Fortunately the Ukrainians were not on the receiving end of the bombardments they’ve faced on Monday and Tuesday.
I’m also a bit fried, so I’m just going to run through the basics tonight and go rack out.
Before we get fully underway, in case anyone is interested, the Biden administration released the new National Security Strategy today.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
I’ve just taken part in the work of the second ministerial roundtable discussion of donor countries, the IMF and the World Bank, which help our country maintain financial stability.
The key issue is covering our budget deficit and quickly rebuilding critical infrastructure, housing and social facilities that have been destroyed or damaged by the occupiers’ strikes.
We are talking about significant amounts – tens of billions of dollars for the budget and the Fast Recovery. But the potential of democratic countries is much greater than the existing needs. Therefore, we are consolidating the support of partners for the sake of Ukraine. We are creating a financial “Ramstein” – a systemic tool for constant support of our struggle for freedom.
Another meeting took place today in the format of the defense “Ramstein”. Quite productive. First of all, they discussed providing our country with anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems.
The more audacious and cruel Russian terror becomes, the more obvious it is to the world that helping Ukraine to protect the sky is one of the most important humanitarian tasks for Europe of our time. I believe that we will cope with this task.
And I am grateful to those of our partners who have already made a decision to strengthen such support for our state – support for effective defense in the air.
By the way, today I want to celebrate the fighters of our Air Forces in the southern direction. Good results were achieved there, in particular, four Russian attack helicopters and more than ten Iranian-made attack drones were shot down. We had to defend our sky today in other directions as well.
We have positive news from the defense “Ramstein” related to the additional strengthening of our army with modern artillery. I am grateful to the partners!
Recovery after a two-day Russian missile attack continued across the country today. At that time, energy facilities were damaged in 12 regions and in the capital.
As of now, the technical capability of electricity supply has been fully restored in most regions. In four regions, work is ongoing, repairs should be completed shortly.
Our energy workers in some cities and districts have to use stabilization blackout schedules. This is necessary solely to maintain the normal operation of the entire energy system in such conditions – in conditions where electricity production has decreased.
And I want to once again thank all our people who approached this situation consciously and make their very important contribution to guaranteeing the normal operation of Ukraine’s energy system. It is worth continuing to distribute your electricity consumption by the hours of the day, in order to use as little as possible equipment that requires a significant amount of electricity during peak hours.
Today I would also like to thank all the heads of regions, mayors of cities and heads of communities, who significantly reduced electricity consumption in the utilities sector. It is important!
The situation remains tough in all areas bordering the frontline. Tonight, the occupiers shelled Nikopol of the Dnipropetrovsk region with Grad and artillery. Among the wounded is a child, a girl born in 2016. An extremely serious wound…
In the morning, Russian terrorists shelled Avdiivka, Donetsk region. Central Market. The occupiers used Grad. As of now, 7 people were killed and 12 were wounded.
Our intelligence, special services, law enforcement agencies are finding out all the details regarding these and other Russian strikes. No Russian terrorist will manage to remain unknown to justice – we will find out all the names and all the details.
Ukraine will bring to justice every Russian murderer and torturer – from commanders to privates who carried out criminal orders. By the way, we will not forget about the propagandists of terror as well. All those who justify Russian terror and incite aggression, all those who call for murder and encourage torturing of our people will be held to account on an equal footing with murderers and torturers.
The entire Russian terror machine must be neutralized. And it will be neutralized.
Gratitude to everyone who brings our victory closer!
Gratitude to everyone who helps Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
The Ukrainians spent the morning hunting!
Productive morning, Ukrainian style.
Today, in just 18 minutes, service members of #UAarmy shot down 4 russian helicopters that were spoiling beautiful autumn skies in the south of Ukraine.
No place for Alligators here.
The local climate is hostile towards them. pic.twitter.com/KjT9U3GnPN— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 12, 2022
Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessments of the situations in Izium and the bombing of the Kerch Straits Bridge:
IZIUM/1200 UTC 11 OCT/ UKR has cut the H-26 HWY at Krokhalne, threatening Svatove. In response, RU units have flattened their lines to maintain control over the vital P-66 HWY, the principal north-south line of communication and supply (LOCS) in the Kupiansk-Izium sector. pic.twitter.com/T9KykIIyOe
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) October 11, 2022
Leaving a follow up question.. How did UKR insert operatives into RU, source multiple tons of high explosives, construct a VBIED, recruit a suicidal but reliable driver, and then expect to ‘bypass' security forces protecting a strategic bridge– all under the nose of Putin's FSB?
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) October 12, 2022
Honestly, this is just embarrassing:
THE USUAL SUSPECTS: As Putin tries to sell the Kerch truck bomb hypothesis, videos emerge of the ever vigilant FSB ‘arresting UKR saboteurs’. In this Hollywood epic, a RU security operator (without a bomb suit) uses his bare hands to frantically unwrap a supposed Ukrainian IED. https://t.co/9q39RJijTM
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) October 12, 2022
And one for Zaporizhzhia too:
ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR PLANT/11 OCT/ Valeriy Martynyuk, deputy head of nuclear operations, was arrested by Russian forces on Monday and is currently being detained in an unknown location. The incident follows the detention of the plant’s chief, Ihor Murashov, on Oct. 1. pic.twitter.com/sz7fQ8uDJ7
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) October 12, 2022
Zaporizhzhia NPP ☢️ completely lost external power for the second time in five days. It happened this morning due to a missile attack on Dniprovska substation. NPP runs on diesel generators. Energoatom calls it nuclear terrorism and warns of the threat of a radiation accident.
