Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it’s a trap.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 213: A Brief Update

War for Ukraine Day 213: A Brief Update

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It’s Rosh HaShana, and while I’m not super observant, I’m going to just do a very brief update for you all tonight.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:

Ukrainians!

Today we have great news. Maryana Mamonova, a combat medic, defender of Azovstal whom we freed from Russian captivity gave birth to a daughter. I sincerely congratulate Maryana from the bottom of my heart and wish the girls only the best – peace and victory.

This is another proof that life always triumphs over any evil. And evil under the Russian flag is no exception to this rule.

Now all our state structures, which are needed, are fully working to help our released warriors. Medical aid, social, legal… Treatment, rehabilitation, restoration of documents, bank cards, housing, etc.

Rustem Umerov, pursuant to my instruction, visited our commanders from “Azovstal” in Turkey today. He checked their living conditions – the conditions are comfortable. The boys are provided with everything they need. Rustem controls that. Soon we will ensure that the boys meet their relatives and friends.

This week, on Tuesday, I am to receive a clear plan for each of those released – how their normal lives will be restored. Just as the process of releasing our heroes from captivity, this process of normalization is managed by Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office. He is also assisted by Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as our ombudsman, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service, etc.

I would like to emphasize: work is ongoing regarding the next exchanges. No matter how difficult it may be, we must free all our people, all Ukrainians. We do not forget about anyone.

But we should still remember: it is not easy, it requires the efforts of many people, and it is directly related to the situation on the frontline. Our active actions include, in particular, the increase of those whom we can exchange. The more Russian soldiers are detained by Ukrainian forces, the faster we will be able to free our warriors, our heroes from Russian captivity.

Fierce fighting takes place in many sections of the front with a total length of more than 2,000 kilometers. This is the Donetsk region, this is our Kharkiv region, Kherson region, as well as Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia regions. We have positive results in several directions.

And no matter what happens this week in Russia, no matter what steps the terrorist state plans – political or military – the tasks of our state, the tasks of Ukraine, cannot change: we are fighting for life and freedom for all Ukrainians.

This week there will be a new wave of our diplomatic activity. My new appeals to the political, business and student communities abroad. Our needs, our positions, our view on how to stop Russian evil will be heard everywhere in the world, absolutely everywhere.

We will also make a special emphasis. Emphasis on the fact that criminal mobilization is used by Russia not only to prolong the suffering of people in Ukraine and to further destabilize the world, but also to physically exterminate men – representatives of indigenous peoples who live in the territories controlled so far, temporarily, by the Russian Federation.

The situation in the occupied Crimea is catastrophic. The information about the Crimean Tatar people is fully confirmed: most of the mobilization letters are given there specifically to qırımlılar. This is another element of Russia’s policy of genocide, another reason for the immediate and tough reaction of the whole world.

The same is happening on the territory of Russia itself. This is a deliberate imperial policy. This is a blow to the peoples of, for example, Dagestan and the entire Caucasus, to the indigenous peoples of Siberia and other territories.

And I want to repeat it once again.

Again in Russian, specially for Russian “comrades”.

And this is not a kind of collection of peoples in Russia, not badges or flags somewhere on the map, no. These are not candy wrappers – these are real people.

And only now you are beginning to hear it, yet still not everywhere.

We see that people, in particular, in Dagestan, began to fight for their lives. We see that they are beginning to understand that this is a question of their lives. Why should their husbands, brothers, sons die in this war? In a war that one man wants. In a war against our people, on our land. He does not send his children to war.

Fight to ensure that your children are not sent to die – everyone who can be taken by this criminal Russian mobilization. Because if you come to take the lives of our children – I will tell you as a father – we will not let you go alive.

I want to emphasize once again: there is a way out. Do not submit to criminal mobilization. Flee. Or surrender to Ukrainian captivity at the first opportunity. I urge all our friends in the information field to spread this appeal. The more citizens of the Russian Federation at least try to protect their own lives, the sooner this criminal war of Russia against the people of Ukraine will end.

I am thankful to everyone who fights and works for our victory! A difficult week is ahead. A difficult path. Difficult challenges. But ahead is our victory. And it is inevitable.

This evening, I want to congratulate the Ukrainian Jewish community and all the Jews of the world on Rosh Hashanah. May all prayers for victory, all prayers for peace for Ukraine be heard.

Keep defending Ukraine!

Keep defending life!

Glory to Ukraine!

This is the medic that President Zelenskyy is referring to in his nightly address:

Just in time for Rosh HaShana:

Here is the British MOD’s assessment for today. It appears the mappers were given the day off to prepare for the Jewish New Year…

 

Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent updates regarding the situations in Lyman and Kherson:

Apparently it’s NASAMS O’Clock too!

There was speculation that the Russians used a chloropicrin grenade. Here’s CBRN subject matter expert Dan Kaszeta debunking that and explaining that it was a CS grenade. Which is banned under the Geneva Convention:

Several people were asking about the rumors and speculation that Xi has been deposed in a coup. As I wrote last night, that’s all garbage. Here’s a great thread explaining how this all got pushed on social media:

Yes, you read that right, that big node on the upper left is an account named “loliwifegroomer”. I’m sure he’s quite nice…

Last substantial item tonight:

For the last time: one conflict at a time is all I can handle with my current schedule!

There is actual footage of the launch:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:

@patron__dsns

Мрія кожного українця👹🇺🇦 #славаукраїні #песпатрон #патрондснс

♬ suono originale – Drill💙🔥

The caption translates as:

The dream of every Ukrainian👹🇺🇦 #SlavaUkraini #Patrondog #PatronDSNS

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  1. 1.

    Anonymous At Work

    Question: Since the new and incoming Russian forces will probably have a high rate of surrenders, can Ukraine absorb them with food, warmth and shelter?  I hate to be over-thinking it but could Putin be rounding up undesirables (especially protestors and non-Russian ethnic minorities) to force Ukrainians to waste resources on them?

  2. 2.

    Urza

    @Anonymous At Work: I was wondering about that myself.  Its a massive number of prisoners to feed, house and guard.  Can they pass off prisoners of war to another country legally?  If they can something should be setup ASAP.  If not how many guards do you need to imprison 100k Russians?  I suggest women guards as a possible humiliation tactic for the ubermanly Russians but someone else may come up with issues with that.

  3. 3.

    Mallard Filmore

    From https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217192106
    “Trent Telenko on Russian Mobilization and the Coming Winter.”

    Trent isn’t always right but early last March he was the only person writing about how terrible Russian logistics were. There weren’t many back then who thought Ukraine stood a chance in the war and he was one.
    I think he’s spot on about the disaster the mobilization will prove to be and the prospects of the Russian army this winter. Definitely worth a read:

    Link to tweet

  5. 5.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The whole brouhaha over “China Coup” just encapsulates the sorry moment we are in. There weren’t even any circumstantial evidence (however threadbare) to suggest anything unusual has been happening, it was invented purely on internet. Every China scholar I follow, & quite a few western journalists in China, wasted the weekend responding to inquiries about the “coup”.

    Says a lot about the destructive power of modern social media, & Twitter’s recommendation algorithm specifically.

