Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

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

When I was faster i was always behind.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 214: My Patron Stamps Arrived!

War for Ukraine Day 214: My Patron Stamps Arrived!

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Well now that we’ve gotten the important news out of the way in the post’s title – my Patron stamps arrived today!!! – we can get on to the other stuff. For those wondering, I bought these from UKRPOSHTA’s official Amazon store.

Tonight’s post will be brief. I spent most of the day not observing Rosh HaShana, but doing pre-hurricane prep stuff. I’ll finish that tomorrow AM and tomorrow afternoon, once we get more accurate forecasts as the storm clears Cuba, gets into the gulf, and we’re within two days of the storm’s arrival, I’ll make the decision as to whether to stay put and ride it out or fall back to where I’ve lined up a place to evacuate to. My preference, of course, is to ride it out. But if tomorrow’s updated forecasts are showing a very high risk that the storm will suck the water out of Tampa Bay and then push it all back in creating a hurricane driven tsunami, I will be heading much farther inland. Nothing I can do about that now because the storm is still too far away and the forecasting/modeling is still too hazy. But I’m all set if I’m able to stay put and I’m all set if I have to get out.

One last point item before we move on: EVERYBODY LIGHTEN UP!!!!!!! The comment sections have been far too stressed out over the past several days. So let’s cut each other some slack.

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

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

I held another meeting of the Staff today. The main focus is on the operational situation on the frontline. We heard the report by the Commander-in-Chief, commanders, head of intelligence, Minister of Defense. We discussed the use of new weapons by the occupiers, in particular, Iranian drones.

We are constantly working to provide our warriors with weapons and ammunition. All active actions of the Ukrainian military must be synchronized with the use of high-precision weapons. This is one of the basic priorities.

The situation is particularly tough in the Donetsk region. We are doing everything to curb enemy activity. This is where our number one goal is right now, as Donbas is still the number one goal for the occupiers.

Despite the obvious senselessness of the war for Russia and the occupiers’ loss of initiative, the command of the Russian military still drives them to their death. Constant attempts of the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region will surely go down in the history of wars as one of the most cynical murders of one’s own soldiers. When we see this, when we see these offensives, we are once again convinced that the Russian mobilization is a frank attempt to give commanders on the ground a constant stream of “cannon fodder.” There is simply no other point in the Russian mobilization.

They felt that they will lose, and they are simply trying to delay this moment, to ensure at least some activity at the front, to replace the dead with at least someone with weapons in their hands.

Unfortunately, Russian society is not yet aware of all the brutality of the Russian government towards its own people. But we must do everything so that every citizen of Russia recognizes that his own state is depriving him of the most important thing – the right to life.

I spoke today with Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. In particular about the criminal mobilization that Russia is carrying out in the occupied territory, trying to throw our citizens to death under the Russian flag. We also talked about sham referenda – the world’s reaction to them and to any further steps taken by the occupiers will be tough.

I am thankful to the Prime Minister for his clear support and willingness to increase sanction pressure on Russia. We coordinated our steps in international organizations, discussed defense cooperation.

I held a meeting with the head of our Government, Denys Shmyhal. We summarized the results of our international activity in September, the results of contacts with partners.

No matter how difficult it is, the state fulfills all its social obligations. We are carrying out work as part of Fast Recovery, returning normal life to the territory liberated from the occupiers. We are taking the necessary steps in preparation for the winter period.

I took part in the launch of a special investment fund to support our Ukrainian entrepreneurs and export-oriented companies. The fund has already attracted 125 million dollars, and the amount will be doubled. The most esteemed Western funds, banks and institutions have invested in this fund, Horizon Capital Growth – that’s what it’s called.

I am grateful to everyone who prepared and implemented this investment project. And I believe that it can become a special signal for investors – a signal that it is possible and necessary to invest in the Ukrainian economy already now, as we are on the path to our victory.

An important political and diplomatic event took place in the Office today. A project on the establishment of a Special International Tribunal to punish Russia for the crime of aggression against our state was presented to the ambassadors of thirty states – our partners.

The difficulty of prosecuting Russia for this crime is that the existing international legal instruments are not enough. What is needed is a Special International Tribunal. And we are working on this project in great detail and meticulously. I have no doubt – the Tribunal will take place. Everyone who unleashed this criminal war against Ukraine and freedom in Europe will be brought to account.

I thank everyone who defends our country! Today I especially want to celebrate the warriors who are defending Ukraine now in the Donetsk region. Warriors of the 93rd separate mechanized brigade “Kholodnyi Yar” and the 10th separate mountain assault brigade – for heroic defense in the Bakhmut direction. And I also want to praise the warriors of the 80th airborne assault brigade for their decisive and competent actions during the liberation of our territory. Thank you guys!

A total of 2135 warriors of these three brigades have already been awarded state awards.

Eternal glory to all those who gain victory for Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here is the British MOD’s assessment for today:

And here is their updated map for today:

Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessment of the situation in/near Lyman:

For those interested:

With Rosh HaShana and hurricane prep, I haven’t had a chance to read this yet:

But I’m looking forward to getting the chance to do so.

The mobilization is going well:

I’ve seen the reports that Putin is closing Russia’s borders; at least to those between 18 and 55 or so.

Speaking of potential draftees in Russia:

Once you buy a prize, it’s your’s to keep!

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:

@patron__dsns

Ось так Том відкрив мені страшну таємницю… #песпатрон #патрондснс #славаукраїні

♬ оригинальный звук – _KataRina_💙

The caption translates as:

his is how Tom revealed a terrible secret to me… #PatronDog #PatronDSNS #SlavaUkraini

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    EVERYBODY LIGHTEN UP!!!!!!!

    But this is Balloon Juice. Uptight pedantry is what we do here.

