Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Bark louder, little dog.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

I really should read my own blog.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Come on, man.

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

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Not all heroes wear capes.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War For Ukraine Day 167: Crimea Goes Boom!

War For Ukraine Day 167: Crimea Goes Boom!

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Tonight we’re going to focus on Crimea.

Earlier today a Russian ammo depot blew up in Crimea.

Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier this evening, which touches on this. Video below, English transcript after the jump (emphasis mine):

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

Today, there is a lot of attention to the topic of Crimea. And rightly so. Because Crimea is Ukrainian, and we will never give it up.

We will not forget that the Russian war against Ukraine began with the occupation of Crimea.

Russia has turned our peninsula, which has always been and will be one of the best places in Europe, into one of the most dangerous places in Europe. Russia brought large-scale repression, environmental problems, economic hopelessness and war to Crimea. War.

Perhaps historians will one day determine how many people were killed as a result of Russia’s use of Crimea for terror. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? From Ukraine and Georgia to Syria and more remote regions.

The presence of Russian occupiers in Crimea is a threat to the entire Europe and to global stability. The Black Sea region cannot be safe as long as Crimea is occupied. There will be no stable and lasting peace in many countries on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea as long as Russia is able to use our peninsula as its military base.

This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – with its liberation. Today it is impossible to say when this will happen. But we are constantly adding the necessary components to the formula of liberation of Crimea.

We launched the Crimea Platform – a key diplomatic platform for the work on the liberation of Crimea. The Crimea Platform will work this year as well. We are already preparing for this summit.

The Crimean topic sounds on all international platforms where the Russian war against our state is discussed. The history of the global response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea, or rather the lack of such a response, is now one of the best arguments for strengthening sanctions against Russia. The world is beginning to recognize that it made a mistake in 2014 when it decided not to respond with full force to Russia’s first aggressive steps.

And, of course, we pay due attention to the struggle for rights and historical justice for the indigenous peoples of Ukraine – the Crimean Tatar people, Karaites and Krymchaks. Today, on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we really have something to say.

Last summer, the fundamental law on indigenous peoples of Ukraine was adopted. This law recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and representative bodies of indigenous peoples.

Ukraine is a multinational state. Various national communities have been living on our land for centuries. But most of them have experience of state formation outside of Ukraine. Our state is native to peoples whose national cultures and aspirations were formed in Crimea. Therefore, when we are working for the liberation of the peninsula, we are fighting for the restoration of the territorial integrity of our state and for the return of home to the indigenous peoples of Ukraine. I believe that it will be so. I know that we will return to the Ukrainian Crimea. And I am grateful to all our partners and international organizations that help us in this.

It is too early to disclose all the details, but this year the work of the Crimea Platform will be no less important and representative than last year, when its first summit was held in Kyiv. The format will be different, but the value will be even greater.

We are preparing new solutions for the protection and assistance in the realization of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine. We are also preparing programs for the economic recovery of our Crimea after its liberation from the occupiers.

Well, the main thing is to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, our intelligence and everyone who is fighting to liberate our land and repel the Russian colonial invasion.

From the Kharkiv region to Kherson, from Donetsk to Enerhodar, from Stanytsia Luhanska to Yalta, from Berdyansk to Novofedorivka – these are all parts of our country, this is Ukraine, which will be completely free.

Today I signed a new decree on awarding our defenders. 182 combatants were awarded state awards. The total number of awarded Ukrainian warriors has already exceeded 26,000 since February 24.

I thank everyone who defends Ukraine!

Eternal glory to all who fight for freedom!

Glory to Ukraine!

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek:

The Russians, of course, are claiming its an accident:

Well that Russian statement is no longer operable:

Also, this is important to keep in mind:

Just some very brief spot analysis. I think the Ukrainian communication strategy regarding this incident is very telling. While everyone speculates if the US or one of our NATO partners managed to ship Ukraine an ATACMS or two and no one noticed, or if this is a Ukrainian designed and built weapon as part of its munition program, or its Ukrainian partisan and/or Ukrainian SOF activity in Russian occupied Crimea, Ukraine has decided to go with a the strategic communication equivalent of the Cheshire Cat’s grin. And that’s both a good communication strategy and an effective one. Some times strategic ambivalence is the way to go.

