Fedir Androshchuk is leading the work to protect as much as possible of the National Museum’s 800,000 objects from being destroyed in the war. At first he slept in the museum’s basement, while he, together with about twenty others, worked on packing the objects to the sound of constant flight alarms.
“The situation was very unstable, the development was unclear and the goal was to dismantle all the exhibitions to avoid possible damage from air bombings,” writes Fedir Androshchuk.
However, the hope of protecting everything has been dashed during the war.
“It would be impossible. We have managed to evacuate the most valuable parts of our collections. There is a priority list that helps us organize the work, ”writes Fedir Androshchuk, without being able to go into more detail on what has been prioritized for safety reasons.
Until 2020 , the Viking archaeologist Fedir Androshchuk had worked in Sweden for more than 20 years, including at the Upplands Museum, with which he still has close contact. When Androshchuk was given a five-year contract by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, his wife and children remained in Sweden.
He had not expected that the job would mean trying to secure the country’s cultural heritage in war. But, as Fedir Androshcuck describes it, someone has to do it – protecting museum collections is important because at the same time protecting the identity of the people and the country.
“Cultural heritage is a country’s biography and experience , which are worth teaching. This is the central museum in the country that illuminates the history of Ukraine from ancient times to the present. It is no coincidence that conquests of statues, obelisks and relics took place in ancient times. It is part of the identification when you conquer a country “, writes Fedir Androshchuk and continues:
“We see something similar in the museum collections founded by colonial Russia that hold cultural treasures of all colonized countries, even Ukraine. A new war poses a new danger to Ukraine’s cultural heritage. ”
Fedir Androschcuk states that the museum employees in Ukraine who do not do military service work around the country to protect the threatened cultural treasures in secret places. The work is dangerous and takes place largely online in the form of contacts with other countries. According to the museum director, he has had great help from his former homeland Sweden. The Nordic Museum Foundation’s fundraising for Ukraine’s museums , among other things, has generated one million Swedish kronor which is now used to support the preservation of Ukraine’s history.
The Swedish National Heritage Board Joakim Malmström is in constant contact with Fedir Androschuk, and has also initiated a statement from the EHHF, a co-operation body for directors general of cultural heritage authorities in Europe, which demands that Russia respect international conventions to protect cultural heritage.
“Swedish museums, companies and individuals have made an enormous contribution. Ukraine has a common history with the Nordic countries that stretches all the way to the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, “writes Fedir Androshchuk, who points out that he is very grateful for the Nordic countries’ contributions.
Fedir Androshchuk can not comment on how the work will continue.
“But when it comes to jobs in these circumstances, personal responsibility is the most crucial.”
As someone who was involved with trying to help ensure the US Army did not even accidentally damage Iraqi heritage sights, I can tell you from first hand experience that this is not an easy job to do. Not because the US Army didn’t care, but because war doesn’t always stay contained to the places that you want it to stay.
And we’ll end it with your daily Bayraktar!
My son brought from Kyiv a big package of doggy food for our special puppy Bayraktar. Here is Bayraktar and his treasure? pic.twitter.com/ALLLLBgLxB
— Xenta (@Xenta777) April 3, 2022
That is the most boopable Bayraktar nose EVER!!!!!
Open thread!
Open Thread: Dispatch from a Purple State
Ishiyama
This is horror on an unimaginable scale. I can’t bear to read it but I don’t want to ignore it. Crimes must be punished and criminals pursued endlessly.
debbie
@Ishiyama:
Every UN representative should be made to watch all this, including the child rapist, and then vote whether or not Russia should remain as a member.
Martin
That’s how I’ve interpreted it. NATO seems to be okay with anything that can kill Russians in Ukraine but doesn’t want it to be used to kill Russians in Russia.
RaflW
This seems likely to really improve
wartimespecial-operationtime morale back home in Russia:Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War
Citizens are denouncing one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.
(Yes, it is a NTY story, so be advised. Their coverage of the US politics and rising authoritarianism is an absolute disgrace.
But as newsrooms shrink, they are among the remainder with the money to cover overseas with some depth.)
RaflW
@Martin and/or Adam: Shooting at Russians in offshore waters is ok? Would the tacit agreement be that Ukraine use the harpoons only if the Russian vessels are inside whatever territorial distance from shore is considered UKR?
Or only fire harpoons if RU fires onto shore first?
