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Bark louder, little dog.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

I really should read my own blog.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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This really is a full service blog.

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 227: A Slower News Day Today

War for Ukraine Day 227: A Slower News Day Today

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Today was a much slower day in terms of news, but it wasn’t without news. More and more information keeps coming out of Zaporizhzhzia. The Russians have been bombarding and shelling and kamikaze droning it pretty relentlessly. We’ll get to that after the jump.

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

Today I want to address those in the world who give in to Russian manipulations about the alleged negotiations. About an assumption that it is supposedly only negotiations that can end this brutal Russian terrorist war.

Does the terrorist state want peace? Obviously not. It proves that every day and every night.

Zaporizhzhia. One of the Ukrainian cities against which Russia directs its missile terror.

At least 14 people died last night as a result of Russian strikes on ordinary residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia. Unfortunately, this number may increase. Debris is still being cleared. More than 70 people were injured, including 11 children. All of them are provided with proper aid.

Hundreds of families were left homeless. An entire block, from the first to the sixth floor, was destroyed by one of the missiles – a heavy anti-ship missile Kh-22 – aimed at an ordinary nine-story residential building.

It was a deliberate strike. The one who gave the order and those who carried it out knew what they were targeting.

The strikes this night continued a series of Russian missile strikes on Zaporizhzhia, which have killed at least 43 people since October 3 this week alone. And there were also strikes on Kharkiv, on the cities of Donbas, on other cities of Ukraine… There were also strikes by Iranian drones. Airstrikes. The absolute majority of them were aimed at the civil infrastructure of Ukraine and civilians.

When someone wants to negotiate, he does not do so. And when someone is a terrorist, that’s exactly what he does.

Do negotiations really help overcome terror? Now everyone has to answer this question honestly. Terrorists are neutralized.

Terrorism is a crime that must be punished. Terrorism at the state level is one of the most heinous international crimes, which threatens not just someone in the world, but the entire international community.

If terror goes unpunished, if the terrorist succeeds in intimidation so much that someone in the world is willing to simply turn a blind eye to terror, then that will be a loss – a loss of freedom, a loss of humanity and a loss of democracy. This is exactly what Russia longs for. This is why it needs all this terror – from missile strikes to global crises provoked by a terrorist state.

This has already happened in history. Last time another terrorist state was allowed to do what it wanted because the world powers were afraid of its terror, World War II started.

Now the world is united. Now everyone in the world understands what this war in Ukraine is actually being waged against by Russia. This is a Russian war against all those values that make people human and life peaceful.

Ukraine will win this war. We can liberate our entire land and we can put the terrorist state in place. Russia must be punished for terror. Only this guarantees that the confrontation will not grow to an even greater scale and will not spread to other countries.

But for this we must preserve the maximum unity – the unity of all the people of the world who value peace, respect the right to life for everyone and are honest enough to admit: the constant terror against the civilian population is an obvious Russian refusal to engage in real negotiations.

Therefore, official designation of Russia as a terrorist state is needed – designation at all levels.

It is necessary to limit any economic contacts with any Russian subjects – you cannot be a sponsor of terrorism.

We need a clear condemnation at all levels of every escalating step by Russia – from terrorist attacks to the criminal attempt to annex our territory. The relevant resolution will be considered by the UN General Assembly in a few days. We will see from the vote who and how treat terrorists in reality.

And Ukraine needs principled and sufficient aid. Aid to our people who are targeted by the terrorist state. It is necessary to accelerate the provision of a sufficient number of effective air defense systems to Ukraine. The negotiations on the provision of such air defense systems, the negotiations on increasing other defense, political and financial support for Ukraine are the only possible negotiation format that can really bring peace closer.

I am grateful to everyone who helps us resist terror!

I am grateful to everyone who fights and works for the return of peace to Ukraine and guarantees of the right to life and security to every Ukrainian.

Eternal memory to all victims of Russian terror!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here’s the British MOD’s assessment for today. The mappers apparently got the long weekend off.

Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessment of the situation in Izium, as well as an updated battle damage assessment regarding the Kerch Bridge explosion:

Here’s a full size of his graphic:

This is not definitive. It is informative based on Pfarrer’s experience and expertise. We won’t know exactly how the bridge was attacked until those who actually did it tell us.

The Russians have been heavily targeting Zaporizhzhia:

The good news is that Germany has finally gotten at least part of the stick out and is going to be sending IRIS-T air defense systems to Ukraine:

The bad news is that Ukraine is in desperate need of more air defense systems right now, not whenever they actually arrive from Germany.

Lyman:

Last night in a comment, Goku asked:

Adam, what do you think would happen if Ukraine were to retake Crimea, hypothetically speaking *knock on wood so I don’t jinx anything*? I’ve read that the peninsula is mostly ethnically Russian. Do you think this could present problems?

I didn’t answer last night because 1) I wanted to go to sleep and 2) this question needed to be answered within the post.

There is a lot of both outdated and down right bad data and information about the ethno-national make up of Crimea. A lot of the latter is because of Russian efforts to obscure the actual reality on the ground. In 2015, Dr. Elanor Knott, Phd – then a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics – did a deep dive into Crimea’s complicated ethnic composition in The Washington Post:

Many observers have suggested that since most Crimeans were ethnically Russian, they were therefore loyal to Russia, and therefore welcomed annexation. But is it true? Would Crimeans have voted to join Russia if the referendum had been legal, free and fair?

As is often the case, the actual evidence suggests a much more complicated picture. Back in the 1990s, Crimean separatists had tried to secede from Ukraine, in part to be closer to Russia. They were able to organize a referendum in 1994, which Kiev declared illegal. This referendum showed mass support for a “treaty based” relationship between Kiev and Crimea, and for allowing dual Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, which was banned under Ukrainian law. However, following this peak, the movement failed to achieve secession, weakened by the egoism of its leader, Yurii Meshkov, who failed to foster ideological cohesion within the movement, nor secure enough mass support to crystallize a viable opposition to the Ukrainian state. After this, separatist politicians became the “losers” of mainstream politics in Crimea, according to those I interviewed, and popular support for separatism waned.

What’s more, Crimea is not in fact populated by an ethnically Russian, pro-Russian majority. That’s far too homogenized an image of the peninsula. In fact, before annexation, Crimea’s Russian ethnic majority was highly fractured and contested, as I will explain in the remainder of this post. Therefore, it is important to go beyond simple explanations of ethnicity as a cause of annexation, or an indicator of support for Russia.

