Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

So many bastards, so little time.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

The revolution will be supervised.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

In my day, never was longer.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War For Ukraine Day 148: Your Daily Patron!

War For Ukraine Day 148: Your Daily Patron!

by | 65 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Since things are a bit discombobulated around here right now I’d rather not spend an hour and a half drafting out an update if it might be going poof. So I’m just going to do a Patron updated for you all.

There’s nothing new on his official Twitter feed, but there is a new video on his official TikTok:

@patron__dsns

Як вам такий шейх?😏 #песпатрон #патрондснс #славаукраїні

♬ Arabian nights sped up – Sage and lunar have my heart<3

The caption translates as:

How do you like such a sheikh? 😏 #pespatron #patrondsns #славаукраїни

And the first official comment translates as:

Patron_official · Creator

Sheikh Patron is looking for a wife. So girls, shoot duets! I will post the ones that fall into my heart on my Instagram😌

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  3. 3.

    planetjanet

    So great to see you back!  What a great speech from Mrs. Zelenskyy today.  So sad that her son now wants to learn how to shoot a rifle.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    I understand not wanting to go for a whole post. I did want to highlight this bit from Zelenskyy’s address tonight:

    Against the background of such regular military-political and diplomatic activity, it was a little strange to hear today an old-new fake of russian propaganda about me. That I am allegedly in an intensive care unit, that Ruslan Stefanchuk is allegedly performing the duties of the head of state. Well, what can I say…Earlier, almost every week, russian propagandists and officials spread fakes that I allegedly fled somewhere from Ukraine or that I allegedly did not fulfill my duties. Then it all stopped. And here such primitive things are thrown in again. It seems that the occupiers are even running out of ammunition of lies – they are unable to come up with anything new.

    LOL. So in addition to being evil, the russians are also stone cold idiots.

  7. 7.

    Spanky

    @Medicine Man: There aren’t a whole lot of A10s left. Drones have been highly effective, and don’t require all the support the A10 needs. I doubt you’ll see this happen.

  9. 9.

    Mallard Filmore

    Hi Adam, since you did not put up a full post, I don’t feel guilty plopping this message here.  I just finished watching this YouTube video about the missing Secret Service text messages …
    link: https://youtu.be/slsIaif4tSE
    title: “Lawrence: James Murray Is The Problem At The Secret Service”

    First a bit of fluff.  In August 1967, postgraduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell recorded data from a new experimental radio telescope [1].  She wrote up her part of a paper about what all those signals meant.  Then at the end, in a footnote, she described an anomalous spike that shows up in the data every 1.33 seconds.  Huh, just a little insignificant mystery that led to the study of Pulsars, Quasars, Black Holes, … and it all started as a small footnote.

    And so with the reign of Trump.  So many big crimes that it takes a professional team to catalog them all.  Surrounded by countless small anomalies, each is easy to ignore but each one proving to be its own bottomless rabbit hole.

    The thing I find so disturbing, is that going down any one of these little rabbit holes is proving to be so freaking productive.  There aren’t ANY duds.  For instance, the missing SS texts … such a small thing. Who really cares?  WRONG!  Even a surface investigation, such as shown by Lawrence O’Donnell in the video, is producing an explosion of new scandals.

    How could one incompetent spray tanned buffoon so completely shatter the government of the USA in such a short time?  The rot went so deep, so fast, so comprehensively.  It is absolutely staggering.  I’m slipping into conspiracy territory here.  Surely Trump must have had some top level professional help from Putin.

    Was it simply a matter of blind luck that Putin’s feet of clay crumbled before our own?

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#History_of_observation

    DHS has launched criminal probe into destruction of Jan. 6 Secret Service text messages, sources say
    https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142945672

     

    And just because, here are two vids about future wars:
    https://youtu.be/9fa9lVwHHqg “Slaughterbots” (robot dog)
    https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216952822 “First the Oohs and Aahs, then the Running and Screaming” (swarm)

  10. 10.