    My stamps are still on the way, but if yours arrived in Florida, hopefully that means mine will get to California in a few more days.

    I sometimes wonder if, in the deepest recesses of his mind*, putin knows how full of absolute bonkers shit he is…or if he is 100% high on his own supply and believes all the propaganda he shovels out to everyone else.

    (*I was going to say “in his heart of hearts” but, you know…assumes facts not in evidence.)

    Thank you as always, Adam. Please do whatever you need to stay safe and keep us informed. Shana tova to you and yours.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    Thanks, Adam. Stay safe and dry; presumably ‘remember to stay hydrated’ will take care of itself these next few days.

  6. 6.

    Nelle

    As best I can tell, my father’s village is in the now contested area.  The last I saw from there was from Sept. 10 when gunfire and explosions were coming closer and closer.  The area southeast of Zaporizhzhia used to be a Mennonite colony, named Molotschna, before WWI.  His village is now Molanchansk.

  7. 7.

    PaulB

    Thanks, as always, Adam. This continues to be a must-read every day. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that you don’t get hit by the hurricane.

    I’m not even remotely any kind of expert, but the thing that worries me about the mobilization is the impact on the civilian population in the occupied and contested areas. You have tens of thousands, or more, of new, inadequately trained soldiers who don’t want to be there, coupled with an inadequate command structure, which means little control, and inadequate provisioning. And the ones who are there have already shown their brutality in many ways.

    So what happens as winter approaches and these soldiers don’t have adequate food or shelter, have nobody clamping down on them, have contempt for international norms and treaties, and have a nearby civilian population from which to take their food and shelter and to take out their frustration and anger on?

    Am I right to fear that this will be a brutal, brutal winter in the occupied Ukrainian territories?

  8. 8.

    Jinchi

    Now that Snowden is a Russian citizen, is he being called up?

    He’s apparently in good physical health and well below the 65 year old cutoff age.

  10. 10.

    kalakal

    Thank you for all these posts Adam but I espescially appreciate you doing this one. Everyone in the Tampa Bay area is pretty stressed out right now and to put it mildly, somewhat preoccupied so I have to compliment you on being able to focus under stress.

    The surge numbers round the bay do look bad. Stay safe

  11. 11.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Those stamp sets from UKRPOSHTA look awesome. Great artwork! I’m going to start collecting them

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    He wouldn’t be Vlad if he had the slightest idea that he so full of shit that his eyebrows stink.

    One would think that he has some understanding that it’s no going all that well for him but I’m thinking that he’s missing the part of a normal brain that tells you when you’ve done something so pompous, arrogant and stupid, like think the world owes you everything and your shit smells great. Because he sure as hell acts like it. He strikes me like most every Russian mob boss the world has seen for the last couple hundred years. The kind of person SFB would be if his IQ was higher than his age rather than a decade or so’s worth of points less. They both seem to think far more of themselves than any rational person does and seem to work at proving that they are wrong.

  13. 13.

    Barbara

    The twitter feed video includes the woman in the green dress saying unironically that she doesn’t believe in shooting people.  That’s in response to another speaker’s heated demand to take a few recruitment officers out and shoot them for incompetence.  So I guess she means she doesn’t believe in shooting Russian people.​

    I was in Tampa three years ago when it was threatened by another storm. Somehow, it totally bypassed Tampa and I was able to fly in at approximately the same time that it hit the Pensacola area as a category 5. I hope you and the city are spared the worst of it.

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    re your Jack Detsch tweet – AlJazeera:

    [ image ]

    Drone footage shows long queues of vehicles on the way to exit Russia on its border with Georgia, in Verkhny Lars, Russia [The Insider/Handout via Reuters]

    […]

    Reports that Russia might close the frontier have contributed to turmoil since President Vladimir Putin gave the order last week to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists in the biggest escalation yet of the seven-month Ukraine war.

    Flights out of Russia have sold out and cars have piled up at border checkpoints, with reports of a 48-hour queue at the sole road border to Georgia, the rare pro-Western neighbour that allows Russian citizens to enter without a visa.

    “Panic. All the people I know are in panic,” said David, a Russian who gave only his first name out of fear of reprisals, in an interview with The Associated Press news agency at a border crossing with Georgia. “We are running from the regime that kills people.”

    Long lines of cars were also seen on roads to border crossings with Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

    “Everyone who is of conscription age should be banned from travelling abroad in the current situation,” Sergei Tsekov, a senior lawmaker who represents Russian-annexed Crimea in Russia’s upper house of parliament, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

    Two exiled news sites – Meduza and Novaya Gazeta Europe – both reported that the authorities were planning to ban men from leaving, citing unidentified officials.

    The story opens with a closer-up picture of the traffic jam – the line is 3-4 or more cars wide.

    It doesn’t seem like this is sustainable, to these amateur eyes…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  18. 18.

    ItinerantPedant

    @Jinchi: No.  Snowden’s prior commission in the GRU prevents him from being conscripted into a different branch of the RU military.

  19. 19.

    Anoniminous

    @PaulB:

    Unless the Russians solve their logistic problems it is a certainty occupied Ukraine will be looted and devastated over the winter.

  21. 21.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    Wishing you well Adam.

    Mrs Grumpy and I have the RV loaded and will be peregrinating the North Coast of California between Bodega Bay and Westport. A few days here. A few days there. Salt Point State Park is always a fav as we can stay down in the overflow parking with a panoramic view of whales migrating. Plus 26 miles of trails to hike from the coastal plain to the inland Redwoods! Also always like to visit Fort Ross State Historic Park to see how the Rooskies survived way back when I was just a young brakeman in the early 1800’s. September and October are usually the best time to be on the North Coast and kids are in school so fewer touristas. We’ll be back in 5 weeks.