Five categories of Crimean ethnic identity

In 2012 and 2013, as part of my PhD research, I conducted 53 interviews in Simferopol, Crimea, to examine the meanings of being Russian in Crimea. I interviewed individuals from across the political and social spectrum, including many from the post-Soviet generation, to unpack the experiences of being Russian in relation to Ukraine, Russia and Crimea.

Based on this data, I constructed categories to help explain the complexity of Russian identity that I observed. Except for the final category, all respondents said that Russian was their native language and language of common communication.

  1. Discriminated Russians
  2. Ethnic Russians
  3. Crimeans
  4. Political Ukrainians
  5. Ethnic Ukrainians

These categories offer a more nuanced look at Crimean and Ukrainian identity, going beyond the mutually exclusive ethnic and census categories of “ethnic Russian” and “ethnic Ukrainian” that most observers have used before now. Using these can help illuminate how Crimeans are actually negotiating complex questions of identity, loyalty and territorial aspirations. Let me describe these categories in more detail.

Discriminated Russians most ardently identified as Russian, ethnically, culturally and linguistically, and were supporters of Russia. They felt marginalized and threatened by Ukraine’s policies of Ukrainization, and were members of pro-Russian organizations. By 2014, these organizations came to endorse annexation. That catapulted their leaders, like Sergei Aksenov of Crimea’s pro-Russian party (Russkoe Edinstvo), to positions of power — and helped Russia claim some  legitimacy in its occupation. It’s important to note, however, that before 2014, only these few highly politicized individuals, including pensioners, were claiming that they were the victims of discrimination.

Discrimination was therefore a sentiment of those who felt they lost out from post-Soviet politics, rather than those willing and able to adapt, in particular the younger post-Soviet generation.

By contrast, Ethnic Russians identified as ethnically Russian. But they expressed no sense of being discriminated against by Ukraine. Instead, they felt a sense of legitimacy in being Russian, and at the same time, they were not only happy to reside in, but felt a sense of belonging to, Ukraine.

Crimeans and Political Ukrainians blurred ethnic categories in ways that could not be captured by censuses.

Crimeans described Crimean (“Krymchan”) as their primary identity, saying that they identified as both ethnically Ukrainian and Russian, having come from ethnically mixed families. They expressed a sense of belonging — both as individuals and as a territory — to both Ukraine and Russia.

Political Ukrainians subverted ethnic categories. They defined themselves in terms of their political connections to Ukraine, as post-Soviet citizens of Ukraine. While they identified their parents as ethnically Russian, Russia was a foreign place to them. They felt that ethnicity did not determine their life chances in Crimea or Ukraine because everyone — no matter what ethnicity — “lives badly.”

Unlike Ethnic Ukrainians, Political Ukrainians saw themselves as a post-Soviet category who could conceive of themselves as Ukrainian and from Crimea.

Ethnic Ukrainians explained themselves as Ukrainian, culturally and ethnically, because they were born in parts of Ukraine that were outside Crimea.

These categories revealed a lack of association among identity, citizenship status and territorial aspirations. None of those I interviewed held, or admitted to holding, Russian citizenship, citing it as inaccessible and/or undesirable. Only Discriminated Russians wanted, but could not access, Russian citizenship; they wanted leverage against Ukraine, which they felt marginalized them. All other categories saw Russian citizenship as undesirable, offering rights they neither needed nor wanted.

None of the people I interviewed wanted to secede from Ukraine or to join Russia. They were, rather, happy with the status quo. Even Discriminated Russians, the most pro-Russian and pro-Russia category, supported the territorial status quo, preferring peace to separatism or unification, which they associated with “bloodshed” and a “cataclysm.” Regardless of how they identified, my respondents said that separatist sentiments had existed only on the political margins after the failure of the separatist movement to achieve secession in 1994.

There’s much, much more at the link!

While Dr. Knott’s column is now seven years old and the research she based it on is a year or two older, what she’s laid out demonstrates the complexity in Crimea. Since then Putin has worked hard to reshape things on the ground in Crimea, but it is unclear just how successful he’s been. For instance, a lot Crimean Tatars either fled prior to February 2022 or have more recently been involuntarily mobilized over the past several weeks.

ETA: Other then her focus in her doctoral research was on ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians, I don’t really know or understand why she’d ignore the Crimean Tatars. The reason I chose her column in WaPo had to do with how she broke out the Russian population. Far, far too much of the analysis is exceedingly reductive to the Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians in Crimea support Russia or support reintegrating with Russia and that is just not the case. Yes, a failure to include the Crimean Tatars is an issue. But given the column and analysis is based on her doctoral dissertation and we have no idea if her committee limited the scope and exclude the Crimean Tatars, let’s cut her a modicum of slack. Those of us who went all the way through and came out the other side with a doctorate know that all too often our doctoral research is not fully our own. It is, unfortunately, compromised by the egos and preferences of the people that already have their PhDs on one’s dissertation committee. I was fortunate and didn’t really have that problem. But my doctoral committee was the exception, not the rule.

Anyhow, as i indicated above, a lot of the Crimean Tatars fled to safety within Ukraine after 2014. However, as Gin&Tonic correctly pointed out in a comment, the Crimean Tatars make up about 12 to 13 percent of the Crimean population. And they will play a major role in the ultimate resolution of how Crimea is reintegrated into Ukraine.

As to what I think will happen? I expect that if Ukraine is able to liberate Crimea it will be less than stable for a while. A lot of the Russians that moved to Crimea since 2014 will flee back to Russia. But some will stay as dead enders, join up with the ethnic/ethno-linguistically Russian Crimeans who lived in Crimea prior to 2014 who are oriented towards Putin and Russia, and the Ukrainians will have to worry about an insurgency. Given the effectiveness of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces and the Ukrainian underground/partisans, many of whom I expect are Crimean Tatars, I expect that insurgency will eventually be overcome. How hard a fight that will be, I do not know. At the same time, I expect the Ukrainians will establish a reconciliation program to bring everyone they can back into the fold.

I don’t have a better answer than that, so that will have to do.

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    Zelenskyy’s address tonight had me in tears. I recommend that folks watch the video, if you usually just read the transcript–they splice in footage of the areas hit by russia today (nothing graphic), and it really makes it hit home even harder.

    I simply do not and will not ever understand the refusal to label this as terrorism. I don’t want to hear political excuses–I’ve heard it all before and I do not agree. It’s really easy to muse on it as a political issue when we’re thousands of miles away from it being anything else for us. And I find it abhorrent when people start splitting hairs when it comes to this stuff. Terrorism does not need to have one and only one definition.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  2. 2.