    Spanky

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not disparaging the Warthog! I doubt the US would let them go. Especially since Ukraine is already trained and successful on the much cheaper drones.

  11. 11.

    lee

    I’m glad this is early. I’m usually sound asleep when these post so I never get to ask any questions.

    Any ideas on what happened to the Russian VDV? I can’t find anything solid.

    Any idea on how much pressure was put on countries to not enter on either side? Belarus seemed all but a done deal. Was there too much internal unrest?

    I really appreciate reading the update first thing in the morning (like 5am central)

    Thanks!

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    There’s a race to see whether the west or Russia run out of stock first. Neither can produce high-tech weaponry at a pace matching the burn rate occurring in Ukraine; Russia’s use of “dumb” missiles and bombs can destroy cities and kill civilians, they seem not to benefit the military campaign.

    Vlad’s broad-brush invasion goals seem unlikely to vary but is there a sliver of though within him that this might not be the legacy he desires? In February I naively believed this would have come to a conclusion by now. Today I can see it slogging on for years.

  14. 14.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    @Spanky: Do not disparage the Warthog.  Best thing the Air Force ever did.

    The counter argument is that portable shoulder fired anti aircraft weaponry has made the slow flying A10 very vulnerable. The A10 was a marvelous weapon but its time has ended, just as the the rifled musket of long ago is no longer viable

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    @trollhattan: It’s not V.V. Putin’s invasion goals, it is russia’s goals. Read the statements of Lavrov or Medvedev – they want to eliminate Ukraine as a nation and a people.

    This is a nation committing genocide, it is not one man.

  17. 17.

    Jay

    @lee:

    On the VDV,

    In late April, Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev reported that Russia had lost “almost 90% of its best paratroopers”.[59] A large number of helicopters were shot down by Ukrainian defenses and the paratroopers were stranded without armored vehicles or air support.[60] In early May, the UK MoD stated that the VDV units and other elite forces had suffered high losses and that it would “probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.”[61] On June 18, ISW reported that Colonel-General Andrey Serdyukov, Commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, was fired due to mass casualties among Russian paratroopers.[62][better source needed]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Airborne_Forces

    From what I understand the surviving VDV  have been parcelled out as light infantry.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @Gin & Tonic:  Agreed, but who has the power and willingness to counter Putin?  Last winter all manner of speculation had someone–generals, Duma officials, random bartenders–taking him out to end the madness. Russian crickets, and on we go.

  21. 21.

    The Pale Scot

    A-10s are a dumb idea. Proper close in ground support requires real time intelligence and C&C, and most important, experienced onsite ground controllers that can figure out the ingress and egress paths. That needs years to work out, like carrier ops.

    Give ’em to the Marines, the experts at ground support

  29. 29.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jay:

    Russian Paras aren’t crack troops like the 101AB or the French 11th Parachute Brigade. They are thugs whose job is to show up quickly and break heads during domestic disturbances. They are not equipped to do what 101 or the 11th or able to do. They are chosen because they are big and intimidating, not because they are excellent soldiers

  34. 34.

    Medicine Man

    @Gin & Tonic: And they did about as well against armed people determined to fight back as the Praetorian Guard used to against frontier legions.

  35. 35.

    Jay

    In 2017 the USAF announced that the existing fleet of A-10’s will be kept in service “indefinitely”.

    Basically, it was designed to survive in a high threat environment while providing CAS. It was designed to survive gun AA, SAM’s and Manpads.

    The USAF made the decision because there is nothing in the inventory or pipeline that can do the same job.

  37. 37.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Hey, didn’t you ask about “together to victory” last night? I saw it late, and saw that somebody else answered, then the site went into lockdown. But your translation was correct. Разом до перемоги is a very common phrase.

  39. 39.