Bill Arnold
I would not be surprised if some Ukrainian sub national group eventually organized an Operation Nemesis, but with an orders-of-magnitude larger target list. (Personally, I loath the Russian internally-directed propagandists and the influential Russian nationalist public intellectuals the most of all.)
Operation Nemesis
Another Scott
Points to an Institute for the Study of War article (by Fred Kagan (AEI) and others).
Kagan’s a well-known name (with lots of baggage) – I don’t know how well his analysis is holding here.
Cheers,
Scott.
featheredsprite
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – Thank you Adam!
You spend so much staring into the abyss. Do you have enough remedies?
debbie
Good.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
A few days ago, there was some discussion about the inability of the United States to bring Russia before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, due to issues of jurisdiction, moral standing, et cetera.
But the US does have allies with both the moral high ground and the legal foundation to get The Hague involved. Specifically, one example: Greece is going to formally ask the ICC to open an investigation into war crimes in Mariupol. (Source: Kathimerini)
I recall that in his speech to the UN, Zelenskyy specifically cited Ribbentrop, which I found significant because Ribbentrop went to the gallows at Nuremberg for his acts as Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany. I know Putin is able and willing to use nuclear weapons to prevent that fate from coming for him, but one can hope…
Martin
@RaflW: Yeah, it’s not like there’s a rule here. It’s unclear if the anti-ship missile is the land launched one or the one that can be launched from a patrol boat. I’m assuming the former – that it’s designed to target amphibious ships that might come near Odessa, rather than Ukraine being able to go hunting throughout the Black Sea.
The weapons can also come with conditions which would affect their ability to get future weapons. When Trump finally gave in and allowed Ukraine to buy Javelins, it was with a provision they couldn’t be used in the eastern half of the country. So, Ukraine can use them within x miles of the Ukrainian coast, that kind of thing.
RaflW
@debbie: I believe I’m one of many who have been saying that the E.U. needs to deal with what it means to have an actively anti-democracy and even pro-Russia member. Not that I have huge hopes of the E.U. figuring this out well or with any speed.
That said, several E.U. member-states have really stepped it up about Russia’s utterly depraved invasion. But responding to an internal threat v. external? I’m less confident.
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: Those are Ukrainian waters. The Russians are illegally occupying them.
Kent
Offensive vs Defensive? I suggest a simple rule:
If you use it inside Ukraine or within Ukraine’s territorial seas or airspace it is a defensive weapon.
If you use it to attack Russian territory it is a offensive weapon.
Torrey
I wish the House had managed to pass the lend-lease bill for Ukraine before Congress went off for two weeks’ recess. It seems clear that it will pass, but it would be good to have it passed and on Biden’s desk ASAP.
Martin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The explanation that I’ve read is that because the war crimes were committed in Ukraine, and because Ukraine, though a signatory to the ICC (like the US) and not a ratifier of that treaty (also like the US) extended jurisdiction over Ukraine to the ICC after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
So as far as the ICC is concerned, war crimes are being committed in an area over which they have jurisdiction, and that’s all that matters. Doesn’t matter if the US or Russia ratified.
All that said, the US is a signatory and observer to the ICC. So we can make referrals, and we can participate in deliberations over a case brought before the court, we do not get a vote on the final judgement because we never ratified the treaty. The ICC has no jurisdiction over war crimes committed on US soil. We reserve that right for ourselves.
Kelly
According to this Rolling Stone article the Russians have figured out how to home in on and drop artillery on Ukrainians using off the shelf civilian drones. Ukrainians keep on keeping on.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ukraine-war-marines-front-lines-1334770/
Martin
@Torrey: I think it’s more of a formalism. I think Biden can still send Ukraine what they need.
RaflW
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, both for the specific response (and to Martin, too) and for the nightly work to keep us informed.
I admit I have to skip over some of the civilian war crimes bits but I look at enough to understand how utterly cruel and debased the Russians are.
Seeing how well Le Pen appears to be doing in France, and how the US is teetering back towards rewarding GOP insanity, I feel such huge dread. But I will keep on. We are on a cusp, but better outcomes can prevail – if we work for them. Maybe not everywhere, but in many places.
Good night, all.
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: The EU President began the formal process regarding a member that is out of compliance, in this case Hungary, last week. I’ll try to work that into tomorrow night’s update.
phdesmond
@Adam L Silverman:
that puts the russians on the back flipper when it comes to legalities at sea. :-)
Adam L Silverman
@featheredsprite: You’re quite welcome. As for me, this is what I’m trained to do, so no worries there.
patrick II
Is that a good thing? The Russians are not closing in on the vulnerable Ukrainian troops in the East. Instead, they continue their assault on cities. Perhaps it is similar to the Battle of Britain when Hitler stopped going after military targets to attack London and came to regret it.