    Anonymous At Work

    Chuck Pfarrer reported a few times that the RU senior officers north of Kherson have buggered off south of the river.  What’s holding those forces north of the river together?  Carlo Graziani indicated that this might be the best of what’s left from the entire Southern Army, but, if that is the situation, is Putin really going to risk extinguishing an Army to hold Kherson?

  3. 3.

    Gin & Tonic

    Adam, I appreciate your taking the time to go into more detail on Crimea, but one aspect you mention in your own comments highlights the weakness of Dr. Knott’s analysis, which defines five categories, none of which are “Crimean Tatar” – and the Tatars (actually with a longer claim to Crimea than any Slavs) were, at the time of her research, somewhere around 12-13% of Crimea’s population. Perhaps she had a reason for her five categories – I am not going to read her dissertation – but ignoring 12-13% of the population doesn’t seem like a good start for an ethno-political analysis.

    The Tatars, in fact, have ample reason to be anti-Russian – Mustafa Dzhemilev, the first Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis has quite a history as a Soviet-era dissident – and have been vocal supporters of the Kyiv government for years. They are, as you note, once again getting the shit end of the stick.

  4. 4.

    Nelle

    As I’ve probably noted before, in 2018 I went from Odessa by ship over to Kherson, then up the Dnipro River.  Most of the time was spent visiting former Mennonite colonies, but we also had a lovely day in Zaporizhia.   We went by a building where my uncle likely trained as a medic during WWI (many pacifist Mennonites served as medics then).  This beggars belief and yet it is all too real.

    Samantha Power, whose early work was identifying developing genocide and diverting it, was in Ukraine this last week.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    What bothers me about the ATACMS theory for the bridge attack is that you’d expect it to be targeted on the rail bridge, not the road span with collateral damage to the rails. Unless, I suppose, there were two rockets and one of them failed to hit its target for whatever reason.

  7. 7.

    glc

    @Gin & Tonic: You don’t need to read the dissertation, it’s enough to follow the link.

    Her subject is  the ethnic Russian population.

    Based on this data, I constructed categories to help explain the complexity of Russian identity that I observed.

    (As usual in such cases, the headline says something different.)

  8. 8.

    oldster

    The targeting of civilian dwellings is indeed abhorrent and evil.

    It is also clear evidence that the russians still have no military competence. From a military standpoint, those missiles should be used for targeting high value Ukrainian military targets — ammo dumps, command and control, anti-air craft defenses, air bases, and so on. We know that’s what a smart army would do with its missiles, because that’s what Ukraine does. They are not *only* being humane; they are also being strategic about their resources. Using missiles on apartment buildings is a waste of resources, and russia, thank god, is running out of missiles.

    Two conclusions. First, that the russians have no actionable intel about high-value military targets. They don’t have a plan for attritting Ukraine’s materiel, as Ukraine is so skillfully depleting theirs.

    Second, that Putin is still running the only play he knows: the Grozny play. His idea of fighting a war is to reduce civilian areas to rubble. It’s what he did in Chechnya, it’s what he did in Syria.  He has no idea of maneuver, terrain, landscape, and no idea of how to counter the sweeping mobile campaigns that the Ukrainians are conducting around Svatove and Kherson. He only has his Grozny play, and it won’t work in Ukraine.

    Interesting that Pfarrer thinks the bridge was struck by an ATACMS. I don’t think he’s right, but if he’s right, then it will strike again.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    @glc:

    These categories offer a more nuanced look at Crimean and Ukrainian identity,

    They do not, in fact, offer a “more nuanced look at Crimean … identity” if she ignores the native population of Crimea.

  10. 10.

    Anonymous At Work

    @oldster: Third possibility is that RU forces don’t have the capability to fight UA forces with precision strikes because they lack the capabilities and are just targeting what they think they can hit, with criminal indifference.  Cities are dense with things to hit, even if low value, and rural areas lack things to hit.  Armies aren’t bunched formations since the phalanx and massed cavalry charge went out of style.

  11. 11.

    oldster

    @Anonymous At Work:

    Fair. I think of that as an elaboration of my lesson 1. They either cannot find, or cannot hit, worthwhile military targets, so they hit the only things that they can, namely civilian targets in cities.

    As you say, cities are dense. And they are relatively slow-moving. If russia has used up its smart munitions — and they certainly have a lot fewer now — then dumb munitions will still work on apartment buildings.

    It’s evil, it’s incompetent, it’s wasteful, it’s unimaginative, it’s cruel. It’s orc-ish. Maybe that’s why Wagner calls itself an “orc-hestra”.

  13. 13.

    Fair Economist

    I wish I could believe Pfarrer, but he seems to put out a lot of pleasant fantasy.

    I wish there were more info from Kherson. The silence from Ukraine suggest their offense has stopped, which I find disappointing and surprising. Did not see how the Russians could stop them short of the Inhulets.

  14. 14.

    Bill Arnold

    @oldster:

    If russia has used up its smart munitions — and they certainly have a lot fewer now — then dumb munitions will still work on apartment buildings.

    Also, semi-smart munitions can hit big stationary targets. I’m sure an anti-ship missile can be made to target a large apartment building and other infrastructure full of civilians. So the Russians do so, though these attacks are war crimes in Russia’s own war crimes military manual. Because (as you are saying, approximately) something must be destroyed, and apartment buildings and the civilians in them are something. (Emphasis on the dehumanization there.)

  17. 17.

    zhena gogolia

    I have a problem with our minister. She keeps saying THE Ukraine, and today she asked for prayers for the three people killed on the bridge. Yes, sorry three people were killed on the bridge BUT DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? My husband won’t let me write to her. She’s an interim minister so he thinks just let it slide.

    I know in the scheme of things it’s not important but it makes me cringe.

  18. 18.

    oldster

    @Bill Arnold:

    “…something must be destroyed, and apartment builds and the civilians in them are something.”

    Yes, the bureaucratization of military quotas is surely playing a role. An order comes down that such and such number of rounds be fired, so many missiles be launched. Commanders in the field obey the order even if it makes no tactical sense.

    You can see a similar phenomenon in the videos of helicopters lofting salvoes of rockets upward into the air instead of firing them into ground targets on a line of sight.  Their chances of hitting anything that way are very low. But they are terrified of getting too close, and they have been told to take off with these rockets and not come back with them. So, off they launch them, into an empty forest or deserted field. 