    BTW, the Jennifer Zeng referenced seems to work for Falun Gong associated media, or at least Falun Gong adjacent. She seemed to amplified the rumors to gain followings to her YouTube channel, claiming to plan to analyze the developing situation, then backed off of those claims & pivoted to trying to get more audience to her YouTube channel, ostensibly to analyze the apparently false rumors. Not a good faith actor.

  6. 6.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    Because if you come to take the lives of our children – I will tell you as a father – we will not let you go alive.

    When I watched his address this afternoon, after that line, I sat back and said “Dang” out loud. He knows how to drive home the point, doesn’t he?

    Love seeing him on that JPost cover, though the article itself bugged me a bit. But I am somewhat over-sensitive, as we all know around here. Case in point: why did Pfarrer spell his first name that way?

    Thank you as always, Adam. L’shana tova tikatevu to you and my other Heebs among the jackals. Hoping for a better year ahead for all of us than the one we leave behind.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    Sunday’s ABC network news showed a few thousand people arrested in several cities in Russia, while up to 250K men have fled the country to avoid the draft. Also another night of protests and crackdowns in Iran. If the hurricane moving towards Tampa does a lot of damage/casualties, it could impact the reelection chances of Ron DeSadist. Just another boring Sunday night.

  11. 11.

    YY_Sima Qian

    I also read that the reference model for a strategic rival in the minds of many Indian nationalists is Pakistan, which has suffer numerous coups backed by the military, which they are now wish casting onto China (leaving aside the possibility that a military coup ousting Xi would produce a more hawkish replacement). Apparently the Indian media most energetically playing up “China Coup” angle has been BJP’s propaganda arm, to the point of un-ironically quoting twitter posts by Der Spiegel’s correspondent in Beijing, failing to note the obvious sarcasm.

    One China-focused analyst quipped that Falun Gong propaganda has taken away their sh*t-posting privileges.

  12. 12.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Back to the topic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s partial mobilization will not change the balance on the battlefield. Ignoring the quality of the troops for the moment, Ukraine can alway draft more w/ a full mobilization. To implement a full mobilization in Russia (especially the ethnic Russian dominated regions) will probably spell the end of Putin’s regime, based on reactions to the partial mobilization to date.

  15. 15.

    Starfish

    @YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for weighing in on this. I was wondering if you would see the Juicers in some of the other threads asking about it. I cautioned people on trusting journalism from countries that they do not know well.

    There were also things spreading on Twitter saying a woman in one video from a protest had died in Iran. BBC Persian debunked that today. The woman who died was a completely different woman.

  17. 17.

    ema

    For a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear presentation, using any available journalistic tool.

    and

    For a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, using any available journalistic tool.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mallard Filmore: Telenko has been repeatedly debunked and is  2020 election truther.

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64287.html

    Millions of 2020 Votes Will Be Stolen – How To Tell If Yours Is One

    by Trent Telenko

    The Democratic Party’s vote-by-mail scheme (which is NOT the same as absentee ballots) and, worse, its previous and expanded “vote-harvesting” scheme, will steal millions of votes to re-elect Trump, and for Republican candidates, in the 2020 election. This is NOT counting fraudulent votes. This is stealing Republican votes by changing them to Democratic votes. Here is how they do it, and how you can determine if your vote is stolen. If this clear signal that your vote has been stolen appears, do not walk away quietly. FIGHT BACK! How to do that is also explained.

    More insanity at the link.

  21. 21.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I don’t know about people from other countries, but it seems like Americans really have a bug up their butt, refusing to pronounce names from other languages properly.  It ain’t so damn hard, and yet Americans seem to be shite at it.

  24. 24.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Starfish: Yes, political turmoil, socioeconomic stress, anti-establishment populism, & generous funding thrown in to advance geopolitical competition, give space to all kinds of bad actors w/ cynical agendas, on all sides.

    As an example of the corrosive effect in the US:
    Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations

    Here is the Standard study referenced by the WaPo article.

    UNHEARD VOICE Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations

    People advocating for a new Cold War or intense great power competition (at least w/ China or Iran) need to appreciate the fact that such securitized competition inevitably empowers illiberal, reactionary & populist forces, often back by oligarchic capital that can profit from such competition, on both sides of the conflict.  We have seen impact in China, Iran, Russia & the US. We have seen how the original Cold War negatively affected democracy, liberalism, & protection of minority rights in the US.

    One of the key justifications used by the Xi & the CCP regime for muzzling domestic dissent (or even diversity of opinion), or at least their prominent expression, is that such differing opinions provide ammunitions to “evil” foreign forces that wish China ill, & create internal divisions for these “evil” foreign forces to exploit. That has always been the justification promulgated by the regime, but after 4 years of Trump (& admittedly 2 years of Biden), the narrative is much more convincing to the population. In some of the Red Scare level of fear mongering, threat inflation & over-securitization wrt China in the US, I see the same dynamic at play.

    W/ Russia, however, Putin isn’t giving other countries much choice but to confront & at least contain him.

  26. 26.

    cintibud

     I don’t know about people from other countries, but it seems like Americans really have a bug up their butt, refusing to pronounce names from other languages properly.  It ain’t so damn hard, and yet Americans seem to be shite at it

     

    Do you think that is really an intentional disrespect as opposed to simple ignorance? Most Americans only know one language and aside from Spanish, rarely even hear any others. I know how to say Vladimir, I have no freaking idea how “Volodymyr” is pronounced and I don’t have the ability to have someone here repeat it to me multiple times while I attempt to pronounce it. The only place I might hear the correct pronunciation is on a newscast and most American broadcasters say “Vladimir”

    ETA and to further show my ignorance, I thought “Vladimir” was in reference to Putin, since I don’t recall seeing that written for Zelensky

  27. 27.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Chetan Murthy: As someone who is absolute garbage with accents*, sometimes I can understand it if the correct pronunciation uses vocal sounds that are not used in English and are tricky to say properly no matter how many times you hear them. But if one cares, one can usually at least get pretty close, and in the case of the name Volodymyr, I mean…it’s basically phonetic.

    (Someone once asked me if I’d had a bat mitzvah, and I said no, but that a part of me kind of still wants to. Except that would involve me trying to speak Hebrew in front of God and everyone, and no one on Earth or above it should be forced to listen to that.)

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud: I don’t know, but it feels intentional.  It feels like “speak English!” avant la lettre.  A recent example: have you watched the “Task and Purpose” YT videos about the RU-UA war?  The guy *gleefuily* mispronounces so egregiously (sometimes just babbling nonsense sounds) that it’s clear he’s doing it on purpose.  He just doesn’t think it matters to try to learn how to pronounce the place-names.

    All my life, I’ve watched Americans mispronounce foreign-origin names — all my life.  And growing up in Texas, a lot of them were Spanish, for which there is simply no excuse — none whatsoever.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    @cintibud: If you pronounce “Volodymyr” incorrectly, that’s understandable. If somebody who’s paid well into six figures annually to talk on TV pronounces it incorrectly that is – at the very best – laziness.

  31. 31.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @cintibud: If after this many months of the war, you still say you have no idea how to pronounce Volodymyr, then that sounds like a you problem. It is no more difficult to say than Vladimir, and unless you haven’t watched any news or any social media in the past seven months, you have absolutely heard the name said properly hundreds of times.