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) October 12, 2022
NATO’s @jensstoltenberg: “We haven’t seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture, but we remain vigilant.” pic.twitter.com/cb1iJY1rGR
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) October 12, 2022
Air defense is coming:
And personal thanks to my colleague 🇩🇪 Minister of Defence @BMVg_Bundeswehr Christine Lambrecht for her partnership and strong commitment to supporting Ukraine. We will win.
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) October 11, 2022
But… The Financial Times explains the difficulties in getting more air defense systems to Ukraine quickly:
Nato allies are struggling to secure sufficient air defence systems to meet Ukraine’s demands for additional support, western officials have admitted, as Kyiv pleas for greater protection from Russian missile attacks.
Ukraine has identified the procurement of air defence systems from the west so it can shoot down rockets, aircraft and armed drones as its top priority, in the wake of Monday’s mass barrage of its big cities that killed at least 10 civilians.
“It’s certainly not a question of lack of will,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday, when asked at a press conference why allies were not sending air defence systems faster. “Countries will do whatever they can, if they can to generate additional capabilities.”
Western officials have agreed on the need for more air defence systems and are looking to help, but sourcing them quickly has been challenging. The US and other western powers were working to locate systems that could be moved, two senior western officials said, in the face of production shortages in the west and stretched inventories.
“Countries have already provided some, but there is a shortage of production capacity,” said one of the officials who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the talks. The person added that some Nato members themselves were facing years of delays for their own air defence platforms.
It is the obvious and what most of us knew: lack of available supply and it takes time to ramp up. Which is what commenter Another Scott suggested in comments last night.
My question still is why efforts to ramp up production weren’t undertaken sooner because we’re now 9 months into Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion and we’re still slow and late regarding helping the Ukrainians meet their air defense needs.
Speaking of support for Ukraine, this is a bit embarrassing for the Europeans. Especially the large EU member states:
This is an astonishing & frustrating update on military, financial & humanitarian aid to Ukraine by @kielinstitute in € billion: „The U.S. is now committing nearly twice [!] as much as all EU countries and institutions combined“ 👉 https://t.co/LwsxdUHtOY #ukrainesupporttracker
— Dr. Liana Fix (@LianaFix) October 11, 2022
The US is leading the war effort, and Europeans – or better to say: Western Europeans – are leaning in. This is problematic on some many levels, not least with a view to the US midterm elections. The US continues to invest heavily, and EUropeans are falling more and more behind.
— Dr. Liana Fix (@LianaFix) October 11, 2022
Meduza brings us new reporting regarding Russia’s casualties in Ukraine:
More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.
“Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service.
This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had been killed or critically wounded since the start of the war. In September, the British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Russian army’s total losses exceeded 80,000; of those, about 25,000 were thought to have been killed.
Aww!!!!!!!
Maryana Mamonova, who has recently been freed from captivity, and her husband had a photo session with their newborn daughter Anna.
Video: Antonina Matviychuk pic.twitter.com/7XVyntGPJt— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 12, 2022
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
https://t.co/D2ed7N80lB I forgot yesterday to duplicate my fundraising for the needs of sappers. You already know it: we buy equipment or, unfortunately, pay for the treatment of sappers.
— Patron (@PatronDsns) October 12, 2022
If you’re so inclined, you all know what to do.
As in all groups of people, there is "us", there is "them" and "others". "Them" and "others" should know that the history has the screenshots now. See you in the future, guys! pic.twitter.com/y11tCUQl3R
— Patron (@PatronDsns) October 12, 2022
And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok page:
@patron__dsns Сильно я змінився?😊 #песпатрон #патрондснс
The caption (machine) translates as:
Have I changed a lot?😊 #PatrontheDog #PatronDSNS
Open thread!
Pay Attention to the OH Supreme Court Races if Abortion Rights Matter To You
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
Well hey, a time to be glad to be from the US. Nice when that happens.
The list of countries in red and yellow is……….quite a group. I wanna tell them all YOU CAN’T SIT WITH US!!!
This was pretty cool: Ukraine crowdfunding raises almost $10 million in 24 hours to buy kamikaze drones
Thank you as always, Adam.
Eolirin
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: We actually need to be doing a lot of outreach to those yellow countries so that they have viable alternatives to Russia and China. We really need to stop ignoring them so much.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Eolirin: Some would certainly be worth it, but others, it might be futile. Not sure how much outreach I’d want to do with a country that thinks I should be put to death for being queer.
Martin
Russia wants you to think it’s a truck because the only economy Russia has left is as an arms dealer, and a truck bomb doesn’t indict the competence of their weapons systems.
Say what you will about the US military, they are at least competent spokesmodels for Raytheon’s latest murderbots
[Edit]On this point, the number of Russian weapons customers that voted against them in the UN would have me shorting Russian weapon manufacturers.
SpaceUnit
God help Ukraine if it needs the freaking IMF to get involved. Find another way.
David Anderson
How much is the the shallow inventory modern NATO air defenses has been the strong assumption since 1990 that if NATO was fighting, it would have air dominance within forty eight hours or less so ground based air defenses were a nice to have instead of a have to have? This also applies to stockpiles of artillery and MLRS pods as it seems that a lot of the HIMARS strategic/operational targets would normally be tasked to F-16s in a US/NATO campaign.
Geminid
. Politico put up an article this morning titled “NATO sets sights on rebuilding Ukraine arms industry.” It’s datelined Brussels, where the reporter is attending the sixth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. Representatives of most of the 50 nations supporting Ukraine were discussing measures they would take to help meet Ukraine’s more immediate needs.