    “We are very lucky that they are so stupid.” Stupid, demoralized, and incompetent.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @Anonymous At Work:

    Armies aren’t bunched formations since the phalanx and massed cavalry charge went out of style.

    Just to pick a nit, but this is only true if you consider troops armed with muskets and bayonets as “phalanx”.  Up to and including the US Civil War, infantry tactics emphasized massed firepower from infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in multiple ranks.  It was really only the magazine-fed rifle that ended those kinds of tactics.

  21. 21.

    Andrya

    @Roger Moore:  Just to pick an even tinier nit, massed charges lasted a bit longer than that.  My maternal grandfather served in the British army in WW1- when I was a child/teen he was still venting to me about the idiocy of British commanders ordering massed charges across no-man’s-land in France- they had not noticed the invention of the machine gun, which rendered such charges suicidal.

  22. 22.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @zhena gogolia: I told someone not to say “the Ukraine” the other day and they reacted with such snide dismissal that I was like, “Oh sorry, didn’t realize I was dealing with a russian troll.” By now, there is zero excuse for anyone not knowing the right name, so there is really only one possible explanation, IMO.

  23. 23.

    Lyrebird

    @Gin & Tonic: I looked at the whole article on WaPo, and although the author talks about post-Soviet politics, I didn’t find any mention of Soviet policies, nothing about removal of Tatars from their home communities in Crimea.

    Now Putler is sending their grandchildren to fight in this war.

    May it be over soon!

  25. 25.

    Andrya

    @Gin & Tonic:  I completely agree that russia is trying to erase Ukraine, and that is a huge part of the indiscriminate bombing/shelling of civilians.  However, I think it’s obvious that the russian regime is not intending to stop with Ukraine- by no means.  This is also a message to Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland (at a minimum)-  “This is what will happen to you if you if you try to resist”.

    putin’s whole enterprise is built on imposing extreme fear- and  it worked for him, internally, in his seizure of absolute power.   He seems not to realize that these extreme terrorist tactics also inspire extreme resistance.

  27. 27.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @oldster:

    I was having similar thoughts.  Russia is having major logistical issues.  It’s really wasting those Iranian drones mass bombing civilian cities?

    And the answer is, of course, yes.  It makes particular sense if Putin is indeed insisting on personally directing the campaign.  He is a bully, and his entire regime is built on an ‘intimidate civilians’ philosophy.  So forget actual military goals, ‘bomb everything’ makes sense to him.

    I could imagine a secondary political purpose.  His support among the right-wing elite is increasingly shaky.  Every quote I hear from them sounds exactly like our own right wingers.  ‘More cruelty’ is their universal answer.  Russia would be winning if they were more cruel.  So mass civilian bombing reassures them that Putin is doing what they would do.  An ‘our right-wing philosophy cannot fail, it can only be failed’ reckoning is on its way, but Russia’s war will have to be not just losing but lost before that reaches its next stage of crazy.

  30. 30.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Andrya:

    However, I think it’s obvious that the russian regime is not intending to stop with Ukraine- by no means.  This is also a message to Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland (at a minimum)-  “This is what will happen to you if you if you try to resist”.

    Which is exactly what Zelenskyy has been trying to get people to understand since the start (and probably since 2014). In early March when he spoke to the European Parliament and essentially gave them the message that if putin is stopped at the Ukrainian border, everyone in Europe is safer, that they cannot let themselves think it is only Ukraine he would go after. He wants to get the Soviet band back together, it would seem.

  31. 31.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Chetan Murthy: Well sure, the response to the correction is illuminating, but again, at this point, you’d have to have been living on the moon not to know the correct name. I know the comments got into a bit of a throwdown over this recently and I’m not looking to restart that whole thing. I’m just saying if you met me and called me Alice and I told you my name was Alison, and nearly eight months later after seeing and hearing my name hundreds of times, you’re still calling me Alice…I can glean things from that, too.

  32. 32.

    BeautifulPlumage

    If it was a missile from the Kherson region, how long would the flight be to the bridge? Would the bridge defenses have at least picked it up on radar/ satellite/ other imaging?

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:

    “russia is not trying to win a war, it is trying to erase a nation.”

    As much as I hate to have to or be able to say this, you are correct. He is doing everything he can to destroy a nation, bombing/destroying the citizens of the area he’s trying to claim is russian is fucking insane.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @Andrya:

    However, I think it’s obvious that the russian regime is not intending to stop with Ukraine- by no means. This is also a message to Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland (at a minimum)- “This is what will happen to you if you if you try to resist”.

    In which case it’s a really, really bad way of doing it.  Apart from the way Ukraine has demolished the image of Russia as a military juggernaut, doing this just convinces the countries Russia is trying to intimidate that they need allies.  Russia’s obvious reluctance to attack NATO countries- at least in a way that triggers a military response- has driven Sweden and Finland into the arms of NATO, which is a huge self-own.

  36. 36.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Two thoughts:

    1. I agree with you 100% on everything: people gotta be living under rocks to not know.  More importantly, to not have fuckin’ inquired, when clearly there are multiple ways of naming various things in Ukraine — like the Antonivski Bridge for instance.
    2. But it’s like with so many other things: the sort of person who mis-names, or mis-genders, or uses slurs, is also the sort of person who will *refuse* to accept that they’ve made a mistake and work to correct it; instead, they’ll belligerently double-down and claim that they’re being oppressed.

      It’s the Ukraine/international relations version of the American “race card”: the only racist thing is to accuse someone of being a racist, etc, etc.

    Or as they say “My “The Ukraine” shirt is raising many questions already answered by my “The Ukraine” shirt” (h/t LG&M today).

  38. 38.

    Jay

    @oldster<

    You can see a similar phenomenon in the videos of helicopters lofting salvoes of rockets upward into the air instead of firing them into ground targets on a line of sight. Their chances of hitting anything that way are very low. But they are terrified of getting too close, and they have been told to take off with these rockets and not come back with them. So, off they launch them, into an empty forest or deserted field.

    Only armored attack helo’s like the KA-52, Hinds, fire on a LOS trajectory, both rockets and guns. Since Afghanistan, armed transport helo’s like the Mi-8, Mi-24, lob missiles to target, they have a computerized gunsight to allow this. Even the Ukrainian Airforce Mi-8’s do this. Apparently some SU-25’s also have a similar rocket sight.

    It’s not cowardice, the platforms simply can’t survive in the modern combat envelope with out that tactic.

  39. 39.

    Bill Arnold

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Every quote I hear from them sounds exactly like our own right wingers. ‘More cruelty’ is their universal answer. Russia would be winning if they were more cruel. So mass civilian bombing reassures them that Putin is doing what they would do.