  32. 32.

    cintibud

    @Chetan Murthy: Again, I think I object to the blanket accusation of maliciousness  – we are not all republicans. My spanish name has been mispronounced all through my life so I often don’t even bother to correct it in causal one time encounters. Again, it’s ignorance.

  33. 33.

    Chetan Murthy

    In last night’s HIMARS o’clock thread, I posted a couple of comments with tweets from a Russian emigre’ who was tweeting angrily about CEE countries’ visa bans for Russians.  It’s a pattern I’ve noticed that it seems like these emigre’ Russians — even the “good ones” who seem to otherwise oppose Putin’s war — seem to have no ability to put themselves in the places of the citizens of CEE countries (like, FFS, the Baltic countries) and UA.

    It feels like even the liberals ones are just unable to not put their own feelings and those of Russians first.  When combined with the many reports I see of Ukrainians all over Europe being attacked just for even wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag, it’s by turns dispiriting and enraging.

  35. 35.

    Kent

    @WaterGirl:How are they getting out of the country?  I thought they weren’t being allowed on planes. Where are they going when they get out?

    There are a LOT of ground borders along the MASSIVE Russian frontier.

    How much do you want to bet that whatever Russian border guards are posted to some side road on the Kazak border aren’t exactly well-paid elite troops.  How much do you want to be they supplement their salaries by aiding and abetting smuggling of all kinds including human?

  37. 37.

    cintibud

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: So sue me. I’m a horrible person who just does that because I support war criminals and want to piss you off. Sue me because I get my news from Balloon Juice and other online sources and very rarely listen to audio sources. I’m a terrible person because even though I know how Zelensky is pronounced I never really noticed the pronunciation of his first name even though broadcasters always say his full name, not just his last name

  38. 38.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud: You say “ignorance”.  I would respond “callous disregard”.  it’s the same attitude that produces the (true) stereotype of the loud American tourist who starts in English, and when met with incomprehension, starts again in English, only louder.

    I mean, I was monolingual until age 26, but when I worked in France that was *exactly* what I saw American tourists do.

  40. 40.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud: You’re a private citizen, not a media talking head.  And the thing is, anybody who is a media talking head, or a YT personality trying to make a buck, has to do all sorts of things to reach their audience.  They’re assudiously working to tune their image and messaage to reach their audience.

    It speaks *volumes* to me that this Task and Purpose guy just intentionally *mangles* Ukrainian place-names.  He just DGAF.

    You’re a private citizen.  If it were your *job* to communicate, I would hold you to a higher standard.

  42. 42.

    Martin

    @WaterGirl: Russia has a *massive* land border – 12,000 miles – 6x longer than the US southern border. Lots and lots and LOTS of places for someone to drive their Subaru across. Well, subtract a few hundred miles of border with Ukraine because, well, driving across that one would sorta defeat the point.

  43. 43.

    Cameron

    @Chetan Murthy: Not just Americans – I’ve noticed that people of all stripes try to improve their listeners’ comprehension by speaking louder when they should be speaking slower.

    ETA: A friend told me a story about being in a store in Rome when some American tourists came in to buy something.  When quoted the price in lire, they asked how much that was in ‘real money.’  Making friends wherever we go…

  44. 44.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud: Let me say it a different way: when I meet someone whose name is obviously foreign, I *ask them how they would like their name pronounced* even if they introduce themselves with an Anglicized or Americanized name.  And *often* I’m given a closer-to-original pronunciation.  And so I try to use that.

    NEVER IN MY LIFE has any American ever asked me that.  Au contraire, in 6th grade when I moved to Texas, my classmates anglicized my name for me to “Chet”, and I stuck with that for the rest of my life.  B/c “easier than dealing with all the goddamn mispronunciations”.  It seems vanishingly rare that anybody gets my last name correctly-pronounced, or even correctly *spelled*.

    And BTW, it ain’t like Americans aren’t picky about their names.  There was a guy name “Brent” at the Jack-in-the-Box where I worked at age 16: He *insisted* that his name was pronounced with a long drawling “e”, and that the name with a  short “e” was not his name.

  45. 45.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @cintibud: Oh lord, are you the one from last night’s thread? Point out where I called you “horrible” or “terrible” or said that you support putin. I said nothing approaching any of that, so calm the hell down. I merely noted that 1) the name is not difficult to pronounce at all once you’ve heard it even a few times, and 2) everyone (aside from those with hearing loss) has had many many chances to hear the name pronounced over many months now. Fine, you don’t listen to a lot of news. There have also been many videos right here on Balloon Juice where his name has been said. You also could simply have Googled it.

    What is the deal with people on here responding with undue vitriol to even the most mild pushback on anything? Jiminy crickets.

  46. 46.

    Martin

    @Tony G: The public number is 300K. The real number is probably closer to a million. Russia probably has 25 million males in the age range. They have plenty still to draw from, and they aren’t particularly discerning even to stay within that 25 million.

  50. 50.

    cintibud

    @Chetan Murthy: Thank you, I can agree with that. I’m probably a bit defensive because I always have had a problem with pronunciations that has really hampered me when trying to learn another language. I’ve gotten better as I’ve aged but it takes a lot more effort.

  52. 52.

    cintibud

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I’m really sorry I offended you. I was being sarcastic, I didn’t think I was being vitriolic. You sounded to me as if I had a moral failing for not knowing how to pronounce a Ukrainian name that I don’t recall hearing pronounced before

  54. 54.

    Tony G

    @Chetan Murthy: Well, Americans, like most people, are certainly dumb and arrogant, but this mispronunciation of foreign words is certainly not uniquely American.  The contemporary Japanese language, for example, has a lot of English words pronounced the Japanese way — for example, “terebi” for television, “air con” for air conditioner, “hombaga” for hamburger, “cohi” for coffee, etc..  That’s fine with me.

  55. 55.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud: many of us early on did not know how to pronounce Kyiv.  So we googled and found YT videos that taught us how.  We all learned, bit-by-bit, the Ukrainian spellings of place-names — the Antonivski Bridge, not “Antonovsky”.  Kharkiv, not “Kharkov”.  etc.  We’re all still learning, and we make mistakes.  It seems like the least we can do.

  56. 56.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Martin: W/ the amount of draft dodging & anti-draft protests, would Putin be able to mobilize 1M troops w/o facing an internal crisis? Would he even be able to mobilize 300K? How many will desert from the training camps or on the way to the front? How many will desert once at the front lines? & I seriously doubt Russian can manage the logistics of sustaining such a large body of draftees.

  57. 57.

    zhena gogolia

    @Chetan Murthy: Let’s call it Ukrainian transliterations, not Ukrainian spellings, because it’s a different alphabet, so there are multiple plausible spellings. The key thing is “i” instead of “o” in those words.

  59. 59.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @cintibud: Sheesh. By saying “that sounds like a you problem” I wasn’t saying “…because you’re obviously the worst piece of crap on the planet” or something. I meant that it was likely because you simply hadn’t put in any effort to figure it out, because as I noted, it’s easy to say and easy to find countless videos online of people saying it.