A U.S. defense official also briefed the reporter on a longer term effort NATO will make to aid Ukraine in rebuilding its defense industry so as to produce weapons system compatible with those of NATO. The official said that a team would visit Ukraine next week to begin planning with Ukrainian defense officials.
lowtechcyclist
Good to hear that the first IRIS-T has arrived in Ukraine from Germany. Hopefully more of them, along with the NASAMS from the U.S., won’t be too far behind. And hopefully this will be as much of a game-changer on defending against attacks on civilian areas as the HIMARS have been on offensive operations.
One thing I get tired of hearing, though, is the whole “these machines are complicated to use and to maintain, we can’t just hand them over in a day” rap. I keep thinking, “so that’s why you started training Ukrainian soldiers back in June to use and maintain F-16 jets, Abrams tanks, etc., right?”
Jay
Martin
This is sort of the great sin of the US economy and how finance in the US works. I often compare to China. In the US, the goal is always maximum efficiency of capital. You don’t tie up a dollar until the moment it can start doing work. This is what Just-In-Time manufacturing is ultimately about. In China, the goal is fastest utilization of capital. In China, a dollar should seek the fastest route to work. This is why US companies – particularly tech companies – go to China for manufacturing because their designs have very short shelf lives, and a design that takes a year to get into production loses all of its value before the product even ships.
So you look at a traditional missile system like ATACMS – one of the missiles used with HIMARS. Does Lockheed keep an ATACMS production line built out for the cadence that the US military might need, or do they keep enough production capacity to fill existing orders and once some shit hits some fan, go source some factory space and start filling it with equipment to build at a higher cadence? Well, they do the latter because why tie up their capital when they can have the Secretary of Defense tell the President to invoke the Defense Production Act to clear all the necessary hurdles for them for free?
This is also what happened when Covid hit. China could ramp because they had already built factories, they had equipment built just waiting for some use. The US in order to make more PPE had to start by finding a plot of dirt that one day could turn into a factory. When California talked to BYD for PPE, BYD didn’t have *any* PPE capacity – but they had empty factory space, they had workers, they had equipment. Their first masks rolled off of machines a week after the contract was signed.
There’s a story of how Apple went about getting the iPhone assembled. They couldn’t find a domestic manufacturer that could meet their timeline, but Foxconn said they could make it out of China (Foxconn is a Taiwanese company). Apple signed a contract and Steve asks Terry Gou if they can see the factory. So they head over to China and Terry leads them out to an empty field in Shenzhen. It’s just dirt, and they are shipping in 6 months. Scott Forstall is freaking out because it’s just dirt. There’s no way this is going to work. But the factory got built and outfitted in about 2 months, they did the production line work, and the phone shipped.
You see this a lot in road construction in the US. Contracts go to the lowest bid, but in order to get the lowest bid, the contractors throw the calendar out the window. You get your excavation when the excavation equipment is free. If they can’t finish it, you might need to wait a month for it to be free again. Then the next crew works on their schedule, and the one after that, and the one after that. Time has no value in the US. If that road is torn up for 2 years, well, that’s the cost of the lowest contract – the important thing is that the equipment and workers are never idle, because capital is precious, but time is not. The economic cost of not having a road is ignored. The economic cost of not having a factory, or an assembly line is ignored. But China doesn’t ignore those opportunity costs – so they put capital to work immediately. That leads to a host of other problems, not the least of which is massive overbuilding, and a lack of adequate capitalization in a lot of cases – in China’s blind spots.
That’s really the benefit of state control of key resources. The federal government doesn’t give a shit if a vaccine factory sits idle for 5 years, provided it’s ready to roll when some new disease crops up. The feds don’t have a profit motive to fuck up a good plan. This is also why California is building its own drug production industry.
Lyrebird
We have different views, differnt people, and I don’t claim any monopoly on the truth. But even before RU invaded Ukr, one of the big reasons to reach out to some countries is to make the USA less of a devil in their eyes and to maybe save the lives of some of their people who they might put to death. If the whole population is all, heck yeah death to those Americans, they don’t care if we starve, no government or Clinton Foundation outreach is gonna reach them.
Another reason is to make people in those countries less in favor of terrorism against us.
Calouste
The EU is hosting about 7.5 million Ukrainian refugees. Are the costs of that included in the support of Ukraine or is it just about checks having been cut?
Damien
Adam, can you explain to us civilians what “flattening lines” means/looks like? Pfarrer has used that term a lot and I can’t seem to Google anything that seems right.
thank you
Mallard Filmore
Mallard Filmore
@lowtechcyclist:
On a related note, a YouTube video I saw today said that 10,000 UA soldiers have finished training in the UK and will be rejoining the UA army.
Martin
@Mallard Filmore: The problem with the whole truck theory is that Russia’s evidence is a scan of a 5 axle truck which they say is evidence that a 6 axle truck was the vehicle that exploded.
Since their evidence is so laughably doctored, I don’t see why the truck theory should be given any more credibility than any other theory.
The truth will eventually surface. Russia is so non-credible on this that we’re all better just waiting until the truth does surface.
Jay
@Damien:
it’s a fancy term for “with drawing to a more defensable position closer to logistics”, aka, R-U-N-N-O-F-T
oldster
I’ve never put much stock in the truck-bomb theory, because it would require too many lucky breaks to make it work, and because I don’t see Zelensky signing off on a literal suicide mission. Now that the Kremlin is pushing it, I have a third reason not to believe it.