    They would object if e.g. several for example several apartment buildings in Moscow were destroyed by Ukrainian missiles. So it’s really limited to ‘more cruelty’ against non-Russians, AKA “Nazis”.
    (And related, that bridge was and is military infrastructure; it (especially the railroad part) has moved a lot of heavy military equipment that ended up with the Russian invasion/occupation forces North of (occupied) Crimea. )

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    @BeautifulPlumage: A Google search says an M30/M31 rocket in a HIMARS travels at Mach 2.5 or around 0.9 km/s.  A report that Google dug up said that typical flight time is 2-2.5 minutes.

    It looks to be about 450 km by road from Kherson to the Kerch Strait.  An M30/M31 won’t do it – not enough range.  I assume other, longer-range rockets have similar speeds, but I’m no expert.

    HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    Andrya

    @Roger Moore:  I think we agree, but unfortunately I think there is one more factor that we need to consider.  putin thinks he can make NATO impotent/completely ineffective.  The russians didn’t just meddle in the US elections, but also in many European elections-  and it’s clear putin thinks he can cut a deal with far-right parties.  In the US, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, Rod Dreher, and MTG have all been promoting pro-russia propaganda and/or demanding stopping or cuts of military aid to UK.

    putin thinks he can create a situation where he can safely attack a NATO country without fear of Article 5.  It is incredibly important that we show that he is wrong.  And that means TFG MUST be kept out of the White House- because TFG  absolutely would give the green light to more putin imperialism.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @phdesmond:

    in general, people don’t like to be corrected.

    Even if you don’t like to be corrected, there’s more than one way to deal with it.  People who are rude about having their mistakes pointed out have made a deliberate choice about how they respond.  They could swallow their pride, listen to people who know better, and try to get it right next time.  They could even look it up before saying anything in an attempt to get it right the first time.

  44. 44.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore: Thank you for this.  Nobody likes to be corrected.  The question is whether you turn that into a position of privilege, or whether you’re open to learning — esp. moral learning — when you’re wrong.

    I’ve been corrected — and pretty fuckin’ harshly — and learned from the experience.  It was an important learning, too.  Was it fun?  Did I like it?  Was it necessary?  Was it salutary?  No, No, yes and yes.

  45. 45.

    Torrey

    @HumboldtBlue: This maketh my day. Thank you for linking to it and to the previous entries.

    Ukraine had Vikings, back in the day, and some of them hung around and contributed to the culture and population. Also refreshing the name-stock with monikers like Waldemar, Ingvarr and Helgi. In addition to Ye Fiendish Anglo-Saxons, I am kind of hoping the creator gives Ye Fiendish Vikings a cameo at some point.

  46. 46.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore: Lower-status people don’t have a choice about getting corrected: their entire lives consist in being corrected, being forced to conform.  As someone said, “Black people are *experts* in white fragility, experts in how to placate white sensibilities: it’s a survival skill.”  The privilege of not having to GAF about what people around you think, is a privilege of higher-status people.

    It’s a Wilhoit’s Law corollary, I suspect.

  48. 48.

    Ohio Mom

    @zhena gogolia: Well you should probably cool off some before you try to explain to the interim minister why it’s not The Ukraine, and you’ll have to do some strategizing on how to best approach her. You do have the “I’m a college teacher and this is my field” thing to fall back on.

    In the end, I think it’s disrespectful to discount her because she’s “only” an interim. She’s not nobody.

  49. 49.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Another Scott: thank you for going googlin’ so I don’t have to!

    I’m guessing the Russians have some clue of the explosion source and aren’t sharing. At least I expect they would, given the $$$ spent on dolphins and other bridge defenses.

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    AlJazeera.com:

    “There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” Putin said on Sunday in a video posted on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

    “This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services.”

    […]

    Putin made the accusation against Ukraine during a meeting with Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, who presented the findings of an inquiry into the bridge blast and subsequent fire.

    Bastrykin said the truck had travelled through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Russia’s Krasnodar region before reaching the bridge. Among those who helped in the attack were “citizens of Russia and foreign countries,” Bastrykin added in the video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

    In Kyiv, presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak called Putin’s accusation “too cynical even for Russia”.

    “Putin accuses Ukraine of terrorism?” he said. “It has not even been 24 hours since Russian planes fired 12 rockets into a residential area of Zaporizhzhia, killing 13 people and injuring more than 50. No, there is only one state terrorist and the whole world knows who he is.”

    (Emphasis added.)

    Recalling that VVP’s russia lies about everything, I wonder how the truck got from Bulgaria over to Georgia??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    way2blue

    @Ruckus: Not just the attacking the citizens & their homes, but also the hydro dams, hospitals, power plants, schools, monuments…  all the infrastructure that makes daily life liveable.

  52. 52.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Video that follows the slow death of the 93 Mechanized Brigade of the Russian Army in this war.

    https://youtu.be/GO6OUTELkjo

    It’s worth a watch though because it goes into how a lot of the claims on both sides don’t match up, and for all the talk of the miserable performance of the Russian army because of corruption, this unit sounded like it had a lot of combat experience, was staffed with soldiers who so saw themselves as a cut above the rest of the Russian army and it still was torn up.  For example the first days of the war then set up a road block with unit that was so isolated the UA just gobbled it up and then the 93 Mech let it’s artillery get ambushed.

  55. 55.

    Chetan Murthy

    The Ukrainian way of war

    Russian forces in the north of Luhansk region are panicking:

    “In the area of ​​the settlement of Svatove, the enemy blew up railway and road bridge crossings [of the Krasna River].”
    –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 06:00 on 10 October 2022 pic.twitter.com/CX0I2OcdRS
    — Michael MacKay (@mhmck) October 10, 2022

    Swim, orc, swim!

  56. 56.

    way2blue

    @Another Scott: 2-2.5 minutes!  So how does one time firing to have the train passing at just the right moment?  That’s astonishing on top the of whole astonishment of hitting a bridge that was suppposed to be protected by multiple defensive systems.  Are those defensive systems another figment?

  57. 57.

    way2blue

    @Another Scott: 2-2.5 minutes!  So how does one time firing to have the train passing at just the right moment?  That’s astonishing on top the of whole astonishment of hitting a bridge that was suppposed to be protected by multiple defensive systems.  Are those defensive systems another figment?

     

    @Another Scott:

  60. 60.