    I appreciate the apology.

  63. 63.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Chetan Murthy: YIKES:

    “It’s obvious that Putin does not know how to get out of this,” Mr. Scholz said. “It’s obvious that he will not win the war and Russia will not win the war.”

    But he would not utter the word “victory” at all, let alone define it.
    Did he want Ukraine to win? “Russia can’t win,” was as far as he would go.

  64. 64.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Cameron:

    Making friends wherever we go…

    I’ll say this for America becoming (again) the Arsenal of Democracy: it makes me feel like, the next time I travel internationally, I won’t need to put a Canadian Maple Leaf on my backpack.  B/c geeez, during TFG’s reign (and Dubya’s) I sure would have.  in 1991 when I worked in France, many Americans did that.  B/c ashamed of GHWB and RaYgUn before him.

  67. 67.

    Tony G

    @Martin: Hmm.  Yes, Russia has a lot of men in that age range.  I wonder how many days of training they’ll get before they’re handed a rifle and sent into combat.  That should go well.  I’ve never been in the military myself.  The draft (and the Vietnam War) ended when I was 17 (fortunately for my health), and I never had any interest in volunteering.  It has long been my understanding that the draft ended because, after observing the draftees in Vietnam, the politicians and generals no longer wanted reluctant draftees; they wanted well-trained volunteers instead.  (And they wanted wars that minimized the number of American casualties.). Best of luck to Putin and his generals with hundreds of thousands of poorly trained and hostile draftees being thrown into combat.

  68. 68.

    cintibud

    @Chetan Murthy: Actually I did google it and found this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3e1x9piyw

    I think I can pronounce that. Again my initial confusion was due to hasty reading. I saw Vladimir and thought people were talking about Putin since I have never seen that spelling used for Zelensky’s first name. But no, I’m probably not going to google how to pronounce all those Ukrainian locations since I don’t think I’ll be verbalizing those words. I’ll be writing them instead. If it comes up in a conversation I will however.

  70. 70.

    Freemark

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I watch a ton of media and don’t ever remember it being pronounced. Pretty much ever reference uses Zelenskyy. The main thing I renember is the controversy over one y or two. I’ve seen probably seen over a thousand references to Zelenskyy and heard hundreds and if someone had asked me his first name I couldn’t have told them; even pronounced incorrectly.

    As for Americans pronouncing names it’s more ignorance. Americans have terrible knowledge of how letters are pronounced in the Romance languages much less other lesser known languages (to Americans). And Romanized Ukrainian names are pretty ridiculous, about like Welsh. Since I have a basic knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet I can get much closer the place names actual pronunciation in it’s original spelling. The romanized spelling is often absolutely useless to attempt any reasonable approximation. That is why people often make a ‘funny’ attempt at saying it. Because any real attempt will only result in severe butchery of the name causing  embarrasment to them.

  71. 71.

    Gin & Tonic

    @cintibud: Ukrainian is a phonetic language, so if you see Izyum or Melitopol or Balakliya you’re likely to get close anyway, the only question being which syllable is stressed.

    ETA : Balakliya, of course, is not a Ukrainian word, so you have double transliteration.

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    @Martin:

    I have read one or two stories in news sites like BBC and CNN about people getting drafted despite being in exempt categories: a university student, a 63-year-old man with diabetes and ischaemia, an IT worker. This might be the kind of slip-up inevitable in such a large exercise, or it might be intentional. I wonder how widespread it is.

  73. 73.

    cintibud

    @Gin & Tonic:Ukrainian is a phonetic language, so if you see Izyum or Melitopol or Balakliya you’re likely to get close anyway, the only question being which syllable is stressed.

    Thank you. That is very helpful.

  75. 75.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cintibud:

    But no, I’m probably not going to google how to pronounce all those Ukrainian locations since I don’t think I’ll be verbalizing those words. I’ll be writing them instead. If it comes up in a conversation I will however.

    We’re on the same page here.  Though when I speak the place-names to friends (as we discuss the war) I always try to use my potted pronunciation of the UA transliteration.

  76. 76.

    Tony G

    @YY_Sima Qian: It seems to be the case that, for the past seven months, Russia has been f***ing up the logistics of its current force in Ukraine.  Throwing a lot more untrained, unwilling bodies into that force will make the logistics problem even worse.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see mass desertions or even mutinies among the new Russian troops.

  77. 77.

    Chetan Murthy

    @James E Powell: Trust me, there’s a difference between someone trying to pronounce a name correctly and missing, and …. not giving a damn.  Americans mostly don’t give a damn.

    And that includes the names of people they interact with daily over years.  I mean, I’ve lived in America since 1969 when I was 4.  So it’s not as if I haven’t seen a ton of it.

  78. 78.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Americans mostly don’t give a damn.

    I’m sure this is changing as more of America becomes nonwhite.  It’s certainly different here in the Bay Area.

  79. 79.

    Sally

    @Tony G: It surprises me that anyone still thinks that Ru is going to make any but the most desultory effort to train anyone.  Or equip anyone.   I argued with my military family, who insisted that these conscripts are’t going to make any difference to the war in the short and medium term because they would have to undergo months of training.  This is Ru you’re talking about, I answered, they’ll be lucky to get days of training.  Most experts can’t get their heads around that, and are thinking like western military.  Mistake.  Now I see already these conscripts are being sent after, at best, one day of training.  I hope they can surrender.  I am worried that the large number of new “amateurs” will be a problem for UA.

  80. 80.

    Cameron

    Many years ago, I heard a story (probably apocryphal) that when the first James Bond movie was released some French speakers pronounced his name as ‘jambon.’

  81. 81.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Freemark: I don’t know…I’ve heard the full name used many times. Whenever he is introduced before giving remarks or making a speech, or at the top of a news segment the first time they mention him. I’m not saying everyone is shouting it from the rooftops at all times, but I’m just confused as to how people can say they’ve never heard it spoken aloud.

  82. 82.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Cameron: Heh.  31 year ago when I started my job in France, there were very few English loan-words (that I could discern) and for sure, French culture was somewhat rejection-prone towards them.  As I was leaving for the US in 1994, the French Assemble’ Nationale passed La Loi Toubon that banned the introduction of English loan-words.  [Of course, my boss told me: there’s a difference between passing a law, and then passing the “decret d’application” (decree of application) to actually put the law into practice]  Today, when I read Le Monde, it seems like every 4th word is an English loan-word.

    It’s kind of sad.  I find French to be a really beautiful language, and butchering its Romance roots with all these English words just feels wrong.  But gotta admit: it’s far more efficient, phoneme-wise.

  83. 83.

    Shalimar

    Off-topic, DeSantis said this when he announced the hurricane Ian state of emergency: “Just don’t think if you’re not in that eye, that somehow you don’t have to make preparations.”

    He has lived in Florida for decades and doesn’t seem to know what the eye of a hurricane is.  That is a strange sentence for a Floridian.

    Edit: For those who are lucky enough to have never needed to know, the eye is calm.  It is the area to the immediate northeast of the eye that is most dangerous.

  84. 84.