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW:
West of the Rockies
@RaflW:
Are they Russian war ships? I think we know what to say to those.
Carlo Graziani
I’ve been wondering about the “offensive versus defensive” artificial distinction too. Artificial doesn’t necessarily mean it’s stupid. It just mean there’s a line, and a reason for wanting a line.
I have a private theory, for which I have no substantiation. It goes like this: the Biden administration privately informs Putin of a bright red line. Any use of NBC — nuclear, biological, chemical warfare — in Ukraine crosses that line. The consequences for crossing the line are immediate NATO intervention against Russian ground Forces — USAF could probably shut down the “special military operation” in a few days. The rationale would be that NATO restraint is justified to prevent the worst outcomes, but if the Russians roll out those weapons then the worst has happened already.
The incentive works best the farther the Russians are from weapons that can hit them hard, in depth anyway. It’s an argument subject to incremental recalibration as the war evolves. The point, in the theory, would be to maintain enough of a gap between current “defensive” weapons and NATO threatened action to deter NBC use in Ukraine.
And no, I’m not certain it makes sense. But neither does the “defensive weapon” restriction on its face.
West of the Rockies
I hope that animal who raped a baby is made to pay. I’d like to see his junk dunked in acid on a public stage.
patrick II
@Carlo Graziani:
Bad news for you — I pretty much agree. The trouble for Ukraine is that the most powerful weapons that would let them attack Russia are also the ones that would most decisively tip the war in Ukraine in their favor. It makes for a long and difficult war for Ukraine.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo Graziani: There is nothing that can be said to deter Putin. He will do what he wants to do no matter what we do. He’s already used white phosphorus and thermite bombs. He’s already used his thermobaric missiles. He’s already targeted Ukrainian chemical facilities, basically using his conventional weapons to turn them into chemical attacks.
VeniceRiley
I hope this yields valuable intel
https://twitter.com/uaweapons/status/1512489626367557633?s=21&t=EdLFRlo3gc5LFHzbwXealg
As for these monsters who would film themselves doing that … There is nothing I can imagine that would suffice as a punishment equal to the crime.
EZSmirkzz
You may find this interesting Adam,
From the 2020 WaPo link
Perhaps Russia is having to compete with Ukraine for its’ old weapon systems?
From the ISW link above
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, but NBC is a different threshold. And mercifully it hasn’t been crossed yet. Given that Putin has no moral brakes, perhaps there is a reason we can’t see. Just sayin’.
Ishiyama
What does it say about the conduct of the war that there have been prisoner exchanges, even with no other evident agreements? At what level are these things decided?
VeniceRiley
Any intel on how the UA equipment bounty program is going? I imagine we won’t hear much beyond that one helicopter story, but there has to be some serious reaching out, surely.
in other news: bye Imran Khan in Pakistan. Wonder how that is going to shake out.
NotMax
@Ishiyama
Even in the depths of WW2 prisoner exchanges took place.
patrick II
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Given the filthy behavior of Russian forces, I wonder what in holy hell they teach at their war colleges. Burn those places to the ground, preferably with all their officers inside them.
jnfr
Thank you, Adam. This is all so hard. And still a hard road ahead.
prostratedragon
From Bailemos Tango Festival, Kyiv, October 2021: A smooth tango-milonga danced by Juana and Mariano. Very soothing.
Carlo Graziani
Good discursive summary in ISW’s April9 Campaign Assesment. Something that caught my eye:
Followed by material on elite units — Paras and SPETSNAZ — dealing with soldiers refusing to return to Ukraine, which Scott reported earlier.
This story doesn’t really line up with the narrative of the nation rallying around the flag that we’ve been reading about. If you think back to classics of jingoism, patriotic fervor drove thousands daily to recruitment offices in WWI and WWII. Where are they?
NotMax
@Carlo Graziani
“Just my luck. No sooner shipped off to boot camp than they put another pretender to the throne up against the wall.”
//
gene108
@Carlo Graziani:
People support the war. They do not support actually fighting in the war themselves or have their sons go and fight.
The U.S. experienced this with Vietnam, Iraq 2, and Afghanistan.