    Jay

    @way2blue:

    HIMARS doesn’t have the range,

    Saw a vid today that showed a different angle on the bridge and two missile strikes, but it could be fake.

    Ukraine was working on an Iskander “clone”, which would have the range, speed and warhead, it was “mothballed in 2018 due to funding issues, but restarted in 2020.

    If the Kerch Bridge strike was a missile attack, that would make it the second strike by a long range missile that Ukraine does not officially have in inventory.

    As for the train, it was probably a case of it being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  61. 61.

    Anoniminous

    @Roger Moore: ​
     

    Russians were conducting mass charges against entrenched interlocking machine guns to try and crack the Mannerheim line during the Winter War in 1940. If one is not feeling generous – and I’m not – one could say Zhukov’s attack on the Seelow Heights in 1945 pretty much did the same thing: sent massed infantry into MG-42 fire.

  63. 63.

    kalakal

    @Fair Economist: I know I keep banging on about this but I don’t think the UA is an as big a hurry to finish off the Russian forces around Kherson & west of the Dnipro as you might think. Those Russians aren’t going anywhere, are getting ground down via artillery, it’s killing the Russian logistical system to keep them there. Also the UA does not want to get into a fight in Kherson itself, it could very costly in manpower and there’s a lot of civilians. Just as people were concerned about lack of news from Kherson prior to the Izyum offensive I suspect all that captured armour and the products of the last few months of troop training may well make an appearance elsewhere. My favourite is a drive to the coast splitting the occupied territories in two. At that point the Kerch bridge is toast and every Russian soldier to the west of that advance has a choice of surrender or starve.

  64. 64.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    Oh okay, I feel totally safe now:

    As Moscow investigates what President Vladimir V. Putin called a terrorist attack on its bridge to Crimea, Mr. Putin’s spokesman told a Russian news outlet on Sunday that the explosion did not merit a nuclear response.

    …
    After the president’s remarks were published, a reporter from the state-run Russian news outlet RIA Novosti asked Mr. Putin’s spokesman whether the “terrorist attack” fell within the category under Russian defense doctrine that allowed for a nuclear response.
    “No,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, responded, according to the outlet.

    He would never lie, so let’s all sleep easy.

  65. 65.

    Andrya

    @Anoniminous:  I totally agree.  Finland is armed to the teeth, and has been poised to handle russian aggression since forever.  A portion of my extended family is Finnish-American, and those guys are tough.  I only meant that putin wants to intimidate the Finns, and everyone else who was ever part of either the USSR or the tsarist empire.  I don’t think he will succeed.

  68. 68.

    Chetan Murthy

    @kalakal: This would seem to be consistent with “the Ukrainian way of war”, wouldn’t it?

    1. attract masses of RU troops to some location
    2. attack logistics (attrit)
    3. attack ammo depots (attrit)
    4. fix enemy formations by flanking attacks
    5. leave them limited and painful retreat paths

    And wait for time (and attrition) to reduce them to a quivering mass.

    It would seem to be what they did in Izyum, Kupiansk, Lyman, Kherson, and now what they’re doing in Svatove.

  69. 69.

    Chetan Murthy

    As I write these words, a third wave of missiles is incoming from Russian heavy bombers flying over Astrakhan — tens (47?) of missiles heading for Ukraine’s big cities.  A third wave.  Civlian targets.

    I know it won’t happen, b/c Biden is too cognizant of the nuclear escalation risk, but jesus, I wish we’d give UA ground-launched cruise missiles.  Let Fucking Putin find out what it’s like to have his Fucking Kremlin blown to smithereens, his Fucking Palace on the Black Sea blown to smithereens.

    The motherless fuck.

  70. 70.

    LadySuzy

    Bombs on the center of Kiev this morning.

    How many friggin’ long-range missiles does Russia still have ???!!!

    And at what point does the West say “enough” ?

    And why the supply of anti-missiles defense systems is STILL not quick enough??  It’s not like everyone hasn’t understood that the Putin regime is willing to bomb Ukraine into annihilation.  I get the impression that the West is always reactive instead of proactive. Always a few months late. The numbers of anti-missile systems is insufficient and Russia is STILL able to terrorize whole cities. And the delivery of military aid could get complicated soon, given the upgrading of the base in Belarus.

  72. 72.

    LadySuzy

    @Chetan Murthy: I’ve been worrying for some time that Putin was keeping “big stuff” in reserve. That he was still hoping to conquer Ukraine without destroying too much in the big cities.

    But now he’s going for broke.

    The SCALE of the attacks today is horrible.

    Moment of truth for the West:  we can’t let a terrorist state destroy a whole country. We’re dealing with a psychopath, and his evil regime. This is nuts.

  73. 73.

    Ksmiami

    @Chetan Murthy: I’m ready for us to inflict heavy losses on every single Russian asset outside their mainland from tankers in the Middle East to soldiers in Ukraine. Russia under Putin needs to fucking die

  75. 75.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Jay: C’mon, guys, the missile theory is the nuttiest one of the bunch, and Hrim is vaporware. It keeps getting seen by people who want to see it, like Elvis, or the Loch Ness monster. Last time we had Hrim “sightings” was at the attack on the Saki Air Station. Pretty sure that the Biden Administration would have leaked it by now if the Ukrainians had a working IRBM, and had fired one at Saki. Do we have to wait a few weeks to confirm that they didn’t fire one at Kerch either?

    ATACMS is an even stupider theory, so, no surprise, Pfarrer has his graphics PC working full-time on it. There are zero ATACMS munitions in Ukraine, since the Biden administration is so far immovable on this, but had they secretly handed over a few to the Ukrainians for use on a target like Kerch, they would not be used to target the road deck, thereupon to ignite a railcar full of fuel, so as to obtain a secondary explosion that damages the rail span. The ATACMS has an available warhead — WAU/23B — with a 500lb high-explosive penetrator. A couple of those aimed at a support pylon of the rail span, and the span is gone for good.

  76. 76.

    Carlo Graziani

    @kalakal: The UA’s actual intentions remain opaque, of course. We argue about what the best course would be for them. This argument is one we’ve had before. I’d still say that there are very valid arguments for winding up the Kherson campaign ASAP.

    I’ll just name one: Political warfare. This is a moment of great psychological fragility in Russia. A huge defeat, with the loss of Kherson and thousands of their best troops on TV in POW camps could be the bullet in the back of Putin’s skull. Not that his successor would be any better, but a politically debilitated Russia? ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished…

  77. 77.