    Play nice and be kind to each other. I’ll check in when I have a good cell signal or wifi

  22. 22.

    Barbara

    @Anoniminous: ​My husband thinks this is the plan of mobilization, to create roving gangs that will terrorize civilians in any place held by Russia — which is basically the equivalent of a strategic military regression to the Thirty Years War.​

  24. 24.

    Kent

    By executive order, Vladimir Putin just granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden. Just to be clear: this means that Snowden can now be drafted into the Russian army.

    [busy cleaning the spewed coke off my monitor]

    hah.!

  25. 25.

    eddie blake

    two things- first, everything beneath the british map until the comments is blanked out to me on my thinkpad running win 10, but i can see it all on my iphone. weird.

    second.. where the fuck are they gonna get two million boots of various sizes in a MONTH? fuck, where are they gonna get two million boots of ONE size?

    in so many ways, the logistics (or lack there of) of this russian misadventure does not bode well for these conscripts or the army in general. i don’t see how they absorb these recruits. at all.

  26. 26.

    Kent

    @Anoniminous:Unless the Russians solve their logistic problems it is a certainty occupied Ukraine will be looted and devastated over the winter.

    Is there anything left to loot?

  29. 29.

    Anoniminous

    @Barbara:

    I don’t know if it is a “plan,” as such, as much as it is a fact of war: soldiers with guns in the face of death by exposure or starvation will take whatever they need, want, desire from the local population.  That goes triple for the undisciplined rabble Putin is throwing into Ukraine.

  30. 30.

    Nelle

    No, he left in 1924, after the famine if 1921-1923 (I’m the youngest cousin.   The first born cousin starved to death in 1921).  Immigration to the States had shut down by then so he came to Canada.  Before leaving, he had experienced WW1, the Civil War, which lasted about the longest in that area before the Whites escaped to Turkey, and roving groups led by the anarchist, Nestor Makhno.   Plus the famine.

    After reading about Russian behavior, I think I understand the nightmares of his while I grew up.  Russian soldiers occupied his house in retaliation for my grandfather’s escape (he wrote and edited a newspaper that they weren’t happy with).  My father died in 1997.

    The only time I ever heard him curse was the week before he died, when he was revisiting his memories of war (likely prompted by my sister being caught in a war zone in the revolution against Mobutu in Zaire).  He said damn Russians and “Speculator, speculator,  you can speculate.  But Daddy Makhno liquidates.”

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    PSA: In our continuing battles with the Twitter login screen for those of us who don’t have a Twitter account and who use uBlock Origin (UBO):

    Reddit gives pointers to get rid of it.

    Basically, click on the UBO icon near the URL bar, select the 3 gears icon, click on the Filter Lists tab, click on the Annoyances line to expand it, select the AdGuard Annoyances and uBlock Filters items. Apply changes. Close the UBO tab. Refresh your Twitter tabs.

    This seems to work for UBO on Chrome on Winders. Dunno yet about UBO on FF on Android.  [eta] It seems to work for Firefox with UBO on Android as well.  Woot!

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Barbara

    @Anoniminous: ​I think the point is that truly modern military operations do a lot to avoid that scenario. It’s not just a fallback or default when things go wrong — it’s a sign that Russia can’t maintain a modern military operation of the scale needed to succeed in the regions of Ukraine it is laying claim to. And it’s just horrifying when you contemplate the likely human cost, but especially for Ukrainians.

    I know that there is a great deal of disdain for what seem to us to be a servile Russian population, but I keep thinking about how I felt after we invaded Iraq, which was quiet desperation and anger over the futility of protest. I wasn’t afraid to say what I thought, but I didn’t see a lot of point. But I definitely think that resistance would have spiked if Bush had decided to reinstate the draft and start sending draftees to Iraq. I do wonder how many Russians are just biting their tongues.

  35. 35.

    kalakal

    1. @Kent: I remember reading years a theory that as the 30 years war progressed the movements of armies was dictated more by trying to find (relatively) unpillaged areas rather than any obvious war winning purpose. The Russians have been looting the same area for months, there can hardly be anything left
  36. 36.

    Urban Suburbanite

    I’ve been reading W. Bruce Lincoln’s books on Russia from 1890-1920 (easily one of the grimmest trilogies, and not just for the photos of families arrested for cannibalism) and there’s something about his description of the war with Japan that tracks with the current conflict. The conscription drives to feed more soldiers into the war with Japan (which was about controlling Korea) led to a widespread (but uncoordinated) insurrection that the empire ended brutally. There were people torching recruiting offices a couple months back, and now there are guys walking into draft offices and opening fire.

    There are thousands of people crossing the Russian border, and I hope more make it out. And Zelensky stating that Russian POWs won’t necessarily be returned to Russia was a very smart move.

  37. 37.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ruckus:

    Putin is well aware that the war on Ukraine is going very badly. I mean, how could he not be? He bet heavily on a quick and easy win, but his military has failed at pretty much every level and let him down badly. He’s facing the prospect of a slow and painful defeat, and I think it’s dawning on him that it might not be in his power to turn it around. The mobilisation is wildly unpopular. He’s running out of options and getting desperate. He knows he’s in trouble, and that makes him especially dangerous right now.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    Adam,

    Please bug out. The lesson from the last few years is that our extreme weather predictions tend to lowball the risk.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    Photo from the Russian-Georgian border

    Few years ago social media users were mocking the Syrian refugees wondering why fighting age men are so heavily overrepresented among them

    Well, now you can get why pic.twitter.com/IPNo4kcDbL

    — Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) September 26, 2022

    Shows a photo of what seems to be a few hundred young men at a border checkpoint. I assume that’s being repeated just about everywhere that has relatively permissive crossing.