Edit: Outside of Putin’s beliefs, I don’t think the fighting in Ukraine is an actual threat to Russians in Russia, ie Russians don’t feel like Ukraine will be invading or will launch attacks within Russia.
cazador
Thanks as always Adam. These nightly reports are so very helpful and I can only imagine very stressful to have to compose. I have a question for you and the rest of the commentariat here; Is Azov Battalion neo-nazis like was implied before the conflict by even some western media? Or was this just FSB anti-Ukrainian propaganda that managed to stick? Because of the initial covering of Azov, I instinctively cringe that we are creating the next al qaeda, but i have yet to see any hard proof of anything.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
bjacques
@cazador: G&T was going to address this, but you won’t have to worry about postwar Ukraine breeding neo-Nazis, From what I gather, the AB were definitely Nazi-adjacent starting out, mainly for historical reasons, but they have become more nationalistic than Nazi. In 2014, they were the only force organized and willing enough to fight the Little Green Men, but their influence has waned outside of their home region (the name is a clue) as the UA have become more professional and effective. They also don’t have a lot of time for neo-Nazis who want to go there to play cowboy and Indians. They’re definitely bringing it to the Russians outside Mariupol. After the war they should be thanked for their service and encouraged to get a new hobby.
Every country has a Nazi problem—not just Ukraine—but it doesn’t make them Nazi countries.
EDIT: If Russians support the war down to the last neighbor’s son, I wonder how many of the cheerleading elite have sons fighting. It reminds me of young Mitt Romney demonstrating for the Vietnam War but not finding his way to an Army recruiting center.
Sloane Ranger
Adam, do we know what unit/regiment this sick rapist belongs to, or can we tell anything from his badges and flashes? Also, some people on Twitter have said that he’s been arrested. Do we have any reliable information on that?
Unfortunately, this and the other war crimes uncovered do not surprise me. The Russian Army has always behaved like this from Tsarist times onwards. I am reading a book about the fall of Berlin and the atrocities they performed then and now are interchangeable. I think a lot of westerners didn’t realise how baked in this sort of behaviour is in Russian military culture because the Nazi war crimes against Russians made them think it was tit for tat.
Betty Cracker
Never thought I’d have occasion to write this, but kudos to BoJo!
@Sloane Ranger: I recently read an article about the Russian military’s sick hazing rituals for new recruits/conscripts. Really brutal and depraved stuff. If the description I read is true, it’s not surprising that system produces a bumper crop of psychos.
MomSense
@Sloane Ranger:
The ballet teacher I was closest to was “liberated” by Soviet soldiers at the end of the war. Her mom’s property was on the wrong side of the wall and there was a lot of drama at the end of her life when the wall had come down and she was suddenly thrust into being paid for her property.
She became a devoted Republican, even supporting Reagan, and I think it came down to supporting Republicans because they were so stridently anti- Soviet Union. In a war full of horrors the things that the Soviet Soldiers did to them and the way they behaved terrified her. Her mom was killed by allied bombs and her sister was killed in a concentration camp.
Interestingly it was a Russian ballet teacher and his wife who took her in after the war. This teacher escaped the Soviet Union in 1925.
Betty
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I have now read several accounts of the long time demonization of Ukrainians by Russia. They have been taught to hate these people as sub-human. An all too familiar story.
Jager
@Sloane Ranger:
After WWII ended in Europe, my father flew supplies from France to the Russian Lines. He landed his C47, the Russian guards had German prisoners unloading the plane. My dad offered the Russian guard a cigarette, the Russian took a couple of drags and dropped it on the ground in front of a German prisoner. The German reached for it, the Russian guard smashed the prisoner’s hand with his rifle butt, then grinned at my dad. Animals then, animals now.
YY_Sima Qian
@EZSmirkzz: The Chinese transports are delivering export version of HQ-22 medium-long range surface to air missile systems that Serbia had purchased.
TonyG
There are psychopaths and sadists in every culture, but what’s noteworthy about that horrific Aleksey Alexandrovich Bychkov story is the fact that he saw fit to brag about what he did, rather than hiding it. Russian military culture — maybe Russian culture in general — is broken. It’s hard to see how it will ever be repaired in the near future.
Rileys Enabler
Thanks again for your time and efforts into writing these updates, Adam. Grim reading, but the value of this depth of understanding cannot be overstated. Thank you.
Jinchi
Boris Johnson looks like a sniper’s dream in his bright blue suit surrounded by men in camo green.