BUT — the more photos that I see of the damage, the more it looks like the main explosion happened above the roadbed. That argues against my earlier theory, that the explosives were delivered via one or more drone boats. Water-level explosives do a good job accounting for the damage to the roadbed, but they don’t explain the pattern of charring on the pillars for the train bridge.
So, if the explosives are above the roadbed, and they are not in a truck…are we back to a missile?
There’s still a lot we don’t know about that strike. However they did it, I hope they can do it again.
Jay
@Mallard Filmore:
if you have seen the countless vids of MLRS’s, tanks, art getting hit, yes, “brewing up” creates a slow running series of explosions, not one massive one.
OB-1
@Damien: “Flattening lines”, also known as ‘shortening lines’, is done to smooth out the concave and/or convex parts of a battle line (when viewed from above). A shorter line tends to be easier to defend. a convex bulge in one’s defensive line can be attacked from three different directions. Ukraine’s recent offensive in the Kharkhive area created some bulges in the Russian defensive line that Ukraine threatened to cut off (example: the attack in the Lyman area).
Jay
@oldster:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrim-2
Geoduck
@Martin: Didn’t have to be a knowing suicide mission, if the luckless guy driving the truck wasn’t told there was a bomb on board. If he was familiar to the inspection guards, that’s a bonus as well, as they’d be less vigilant.
Mallard Filmore
@Jay: Now that you mention it, videos of UA blowing up Russian ammo dumps shows a series of flashes spaced out over some dozens of seconds.
*Sigh* I may not have enough good years ahead of me to learn what really happened.
Jay
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Great summary! Of course, as you mentioned, there are clear downsides to the Chinese approach. How such capital has been leveraged & utilized in the real estate sector has been unsustainable & now proven quite damaging to the larger economy.
The also applies to a lesser extent infrastructure investment at various levels. I say to a lesser extent because there is something to be said about pre-building infrastructure when cost of labor, construction, land acquisition & capital are low. If you wait until the demand is already there due to economic development, the cost of building infrastructure is now much higher due to higher costs of labor, construction & land acquisition, & now you face a bottleneck to further economic development. That is the reality in much of the developed world right now.
oldster
@Jay:
Looks good to me. Has the advantages of an ATACMS without any US involvement. I hope they are building out a few more of them as we speak.
Also ironic that the name of this missile — Grim, or thunder — sounds a fair bit like the Ukrainian name for Crimea, namely Krym. Let’s hope another Grim creams the bridge to Krym.
Suzanne
@oldster: Could a drone have done it?
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I should also mentioned that there in fact not many automated masking making lines sitting idle in China or around the world, when the pandemic hit & demand for masks went vertical, & every player was pivoting to making masks (not just BYD, but also Foxconn). However, capacity ramped up very quickly because the automated mask making lines are not that sophisticated (relatively speaking, most developing economies would find building such machines challenging in a short amount of time), & there are a huge number of machine & tools makers in Mainland China who could quickly learn to make such machines, plus still more in Taiwan.
In the mean time, I remember when GM pivoted to making masks, they had workers attaching the ear loops onto the masks by hand…
Jay
@Geoduck:
The Russians claim that the truck was “loaded up” in Bulgaria, crossed the Black Sea by ferry to Georgia, transited from Georgia to Russia via South Ossetia.
That’s a lot of security checks and border crossings, not including the one by the Kerch Bridge to drive a truck bomb through with out detection.
The reality is that Russia claimed that the Kerch Bridge was massively protect from air attacks, missiles and sea born attacks by layered defences including killer dolphins and radar deflectors.
So, for the Russian Military and Security State, it had to be a “truck bomb”, otherwise their defences are shown to be crap. The FSB can afford to “take the fall” for it as there will be no consequences for them, the have too much dirt on everybody else.
oldster
@Suzanne:
I’m no expert, but my impression is that current drones simply cannot carry enough weight to account for the size of the explosion. The drones in use in the current war are carrying 10 or 20 pound bombs, but this explosion required something like 1000 pounds of explosive.
I suspect that the US may have drones big enough for that sort of job, but we’re not sharing them.
Suzanne
@oldster: Hmmmm. It’s amazing to me, in this time when everyone carries a phone in their pocket, that it’s still ambiguous. It’s fascinating.
Suzanne
@Jay:
um what now
Jay
@Suzanne:
a large drone, converted to a flying bomb, could do the job, but would be vulnerable to detection by air defences as they are relatively slow.
There is the weird case of the TU-141 (1960’s) drone that overflew several NATO partner nations before exploding in a field in Macedonia. Normally, it would carry cameras, not explosives, the SN# does not match Ukrainian stocks, who fired it and what it’s “mission was” is unknown. Besides, it’s not that accurate and relatively slow moving.
Jay
@Suzanne:
trained to detect, track, attack and kill divers.
https://news.usni.org/2022/04/27/trained-russian-navy-dolphins-are-protecting-black-sea-naval-base-satellite-photos-show
oldster
@Suzanne:
Whole lotta ambiguity, yes. And for the meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine each have their own reasons for keeping it ambiguous.
But in time we’ll learn the real story. From the killer dolphins.
Jay
@Suzanne:
https://www.rferl.org/a/zagreb-drone-explosives-russia-ukraine/31802023.html
sorry, Croatia, not Macedonia.
Suzanne
@Jay: I have so many killer dolphin questions.
Kelly
The bomb if it was a truck bomb was in the trailer. Not unusual for a trailer to be pulled by a different truck on different legs of a journey.
I initially was on team boat/submersible. I’ve come around to the truck bomb due to the size of the boom and the distribution of the damage.