I expect we’ll learn more in the days to come.

Your daily Patron!

Here’s a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:

@patron__dsns

Особистий простір? Ні, не чули! #песпатрон #патрондснс #славаукраїні

♬ Funny – Gold-Tiger

The caption translates as:

Personal space? No, they haven’t heard! #pespatron #patrondsns #slavaukraine

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    Well that Russian statement is no longer operable:

    Pshaw. Just a few cosmetic dents, it’ll buff out in no time and we can patch the paint and good as new!

  2. 2.

    Another Scott

    I liked the russian explanation – “Oh that?  Just an ammo dump that exploded.  No big deal.  Had nothing to do with Ukraine.”  As if ammo dumps blow up all the time for no reason and it’s no big deal.

    It’s pathological.  They seem completely unable to consider that maybe lying continuously isn’t the solution to every communications problem.

    The nearly simultaneous, spatially separated, explosions in the first tweet would seemingly be a very , very unlikely accident.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  3. 3.

    Spanky

    I’m pretty sure that aircraft damage will buff right out.

    Eta shakes fist at dmsilev.

  7. 7.

    dimmsdale

    Thanks as always for your tireless updates, Adam. On a slightly different tangent, not sure if you have any perspective to add to the big doin’s at Mar-a-Lago, but there are lots of people speculating, including many who shouldn’t, and in matters involving potential NatSec stuff, I never feel fully informed until you’ve weighed in. Thanks again.

  8. 8.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: As if ammo dumps blow up all the time for no reason and it’s no big deal.

    Given the sort of Russian maintenance that we’ve often seen since this phase of the war began, it’s not totally implausible.

    But it also fits the pattern of the Moskva sinking, where Russia decided to go with “we’re incompetent” by claiming it was a towing accident.

  9. 9.

    planetjanet

    As soon as I heard about the explosion in Crimea, I first went to Google maps to see where it was, hoping it was the Kerch Strait or Sevastopol.  Only 70 km from Sevastopol.  Then I went back to yesterday’s map by Pfarrar of the range of a HIMARS.  That had to be a bit closer.  This took some real courage.  Have to admit to feeling elated about it.

     

    ETA:  There is already a wikipedia mention of the explosion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novofedorivka

  17. 17.

    piratedan

    @RaflW: suspect that they are using the Texas fertilizer storage methodology… perhaps that is what Cornym passed along on  his July 4th visit.

  18. 18.

    Feathers

    Love the Marvin the Martian reference. Thanks for the update and glad to hear happy news.

  20. 20.

    Gin & Tonic

    There was also definite strategic communication value to doing this in broad daylight, in mid-August, when there’s a shitload of russian tourists there to see it.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dimmsdale: The DOJ sent the head of counterintelligence and export control to Mar a Lago in June of 2022, so two months ago, with several agents. They met with trump’s lawyer and were informed there was still classified documents on site. CNN has the details:

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/mar-a-lago-search-warrant-fbi-donald-trump/index.html

    Apparently 10 more boxes. Whatever the DOJ official saw or heard must have been really bad. Additionally, this is the DOJ official who gets involved if you’re worried someone was giving, trading, and/or selling classified information. If this is the case we’re most likely looking at a Middle Eastern, specifically an MBS, problem. But if Trump was selling this info or someone close to him like Jared was doing it on Trump’s behalf, I could see MBS, Bibi, Putin, MBZ, even Xi and Kim all being in play as potential parties to that kind of activity.

  23. 23.

    Bill Arnold

    For what it’s worth, that report about a Russian General threatening about mining of the Zaporizhzhia NPP may have been falsified, and that might provide some media cover for more clearly real and similar Zaporizhzhia NPP-related war crimes. Provenance of the probably-false report has not been determined. (I have not dug into this, also FWIW.) So much disinformation playing with confirmation biases!
    Aug 8, 2022, Institute for the Study of War.

    Western and Ukrainian outlets circulated a report, likely false, of a Russian general allegedly threatening to destroy Europe’s largest nuclear facility, the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), if Russia could not hold the plant.
    …
    This likely misreporting distracts from the very real risks of Russia’s militarization of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which may include mining the plant and almost certainly includes the unsafe storage of military armaments near nuclear reactors and nuclear waste storage facilities.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dimmsdale: One final point before I crash for the night: it coukd be what I wrote in my initial reply, but it could be a dozen other things too.