O. Felix Culpa
I don’t think this was linked to yet — another worthy read from Phillips O’Brien (got the name right this time): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1513047743912202246.html
EZSmirkzz
@YY_Sima Qian:
As the article stated.
Do you suppose that the Chinese flew four empty transports back to China,
given the information from the Washington Post link?
Russia isn’t selling arms at the moment, in fact they have asked the Chinese for weapons, so Serbia bought knock offs from China.
If I was Boris I would have made deals with Serbia for their purchases earlier of Russian equipment to replace what the Ukrainians have blown up. Coupled with Presidents Armenian genocide remarks, and Turkey’s purchase of Russian SAM systems and Turkey’s resentment of those remarks, coupled with MLAT overflights, I’m curious.
Worst case scenario, this entire enterprise could get out of hand rather quickly. If Russia’s mobilization of reserves, 60,000 I’ve read, they’ll need gear, which the Russians may or may not have, but which their allies might.
Carlo Graziani
@Betty Cracker:
And that’s another self-inflicted wound of the Rusiian military, which dates back to the Soviet Union. It’s been remarked upon in various comment threads that the Russian Army’s rigid, inflexible mentality is due to a good extent to over-officering, due in turn to a lack of a professional NCO corps. Basically you have a lot of lieutenants and captains doing the work that corporals and sergeants do in Western armies.
The reason for that is that same Dedovchkina system of institutionalized seniority-based hazing embedded in their semesterly-intake two-year draft, which creates four classes of privates, informally “ranked” by seniority. Since they formally promote NCOs from these self-same recruits, you have instant conflict, where a sergeant might find himself giving an unwelcome order to a nominal subordinate who is in a far more real sense his superior in dedovchkina. The results of such a conflict could be lethal, so the effect is the total undermining of NCO authority.
It seems bizarre that they can’t seem to fix this pathology, which the Russian Army knows about and has made real but unavailing attempts to reform.
Jinchi
@RaflW: My guess is that firing on Russian military targets in range of Ukraine is defensive. The only concern is if they are physically located in Russia.
The Black Sea isn’t Russia.
Crimea and Donetsk also aren’t Russia.
NATO probably gets nervous at Ukraine firing at targets within Russia, although fuel depots and artillery units firing on Ukraine would probably pass the defense test.
Carlo Graziani
@O. Felix Culpa: Good find.
charon
@O. Felix Culpa:
A link to the twitter thread, for those of us who find threadreader abstractions unsatisfactory:
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1513047743912202246
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: Galeev makes the point that a competent, popular, professional military is a threat to a kleptocratic dictatorship. Can’t have that.
He also thinks that the only power center with a hope of overthrowing the Putinists is the police forces.
True? No idea. He makes a pretty good case though.
Cheers,
Scott.
lee
I know it is highly unlikely but removal of Russia from the UN Security Council would also seem to be in order.
I realize the US has very little room to critize Russia.
Carlo Graziani
@Carlo Graziani:
Replying to myself, because I’ve been mulling that theory overnight.
The thing is, at the advent of the war it seems very likely that an early NSC policy task was deciding what the threshold conditions would be that would actually trigger NATO intervention. It is certainly not “under no circumstances”, so one would like to have as clear as possible an idea of what those circumstances are, in advance, so as to be as prepared as possible for bad news.
One would have to be really sure that these are “go” points. They cannot later turn out to be equivocations, because it becomes very important to communicate them, as bright red lines, in the clearest possible terms, to the Russian leadership at various political and military points of contact, so they simply cannot be understood as bluffs. They cannot be bluffs. They have to be conservative, but very, very realistic and credible.
One clear set (I believe, YMMV) of such circumstances would be NBC weapons use by the Russians in Ukraine. Basically because at that point the worst is already happening.
If true, this would certainly be another reason for the Biden administration to show restraint in intervening over “lower” (sorry, but it’s true) thresholds such as humanitarian catastrophes: restraint would protect Ukraine from use of terrifying nerve agents, or from battlefield nuclear weapons.
I do think it is worth asking outselves at this point, given the demonstrated depravity of the Russian leadership what is keeping such weapons from being used for intimidation purposes, out of sheer desperation. This theory isn’t a bad answer, IMO.
Admittedly the connection to the “defensive/offensive” weapon distinction is more tenuous.
lee
@Carlo Graziani:
I imagine that the criteria has been decided and communicated to every NATO member. So once the threshold has been crossed there will be very little discussion within NATO.