OverTwistWillie
BDA results are consistent with extracting every dollar they could from that bridge project.
Chetan Murthy
@Calouste: You make a good point, and I don’t know the answer. In the same vein, I wonder if private donations are accounted-for in the balance.
But my belief is, *none of this matters*. None of it. What matters, is getting Ukraine enough weapons to end this war before the US government can change to be run by traitors. The EU should be fucking running around with their hair on fire, worried about that eventuality. And acting to be ready for when that happens. And that means meeting the military need. Hell, the EU should be shorting their own fucking defense, in order to shore up Ukraine’s. B/c every RU tank, every RU plane, chopper, howitzer, that UA blows up, is one that won’t be sent to attack Poland.
The short-sightedness of the EU is shocking. They expect the US to always be there to save their fucking asses. And sure, if we can, we sure AF should. But there’s a decent chance that in 2025, we’ll be part of the problem, not the solution, And the EU is doing JACK SHIT to prepare for that.
Jay
@Suzanne:
you realize that if they are answered, you can never go in the ocean again,…………
because “you will know too much”,…………
Feathers
When it comes to a suicide mission, I always think of the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo. All of the assassins had terminal cases of tuberculosis. Of course, from the murderers POV that was a disaster which got an extremely lucky break at the last minute.
It truly is amazing what a clownshow the media is when writing about all of this. They can’t even keep the timeline straight about what is going on.
Kelly
Ukraine’s most solid support is ex-Soviet and ex-Warsaw Pact. They know what Ukraine is doing helps all of them.
Joe Falco
If an American president oversaw a “special military operation” that was responsible for the loss of 90,000 active service members within the span of nine months, there may finally be a president that would be impeached and removed from office for the first time in US history.
Argiope
So, what is the advantage to Russia of nabbing the nuclear power plant administrators? I can’t help but wonder if the nuke Vlademort is planning to use is the power plant itself. Not an actual weapon, thus deniable, but still causing long term environmental damage and casualties. Here’s hoping all the NATO back channels have provided sternly phrased “Don’t even think about it” so it’s clear there would be major consequences.
Jackie
The reunited family and newborn daughter moved me to tears. To be born in captivity and released to freedom and united with her daddy… priceless. May they stay safe!
sdhays
@Jay: I wonder if Russia’s dolphin training is as shitty as its soldier training.
Also, I wonder if the budget says they have 100 diver-killing dolphins but they really have 3 and the commander pays for a nice house in Crimea with the funds for the other 97.
Fake Irishman
@David Anderson:
yeah, I’ve been thinking along these lines too. NATO also doesn’t have great short range AA guns.
Mallard Filmore
@Geoduck: I just found this Twitter thread that traces the truck’s route through the countryside.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1580305379212529670
OverTwistWillie
@Argiope:
They are crazy, paranoid and utterly convinced Ukraine has a nuclear weapons program.
Kelly
The speed with which the Russians came up with the truck bomb’s journey seems a bit unlikely.
The reported cargo, rolls of plastic edge binding seem like a good fit for hollowing out bomb cavities. Time consuming to unroll big spools of plastic to inspect. Pure speculation on my part is there might be an explosive that matches the xray density of the plastic such as to not show on a scan.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
many of the EU States have over the past couple of decades, “neglected” their Military. Budget cuts, costs have soared and “we” are only supposed to, (according to the past few decades of Military theory), only supposed to be fighting bush wars against terrorists.
As an example, Canada has no M-777 howitzers, we sent them all to Ukraine, so our guys train on all manual 105mm howitzers for the 1960’s and 1970’s.
When the US went into Afghanistan, they discovered that they needed “pack howitzers”. Problem was they had all been scrapped, sold off, a few mothballed in the 1950’s, so they wound up raiding Museums and Avalanche Control units.
Most of the EU’s Marders, Leapards, etc are mothballed, with just enough in active service to form a bare “Armoured Force”.
It takes time to get them running, more time to upgrade them and convert them for Ukraine service, and then they need to train Ukrainian tankers, ( who are kinda busy right now, what with all the lightly used Russian gear they have to man), on weapon systems they have never seen or used.
Yutsano
I discovered this on a random YouTube dive. I REALLY would like to know more about the group singing here, as this just sounds amazing.
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I think you’ll especially like this one.
Geoduck
@Jay: Why should we believe what the Russians say about the truck’s itinerary?
If it was a truck at all. I’m inclined to believe it was, even though that would mean that I was the one believing the Russians about something.
EDIT: I see there are more comments about the truck’s supposed travels.
Mallard Filmore
@Chetan Murthy:
The guy running the YouTube channel “A Tippling Philosopher” put out a video this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_-R79jVQPQ
The chapter of interest starts here:
https://youtu.be/P_-R79jVQPQ?t=2254
—> He discusses the situation that Europe has been using China for cheap goods, ,Russia for cheap energy, and the USA for cheap defense. The EU must prepare for changes.
He also has a chapter in that vid about cutting edge technology “mines”, which to me look like AI controlled bazookas.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Yutsano: That was a delight! Now I’ll be humming it, even if I can’t say any of the words :P
Jay
@Argiope:
Putin want’s to add Zaporizhzhia to Russia, and sell the electricity to the EU. It’s part and parcel of his belief that he can Energy Blackmail the EU into abandoning Ukraine. Anything to keep the Ukraine and the IEAE from “managing” Zaporizhzhia he thinks aids his attempts to annex it.