    And it’s perfectly understandable. Self preservation instincts are strong in humans. Wikipedia:

    Draft evaders

    See also: Draft evasion

    Estimates vary greatly as to how many Americans immigrated to Canada for the specific reason of evading conscription, as opposed to desertion, or other reasons. Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era. The BBC stated that “as many as 60,000 young American men dodged the draft.”[25] Estimates of the total number of American citizens who moved to Canada due to their opposition to the war range from 50,000 to 125,000[26] This exodus was “the largest politically motivated migration from the United States since the United Empire Loyalists moved north to oppose the American Revolution.”[27]

    That was over a 10 year period (1965-1975).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Thank you for the update, Adam, and best wishes for you, Betty C, and the other jackals keeping their eyes on this storm.

  43. 43.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    @Another Scott:

    Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era.

    Ayup. It wasn’t until I stepped off the Huey to join my infantry company in the An Lao Valley of the Central Highlands that I thought: “Damn, I should have gone to Canada when I had the chance. . . “

  48. 48.

    way2blue

    @Another Scott: Any tips for Mac users?  The twitter splash screen is beyond annoying.  I’ve figured out how to scroll past it, but would really like to block it.  Thanks.

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    @eddie blake:

    vlad is desperate. He’s put himself in spots before but was always able to wiggle out relatively easy. He ain’t doing any wiggling these days. As the old joke goes he’s stepped upon the old johnson with golf spikes on, the old fashioned kind with the very sharp pointed spikes. You’ve heard about stepping in shit, this is really about 1000 time worse because you don’t want any spike like this near any johnson, even one of someone you hate. Now he’s just doing the pre ambulance ride dance. In the long run none of this is going to go well for him. I’m almost amazed this hasn’t been “fixed” before now. He must really have some dope on all the billionaires in Russia to keep them in line going forward.

  52. 52.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Major Major Major Major:

    It’s so cool knowing humans did that. Watching the final images the DART spacecraft transmitted was amazing as well. Not used to seeing such crystal clear images like that of space objects up close

    Comparing the sizes of the rocks on the asteroid’s surface to the whole asteroid, it doesn’t look it was very large. According to Wiki, its mean diameter is 0.170±0.030 km
    or 170±30 m. According to a NASA tweet, it’s about the size of an American football stadium

  53. 53.

    eddie blake

    @Ruckus:  yup. it’s crazy. the russian army couldn’t pull off an orderly withdrawal under fire. how can raw recruits pull off a successful offensive? unless the plan is to force the ukraine army to run out of bullets and shells with human wave attacks…

    you’re right. it smacks of desperation.

  54. 54.

    Poptartacus

    I imagine the new meat won’t be getting much training. Why waste time and rubles on the rubes who are just going to get quickly blown away.

  56. 56.

    Carlo Graziani

    Something is bothering me about the mobilization thing. It makes no sense for Putin to do this.

    We know he hates it, and all the reasons he resisted doing it are coming true right before his eyes. It’s destabilizing his orderly lie of a society that he strained every fibre to sustain for years.

    And for what? He’s an evil, reptilian bag of fecal slurry, but he’s not an idiot. He certainly knows that the mobilization will not solve any of Russia’s military problems in Ukraine. At best it’s a temporary sop to appease the crazy foaming right-wingers. For a while. But then what?

    Something’s not right.

  58. 58.

    prostratedragon

    Old wisdom from Sun-tzu, who evidently has never been translated into Russian:

    During times of raids and the taking of booty, invading troops must be made to move with purpose and haste. Plundering a country has a tendency to make the invading troops lax in their vigil. If this mentality is permitted, they will become more impressed with the accumulation of trinkets and forget their reason for being there in the first place. The wise warlord must insist that the army gets in and gets out quickly. He knows to take what he can carry with ease, leaving the rest for the people. Otherwise the hatred of the conquered people will travel faster than the wind

  60. 60.

    way2blue

    @kalakal: I wish I found that reassuring.  Perhaps the least worst outcome is for new recruits to knock off their commanding officers and surrender.

  62. 62.

    BeautifulPlumage

    How long after being cut off from their daily vodka until the alcoholics among the mobilized go batshit? Should be hitting any day now.

  63. 63.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @way2blue:

    Apparently that last part’s sort of already happened with the new recruits:

    Mobilized Russians Asking How to ‘Surrender’ Through Hotline: Official

    A spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence says that Russian men being rounded up for the Kremlin’s war effort are already seeking to avoid the front lines by handing themselves over to Ukrainian authorities.

    Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, told state television on Monday that recently mobilized Russians have contacted a hotline set up by Ukraine’s security services asking to surrender, reports Ukrainska Pravda. Yusov’s remarks follow other reports of challenges facing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to compel military service to shore up his military campaign in Ukraine.

    “Now there are a lot of calls to the hotline from newly mobilized Russians or even from those who have not yet been mobilized,” Yusov said during the broadcast, according to Pravda. “They call and say: ‘If I am mobilized, what should I do, what should I do, how should I surrender?'”

  64. 64.

    eddie blake

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  to do what? iirc, the space program, ostensibly about beating the russians to the moon after failing to beat them into orbit, was really all about developing intercontinental ballistic missiles to accurately nuke cities on the other side of the planet.

    we can do that.

    what would be the purpose of going back to the moon? i’m all about the space program, (worried that boeing means the artemis isn’t going.)i could understand building o’neill cylinders at the lagrange points, but what would you do on the moon?

  65. 65.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @eddie blake:

    Well, there’s resources on the moon to make rocket fuel with. Launching from the moon is also easier than launching from Earth. Also, it’s a stepping stone to get to Mars by building up experience in long-term space exploration (eventually) and testing equipment.