    Jay

    @The Pale Scot:

    the VDV are an “elite” formation. Their training and equipment is amongst the best in RU Forces. In exercises they have successfully done record altitude HALO drops in the High Arctic, including artillery and light mechanized equipment.

    On their second try, they took and secured Hostomel  Airport, but couldn’t hold it, because heavier armed relief columns never arrived.

    as we have seen in North America, ( SWAT Teams and no knock warrants),

    Regular Misuse of “Elite” formations quickly creates internal rot, and years of deployment against “rag tag” opponents, isn’t the same thing as deployment against near peer opponents.

  40. 40.

    Anyway

    OT: Exciting evening at the World Track and Field Championships in Eugene OR. US men got the first 4 spots in the 200m with Noah Lyles running a blistering pace. 1-2 for the Jamaican women. Great races for an appreciative crowd in Eugene

  42. 42.

    Redshift

    @lee:

    Belarus seemed all but a done deal. Was there too much internal unrest?

    Lukaschenko has spent a long time doing this dance with Russia, being just good enough as a partner that they don’t try to annex Belarus, but not doing anything that makes his rule less stable. I’m sure the protests were part of it, but I doubt he’d send troops for anything but joining a victory parade, if there had been one.

  43. 43.

    Redshift

    On the specific topic of Adam’s post, I have to say that the slightly slo-mo Patron clip at the beginning of the video (which has appeared in several) produces a bit of an uncanny valley effect for me.

  46. 46.

    Steve in the ATL

    @JCJ: ugh you totally don’t get labor law!  Union asks for something; management responds “you will get nothing and like it!”

  47. 47.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jay:

    In exercises they have successfully done record altitude HALO drops in the High Arctic, including artillery and light mechanized equipment.

    Scripted show ops, no opposition. The Iraqi Republican Guards were a fearsome force according to Centcom, how many of those guys made it home? The VDV, according to US sources in real life, has the wrong equipment mix to be shock troops, like the 101 and the 11th.

  50. 50.

    Steve in the ATL

    @JCJ: I may or may not have used those exact words to a group of steel workers earlier today….

  51. 51.

    Jay

    @The Pale Scot:

    Soviet/RU paratroop doctrine is not NATO doctrine.

    The Soviets/RU use para’s like Arnhem. Take, hold, get reinforced by heavier combined armour forces.

    NATO uses paras as a Rapid Reaction Force, and they almost never jump, but instead are flown in on transports and deploy outwards.

  52. 52.

    The Pale Scot

    There is a video from RU TV showing a family who received a check from the government for the death of their son in UAK. They showed the nice new car they bought with the money, saying they bought it to honor their son who always wanted a car like that.

    WTF?

    I figured out how to use Twitter without an account, you have to turn off Javascript, scroll down and read slowly, when you see blank space appearing at the bottom of the screen, turn JS back on and scroll slightly up, then turn JS off. It takes some practice, but it works

     

    From Kamil Galeev

    https://twitter.com/kamilkazani

    • Unthinkably high monetary compensations of a size absolutely unprecedented in the entire previous history of Russia – that’s the elephant in the room ignored so often when discussing the passivity of the families. That’s a lucrative business. The end

    •I would even say that now families are incentivized to send their members to war, ideally the most useless ones, who would not earn much (or have no job at all). If you think in financial terms, they can sell a commodity of zero or negative value for a far above market price

    • It’s delusional to discuss public attitude towards the war ignoring how lucrative it is not only for soldiers but also for their families. Soldiers can easily earn 5-8 average regional pay checks per months. Should they be killed, family can get 315 average paychecks. A fortune

    • Average salary in the Volgograd oblast is about 38 000 rubles. So 12 million is 315 average monthly salaries (median is lower). In other words, the coffin money amount to 26 average yearly salaries in Volgograd region. Average guy will never ever earn that much money in his life

    • That’s something that misses from most of discussions. Compensations for soldiers KIA in Ukraine are huge. They are absolutely enormous by the standards of poor Russian province. 12 million rubles is the entire fortune for Volgograd

    It’s Darwinism, get rid of the schnucks. Except RU no longer has the population to spare to be doing this shit

  53. 53.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jay:

    Nobody jumps anymore. Who do think would win,  the 101AB against the VDV on a level playing field with a standard equipment load?