Jay
@Argiope:
Putin want’s to add Zaporizhzhia to Russia, and sell the electricity to the EU. It’s part and parcel of his belief that he can Energy Blackmail the EU into abandoning Ukraine. Anything to keep the Ukraine and the IEAE from “managing” Zaporizhzhia he thinks aids his attempts to annex it.
HumboldtBlue
Carlo Graziani
Does anyone else have problems up on Pfarrer’s mapped accounts of the fighting (his other stuff is not worth paying attention to)? I keep trying to relate to what he’s reporting using Google Maps, and getting very frustrated.
He has his own designations for roads, for one thing. For example, the road that he insists on calling the “H-26” is evidently known to Google Maps (and, therefore, to anyone who might have driven on it in 2021, say) as the P07, identifiable by the fact that it connects Starobilsk and Svatove. Also, Google Maps has never heard of the town of “Krokhalne”, where the UA are reported to have cut the “H-26”. His map features a nearby town of Stelmakhivka, which Google Maps has heard of, and it’s possible that the village on the “H-26” (P07, really) that he is referring to, based on map reference, is either Kuzemivka or Kryvoshyivka, although how either of those became “Krokhalne” beggars the imagination.
Adam, I know you respect Pfarrer and his work. His previous accomplishments may command respect for all know. As an analyst he is totally worthless. To the extent that he shows his work, anything that one checks is full of easily corrected mistakes. He is sloppy as hell, even on stuff you would expect him to have domain expertise on (by no means everything he writes about — his Kerch stuff is the wacky end of the spectrum). Try checking on him yourself sometime. I still try to follow his maps on the off-chance that his sources of information might be OK, but I’ve learned that nothing that he writes can be taken on faith.
dr. luba
@oldster: Not really similar. Грім is hreem (not greem, that’s Russian), and Crimea is Крим, i.e. krim (with a short i)
Agree that another hrim or two in Krym would not be a bad thing.
Jay
@Kelly:
the explosive would have to have the same density of the edge binding, be nitrate free.
Patron shows that it’s hard to hide explosives.
Carlo Graziani
@oldster: Right. It’s so good, they can hit a fuel car on a rail span with a bank shot off a road span. The US should buy a few of those.
The idiotic missile theory is still idiotic.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
https://www.amazon.ca/Bomb-Trains-Industry-Regulatory-Failure/dp/1072181339
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster
you don’t even need an explosion to cause oil tanker railcars to explode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QRvZsO4fc
Anoniminous
Russians are putting 152mm D-1 howitzer,used by the Red Army in 1943, and MT-12 “Rapira” anti-tank guns designed in 1961 into service. Along with the T-62s and the other obsolete shit being fielded it appears the Russians have decided to conduct an experiment to how well the Warsaw Pact of 1965 holds up to modern weaponry.
FYI, this is what happens when troops are sent into combat without leadership and training. Up to 13 people died because the dumb ass vehicle commander didn’t know what he was doing.
Carlo Graziani
@Jay: None of these links is even remotely relevant to what happned at the Kerch bridge,
The road span absorbed most of the energy of the primary explosion. That’s why it fell over, while both rail spans are still standing.
To believe in a missile strike, one has to believe that the missile hit the road span, and the rail car explosion was a secondary explosion. In which case (a) it’s a shitty missile and whoever fired it got very lucky, or (b) it’s such a great missile that instead of outfitting it with a HE penetrator warhead to break up the support, the missileers decided on a bank shot off the road span to ignite the rail car, because they could.
Or, my vote, (c) there was no missile at Kerch, just as there wasn’t one at Dzhankoi, or at Saki.
Another Scott
I guess in their rush to get fresh bodies out to the front lines, they skipped the lesson of normal tank driving school about DO NOT DRIVE OVER MINES.
:-/
(via Oryx)
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: Wow. Or, even “there are things in the world called mines that are bad, even for tanks”.
I mean, who even lays AT mines in a neat exposed line across a road like that? That’s like a Wile E. Coyote trap…
GibberJack
@David Anderson: Seems to me a bit like the JIT lean inventory model vs a trad fat inventory model, which we’ve seen several times fail during unanticipated but not entirely in unexpected shocks.
GibberJack
FYWP for glitchy and twitchy mobile site and resulting double post.
Argiope
@OverTwistWillie:
@Jay: Thanks to you both for these alternative explanations—which I definitely prefer.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
the vid of the blast makes it very clear that the explosion took place on or below the car deck, ( it appears more on, than under),
Here is the glass bridge explosion, which was definateley a missile hitting the walking deck,
Footage of the rail deck show only heat damage from the burning oil cars, which remained on the track, so the shockwave from the blast was’nt even strong enough to derail the tanker cars, but it was enough to crack their single hulls and set them on fire.
If you google CEP, (Circular Error of Probability), you will find that pinpoint missiles and bombs are only sort of. Eg, the Tomahawks that missed Iraq entirely and wound up in Turkey and Syria.
Whether it was the intended target or not, the car deck is the one that took the hit.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
everybody who want’s to put a temporary barrier up to a vehicle passage. There are vids from earlier in the war where UA soldiers use their feet to carefully slide Russian laid AT mine chains off the roadway and onto the shoulder, and vids of civillians “slaloming” their cars through the gaps between mines laid to block tanks, not Lada’s.
https://www.businessinsider.com/video-ukrainian-drivers-dodge-through-a-russian-anti-tank-minefield-2022-4
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay:
@Carlo Graziani:
The idea is to slow an enemy advancing column, even for just a few minutes, so that forward observers can call in artillery/air strikes against the clumped up & stalled enemy formation. Mine fields will not stop the opponent by themselves.