    Plus, we’re competing with the Chinese now

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Carlo Graziani: We must do something!

    This is something!

    Therefore, we must do it!

    Seriously, what other option does he have?  He has to do something because things are going very badly…

    Of course, the sensible thing to do is declare that he has defeated the Nazis and achieved his goals so now he’s bringing everyone home to parades.  (Followed immediately by him taking a fast flight to Dubai to live in exile before he’s strung up.) But if he were sensible enough to do that, he wouldn’t have invaded (again) in the first place.

    He has few options so he had to do this, it seems to me.

    With any luck, it will hasten russia’s defeat and VVP’s downfall.  Who knows what comes after though…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    eddie blake

    @prostratedragon:

    they will become more impressed with the accumulation of trinkets and forget their reason for being there in the first place.

    isn’t the accumulation of trinkets exactly why they’re there? what is ukraine to putin but a trinket he thinks he can display on his mantlepiece?

  70. 70.

    eddie blake

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  you need a LOT of water to make rocket fuel. i know the science-types are pretty sure there’s tons and tons of water on jupiter’s moon, europa, but how much of it have they discovered on OURS?

    also, competing with the chinese for what? i mean, we have the bragging rights. they wanna go now, with modern tech. good for them. we did it fifty three years ago, with calculations done by hand.

  71. 71.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    It still boggles my mind sometimes that Putin declared this war without knowing his army was in this sorry of a shape. Did no-one tell him the truth? And frankly, if he deliberately set up the military to be as corrupt as possible to better control them, how could expect anything else?

  72. 72.

    Jinchi

    @Carlo Graziani: He certainly knows that the mobilization will not solve any of Russia’s military problems in Ukraine.

    I disagree. Putin clearly thinks he can defeat Ukraine. At any point he could have declared victory, stated that he had de-Nazified Ukraine and headed home with his plunder. Everyone in Russia would have applauded and pretended to believe him. He could probably have fallen back to defensible positions at the borders he’d occupied since 2014, declared them Russian, and worked on other projects for a few years.

    But he keeps trying to capture more, so he must believe he can get it. Just a bit more time and a few more men and everything will fall together. It may be obvious to us that press ganging men, handing them rusted rifles and ordering them to give no ground is nonsense. That freeing rapists and murderers is a terrible way to fill the ranks and that putting Chechens at their backs to enforce obedience destroys morale and will fall apart at the first opening.

    But I don’t think Putin knows it. He remembers the story of Stalingrad and imagines he can send wave after wave of soldiers to overwhelm the enemy. As he remembers it, that worked brilliantly.

  73. 73.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:

    Do remember there is a lot of control still in Russia. Not a lot of outside news, mostly just propaganda so most people do not really know what’s going on outside their country, what their “leader” has been doing. And it looks like much of the enforcement system there is still working at least somewhat. A lot of people may have had enough and want change but Russia is being run by a man who worked as a KGB officer and seemingly got into politics to be the shithead he is, which isn’t a good thing. And it seems the rethuglicans didn’t gain as much by being his friend as they might think hiring SFB did. But we don’t know where the remains of the stuff the FBI is looking for is. I wonder if it went to vlad’s office from SFB’s hands or maybe Jared’s for that 2 billion.

    I’m thinking stolen by SFB, sold by Jared.

  75. 75.

    Calouste

    The other things about all those Russians fleeing the country is that these are the guys, by doing so, that are showing initiative and problem solving skills, i.e. the ones that are officer/NCO material. Although of course with two weeks training, none of them are going to get there anyway.

    I agree with Carlo above, on a higher level, this mobilization and the way it’s carried out just doesn’t make sense. Maybe the Russian front line is about to collapse and this is a desperate gamble, but even then a retreat and regroup and training the new recruits and trying again in the spring would make more sense.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): His government’s official policy is to lie about everything.  People who don’t keep VVP happy end up dead, so they tell him what he wants to hear.  Why would he have any idea of the truth about the army or anything else?  You can’t have a system of lies that provides accurate information.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Has anybody done an analysis of exactly how much industrial plant we’d have to ship up to the moon to set up a marginally self-sustaining colony?  I mean, is the plan to ship up all the solar cells, all the equipment to extract the water, etc?  And of course, all that plant has to be sent up in rockets, so there’s building all those rockets, and getting all that mass out of Earth’s gravity well.  And let’s not forget earth-moving equipment to dig tunnels, b/c you can’t live on the surface (no magentosphere, just as with Mars, so cosmic rays will age you in no time).

    I’m unconvinced it’s practical.

  79. 79.

    Jinchi

    @Anoniminous: ​
      soldiers with guns in the face of death by exposure or starvation will take whatever they need, want, desire from the local population.

    I’d read that Prigozhin, while recruiting convicts in Russian prisons, literally told them that they were free to commit any crimes they wanted against the Ukrainian population, without fear of prosecution. It was sold as a perk of the job.

  80. 80.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Another Scott: What I’m starting to wonder about is whether he’s still fully in control.

    The surface story is so senseless that an inside mini putsch/power-grab by a coterie of siloviki, perhaps encouraged by a health crisis, or some such scenario, is starting to seem not completely stupid  I feel sure that if Putin retained the kind of control that he had even a few weeks ago, none of this maniacal hit-the-gas-pedal-instead-of-the-brakes bullshit would be going on.

    It’s just a hinky feeling. There’s something below the radar.

  81. 81.

    Jay

    Recent video where a medic(?) tells the newly mobilized russian recruits they need to buy their own camping mats and sleeping bags because the army won’t provide it.She also suggests taking IFAKs from their car and buying sanitary pads and tampons for bleeding. pic.twitter.com/9e0nasEBVv— Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin) September 27, 2022

  82. 82.