On the same vein of thought: I imagine every submariner is fully erect with the thought of the command to sink every Russian vessel in their AO.
wetzel
@Carlo Graziani:
Hi Carlo. You are questioning the rationale of separating offensive and defensive weapons into category types because there’s no deductively sound rationale. Equipment represents combat power. There is also power in labeling. Let me give an example. I posted yesterday at another site where people give upvotes and downvotes. It was going well. I was up to +4, but then somebody said I was reminding them of that dreary French semiotics from school, and then I got no more upvotes, and now that guy stands at +8. It wasn’t even semiotics fucker!
This is! How something is labeled can change people’s behaviors. There’s some book I read a long time ago that divided phenomenology of language into referential, expressive and appelative dimensions. It was unscientific stuff from 1910 or whatever, but it was helpful!
Let’s take a simple sentence. ‘She’s out in the field’ and the field of reference is clear within pragmatics (context) – the family’s daughter is out in the field near their home. What is the expressive dimension. ‘I’m worried about her’ or ‘I’m proud of her’ ‘she’s lazy’ and there may be an appelative dimension if saying it was to say to the hearer ‘Go get her.’ An utterance (who says that?) can have an aspect of commanding behavior.
This think stretching the definition of ‘defensive weapons’ to absurdity is all about smothering this invasion with a pillow. Stop hitting yourself! If the West were supplying ‘offensive weapons’ the label itself would invoke a different set of behaviors from the Russians.
For my part, I am convinced this invasion of Ukraine was planned and carried out ultimately to establish conditions for purge in Russia, so there is an image of ‘The United States’ that needs to obtain in the ‘Russian mind’. I think Putin always intended to lose this war, stalemated perhaps, not so much in a humiliating fashion. Being a war will set the stage for terror in Russia to give animus to finding and transporting the ‘backstabbers’ and ‘traitors’ over the next couple of years.
I am beginning to think those Winds of Change FSB letters (google if you don’t know) were forgeries to prime belief events are catastrophically different than FSB analyst predictions. The Winds of Change letters prime the idea there are ‘rebels’ at FSB. FSB analysts will welcome the purge of their own ranks. We may see Putin deposed to an island when he’s just passing the baton.
The United States and Russia are competing with a variety of audiences to control the narrative, the story of the war. I think Russia is trying to re-establish totalitarianism. I think a limited ‘war’ with the United States would provide the context for absolute compliance and terror at home. People say ‘Stalin was paranoid’ because people don’t want to assimilate and accommodate inhumanity. You can’t ‘understand it’, cognitively, in Piaget’s sense, without losing your own humanity.
I think it can be helpful to think of a totalitarian unconscious, in semiotics the langue to terror’s parole. Apply a purely scientific perspective where individual people are not important (the cells) but the state (the tissue) drives activity. FSB manages feedback and paracrine signaling. The cells of a certain region may be sloughed off, reabsorbed, sent to senescence or apoptosis. Cells are routinely sacrificed in tumor suppression.
I believe Putin views Russian society as diseased almost like a doctor would see spots of metastasis on a film. People need to open their hearts to understand that the Russian people are under terror. NY Times, STOP TALKING ABOUT POLLS OF RUSSIANS. You are priming the idea ‘Russians have opinions’. In Foucault’s panopticon, his prison design metaphor, the guard is always behind the glass in the central tower, whether that is true factitiously or not. You can’t say ‘We are an independent polling agency.’ It’s disgusting and inhumane.
cazador
@bjacques: Thank You!
Sloane Ranger
@Jinchi: I’m certain the walkabout wouldn’t have happened if the Ukrainians had thought there was any danger to either the President or the PM. Did you notice how empty the streets around them were? I’m certain the two people they talked to were specially selected for the job and vetted to the nth degree. It wasn’t coincidence that the lady just happened to have two gifts, one for each of them!
PS – This is an observation, not a judgement. Propaganda is an important part of war, and this was a perfectly acceptable example.
cazador
@Jinchi: I think that is actually what Ukraine’s government/military want; to prove that they have absolute control of their capital. Also, an assassination of the UK PM would probably be foolhardy, even by Russian standards, because of the likelihood of dragging the UK into the conflict further.
charon
@wetzel:
That seems unlikely, incompatible with the initial attempt to capture Hostomel airport and then the TV facilities in Kyiv. My guess is that Putin is just winging it now, making it up as he goes along.