    Amir Khalid

    @Freemark:

    I have frequently heard Zelenskyy’s first name said in YouTube news clips from MSNBC, BBC, ABC, Deutsche Welle, and other broadcasters. Everyone seems to stick to a phonetic reading of the Romanised spelling. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him called Vladimir. I reckon people are careful about that so as to avoid their viewers confusing him with the other guy.

  87. 87.

    sdhays

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes, and this goes for anything else “foreign” too. When your entire job is pronouncing words on the teevee, and especially if you’re extremely well paid for it, you should go through extensive, ongoing training on how to pronounce things around the world. It should be a matter of pride in the industry on how well anchor X can pronounce cities and leaders in Ukraine, Russia, China, India (all states), Cambodia, Nigeria, Somalia, Central African Republic, etc. Screwing up should be something that gets you laughed at in the club.

    I mean, actors go through intensive linguistic training for accents just for silly movies, and it’s not like the anchors of news shows are actual journalists working a beat themselves. They just read the news. Reading it correctly should be the very lowest bar they should have to clear.

  88. 88.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sdhays: There are schools that specifically teach how to obliterate your native accent: e.g. the Queens accent.  And I remember reading that TV reporters specifically train to speak as if they’re from Kansas/Nebraska, b/c that’s the most widely-understood American accent.  So it’s not as if people just speak however they were raised, in their TV jobs.

  89. 89.

    Bill Arnold

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    I don’t know…I’ve heard the full name used many times.

    I will wager, then, that you have a continuous running internal verbal monologue. Many do not. (I am translating from non-verbal to written verbal just to write this comment.)

  90. 90.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Shalimar:

    I don’t like DeathSentence, but I don’t think he meant it in the sense that you’re reading it in. It’s still a dumb thing to say, given that the eye of the hurricane is in the center of the storm and you still have to go through hell to get there

    It was so confusing to read too

  91. 91.

    Chetan Murthy

    Who are you and where have you taken (Bloody) Bill Kristol!

    We would once have read about the Italian elections, shaken our heads, and lamented Italy’s tendency to succumb to demagoguery and authoritarianism. But we who elected Trump and may do so again have no standing to look down on our Italian friends. We are all in the same boat.
    — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 25, 2022

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: I wanna see the women strip him naked (on camera) and send him running with a spanking.  B/c we’ve all read about how female protestors are stripped naked by the police when they’re arrested.  And much worse, I’m sure.

  97. 97.

    NutmegAgain

    @Chetan Murthy: I confess I gave the story a quick read as I’m off to bed soon, and don’t want to impair my sleepitude… However, I can tell you that my out-outlaws who are German (very educated, live in a northern city etc.) are stunningly weird in their response to the Russian invasion on Ukraine, in my opinion. These people are ” ’68ers” meaning that they were very leftist in the way back when, and still like to think of themselves as, in US terms, part of the Noam Chomsky army. So to me, they seem bizarrely hostile to the US sending all the military supplies to Ukraine. I’m not talking to them directly, so when I hear reports like that I get, ah, heated! And say among other things, that we haven’t sent anything that Ukraine doesn’t want (e.g., it’s not the Middle East all over again), and oh by the way, why doesn’t Germany get off its duff and do some high quality giving of supplies and weapons… but they see a situation where the US is poking its big nose in. Dunno. It’s inexplicable to me. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion there were justifications circulation, such as, the Germans were showing sensitivity due to their actions in WWII. (hah!) I will let you know if I get any kind of cogent explanation..

  98. 98.

    Quiltingfool

    @Chetan Murthy: You brought up a memory!  I went to Mexico with a school group (I was 16).  We were divided into small groups, each with 1 adult.  The adult for our group was a 50ish white man who did not speak a lick of Spanish (neither did I, I studied French, but belonged to the Spanish Club to hang out with my friends, lol).  In an interaction with a taxi driver, he just kept repeating himself, in English, louder and louder and louder.  The poor driver!  All of us kids were staring at our shoes, we were so embarrassed.

    Well, I did know a bit of Spanish, mainly polite phrases.  I finally took a Spanish class in college – and the instructor told me I spoke Spanish with a French accent.  I thought that sounded better than speaking Spanish with a midwestern accent…

  99. 99.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Two thoughts:

    1. Meloni is in a coalition with Berlusconi, right?  And Berlusconi, that guy’s in Putin’s pocket.
    2. Remember how Le Pen moved away from Putin as the election neared?  I wouldn’t assume Meloni is a safe anti-Putin type, simply b/c she’s Teh Fash, and right now, Putin is funding transnational Fascism everywhere.  For instance, she’s been palling around with Steve Bannon ( https://www.newsweek.com/georgia-meloni-italy-elections-steve-bannon-revolution-1746006 ) and that guy, he’s 100% DTF with Putin.
  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party was created in 2012, but has its roots in Italy’s 20th century neo-fascist movement that emerged after the death of fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1945. A 2019 speech from Meloni helped her become a household name when an unsuspecting DJ remixed her words (“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian”) into a dance music track, which went viral.

    The fact that that dance track went “viral” greatly disturbs me

  102. 102.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I think a lot of eyes are going to be on them and I would think Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons would make them think twice; the man’s off his rocker

  104. 104.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Meloni claims to have purged fascist elements from the party and is striking a moderate tone. We’ll see if that’s true or not. Wouldn’t surprise me to see her and her party out of power in a few years

  106. 106.

    Torrey

    @zhena gogolia: Oh, you must be thinking of the Russian pronunciation. :)

    Actually, I have encountered a few American-born Vladimirs (children of Russian immigrant parents), and pretty much all of them put the stress on the first syllable and reduced the second vowel to uh or ih. (I’m sure when speaking to their parents, they pronounce the name in proper Russian fashion.) Kind of like the American Ivans, who stress the first syllable of their names and pronounce the vowel like the word “eye.”

    America: where names come to be pronounced in ways that the original language users would prefer not to contemplate.

  108. 108.

    Ohio Mom

    I’m like cintibud, I get all my news via text. Too impatient to listen to talk.

    There’s lots of names of places and people in the news I have no idea how to pronounce. When it became clear he was going to stay in the news, I worked at learning how to pronounce Buttigieg; I’m still working at Louisville. I don’t think I’ll ever get that weird gluggy sound in the middle down.

    I make an extra effort for names of people in my real life, like my three Indian doctors. But I’m not going to sweat the names of places in Ukraine, and referring to Zelensky only by his last name suffices for my purposes (same goes for Putin and Macron and many other heads of state).

  109. 109.

    Jay

    This is incredible.Within just 24 hours, Mykhailo Danilov’s family received over UAH 5 million in donations from across the world.The goal was to fundraise UAH 500,000 and heal the Azovstal marine’s arm. His family is extremely thankful, and it has stopped the campaign. pic.twitter.com/O1Wic1Dopw— Illia Ponomarenko🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) September 24, 2022

  110. 110.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Like I said, a lot of eyes are going to be on them. News of Russia’s war crimes are still coming out and Putin has threatened all of Europe with his insanity with using nuclear weapons on the battlefield. And frankly, the Italian economy will not get any better in the next few years and the voters will likely blame her and her party

  111. 111.

    Quiltingfool

    @Chetan Murthy: There are several French phrases that you “can” translate into English, but the translation doesn’t do the phrase justice.  Better left in the original!