    Andrya

    @Carlo Graziani:  The only way this makes sense to me is this:  putin has ruthlessly suppressed all liberal/antiwar criticism, but has allowed right wing/fascist/ultranationalist criticism, as long as it is directed at the generals and not at him.

    This suggests that he has no fear on the antiwar left, but he does not see himself totally safe on the imperialist, ultra-nationalist right.

    Ergo, he pulled this stunt lest he be subjected to a coup from hawks.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    Oh I think he knows it’s not going well but can he accept why it isn’t is really my point. Because that is a key point for not making it worse. And I think all he really knows how to do is double down, which is really what he’s trying to do and much of his country is not going along with. And that’s not counting that how is he going to train anyone, even for two weeks and with what is he going to make them able to fight and how does he think this might go? Yes he’s dangerous, he’s always been dangerous. Our lovely rethuglican politicians who spent 4th of July discussing what with him in Moscow not all that long ago think he’s the top of the world and I’d bet they also think we should be far more like him, have a leader like him, maybe even him. I know this sounds far fetched but how far out is it really? vlad is not being the god king he thinks he is for several reasons the first is there is no god king, it’s an asinine concept, but that really won’t stop a deranged man in his position. He’s got to either come to that conclusion or he will die trying, along with a lot of actual humans. And the actual humans know this. Conservative politicians like vlad and much of our conservative side don’t seem to understand this at all.

  84. 84.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: I saw a tweet yesterday that RU mobilized men show up with their own armor, first aid kits, etc, and ….. it’s all taken away from them by the staff at the training ground.  Ha!

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @Carlo Graziani: Yeah, it’s senseless.

    Maybe he was hoping that Xi would somehow bail him out at their recent meeting, and when Xi didn’t this mobilization was nearly all that was left.  Maybe he thought that announcing the mobilization would make the EU and NATO step back.  Who knows.

    But I still think that he had to do something, whether pushed by hard liners or not.

    Slava Ukraini.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Jinchi

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s a lot of water on the moon

    Actually there isn’t. There’s recent evidence that trace amounts exist bound up in the soil, and hope that more exists as permanently frozen ice at the poles, but it’s far drier than the Saudi desert.

    The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said.

    If water is what we’re hoping for, it would probably be more energy efficient to catch a wandering comet.

  87. 87.

    piratedan

    another J6 hearing on Wednesday… sure will be interesting to see what they have on tap for us all.

  88. 88.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Major Major Major Major:

    the rocket is a boondoggle though, especially when we have SpaceX at our disposal.

    On a related note, I read a comment by someone once, mostly pushing back on the Musk worship, that the reusable SpaceX rockets aren’t all that reusable or something? SpaceX doesn’t live up to the hype was the impression I was getting. Wish I could find those Reddit comments

  89. 89.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jinchi:

    From my linked source above:

    Based on remote observations by radar instruments aboard Chandrayaan-1 and LRO, the lunar poles have over 600 billion kilograms of water ice. That’s enough to fill at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This is a low-end estimate because the amount of water detected is limited by the strength of spacecraft radar. New missions with radars that penetrate deeper will likely find more water ice.

    In 2020, researchers using LRO data identified PSRs inside craters that were smaller than a kilometer. These micro-cold traps increase the expected amount of water ice on the Moon by at least 10 to 20 percent.

  90. 90.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Lots of things are “impractical” until they’re made practical. I believe this will be no different. Humans deep down are explorers and innovators

  91. 91.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    I agree, but still what else did he expect? How could he be so naive especially when he’s the one who set this corrupt system up himself? He would’ve been better off trying to undermine UKR with the kind of propaganda warfare Russia has excelled at instead of starting a war.

    I suppose Putin had begun the believe his own bullshit; that’s only explanation I can think of

  92. 92.

    catfishncod

    @Jinchi: To the extent there is a plan, I imagine that’s the goal. No one with any sense in the Kremlin or Defense Ministry (which may not be many people at this point) thinks throwing bodies into the fray will generate any offensive capabilities and little in defensive capabilities. But it will create humanitarian disasters, which has been a key Russian geopolitical strategy for a long time now. Even if most of those recruits simply surrender ASAP— he’s handed Zelenskyy and the EU hundreds of thousands of extra mouths to feed and house right as winter hits. Since he and we are not genocidalists, that diverts logistics capacity that otherwise might feed the fight.

    Vova’s effective weapons are economic and political, not military. The military’s job is to create pain, just as the economic warfare is. Then the fascist pawns sweep in, promising to end the pain – by giving Vova whatever he wants. The problem, from Vova’s POV, is that the military position might collapse before the winter magnifies the energy pain.

  93. 93.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Chetan Murthy: radiation is straightforward to deal with in a permanent installation, you can use fancy things like aerogels or even just water as shielding. As for the other logistical challenges, they’re things we’ll want to explore and solve before trying anything more ambitious, so it makes sense to start on the moon.

    We shouldn’t lose sight of sending robots to places other than Mars, though.

  94. 94.

    Torrey

    @Carlo Graziani:

      I’ve been wondering if the idea is to flood Ukraine with russian POWs and stretch Ukrainian resources that way. Ukraine has to find a way to feed, clothe, and house all those who surrender, and they likely don’t have the personnel to serve as jailers. Adding released prisoners from russian jails to the mix is bound to create more problems. And if the russians can include some loyalists among the POWs, they can create a fair amount of chaos.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Google tells me that there are roughly 250,000 swimming pools just in Los Angeles.

    You’re not really countering the argument that the moon is very dry.