  29. 29.

    Carlo Graziani

    @HumboldtBlue: Pretty sure that if it had been an artillery rocket attack, we’d know from that first footage.

    That camera was pointing out of a window exactly at the right place and time of the attack. The guy (or gal) even knew to the second when to zoom in. Whoever was operating it either arranged the attack or coordinated it. And is also long-gone from that apartment, which is currently being torn apart by the Russians. The point being, however, that we would certainly have had a frame or two of the descending missiles if that had been the attack vector. Did you see them? Me neither. Probably bombs.

  31. 31.

    Lyrebird

    @Carlo Graziani: is also long-gone from that apartment

    That is what I was hoping and praying the first time I saw the video.  I hope they are far away and not recognizable in any way.

  33. 33.

    Geoduck

    @Carlo Graziani: Continuing my party-pooping, there’s already smoke blowing across the scene when the video starts, indicating there was possibly some sort of initial blast that attracted the attention of the camera-owner. But yeah, even if they weren’t expecting it, vacating the scene was probably a really good idea.

  35. 35.

    Redshift

    Tweet from earlier today from astronaut Terry Virts:

    Saky airfield in Crimea before yesterday’s attack, courtesy @apple maps. Looks like SU-24s (F-111 copy) and SU-30/33? Parked along with missiles in the open, immediately adjacent to hundreds of civilian houses. Russians should be furious at their unprofessional Air Force. pic.twitter.com/bIt3uqY4JG
    — Terry Virts (@AstroTerry) August 9, 2022

  36. 36.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Geoduck: In my opinion the smoke is coincidental. If you slow-walk the frames, the camera zoom on the exact spot of the double explosion is 1 second into the footage, while the explosions themselves occur 3 seconds in. That is not a coincidence. And there are definitely no rockets in any frame.

  38. 38.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Gin & Tonic: 

    There was also definite strategic communication value to doing this in broad daylight, in mid-August, when there’s a shitload of russian tourists there to see it.

    WTF??? The Russian government lets tourists into a war zone? Using civilians as props for home propaganda. Maybe the videos showed local tourists instead?

  39. 39.

    Ken Cox

    It appeared to me that there was a lot of smoke before the explosions. Where there’s smoke there’s usually a fire.

  40. 40.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I don’t have any experience with 152mm ammo, the Russian size, but I have worked around/carried live 127mm high explosive ammo. Some of the far more modern projectile/missile explosive devices are far more deadly than what I’ve seen but even that older stuff was not something you wanted to be on the receiving end of. Or close to if something went awry while you were carrying a high explosive shell, as you’d get about maybe a millisecond to consider what went wrong.

  41. 41.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Mallard Filmore: The Russians were not regarding Crimea as “war zone” until last week. Technically they are still not calling their “Special Military Operation” a war at all, and Crimea is supposed to be Russians’ premiers R&R spot. So all of this is a major embarrassment to Putin’s gang, and likely to provoke some kind of reaction. But, well, fuck ’em. They’re on the back foot, and wondering what’s going to hit them next, and that’s not a bad thing.

  42. 42.

    Carlo Graziani

    Also, I got distracted from noting Adam’s TWO excellent cultural references this evening. One is of course to Marvin,  who is welcome to claim Russia at any time for Mars. But the Cheshire Cat’s grin? Adam you’re a Lewis Carroll fan! Vorpal Blades will be next!

  44. 44.

    Kent

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    I love it. Ukrainians all around are fucking bosses. Case in point: This made me cackle earlier.

    I adore Patron enough that I forgive him for putting that ferkakte song in my head.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

    The Ukrainian sense of humor in the face of genocide is just breathtaking.  The absolute best in my mind was at the beginning of the war when the Ukrainian ministry of revenue put out an actual news release reassuring people that farmers who capture Russian tanks would not owe taxes on their windfall gain.  That was beyond genius.

  45. 45.

    Chetan Murthy

    this is interesting

     

    Just watched a very uncomfortable exchange on @tvrain. The anchor, Anna Mongait, was interviewing Sergei Leschenko, a former Ukrainian legislator and now an advisor to Zelensky’s office.