Leaving the mines on the road surface means either the engineers did not have time to properly lay the mines, or burying mines is not possible on hard asphalt/concrete surface, or at least not without giving away the mine positions any way.
Carlo Graziani
@Jay: @YY_Sima Qian: Helpful, thanks.
InMyRoom
@Calouste: The US and larger EU countries are helping to cover the cost of refugees. Each country that are housing the refugees are spending a great deal. Germany especially, housing/food/cash/education costs, for 2 yrs minimum.
Geminid
@Jay: Either a missile or truck bomb would have sprayed enough hot shrapnel to puncture the rail cars and ignite the fuel they carried.
I’m not so sure the fuel cars were even a factor in the attack plan. It might be that it was a very clever plan, but it’s possible there was luck involved.
Geminid
From an article posted today in the Times of Israel;
The reporter noted that Israel is one of five countries Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has said possess critical ant-air defensive technology needed by Ukraine, and discusses the reasons Israel has refrained from providing it.
Some may have reached Ukraine via a back channel, though:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@YY_Sima Qian: Going by what the Chines dissidents are claiming, the real problem with the China Model is the CCP has it’s fingers in everything so, when there is a internal power struggle in the CCP, like what is going on now, the entire economy gets sucked in and it turns into some kind of stealth civil war. From a certain angle the whole China real estate crises was caused by Xi attacking his rivals (on the other hand, the whole thing was unsustainable and set to implode anyway)
Not to mention the whole empty field to factory in full production under a year and damn the consequences is insane anyway for environmental reasons, which China is finding out about.
And the other part of the problem with China model, is going by my bosses were telling me, all those assembly lines are staffed by teenage Chines girls who are only doing this as savings for when they get married, so they all quit in their twenties. Chines demographics are aging out like the rest of the world’s
YY_Sima Qian
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Frankly, Chinese dissidents are some of the worst prognosticators of happenings in China. They are no longer capable of being objective & would rather engage in wishful thinking, & tend to pump out materials that confirm the biases of their paymasters (some are on the payroll of US government or think tanks, others are on the payroll of Taiwanese government). Think of the other exiles of other authoritarian regimes.
Factional in fighting w/in the CCP regime has been a constant feature from the founding of party, through the founding of the PRC, & throughout the Reform era (they just took less destructive forms than during the Mao years). If anything, there is less factional infighting right now because Xi has consolidated power & marginalized all factions other than his own, at least for the time being.
As for young girls working assembly lines, that is at least 7 years out of date. When I 1st returned to China to work in the late aughts, productions lines workers were indeed dominated by young women 18 – 25, because of their attention to detail, ability to concentrate, nimble fingers, & willingness to obey commands. By mid-teens, however, the cohort was already in short supply, so line workers became steadily older & more male. I would say the median age line worker is now probably ~ 30. Chinese manufacturers (Chinese or foreign owned) adapted by implementing automation as much as possible, & climbing the value chain. Those unwilling or unable to adapt either folded or moved to S/SE Asia. However, China has been increasing its share of global exports, including through the pandemic (& the trade war before that), it has held on to much of the lower end manufacturing even as parts of its industry has successfully climbed higher on the value chain & the technology ladder. The trade war & the geopolitical competition has prompted many companies (Chinese & foreign) to adopt a “China+1” supply chain strategy, where further capacity expansion goes to a SE Asian country (Vietnam being a favorite), but existing capacity in China is kept. Very few have actually been winding down their China operations. Those seeking to sell into the Chinese market are investing more, the Foreign Direct Investment numbers bear this out.
Right now, China’s competitive advantage is not in cheap labor (& has not been for years). It is in the huge, diverse & highly integrated supply chain ecosystems, which are increasingly at the center of the larger E/SE Asian supply chain ecosystem, the superior physical infrastructure, the better educated work force, lower corruption, better functioning bureaucracy, etc. (relative to other developing economies).
Sebastian
Adam, I admire your stamina. Thank you for doing this. I’ve lost the will and energy more than once since this war started.
Sebastian
@Carlo Graziani:
I follow Def Mon on Twitter (@defmon3). He is pretty much the gold standard amongst the OSINT guys.
Here is his latest:
Carlo Graziani
Reading the National Security Strategy now. It would be interesting to have a conversation about it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: The consensus seems to be that we are now “officially” in an undeclared Cold War between the US & China. The actions being taken indicate that as well.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: There is a range along which one could state this idea. You have chosen the high end of the range. The National Strategy document is a bit more nuanced. It states that “…the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge.” (p. 11), and elsewhere does set out some stark divergences of outlook and interests.
The section specifically on PRC (pp. 23–25) is, I believe, very balanced. It clearly states the areas of tension, and calls out the PRC government for what the US regards as the actions, policies, and outlook that source those tensions. However, it ends like this:
I wouldn’t call that an “undeclared Cold War”, or at least I don’t think that phrase captures the spirit of the current US government’s view.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: If you read the NSS document in isolation, yes, it is balanced & reasonable. However, actions taken by the Biden Administration suggests otherwise, especially in the technological realm.