Mike in NC
Harpoon missiles are still around
Mike in NC
Are Harpoon missiles still around? They were widespread on US Navy warships when I was active 40 years ago. Thought they were replaced by Tomahawks.
charon
@charon:
I know this seems pretty silly to us but apparently in Russia’s culture having something to brag about by May 9 is really important, Putin really needs something accomplished by then, hence the rush to send unready units into battle in the east.
Ella in New Mexico
@lee:
We made terrible mistakes and many bad choices after 9/11 which was a never before seen assault on American soil. But we did not go to war with the purposeful intent of the targeting and annihlation of innocent civilians, wonton commission of war crimes, or the rape of women and infants in order to take total power in another country because “they had no right to exist”.
You may argue the semantics of the events of the Afghanistan/Iraq wars, but the truth is they were very, very much different in a multitude of ways, including Russia having absolutely no provocative threat whatsover in Ukraine not of its own leader’s imagination.
We are absolutely correct in our judgement and criticism of Russia and should be doing everything in our power to stop them.
O. Felix Culpa
@charon: Yes, May 9th is an important date for Putin, and he wants to brag about something on Victory Day. It’s not clear what that will turn out to be in reality, though.
YY_Sima Qian
@EZSmirkzz: This is fulfilling a long standing order from Serbia (from 2020), & the HQ-22 (or more precisely, its exports model the FK-3) has already sold to other countries (Myanmar, Thailand, Turkmenistan). I am not entirely sure the system is actually compatible w/ the Russian IADS network. IIRC, what the Ukrainian military has been able to destroy or capture are Russian tactical AD equipment (such as Tunguskas, Pantsirs, Tors & Buks), not theater level AD equipment such as the S300s. I don’t think Russia is facing shortage of theater level AD. In any case, what the PLAAF transports delivered is about a battalion’s worth of FK-3 SAMs, or 2 – 3 batteries w/a associated radars. That is a drop in the ocean compared to what Russia is fielding.
So why is the China flying military transports to deliver the equipment to Serbia? Unknown. One possibility is that NATO/EU countries has taken askance to allow Chines military equipment to be shipped to Serbia by rail. Another possibility is that the usual air freight outfits that service such contracts are based out of Russia & Ukraine, & both are busy w/ other things right now. Yet another is that NATO leadership has been making noises about enhancing partnerships in the “Indo-Pacific” in response to China’s rise, & China has take the opportunity to show that two can play at this game, in a not too provocative way (transports are not frontline combat aircraft, & theater SAMs are now “defensive”).
The reason Serbia chose Chinese ware is because the US specifically warned the country from purchasing the S300 system from Russia back in 2020, much in the same way the US warned India & Turkey from purchasing the S400 system. If Serbia for some reason gifts or sells the FK-3 to Russia (I can’t see the country sticking its neck out that far), it will still have to close the gap in capability.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico:
While I agree with the thrust of your post, and also believe that the sins of the past should not prevent a country from doing what is right now, I would argue that W’s Iraq War fits in the category you cite above. All the more reason to rectify our prior wrong-doing by helping Ukraine and condemning Russia’s murderous enterprise.
EZSmirkzz
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m saying Russia has already sold beau coup tactical gear such as you mention to Serbia and other nations which they can buy back to resupply their gear.
I seriously doubt the Russians are selling any weaponry to anyone since they are at war. Serbia has tactical fear, China has empty airplanes in Serbia and Russia has need for the gear in Serbia. Russia pays China to pick up the gear, and buys other gear from China to deliver to Serbia. China saves face.
Russia, China and assorted other allies of Russia can play this game of orderly avoiding sanctions all day long.
We seem to forget that other nations may not like the USA as much as they like Russia. Serbia being a case in point. Most American commentary has been gloating over Russian ineptitude and weakness, or glowering denunciations of western media ignoring Ukrainian false flags, yada yada, America should look at current war crimes in mirror etc.
All I’m saying is be here now.
YY_Sima Qian
@EZSmirkzz: What I think you are suggesting seems awfully convoluted, & at the end of the day, how much materiale can 6 transports actually carry? Not enough to make any difference.
J R in WV
The visuals of War Crimes don’t pop up for me, some security setting I set months or years ago keep twitter images/videos from rolling, which is a good thing. Text descriptions are way more than enough to be revolting. Hope war criminals are taken into custody, tried, convicted, and sentences executed promptly. Knowing that they are facing that legal process would be a large part of the punishment, expecting the civil/criminal process to grind one into dust.