    I remember looking up “moose” in my French-English dictionary;  “elk du Canada” seemed kinda wordy, but rather descriptive!

  112. 112.

    Jinchi

    @Amir Khalid: From what I’ve read, the main.motivator of the conscription drive is regional quotas: Officials are given a number to hit and the easiest way to hit that number is to grab everyone in sight. They figure someone up the chain will deal with it. That’s why you see reports of students being rounded up in class or all the male workers at an industrial site being taken away.

    Similar things have apparently been happening in the DPR and LPR regions. Any adult male is at risk of being hauled off to the front.

  113. 113.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Trust me, there’s a difference between someone trying to pronounce a name correctly and missing, and …. not giving a damn.  Americans mostly don’t give a damn.

    For some of them I think it’s more than not giving a damn, they’re going out of their way to not pronounce names correctly even when it’s easy.

    I think most people will excuse the inability to get it perfect with names that violate English phonemics or phonotactics in ways that make them hard for English speakers to say at all, or to hit the vowel sounds like a native speaker.

    But with most names you can find a decent approximation–it’s just a sequence of sounds you might find a bit unfamiliar, and I think refusing to make that leap is something some people see as a power move. A power dick move.

  114. 114.

    Medicine Man

    @Adam L Silverman: Telenko was also the “Tire Guy” too, if I remember correctly.

    Edit: Nevermind — read further and saw you mention this. I saw Telenko inventing stories about “top-secret documents” captured with that general scooped up during the Kharkiv offensive. He was drawing all kinds of expansive conclusions. He’s a naked clout chaser, I think.

  116. 116.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Quiltingfool: Looking at my Le Monde RSS feed right now,  I find “bluffe”, “Crack”, “console (du jeu vide’o)”, “rap”, “hackeur”, “star” (as in “most celebrated”), and of course, the venerable “shampooing”, “week-end”, and “meeting”.  All English loan-words.

  118. 118.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Matt McIrvin:

    For some of them I think it’s more than not giving a damn, they’re going out of their way to not pronounce names correctly even when it’s easy.

    Case in point: Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I remember the shitfits a lot of white people threw when they realized they were supposed to put the emphasis on a different syllable.

  119. 119.

    RaflW

    @Mike in NC: My eyes briefly read this as Ron JeHadist. (yes, I know its misspelled. But I wonder if it could stick?

    To a more real point: When I saw the potential tracks, I thought of the conversation my partner and I had while driving into Tampa in March. He read to me about how the area hasn’t really had a direct hit from a hurricane in a very long time, and that the area is a sitting duck because of the bay.

    There could be some very serious losses if a big storm surge makes it in. I don’t wish that on anyone. And, unfortunately Ron seems able to spin yarns, and would blame any post-flooding snafus on Biden and FEMA, much of it unfairly I’m sure, but he’d amp it to 11+ endlessly to shift blame to ‘bad gubmit by evil Dems’.

  120. 120.

    cain

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     
    I usually ask how to pronounce a person’s name if I can’t pronounce it .. some names like Georg took me longer! (Gay-org)
    That said the younger generation do a much better job of pronouncing my name. Love these kids.

  123. 123.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cain:

    Love these kids.

    In many parts of the country, they’re growing up in a different America from the one I grew up in.  Thank goodness.

  124. 124.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    Am I missing something? So what if he doesn’t outright say the word “victory”? It amounts to the same thing in the end to me, what he said.

    This just sounds like the kind of shitty political reporting that the NYT has become famous for where they slag Dems using Republican talking points. “He didn’t say ‘radical Islamic terrorism’! He must be a sympathizer!”

  125. 125.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): To not say the words “Ukrainian victory” is to leave the door open for later arguing that Ukraine should make concessions (e.g. of the Crimea) in order to reach a negotiated peace.  That is to say, there is lots between “Putin not winning” and “Ukrain winning” that should be unacceptable to Scholz, but clearly *is* acceptable.

  127. 127.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Here’s Ben Hodges showing how it’s done:

    Dana, it stops when Ukraine has restored Sovereignty over all of its territory incl Crimea and when the 1M(+) deported Ukrainian citizens incl 250K children are returned home to Ukraine. https://t.co/zoWTZohjX9
    — Ben Hodges (@general_ben) September 26, 2022

    Even if UA eventually goes to negotiations and doesn’t get all this, it does no good whatsover for UA’s partners and supporters to take anything other than the absolute hardest line with Putin — it’s giving away concessions that we don’t have a right to give away, and also emboldening Putin to think that he can wait us out.

    And for all that, yes, Scholz is to blame.

  128. 128.

    Jinchi

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    I strongly disagree with the idea that Americans are unusually bad at this, or that most of them are doing it through malice.

    As someone whose family name is regularly mispronounced, despite being spelled phonetically, it’s typically because the original foreign-language version uses sounds that aren’t quite the same as sounds of spoken English. And the stresses follow whatever rules the speaker is used to. I don’t have any trouble pronouncing my name the way my foreign born father did, but it does take an concerted effort to say it that way when put into an English sentence.

    Likewise my foreign relatives will ‘mispronounce’ my first name, despite hearing the correct version repeatedly, because that’s the way it’s pronounced where they are from.

    “Wrong” and “Close Enough” are in the ear of the listener of course, but my default is to assume good intentions unless specifically demonstrated otherwise. Life is just all around easier that way.

    An American who is deliberately mocking the pronunciation of a name will almost always over-exaggerate the sounds as he speaks it (Rush Limbaugh loved to do this), and it will be obvious to anyone listening what he’s doing.

  129. 129.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jinchi: You don’t pronounce “Murthy” as “Murphy” or “Murtry”.  Not if you can *read*.  And let me assure you that I’ve heard much worse butchering of foreign names.  I had a Chinese friend who chose the American name “Wilfred” when entering grad school, b/c nobody could pronounce his Chinese name, which, it turned out, was “Zewei”, and hence quite easily pronouncable for anybody who bothered to try.  Sometime after we graduated, he stated using his Chinese name.

  131. 131.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: I should add: you don’t continue to mispronounce it even after having been corrected.  Americans just don’t bother to even try.

    And I’ll also note that I’m not talking about merely using close-but-no-cigar phonemes.  My first name uses a phoneme that Americans cannot pronounce (my American-born sisters cannot pronounce it).  That’s not what I’m talking about: I’m talking about egregious mispronunciation that completely ignores what a phonetic pronunciation would be, and not bothering to ask how the name *should* be pronounced, as a cherry on top.

  133. 133.

    Chetan Murthy

    @James E Powell: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/giorgia-meloni-italy-election-fascism-mussolini/671515/

    Meloni’s enemies list is familiar: “LGBT lobbies” that are out to harm women and the family by destroying “gender identity”; George Soros, an “international speculator,” she has said, who finances global “mass immigration” that threatens a Great Replacement of white, native-born Italians. Meloni shows affinity for authoritarian strongmen: Like Marine Le Pen, until recently the leader of the National Rally party in France, Meloni has expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin—although she has muted that enthusiasm since his invasion of Ukraine.

  134. 134.