Between the CHIPS Act & restrictions placed on selling advanced semiconductors to any Chinese entity working on AI & high performance computing (supercomputers), the US is clearly aiming to kneecap China’s semiconductor industry & any industry that is highly dependent on semiconductors (which is just about every advanced industry). The ostensible justification is that China is leverage AI & HPC to make advancements in nuclear weapons development, hypersonic glide vehicles, battlefield decision making, etc., which threaten to overtake the US. However, the vast majority applications for AI & HPC are civilian (weather forecasting, climate modeling, drug discovery, etc.), & the Biden Administration is not carving out these civilian applications from the restrictions. Either the US does not care if the Chinese civilian industries end up being collateral damage to the US’ attempt to maintain advantage in narrow military fields, or the objective is in fact to restrict China’s overall technological development (military & civilian) & the military aspects are used as thinly veiled justification. Even more restrictions are expected to come. Both Gina Raimondo & Jake Sullivan have commented that the goal is to maximize the technological lead over China, rather than maintaining the 1 – 2 generations lead (prior policy), & to do so not only the US will try to run faster, it will also work to trip China up.
China has yet to officially respond to these restrictions, because everyone is busy w/ the upcoming Party Congress, but retaliations will come. Therefore, the above are not the conclusions being drawn by Chinese commentators, but China analysts in the US (I highly recommend checking out Paul Triolo, Graham Webster, Jordan Schneider, Mike Mazarr, Ryan Haass on Twitter), but the Chinese government & corporations will come to the same conclusion. In order to prevent Chinese entities from stockpiling components, the administration forewent the normal comment & feedback period. Semiconductor industry is deeply concerned about the direction.
There is huger diversity of opinion whether the US restrictions will succeed. Likely to be somewhat effective in the short term, but also very likely to be self-damaging in the long term. Even if it succeeds, we are facing a negative sum scenario where the Chinese slice of the pie is now shrunk (hitherto the largest & the fastest growing), significantly reducing the revenues to all players (including American ones), revenues they need to fund their R&D to maintain their edge. Overall technological advancement around the world will be slower, since Chinese entities are now contributing meaningfully to fundamental research & innovation, in STEM fields Chinese entities are now leading not only in the quantity of papers, but in quantity of highly cited papers in top publications. Not to mention further entrenching the Cold War dynamic between China & the US. If it fails, China eventually catches up 10 years down the line, Chinese semiconductor supply chain players benefiting from captive market, generating the needed revenue to fund their R&D. The US is unable to turn the unilateral restrictions to multilateral ones, & non-American players gradually design out American tech. to continue access the Chinese market. The US end up giving a lot of waivers/exemptions to the restrictions to reduce the negative impact to American corporations & global supply chain, but inevitably pissing off allies because it is inevitably easier for American companies to obtain exemptions than non-American ones. & we still end up w/ an entrenched Cold War dynamic between China & the US. The administration may claim that these restrictions are emergency measures, not meant to achieve technological de-coupling, but what the White House believes become irrelevant when no one else (China, 3rd countries, private entities, Congress, parts of the US government bureaucracy) believe it.
As for the NSS in general, the take I agree w/ is that the document is chock full of contradictions & vagueness, & does not in fact provide clear direction for the bureaucracy to execute policy. There is no attempt to prioritize, no matching of objectives to available means, no definition of the “international order” the US is trying to preserve, or how cooperation w/ China is possible when competition is relentlessly intensifying across the board. In isolation, the document has a lot of the right rhetoric, but the rhetoric is not matched by actions. & this NSS is too late to really influence policy execution, at least for this term. I recommend commentaries by Emma Ashford, Ashley Townshend, Mike Mazarr, Van Jackson.
This is the danger of the current direction we are in. Both Xi & Biden (& their underlings) say all the right words about avoiding Cold War, but both seem to be blind to the fact that their actions are in fact hardening the dynamic, & instead believe their words are assurances enough, when they clearly are not.
Carlo Graziani
Probably only you and me in this thread now. I’ll read more deeply into the commenters that you recommend. I don’t really disagree about the mismatch between day-to-day policy and the NSS goals, but I don’t think that really points to an incoherence, so much as to how relatively quickly relations have degenerated, and how hard it is for coherent policy to keep up.
I have many accomplished Chinese academic colleagues, and the prospect of a true freeze of intellectual/academic exchanges strikes me as implausible even in AI research, despite the fact that government officials may come to see it as necessary. Nonetheless, I will push back a little on a minor point: metrics of scientific achievement such as “quantity of highly cited papers in top publications” are highly unreliable indicators of preeminence of a scientific establishment. Such metrics are routinely gamed, especially in establishments that prize them, and occasionally weight them more highly than actual accomplishment (I could tell you stories…). I believe that there still exist structural, institutional, and cultural reasons that advantage US R&D over that of other nations, including China, and while there can be no guarantee that these reasons will persist (heavens knows they are certainly not rooted in a superior educational system!) “catch-up” is certainly not a simple matter of investment, whatever the CPCs view of the matter may be.
The degeneration in bilateral relations does grieve me. Nonetheless, it seems to me that whatever the defects of US policy towards China, they proceed from a clearer perception of the world, of Chinese power, of Chinese intentions, and of US interests, than the CPC’s perception of US power (hard and –importantly– soft), of Western cohesion, of China’s own neighbors’ attitudes towards itself, of just about anybody’s intentions, and perhaps arguably (although I recognize the arrogance of this statement) of where its own true interests lie. CPC’s leadership sometimes seems to have inherited the old imperial involute outlook, refusing to understand the world as it is rather than in terms of psychological projections of what it chooses to see. Hence absurd bits of theatre like Xi lecturing visiting EU officials on their false consciousness leading them to the error of supporting the US against Russia last spring.
I worry about how hard-shelled that epistemic bubble is. I hope that the events of this year have caused some fissures in it. I realize that everyone always wants the other guy to give,but in this case I believe that the CPC is going to have to allow a dose of reality in — Xi is going to have to listen to people occasionally telling him things he doesn’t want to hear — before things can really get substantially better.