    Carlo Graziani

    One oddly reassuring (although that’s a terrible word for this sentiment) thing about Russia’s latest terrorist missile assault on civilians in Ukrainian cities is that it may mean that they are still deterred from nuclear weapons use. The US threats of response may have boxed the Kremlin in to the point that even though they perceive Kerch as a terrorist attack by Ukraine (yes, I know) their response options are constrained to below the nuclear threshold. One can hope.

  78. 78.

    zhena gogolia

    @Roger Moore: This is weird. We have to write out our prayer requests. I had written it as “for the people of Ukraine,” and she read it out as “for the people of the Ukraine.” I think it’s just force of habit, I really don’t think she’s a Russian troll. But it’s driving me up a wall.

  80. 80.

    Traveller

    @Carlo Graziani:  Yes, I think this is Hopefully correct. I might even venture to postulate that President Biden had advance knowledge of the Kerch Bridge attack and so made his very-very pointed “Armageddon arriving Gate 5,” for immediate boarding speech prior to the explosions…which, otherwise, all things considered, would have provide an ample excuse for Mr. Putin to go low yield nuclear.

    So it may be a small blessing, but in this war, I’ll take whatever blessings I can get.

    Lastly, as an aside, as I noted elsewhere this evening, (a couple of hundred thousand new even poorly trained Russian conscripts worry me considerably….my involvement in this war is pretty total for me…so I don’t mind pushing, Musk or anyone….most recent reports have actual hand to hand combat in some trench lines…Russian or Ukrainian….Jesus, what a world! As I pointed out earlier, it is exhausting to have to kill so many people…while being under threat of being killed yourself…these are separate but still very real combat fatigue stressors. ) Best Wishes, Traveller

  81. 81.

    Gvg

    @Chetan Murthy: A lot of people don’t watch any news at all including online. Effectively they are living under rocks. There is no universal watching the news anymore. Your assumption that they are choosing not to know the correct names is just wrong.

    I do not ever watch the news. I read some news but for decades I have not watched it because I find video type news too annoying and slow. It’s full of ads, and noise and propaganda and it’s done too shallow. I read very fast and I like quiet and analysis, plus I live alone  so I get to please myself and my local news quality went down hill years ago and wasn’t worth following. But other people according to studies, don’t watch either. It’s widespread now. You cannot assume anyone knows what you do.

    it is kind of a societal problem. Bigger than this one naming issue.

  82. 82.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Roger Moore: Yeah, well, Napoleonic tactics of massed infantry charge after a barrage from the Grand Battery didn’t work too well after Napoleon, but was technically the textbook leading up to World War 1.

  83. 83.

    Carlo Graziani

    Per the NYT:

    …a senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, confirmed that Ukraine’s intelligence services were behind the bombing and said that explosives had been loaded onto a truck that was driven onto the bridge and detonated.

  84. 84.

    Timill

    @way2blue: The train may have been standing at signals, waiting for the train ahead to clear the section.

    It would make sense for the attack to be targeted at a point where trains are frequently stopped.

     

     

    @way2blue:

  86. 86.

    Doug R

    About ethnic Russians in Ukraine-they are not in Russia for a reason.

    For example, there’s about a million Canadians in Los Angeles BUT they don’t want to bother joining Canada. Lots of Canadians live in Bellingham and Point Roberts, the point is they don’t live in Canada-I’m guessing mostly for tax reasons.

  87. 87.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    …you’d have to have been living on the moon not to know the correct name.

    I’m afraid that this ignores much of what we know about human learning, habits, and cognition with aging. It also assumes that everyone is paying attention. In my experience across several countries and cultures, nobody pays attention to what you pay attention to to the level that you’d think they would. Never seen it. What the heck is wrong with everyone else? Why don’t they know what’s important! To me! ;)

    Solution? Persistent, gentle education always based on the assumption that we’re all doing the best we can on any given day. Anything else is just frustrating for all involved.

  88. 88.

    Bill Arnold

    @Another Scott:

    “There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” Putin said on Sunday in a video posted on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

    So this confirms that Russia was planning to move thousands of secretly mothballed T-34s to the southern front over that bridge, but was foiled. /joke (been circulating in various forms.)
    Seriously, the railway is used to move military supplies, including armored equipment. Probably similar for the roadway part of the bridge. In a war, it is a legitimate military target, unlike large apartment buildings. (The annexation of the more northern areas could have been the trigger/go-ahead for the operation.)

  89. 89.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    the assumption that we’re all doing the best we can on any given day

    I’m sorry, but this is not an assumption I can make. I mean, congrats to you, I guess, on not having any assholes in your circles, but there are a lot of people out there who are very much NOT doing the best they can on any day at all ever.

    I am not giving people the benefit of the doubt on this anymore. We are not talking about toddlers. We are talking about grown adults with access to media who are on the internet 90% of their day. They can learn. They do not want to. So they can fuck off.

  91. 91.

    davecb

    If I had to write/train a recognizer for bridges, I suspect a nice wide flat roadbed would be easier to recognize than a lattice of railroad ties and supports. I would not be at all surprised if my missile hit the first roadway it came to.

    On the other hand, if I had to swim a charge out to the bridge, I’d pick the span to blow up that did the most harm.

    That weakly argues for a missile strike over hand-placement.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @davecb: On the other hand, the rairlway bridge was higher and its pylons more difficult to climb. It’s of heavier construction and may have required several times the explosives to damage it. Demolishing the highway bridge might have been within the capability of a small sapper team while the railroad bridge might not have been.

    The size of the explosion seen above the road deck seems to make placement of explosives below the road a less likely theory. I’ll still wait to see more analysis by qualified experts before I rule it out, though.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    AlJazeera (4 hours ago):

    Germany to deliver air defence system to Ukraine within days

    Germany will deliver the first of four IRIS-T SLM air defence systems to Ukraine within days following Russia’s barrage of missile attacks on the war-torn country, the country’s defence minister has said.

    “The renewed missile fire on Kyiv and the many other cities show how important it is to supply Ukraine with air defence systems quickly,” Christine Lambrecht said in a statement.

    “Russia’s attacks with missiles and drones terrorise the civilian population in particular. That is why we are now providing support, especially with air defence weapons.”

    Wikipedia – IRIS-T:

    A surface-to-air missile variant is used for IRIS-T SLM, an air defence system.