    It was a polite interview, but at the end something happened that made my hair stand on end. pic.twitter.com/dtxTqTUeiS
    — Ilya Lozovsky (@ichbinilya) August 8, 2022

    The UA journalist asks Leschenko about the upcoming show trial of an Azov POW, and Leschenko says he’ll watch videos of Russians getting blown up.  In the ensuing discussion, it becomes clear that L. thinks that many Ukrainians will be watching such videos, having such strong feelings about Russians, for a long, long time.  The thread is worth a read.

    It reminded me of how I feel about the MAGAts, and about the people behind them — including the Russians who backed them.

  46. 46.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Chetan Murthy: Many times since late February, I’ve had the uncomfortable dissonance between being someone who is generally anti-violence, anti-war, anti-people-being-murdered-for-any-reason…and having a disturbingly pleased response to seeing russian tanks being blown up or hearing about X number of russian invaders being killed in this or that episode. I don’t wish death on any human, but I think part of the issue here is that russians barely seem to qualify as humans anymore. (Yes, yes, I know someone will pop up to be like #notallrussians, but when we’re talking about the people in power there and the invading posses, then #yesallrussians.) Their cruelty and depravity and utter detachment from reality is impossible for my mind to reconcile with “human being.”

    I say this as a Jew who lost (distant) relatives to the Nazis: I think the way I feel about russians right now is the way I would have felt about Nazis, had I been alive back then.

    I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t like being glad when people are killed. But this is what Putin has wrought.

  48. 48.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:  And then there is the crimes Russia committed against *us*.  They declared war against *us*.  They tried to destroy *our* Republic.  And they’re still trying.  Hell, they might succeed.

    For this also, I hold grudges.  I will not forgive Russia, or Russians, for a long time.

  50. 50.

    dimmsdale

    @Adam L Silverman: Understood, and thanks for that. Easy to see how the search could have been triggered by Trump holding an auction for America’s intel and soliciting bids from everyone you named….although, as you say, could be a dozen other things.

  52. 52.

    livewyre

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: ​
    This is one I’ve been chewing on from the beginning. There are so many historical wrinkles to it that are hard to smooth out into a position that doesn’t at least itch. But here’s what I have so far, to the extent that it helps.

    What Putin and his officials seem to be aiming for is to portray the invasion of Ukraine, as well as the oppression of Russia, as a fundamentally ethnic conflict – your people versus mine, true versus fake, pure versus mixed. That way all he has to do is point at an enemy to destroy and that’s the only thing left for them to do. But like anything else he portrays, I don’t buy it.

    The reason #notallrussians became a meme is that there’s an advantage – a military advantage, a publicity advantage – in making it seem like there’s no choice but for one or the other people, root and branch, to be eliminated. They play both sides; any conflict works. That’s the same reason the Nazi party went to such lengths to portray themselves as an entire people with a whole fictional origin story. Anything to make political conflict existential and stark.

    So from where I sit, it’s imperative for us not to give into that narrative of one entire kind against another. If we let ourselves think that the whole place and everyone in it – or even everyone from it – are the source of the problem, then the only solution is to get out the knives and do some of our own. What would there be to lose at that point? Something vital, in my opinion, while we still have it.

  53. 53.

    Chetan Murthy

    @livewyre:

    So from where I sit, it’s imperative for us not to give into that narrative of one entire kind against another. If we let ourselves think that the whole place and everyone in it – or even everyone from it – are the source of the problem, then the only solution is to get out the knives and do some of our own. What would there be to lose at that point? Something vital, in my opinion, while we still have it.

    This is all well and good, once we’ve defeated the enemy, defanged the threat to our Republic.  But at the moment, the threat is live and perhaps they’re even winning.  And I can see Ukrainians having the same feelings.  I mean, if the Russians succeed in installing another Fascist at the head of our state, this country very well might be over.  The carnage would be immense.  And so *no*, I don’t think I can regard them as fellow humans, until their threat to my country, to my *family* is extinguished.

  54. 54.