    Yes, with enough work, and enough energy, water can be wrung out of the moon.  But I don’t think that anyone has a practical efficient way of doing that yet.  (Could be wrong.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    piratedan

    @Torrey: I guess it would also serve to have those who would most likely be available to protest and overthrow Putin would be removed from the equation if they’re being blown up by the UKR forces and redistributed across Europe as they surrender.

  97. 97.

    Ruckus

    @Grumpy Old Railroader:

    I thought of Canada. I’ve been there a few times and it’s nice. Cold at times but nice. But I enlisted in the navy, I thought it might end up a bit better in the long run. Now we used to have a commenter here who did the same and about 30 days after getting out of boot camp he ended up on an RPB as forward machine gunner. I met him a few years back at a meet up and we talked most of the evening about it. It has effected every day of his life and not really in a good way. I’ve met a lot of guys in Long Beach Navy hospital when I was there for 2 months in 73 and lately at the VA, who had similar or far worse stories and experiences. My enlistment worked out OK for me, it could have gone a lot worse. I hope you are no worse for wear. I met a Marine sergeant in the Navy at LB hospital and we talked regularly. He had issues but not the extent a lot of men have had. We all have different limits of how much of life we can take and warfare tests those limits every second of every day.

  98. 98.

    catfishncod

    Adam, I keep seeing stories telling us to prepare for a collapse or at least destabilization of the Russian state. Regardless of the merits of the argument (which seems wildly premature to me)— what does that even mean? How do you ‘prepare’ for a 150M-person imperial nuclear power to go to pieces (again)? This ain’t Haiti we’re talking about here.

  100. 100.

    Another Scott

    @way2blue: If you install Firefox on your Mac, you can then install the uBlock Origin extension and do the same steps.

    It works with Safari too, prior to v13. (You probably don’t want to use a browser that old though.)

    https://ublockorigin.com/

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @Calouste:

    Russia has very outdated ideas about NCOs, they depend upon officers to lead and they are missing a bunch of steps in the middle. They are like the guys with swards and shields being ordered around by one guy on a horse. It doesn’t work in a modern military, which takes people who know the details and keep things running while the big guy on the horse shines his metals. OK I’m going a bit over the top here but the general concept of warfare has changed from horses and swords and as Russia has proven, a lack of specifically trained NCOs no longer works. It was necessary in our military 50-80 yrs ago and it is in every other working military. And Russia is really poor at NCO stuff. They try and make up for it with a lot of bodies but that just doesn’t work. That may even be what vlad is trying to do now, massive numbers to out run bullets. It’s a failure just waiting to happen.

  102. 102.

    Ruckus

    @Calouste:

    Russia has very outdated ideas about NCOs, they depend upon officers to lead and they are missing a bunch of steps in the middle. They are like the guys with swards and shields being ordered around by one guy on a horse. It doesn’t work in a modern military, which takes people who know the details and keep things running while the big guy on the horse shines his metals. OK I’m going a bit over the top here but the general concept of warfare has changed from horses and swords and as Russia has proven, a lack of specifically trained NCOs no longer works. It was necessary in our military 50-80 yrs ago and it is in every other working military. And Russia is really poor at NCO stuff. They try and make up for it with a lot of bodies but that just doesn’t work. That may even be what vlad is trying to do now, massive numbers to out run bullets. It’s a failure just waiting to happen.

  103. 103.

    eddie blake

    @Major Major Major Major:  so you wanna build von braun city first. cool.

    i would think you’d wanna do it the other way around. experiment a successful habitat with the o’neill cylinders, especially the mirrors for power and plant-growth aiding the air scrubbers. figure they’d be a testbed for the technology needed for a colony on the moon.

  105. 105.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jinchi:  Personally, I think Putin just thinks he needs to hold on in Ukraine until January Jwhen a pro Putin Republican party takes over one or both houses of Congress.

  109. 109.

    ian

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I want to see Americans back on the moon eventually

    Is there a practical reason for this?  It would seem a massive waste of money for little material gain

    Edit: I see that this has been debated.  I am not seeing the benefit.

  110. 110.

    Major Major Major Major

    @eddie blake: they’re all super fiddly except for L4 and L5, which collect debris. Might as well build in earth orbit. Also L2 is incredibly cold and dark (which is why we sent our IR telescope there), you wouldn’t put people there. The moon is easy mode. We should start with Antarctica, though, tbh

  111. 111.

    eddie blake

    @Major Major Major Major:  well, you’re right about L2. that really is too dark for people. earth orbit is a better choice than that but it would have to be considerably larger than the international space station, and iirc they have to constantly adjust that thing’s orbit to keep it up there. still figure L1 would be a decent location, good for the mirrors.

    anyway, we’re not gonna do that. it’s probably some gibberish out of the pentagon about controlling the high ground. most likely they wanna make sure the chinese won’t set up mass drivers or something like that when they set up a stake on the moon. probably do that with unmanned, weaponized satellites. that would be way cheaper. like waaaay cheaper.

  113. 113.

    Kineslaw

    @Calouste: Ethnic minorities are already overrepresented in the military and also in the mobilization.  It would make sense that ethnic minority areas are more aware of how badly the military is doing, both via communications home and the number of people in communities that have died.  They would also have more of an understanding of what a paper tiger the Russian Army is.

    Putin might be sending the minority populations to be cannon fodder to decrease the potential fighters should the hinterlands decide that they don’t need to belong to a Russia that mistreats them and whose military power is at low ebb.

  114. 114.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Torrey: 

    I’ve been wondering if the idea is to flood Ukraine with russian POWs and stretch Ukrainian resources that way.