    […]

    IRIS-T SL

    Within the MEADS program, the German Air Force plans[when?] to integrate a surface-launched (SL) radar-guided version of the missile, called IRIS-T SL. It has a pointed nose, unlike the regular IRIS-T, with a jettisonable drag-reducing nose cone. The missile uses GPS-based inertial navigation system and radar data link for command guidance during the initial approach, while the interference-resistant IR seeker head is activated at the terminal stage.[18][19] Compared to the IRIS-T, diameter of the rocket motor is increased to 152 mm. The IRIS-T SL qualification tests were completed during January 2015 at the Denel Overberg Test Range in South Africa.[20]

    Two variants are available, IRIS-T SLS (short-range) and IRIS-T SLM (medium range); IRIS-T SLX (long range) variant with dual-mode seeker is in development as of April 2022.[21][full citation needed] Operational testing of IRIS-T SLM was completed in January 2022.[22][full citation needed]

    New kit. Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    Your picture is dated 2016.

    Nice try tho. There are massive queues in reality. https://t.co/zx1AYyhf3Q

    — Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) October 10, 2022

    [ facepalm ]

    I mean, the date is right there. Maybe it’s one of those devious “let’s select out the stupid ones” spam thing, or something? Otherwise…

    [ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Torrey

    @HumboldtBlue: ​
      The Kievan Rus. Note the city reference there. It was the capital of the territory. What we call Russia (or the thing that is more or less the country we call Russia) didn’t get the name Russia until the 15th century. Then it presumably acquired the subtitle The Country Formerly Known as the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

  97. 97.

    GibberJack

    @Gin & Tonic: This cuts the gordian knot.

    There are still a lot of reasons to not target civilians even if lacking military target intel or long range precision weapons. Unless it does in fact meet goals.

    If he wins the war, how can he can keep Ukraine, let alone make it Russia, if he doesn’t also destroy the Ukrainian people? It had to have been part of the plan all along, in one form or another.

    Stalin tried this too.

  99. 99.

    Bill Arnold

    For a diversion, a long detailed thread on Russian cyber war vs Ukraine. (It reads as largely accurate to me; I am not a specialist but do track these efforts.)

    This is a long thread on Russian cyber war in Ukraine, in which I will try to explain cyber war and comment on the Russian cyber war in Ukraine. /1— Mattias Wåhlén (@WahlenPMattias) October 10, 2022

  100. 100.

    charon

    https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817

    Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees.

    https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579258480585629696

    More genocidal brainstorming in the Russian media: Expert says that destroying all bridges in Ukraine is not feasible. He proposes demolishing the energy infrastructure in time for winter, causing a massive humanitarian crisis. He argues that China and India would not care.

  102. 102.

    Ksmiami

    @charon: I think it’s about time we bring the pain to Russia- time to stop coddling the bully and fucking flatten Russian imperial designs. He will not stop and I think it’s better to fight him everywhere than to live in fear. Fuck Russia the country can grow up and contribute or be destroyed- at this point it’s up to them, but if Russia didn’t exist, it might be better for the world.

  103. 103.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ksmiami:

    stop coddling the bully and fucking flatten Russian imperial designs.

    Coddling?
    60K (or 40K low end estimates) dead sons of Russian mothers, triple that wounded with permanent damage to body/mind, many of whom will live out the remainder of their lives in drunken anger and despair. The destruction (or depletion) of much of the best of the Russian military and their equipment. Sanctions causing severe blows to the Russian economy, anti-war sentiment mainly manifesting as a large selfish rush to the exits for males of conscription age; major loss of work force talent including high tech. Regions and neighbors getting more willing to buck Moscow’s rule/influence. Russia’s military shown to be much weaker than thought.
    It is possible to be committed to a Ukrainian military victory and to the collapse or serious weakening of the Russian Federation while working to minimize the risk of major collateral damage, such as destruction of global technological civilization.

  104. 104.

    Bill Arnold

    @charon:

    He proposes demolishing the energy infrastructure in time for winter, causing a massive humanitarian crisis.

    It would not be difficult to do humanitarian-crisis-level damage to Russian energy infrastructure; not impossible to make it look like accidents. If Russia goes down that path, well…

  106. 106.

    Geminid

    @Ksmiami: One thing I am curious about with respect to this war is its effect on Russia’s overseas allies. Three- Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba- have been affiliated with Russia for years. Venezuela has been tentatively warming ties with the US, recently. Putin’s predicament may hsve contribited to a change of attitudes on both sides. Cuba and Nicaragua seem determined to remain in Russias camp, for better or for worse. Russia’s weakness might erode those two regimes’ positions.

    Russia has shrunken its military footprint in Syria to free up resources for their war in Ukraine. They still have a small naval base on the northwest coast and an airbase inland. The surface to air missile batteries at the airbase are especially important strategically.

    Russia’s intervention saved Assad’s regime, and the areas Russia so brutally pacified are quiet for now. But will they stay quiet without Russia helping Assad keep them down?

    Russia’s problems could have ramifications with another ally, Iran. I’d be hard pressed to say exactly how, just that the two regimes have been mutually supportive diplomatically and materially, and even more so now.

  108. 108.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ksmiami: The Tuvans, the Buryats, many of the people locked-up in the prison of nations that is the Russian Empire, deserve freedom.  And a chance for development, b/c today, all resources are stolen for the metropole (== Moscow/St Pete region).

    It’s true that there will be dangers of nukes roaming free.  And yeah, that’s a problem.  But the subject peoples of the Russian Empire deserve their freedom.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @Ksmiami: Sounds like you are thinking about Russia’s immediate  empire. That certainly bears more on the power of the Russian state.

  110. 110.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ksmiami:
    How many Ukrainian humans would die in or shortly after a global thermonuclear war? A war that could well reduce the global human population by half, mostly through starvation. 10 million Ukrainians, maybe? Ethical people are also concerned about the other 99.5 percent of the global human population.

    Opposition to thermonuclear war is not a new tankie thing for me, if that’s what’s triggering you. Goes back many decades. Tankies and other propagandists for Russia can fuck off and die in woodchippers, feet first (fires would acceptable too), for abusing such concerns to promote Putin’s imperialistic war/Ukrainian surrender as soon as Russia started losing, while not expressing concerns when Russia’s propagandists started threatening and advocating for thermonuclear war earlier in Russia’s imperialistic genocidal invasion. (I got into trouble with certain shadowy parties for a comment about how “some of them[propagandists] have forfeited their right to continued existence”.)

    Providing more and better arms to Ukraine, faster, is reasonable/probably correct. (I’d draw a line blocking transfer of (non-Ukrainian) weapons that can reach Moscow.) Support to Ukraine like intelligence (NRO/NSA output) and reliably deniable covert operations are viable.

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