Hard to believe the institutional cruelty of the Soviet/Russ draft, with torture randomly disposed upon newly drafted men, no wonder they commit war crimes, they commit crimes against their fellow draftees all the time, no war necessary. But the facts are what they are.
And thanks again to Adam for his work analyzing the process of the war in Ukraine. Trained or not, must be hard to deal with this kind of data.
Ella in New Mexico
@O. Felix Culpa:
I think what we did after 9/11 was actually a much more complicated, although I will admit I come from a more hawkish point of view than many given my close association with a lot of military and DOD professionals in my family tree ;-). A portion of it was justifiable from a national security point of view, and we had the support of a vast majority of the world, at least in the beginning. We forget how traumatized and terrified we were of ISIS and Osama Bin Ladin and random acts of destruction against targets in the west that were taking place back then and in the years leading up to those planes crashing into the Twin Towers.
Putin had absolutely none of that. NONE.
And yes, I totally agree there is so much I wish we had not done or ended up being stuck doing thanks to the Bush Administration’s exploitation of 9/11 (including what they shoved onto the shoulders of the Obama administration which gave him some very bad options that to this day make young people decry that “both sides are just as bad, Obama droned weddings”) but don’t forget that a large number of very reasonable and intelligent experts on our side of the aisle could see that once we went in, we were responsible for cleaning up our mess. That it took 20 years is horrible, disgusting and a war like that should never happen again.
But you’re absolutely right when you say its why its more important than ever to do the RIGHT thing now. This is no time for Glenn Greenwald “whataboutism”, its time to correct our mistakes.
wetzel
@charon:
I don’t understand why this is inconsistent? To re-establish terror in Russia and carry out a purge, I see two necessary conditions: genocide in Ukraine and a stalemated war with the West. The battlefield defeats are unfortunate, but the plan is moving forward I think. Defeat in Ukraine actually motivate Russia to purge itself of the backstabbers and traitors who let it happen, even if not directly, those who were under the influence of decadent Western ideas who weakened Russia’s resolve.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico: A quick note because I’m working in the garden. First, I appreciate your contextual response. Second, I agree that attacking Afghanistan, which had harbored bin Ladn and al Qaeda, had merit after 9/11. Iraq, on the other hand, had none.
charon
@Ella in New Mexico:
Relevant to that, Saddam and Osama were enemies, trashing Saddam did nothing against Osama or Isis
Iraq was a pretext for the long-standing PNAC lust to take out Iraq and Iran.
lee
This story is really amazing if true.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/09/ukrainian-commandos-riding-in-speedboats-captured-a-high-tech-russian-radar-vehicle/
The humint the UA DoD (or MoD) gets must be just incredible.
EZSmirkzz
@YY_Sima Qian: 132 X 6 =792 tons. Awfully convoluted? You red team the situation, you’re the Rooskies, what would you do to win? How would you adapt and overcome?
No psyops allowed. Nothin’s falling off of the moon. Field manuals allowed. Alcohol extremely discouraged.
Ella in New Mexico
@O. Felix Culpa: absolutely agree 100%
Enjoy the gardening! We’re working on raised veggie beds but the dust and wind knocked the fun out of it lol
@charon:
Those elements and their actors in the Bush Administration should have been far, far more harshly dealt with, some even criminally and I totally agree on this. From the first days when they announced their intentions it was obvious that the Iraq invasion was a total fraud and a waste of lives and resourcesn which got us mired down in Hell for decades.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico: Heh. At the risk of turning this into another garden thread, I completed my designated tasks and then took shelter inside. The wind and dust are terrible in NNM too. Not my favorite time of year. Good luck with your raised beds!
YY_Sima Qian
@EZSmirkzz: The Y-20 can “only” carry 66 metric tons of cargo. 180 metric tons is the take off weight. I don’t know where you got 132 tons. 6 x 66 tons gets you 6 main battle tanks, or 9.2K 155 mm howitzer shells (projectiles only, half of you have to include propellant bags). Like I said, a drop in the ocean.
Your premise is that Russia is running out of materiale, I don’t think we have seen any evidence of that. Running out of personnel willing to fight? Possible.
EZSmirkzz
@YY_Sima Qian: I stand corrected on the cargo capacity. The article reported four aircraft not six.
Russia’s guesstimated list of equipment
or here