    SeattleDem

    I occasionally run across maps of the area with Cyrillic place names, which helps a lot. I regularly  find that I have been mispronouncing some of the place names because my reading of the transliteration is crap. Peoples’ names are harder to find, so I am sure I mangle them.

  135. 135.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    @Chetan Murthy:

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I suppose I understand what you’re saying One of the replies on the tweet you linked to said that Scholz simply doesn’t want to escalate things. After all, Russia is a nuclear power

    And this brings me to something I’ve been pondering awhile. Y’know the anti-nuclear movement of the 80s and all of the associated media that came out back then? Like The Day After, Threads, WarGames, etc, plus Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s famous single Two Tribes? Do you think that the messages about the futility and danger of nuclear war are still relevant today?

  137. 137.

    Pete Downunder

    I think it was Trevor Noah who said that an accent is applying the rules of your native language while pronouncing the foreign one. My great grandfather was from Poland and I discovered that a lot of Polish words were easier once I learned where the stress fell (not on the first syllable).

  138. 138.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m sure that at the highest levels of the US govt and every allied govt, they are very, very concerned about nuclear war.  Biden goes out of his way every time he speaks about the RU-UA war, to stress that the US and NATO will *not* be getting involved directly.  He goes out of his way.

    But Scholz is being at best a coward, and at worst a Russian agent.  B/c he’s not stupid and he knows his history.  He knows that Russia gave massive weapons to its clients in wars with the US, that in the Korean war Russian pilots flew MiGs against the US, and in the Vietnam war they operated anti-aircraft emplacements.  This is all known.  The idea that somehow we can’t deliver *weapons* to UA like *tanks* ?  That’s daft.

    He’s either a coward (and needs to resign) or a traitor.

  139. 139.

    cain

    @Chetan Murthy: ​ Btw I thought you might find this amusing. While applying for an Indian visa I had to do a FOIA on myself to get some green card info ..They responded with a cdrom with my a pdf but they added a middle name to my Indian name .. Vladmirnovna .. I was surprised. I mean when did I get a female Slavic name ? I kind of worried that is what they have on record fofore

  141. 141.

    Jinchi

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    You don’t pronounce “Murthy” as “Murphy” or “Murtry”.

    I guarantee that where I grew up, everyone would assume your name was Murphy. Most people aren’t parsing every letter as they read, and lots of Americans were taught to read using sight words, not phonics.

  143. 143.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jinchi: Yes, and the first time, I get that.  But when they’re corrected, and *continue* to butcher it, you conclude that it’s not mental deficit, but rather moral.

    But hey, I will admit that it mostly happened in Texas.  They’re all shitbirds down there, so whaddayagonnadoo.

  145. 145.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, to me, it’s not so much that he wouldn’t use that word, but that he wouldn’t say he wants Ukraine to win. Why not just say that? If he doesn’t want russia to win, well…there is only one other option. It just feels weasely and weird, especially considering the rest of the article where he’s whining about not wanting to send tanks and stuff.

  147. 147.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: It is of apiece with Macron’s “we need to allow Putin to save face”.  The CEE countries let him have it for that foolishness, and rightly so.

    Germany is setting themselves up for being ridiculed and ignored by the CEE countries after this war is over.  If they can’t be counted-on when it matters, nobody’s going to defer to them afterwards.

  149. 149.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cain: Surely you’re aware of the way that some CBP personnel mangle foreign names when filling out visa paperwork.  It’s pretty horrific what some names are mangled into.  And it’s been going on since Ellis Island: certainly nothing new.  I’m not surprised that they do shit like this: absolute power corrupts.

  150. 150.

    Roger Moore

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    But Scholz is being at best a coward, and at worst a Russian agent.

    I think it’s most likely plain cowardice, but of a very post-War German kind. Germans have had it pounded into their heads that Germany should remain peaceful, and there are strong reasons for them to be especially afraid of sending weapons to a country whose enemy has accused them of being Nazis.

  151. 151.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore: Thing is, AFAICT the German population is much, much more eager to send weapons (including Leopards) to UA, than Scholz.  He seems out-of-step with his citizenry.

  152. 152.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’d bet vlad doesn’t give a damn if you qualify or not. He’s willing to draft and send to a war zone people totally untrained, badly armed and who really, really do not want to go. If he doesn’t get enough people I’d bet he has police round up anyone. He’s not trying to win, he’s trying to overwhelm Ukraine. He doesn’t give a damn about his citizens, he only cares about his story that he’s a great leader, and all because he absolutely knows he’s not. His country is barely capable of defending it’s borders, let alone stealing another country. There is so much grift and corruption under his watch that it amazes me he’s gotten this far.

  153. 153.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore: It’s also pretty telling that the German government waas 100% OK with Rheinmetall building RU a tank training ground at Mulino (IIRC, between Moscow and Nizhny Novogorod), going to great lengths to continue the work even after RU invaded UA (they set up a shell company).

    It’s as if we allowed Lockheed to sell RU fighter jets via a subsidiary in Panama or some such.  Even after RU invaded (let’s say) Finland (pre-2022, obvs).

    Scholz’ claims of wanting peace and not escalating ring hollow. Instead, I hear the telltale sound of beringed hands grasping gold bars.

  154. 154.

    Spadizzly

    @Chetan Murthy:  Late again.  Don’t have time to read through all of what looks like a very interesting thread, but I’m reminded of an incident that took place in a Deli on 108th St. in Queens, of all places.  This would have been in 2005 or so.  This was a multi-lingual establishment–primarily russian, georgian, and other languages of FSU.  So, on the sidewalk in front of this deli, someone had spray-painted the words “fucking Uzbeks” in russian cursive.  Bizarre.
    As I’m waiting on line to pay for my stuff, two dudes in front of me are having an animated conversation in a language I couldn’t identify, so I waited until it was polite to ask what language they were speaking, so as not to interrupt.  I’ve always been curious about all languages.  Well, they look at each other and then they tell me russian.  I find this hilarious as I switch to russian and repeat the question with stronger emphasis.  Right away they apologize and tell me they were speaking Uzbek.  So, I thanked them and switched back to English and asked them why they didn’t tell me that in the first place.

    Their response was they thought I was American.   And mine was “I am.”

     

    I’ll catch up with the rest of what looks like a really interesting discussion; time to rack out and wake up to a dead thread.

  156. 156.

    Andrya

    @Jay: Meloni may be inspired by Tolkien, but it appears she hasn’t read him.  She has identified herself as “Khi-ri, dragon of the Undernet”.  (Link). If she had actually read her Tolkien she would know that dragons are EVIL.  (Tolkien’s dragons are not innocent though dangerous animals- their bodies are inhabited by evil spirts, more or less equivalent to fallen angels in Christian theology.)

    Admittedly, I’m a Tolkien fanatic/purist but if she had even read “The Hobbit”…

  157. 157.

    Chetan Murthy

    RUMINT, but one can hope

    Images of the Russian losses near Kupyansk are starting to come out. From the things I hear, you should prepare yourselves for enormous numbers.
    — Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) September 26, 2022

  159. 159.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Another Scott: Thank you for that!  Also, hah, too funny, the French “throaty r”, like in “la rue”, totally different from “la roue”.  As someone once said, to make the sound, you say an “r” and clear your throat at the same time.  Ha!