    A posting over at DailyKos has a different view of the conscripts.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/26/2125480/-The-Russian-mobilization-can-only-be-understood-in-the-context-of-the-BTG

    But the quick summary is that the Russian BTG … is meant to be a trained core of firepower to which a conscript unit is attached to be the BTG’s meat shield. Quite literally a meat shield. The attached conscripts on offense are meant to walk forward in order to get the enemy to open fire. Once the enemy units expose themselves by firing, the BTG’s artillery will target those positions. To see if the artillery hit anything, the next wave of conscripts will be sent out to see if any enemies are still alive. The conscripts are not expected to survive.

    So even as some make fun of the quality of the Russian mobilization, the sad fact is that the mobilization is nothing more than replenishing a disposable commodity. The conscripts don’t need training because all they are meant to do is die.

  115. 115.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Carlo Graziani: Putin was big into martial arts and one of the main tenants of Russian wrestling is only wimps tap out (presumably you should take the brain damage from being strangled out like a man)

  117. 117.

    Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Yep. I don’t think people get how much fuel you need just to move water around. We’re not going to leave humans anywhere that doesn’t have its own water supply for quite some time – so moon, then Mars.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    From a Politico article about Iranian drones in Ukraine:

           “It’s very difficult to see these drones on radars, said Andrianna Alekha, who traveled to DC last month with a group of female Ukrainian soldiers.” Its a huge problem.”

    Ms. Alekha described how drones launched from Crimea were able to evade defenses and destroy two manned tanks that were part of her special operations group fighting near Kherson. Alekha’s group was requesting specific military aid:

         Ukraine needs modern air defenses, such as Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar systems [which were] deployed in Afghanistan, and 360° radar.

    From the article “‘A huge problem:’ Iranian drones pose new threat to Ukraine,” Politico Sept. 26.

    Back in July, when Iran’s potential provision of combat drones to Russia was disclosed by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, I read that Russia had neglected development of armed drones. They thought that reconnaissance drones assisting their warplanes, missiles and artillery would suffice.

    In contrast, Iran devoted a substantial piece of their engineering and industrial base to development and production of armed drones, starting in the 1990s. Iran has relied on Russia’s diplomatic support for a while, and now Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has made Russia more reliant on Iran.

  119. 119.

    catfishncod

    What’s the point of going to the Moon?

    The trivial answer was, “Because it’s there.” That was, in essence, what JFK said; same answer as Edmund Hillary.

    It’s also the profound answer, but for different reasons.

    It’s not for “flags and footprints”, as the saying goes. Or for rocket development, or to deny the Commies a base to rain nukes upon us. And it’s certainly not for any valuable resources (though we’ll take advantage of any ice we can find); the geology isn’t right for that.

    Its because it’s *right there*. Three days travel, and you can launch to it anytime you want. One sixth gravity, a place where we can learn if the health effects of zero gee extend to partial gravity, where we can practice making stuff in such an environment. A place with tons of fines and dust, to work out the practical issues of basic mechanics in the realest of real test beds. A place where we can communicate with just one second’s radio lag back to all the expertise and databases on Earth, where people on the ground can operate robots and waldoes in near-real-time instead of back-and-forth over minutes and hours. A place where it’s relatively easy to bail out if stuff goes horribly wrong. A place to test out survival gear and not-quite-closed-loop life support— where long term experiments are possible but also where resupply isn’t a Herculean task.

    In short: it’s the test bed. A sandbox.

  120. 120.

    Geminid

     

    @Geminid: In other Iran news, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi met with Iranian official Mohammed Eslami on the sidelines of the IAEA’s annual conference. Grossi announced:

    Dialogue has restarted with Iran on outstanding safeguards issues.

    The “safeguards issues” refer to the IAEA’s investigation of three sites with unexplained presence of nuclear radiation, possible evidence that Iran has made undiclosed efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

    Iran maintains that its extensive uranium enrichment program has no miltary purpose. They have said that the IAEA probe must be dropped before they will sign a renewed JCPOA designed to limit their declared nuclear programs. The “E-3” parties in the talks- France, Germany and the UK- maintain that the new JCPOA will not constrain independent oversight by the IAEA.

  121. 121.

    Bupalos

    SUGGESTION: I think it’s a good idea when posting scenes from  the Russian tv propaganda circus to note that it doesn’t represent anything directly other than efforts to deceive and confuse, and to float trial balloons for sentimenrs in a bizare kind of push-polling. Those are all propagabda actors and that has to be kept front of mind.

  122. 122.

    The Pale Scot

    @Torrey:

    I’ve been wondering if the idea is to flood Ukraine with russian POWs and stretch Ukrainian resources that way

    Do what the uk did with their immigrants, send them to central African country and let them bake

  123. 123.

    Bill Arnold

    @Bupalos:

    Those are all propaganda actors

    Actors in which sense?
    1. a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in movies, or on television.
    2. a participant in an action or process.

    If the second, yes of course. If the first, well, some of them are believers, and it’s not just transactional belief, or method acting. Many (most) people Believe dumb things.
    It would be helpful to have a few confessions from those involved, to better calibrate our understanding of the fakeness of Russian propaganda. (Links if there are any recent examples of such.)

  124. 124.

    Bill Arnold

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We should start with Antarctica, though, tbh

    Anywhere above the water surface on earth is at least an order of magnitude more friendly to humans than anywhere nearby in space (i.e. this solar system).
    Air. Water. Fully-functional ecosystems. (And almost no cosmic rays, the right amount of gravity for bone/cardiovascular maintenance, etc.)
    Anyone with activist inclinations should be fighting against human-caused global heating.

  125. 125.

    way2blue

    @Another Scott: A belated thanks.  Major^3 suggested joining twitter, but I’d rather push back against the ‘machine’.

    I remember showing my twin sons (when they were ~8 years old) their iMac’s terminal window, and how to code ‘Hello World’.  Next thing I know—they’ve figured out how to use the terminal window to evade parental controls.  And so it goes…

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