    Kent

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    Many times since late February, I’ve had the uncomfortable dissonance between being someone who is generally anti-violence, anti-war, anti-people-being-murdered-for-any-reason…and having a disturbingly pleased response to seeing russian tanks being blown up or hearing about X number of russian invaders being killed in this or that episode. I don’t wish death on any human, but I think part of the issue here is that russians barely seem to qualify as humans anymore. (Yes, yes, I know someone will pop up to be like #notallrussians, but when we’re talking about the people in power there and the invading posses, then #yesallrussians.) Their cruelty and depravity and utter detachment from reality is impossible for my mind to reconcile with “human being.”

    I say this as a Jew who lost (distant) relatives to the Nazis: I think the way I feel about russians right now is the way I would have felt about Nazis, had I been alive back then.

    I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t like being glad when people are killed. But this is what Putin has wrought.

    I am fervently anti-war which is why I desperately want to see Russia utterly crushed for choosing to start a genocidal war for no reason.    I want Russia to be the new anti-war object lesson to every other country around the world who thinks about doing the same thing in this generation or the next.

  55. 55.

    livewyre

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     
    There’s no question that we’ve already been wronged, and remain under threat. Pain is pain. I don’t expect everyone to take a philosophically rigorous standpoint on the fundamental rights of whoever while we’re under that kind of duress – some definitely more urgently than others.
    In other words, as long as denying fellowship is on the “act” side of the act/essence divide and doesn’t extend to justifying said knives or other implements, then we probably broadly agree. I’m never quite clear on what “human” means in these discussions. But what has been inflicted has to be answered no matter what. We have to remain an institution of consensus, not coup.

  56. 56.

    livewyre

    @Kent: This, but crosswise: I think they’ve already been crushed, and this is what’s oozing out. Oppression begat war, which begets oppression. What we need to cut off to stop them from invading will afterward have to be rebuilt to stop yet another despot from stomping down and squeezing out even more. Longer than one war, in other words. I hope we have the endurance.​

  57. 57.

    bjacques

    I just want Russia pushed back to pre-2014 borders, their coffers drained to pay for their 8-year war of choice, and all Ukrainian prisoners and deportees returned. What lessons Putin and his cronies and supporters draw from all this is up to them.

    And if stuff blows up in Russian-occupied territories, I’ll just assume some housewife got a text from Donald Pleasance in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry…iFON!

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    The Iranian-drones-to-Russia story pops up again, in a report by CNN’s Natasha Bertrand updated 0239 November 10:

          A Russian delegation has visited an airfield in central Iran at least twice since June to inspect weapons capable drones, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and satellite imagery obtained exclusively by CNN….

    “During last several weeks, Russian officials conducted training in Iran as part of the agreement for UAV transfers from Iran to Russia,” a U.S. official told CNN. The official said that intelligence about the training had recently been declassified.

  59. 59.

    Jinchi

    In unrelated news CNN reports:

    A large fire has broken out in the Russian port of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov, near the Russia-Ukraine border.

  60. 60.

    Scott

    This jumped out at me.  And it occurred to me this is the exact opposite of what Victor Orban and the neo-fascists are preaching.

     

    Ukraine is a multinational state. Various national communities have been living on our land for centuries. But most of them have experience of state formation outside of Ukraine. Our state is native to peoples whose national cultures and aspirations were formed in Crimea. Therefore, when we are working for the liberation of the peninsula, we are fighting for the restoration of the territorial integrity of our state and for the return of home to the indigenous peoples of Ukraine.

  62. 62.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Frankensteinbeck: Even when the truth would be better, they lie.

    It’s what they said about Bill Clinton (& likely every other Democrat since time immemorial): He never told the truth when a lie would do.

    As always with those mooks, accusation -> projection -> confession.

  63. 63.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Mallard Filmore: WTF??? The Russian government lets tourists into a war zone?

    Club Ded. Beach Blanket Bullseye. The last wild fling of a collapsing imperium (or so one can hope).

  64. 64.

    Chetan Murthy

    @livewyre: I agree with everything you wrote, but I’ll just note that this sort of “we’ll need the endurance to help them rebuild afterwards” is something we never offer to the brown and black people we crush under our bootheels.  They’re expected to make do with their own resources, and when they fail, we blame them for it.  It’s a kind of white privilege, even in international relations.

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