  160. 160.

    Andrya

    @cintibud:  @Adam L Silverman:  Let me second what cintibud said.  I have a minor neurological problem- since at least my teens- which makes it very hard to remember how to pronounce even English words correctly.  I have a close friend- otherwise a totally nice person- who constantly corrects my pronunciation in English (my native language).  I hear her corrections but have trouble remembering them, which occasionally frustrates her.

    I took four years of French in high school, but when I visited France in my mid-twenties, I was constantly rebuked/sneered at for my horrible pronunciation.

    In college, there was a foreign language requirement.  I solved it by taking classical (ancient) Greek.  My reasoning was:  everyone who spoke this language has been dead for 2000 years!  No one can bother me about pronunciation!  This proved to be a successful strategy.  (I realize that linguists have now reconstructed ancient Greek pronunciation, but I don’t think my university knew that in 1970.)

    Bottom line:  some people who mispronounce have an actual handicap.  It’s no more fair to condemn them than to condemn someone in a wheelchair for being lazy.

    Adam:  I hope you had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah.  And I too am utterly without musical talent, which I suspect is related to my pronunciation problem.

  161. 161.

    terry chay

    @Sally: For a while now (maybe since before the Gulf war) untrained forces are a liability.

    My guess that is the reason your family is talking about training is if any modern military sent such poorly trained people to the front, those that don’t die quickly are a huge burden on the rest in so many ways. It’s basically strategic suicide to send these people to the front given how lethal the battlefield is. Most militaries have learned this, but it appears Russia thinks they’re the Soviet Union of WW2. Ironically it was Ukrainians who did the bulk of the fighting and dying then, too.

  162. 162.

    Sally

    @terry chay: Yes, this is what I have been trying to explain to them.  They know what a bad bad bad move it is to send untrained, let alone unfit (drunken), armed guys into a war.  But they don’t understand that the Russians do not agree, or at least think it is an acceptable option.  To the extent that they (my family) do not believe me.  And of course, the reports we are seeing could be false, but given the recent history, I think they are largely true.  No, no, no, no one would do that, insists one of them to me.  They think “trained” = one year for basic inf.  Ha

  164. 164.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    it seems like Americans really have a bug up their butt, refusing to pronounce names from other languages properly. It ain’t so damn hard, and yet Americans seem to be shite at it.

    Maybe it’s because I read a lot but rarely watch TV, but I’m unclear about where and how I would learn to pronounce names from other languages correctly. I was well into adulthood, for instance, before I had any idea that ‘Jorge’ wasn’t pronounced like ‘george.’

    Now TV announcers, it’s their job to learn, but still, if they weren’t expecting to see ‘Volodymyr’ on their prompter and they didn’t know how it was pronounced, I’m not terribly surprised that they’d fall back on the closest thing they knew. (How do you pronounce it? If you pronounce it by standard English phonetic pronunciation for that character string, would that be more or less right?) I’m happy to correct my spelling as best I can, but I’m really glad I don’t have to master yet another language’s pronunciations.

  165. 165.

    Ohio Mom

    @Spadizzly: Uzbek overheard at a 108th Street deli does not sound surprising to this former Queens-ite: 108th is either Rego Park or very near the border of Rego Park, and Rego Park is where the kosher Uzbek restuarants are (keeping kosher is a hobby of my husband’s).

    I got a chuckle out of your story. So many layers to it.

  166. 166.

    zhena gogolia

    @Torrey: Yeah, they’re pronouncing it that way so they can fit in in America. I’m talking about people on TV who are reading a Russian name.

  167. 167.

    lowtechcyclist

    Speaking of spelling, I just saw a tweet by @Mariana_Betsa, Ukraine’s ambassador to Estonia. She spelled the name of a certain recently liberated city ‘Izum.’ I’d seen it spelled ‘Izium’ and ‘Izyum’ before, and was assuming the former was the Russian name and the latter the Ukrainian spelling. So now I’m totally confused.

  168. 168.

    zhena gogolia

    @lowtechcyclist: Izium is the standard Russian TRANSLITERATION, Izyum is the standard Ukrainian TRANSLITERATION. The originals are not spelled in English letters, so “spelling” is irrelevant here. I have no idea where Izum would come from, as it does not reproduce the pronunciation in either language.

    I’m a pedant.

  169. 169.

    evodevo

    @Chetan Murthy: Yep…when we took a trip to Canada in 2018, we mentioned to people several times that we did not claim The Orange Mad King and wished he would go away…they would chuckle…and sometimes sympathoze

  171. 171.

    The Pale Scot

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I don’t know about people from other countries, but it seems like Americans really have a bug up their butt, refusing to pronounce names from other languages properly.

     

    “If speaking American was good enough for Jesus, It’s good enough for Texas”

    Texas Governor in the  ’30s

  172. 172.

    catclub

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
      and the problem of course is not that Meloni has those typical ‘enemies’ but that too many of the population buy into that. simple scapegoating. What is wrong with people?

  173. 173.

    Tony G

    @Sally: Unfortunately, I’m sure you’re right about this.  I have no military experience, but I would bet that military units consisting mostly of untrained draftees who are hostile to their officers will be even less effective than the ones in combat now.  Brilliant plan by Putin.

  175. 175.

    Torrey

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I can certainly see how it would look that way, since Vladimir is, I suspect, a fairly recent addition to the American collection of names. Ivan goes back a few generations. But these are Americans. I doubt they’re choosing that pronunciation because they’re trying to fit in. They’re pronouncing their names that way because that’s how their names are pronounced. Similar to women named “Linda,” who may answer to the Spanish pronunciation when their Puerto Rican grandmother talks to them, but who pronounce their own names with a short English “i” and a schwa at the end because that’s how they pronounce it.

    I rather like the name Vladimir. I hope Putin doesn’t ruin it, the way Hitler ruined Adolph.

  176. 176.

    Torrey

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      And we are in entire agreement on the subject of people on TV who are reading Russian names (or names in any language that is not American English). There’s a reason we call them “talking hairdos.”

  177. 177.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Torrey: We always had Vladimir(s) in America: they just changed their name to “Waldo” on Ellis Island.  What I experienced as a kid in Texas, many Eastern Europeans experienced at the turn of the 20th century, as they were forced to adopt new, Americanized names.  I mean, it’s even part of the mythology of Ellis Island, this ‘pickinng a new American name’ stuff.

  179. 179.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m trying to track down a rumor that a train of new russian conscripts arriving in Luhansk was blown up by UAF. I’m sure that will help mobilization along.

  181. 181.

    Tony G

    @evodevo: Good clip.  Maybe a foreshadowing of what’s to come with these Russian draftees?  The problem that any military officer has to solve is how to control the troops who outnumber you and who are heavily armed.  American infantry officers in Vietnam weren’t always able to solve that problem; hence fragging incidents.  That’s why the U.S. military stopped drafting people almost a half-century ago.

  182. 182.

    Spadizzly

    @Ohio Mom: Shana Tovah!  Apologies for the late response, as I’ve been davening all day, not that I claim to be super observant at all.  Your response is especially appreciated.

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