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @The Pale Scot:

    as we have seen in Ukraine, 101AB.

    decades of corruption, misuse, abuse, institutionalizeation,  lack of training have “gutted”  what passes for “elite” units in Russia.

    In Canada, for the Regular Forces, you don’t even get to jump out of a plane in your first 2 years. The RU has 2nd year conscripts acting as Paras.

  56. 56.

    glc

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:  I’m not sure whether you’re expressing disagreement or incomprehension. If the latter: the sentiments expressed at #19 seem to me the line that Russian propaganda takes, but divorced from reality.  If the former: noted.

  57. 57.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Bill Arnold: I really don’t know what to believe.  Today’s Republicans, even the good ones, have closed their eyes to snatching babies from refugees.

    Indifferent to turning elementary school children heads into pink mist.

    God’s own political party flat out depends on putting one’s hand on the Bible, looking your Lord in the eye, and then lying like Hell.

    They have accepted government Death Panels deciding that some pregnant women, who have done nothing illegal, must die.

    I’m too stunned to know what to believe.

  58. 58.

    N M

    @Steve in the ATL: Are there even unions in Germantown, WI?  That is one beet red “bedroom community,” in beet red Washington County, represented in congress by the loathsome Glenn Grothman.  The residents are nearly all Trumpists, RonJonites and Standing-with-Walker-istas – the “crazification factor 27%” – but like enriched Uranium (or meth); Washington County went nearly 70/30 for Trump, Trump’s largest margin of victory in the state (for counties with >25k residents).  As a former resident in my youth, I am shocked there’s a union in spitting distance.  I thought such mythical labor organizations could not exist outside the Dane County reality distortion field, like finding a wood nymph in a Superfund site…

  59. 59.

    Steve in the ATL

    @N M: there is definitely one there. Perhaps “unions” plural is an overstatement, but all I need is one to start billing!

  60. 60.

    Spadizzly

    @Gin & Tonic:  That was me, de-lurking for the first time, and my apologies if I stepped on a question that was meant for you, але ми переможемо москалів!!

  61. 61.

    Jinchi

    @The Pale Scot: ​
     They showed the nice new car they bought with the money, saying they bought it to honor their son who always wanted a car like that.

    I saw that. It read like absurdly written Kremlin propaganda. I particularly liked the detail that he specifically wanted “a white car” like that. Because what young single guy doesn’t want the blandest, most common color car to show off to his friends.

    Now if the grieving parents had driven off in a decked out red two-seater, with a racing spoiler on the back and flames painted on the sides, I might have believed them.

  62. 62.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Spadizzly: No harm, no foul. I usually go to sleep fairly early in the thread, so no problem with somebody else answering a question.

    Смерть ворогам!

  65. 65.

    glc

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Not intended to suggest “parroting.” I suppose it can be read that way. I assume G & T has, and can express, his own views, and if I didn’t think that I wouldn’t engage with them.

    @Gin & Tonic: I believe we generally have access to the same information. I  have some rather specific interests in human rights issues (with a fairly narrow focus), but my own emphasis is more on Turkish issues. I think it is widely understood that there is an opposition in Russia, one requiring a good deal of courage. More than I would have in comparable circumstances.

    The sort of thing I pay attention to is typified by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLXDuLnOv5I

    I can’t recommend it to others as it is long and rather limited in scope.  It’s just an indication of where my own focus tends to be. From where I sit, the comment seems like a slur on the opposition and I felt an obligation to register an objection. Preferably briefly, which I’m now failing to do.

    I imagine Adam has definite views on this as well and perhaps we’ll hear about them at some point.

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