It’s been a day. So let’s keep this on the shorter side tonight.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
Today we have important international results.
Our export grain initiative has been extended. Despite all the difficulties, despite various manipulations by Russia, we will continue to export agricultural products through our Black Sea ports.
This is a very specific thing that makes the world see the importance of Ukraine. Since August 1, more than 450 ships have already left the ports of Great Odesa. The total amount of food is 11 million tons. The geography is very broad: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Yemen, Lebanon, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Türkiye, as well as the countries of the European Union.
Tens of millions of people, primarily in African countries, have been saved from starvation, in particular by means of deliveries in the framework of the UN World Food Programme from our ports.
We also managed to reduce the pressure on the global food market. And this means that food prices are significantly lower than they would be without our food exports.
We have done everything to expand this work. And I thank all our partners who are helping: the UN and Secretary-General Guterres personally, Türkiye and President Erdoğan personally. Thanks to everyone in our team who is responsible for this direction. This is a truly important result.
Today, a meeting was held in the Office regarding our Grain from Ukraine initiative. We have the consent of such countries as Germany, Poland, Belgium, Japan, Türkiye and the USA to join the work of the initiative. But these are the countries that have already made up their mind. There will be more participating countries.
The meaning is very simple and as specific as possible. All the countries of the world, together with Ukraine, can ensure the supply of food for those in the world who suffer the most from food shortages. We will provide more details on how this will work shortly.
I believe that this Russian aggression should lead the whole world to an obvious conclusion: never again should there be mass famine in the world. If the world works in unity, famine will be defeated.
A very important decision was adopted today in the Netherlands. There is the first sentence for the murderers who destroyed the Malaysian Boeing in the sky over Donbas in 2014. Three men were sentenced to life imprisonment. And the day will surely come when they will begin to serve this punishment.
But this decision is not just about three murderers. Russia lied a lot about this catastrophe, but nevertheless the key facts were established. Now the perpetrators have been convicted and the basis is provided to convict the culprits of a higher level, too. Those who bear full personal responsibility for the crime of aggression against Ukraine – the original crime that gave rise to all the others committed by the Russists since 2014.
This is something without which it is impossible to protect the world from the repetition of such wars as Russian aggression against our state. When all the murderers and torturers are convicted, when their commanders and political “cover” face fair sentences, when Russia compensates for all the damage caused by Russian aggression, it will be a very solid foundation for a lasting peace.
We have all the possibilities to ensure this. Every Russian war crime, every terrorist attack of theirs will receive its legal response. Today’s decision in The Hague proves it.
The elimination of the consequences of another missile attack against Ukraine continues all day…
Again, there are emergency shutdowns in addition to planned, stabilization ones. Currently, more than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity. Most of them are in the Vinnytsia region, Odesa region, Sumy region and Kyiv. We are doing everything to normalize the supply.
In Dnipro, dozens of people were injured as a result of a missile attack. Everyone is provided with aid.
In Zaporizhzhia, the clearance of the rubble of a residential building, which was destroyed by Russian shelling at night, continues… The list of the dead includes seven people. Unfortunately, this number may increase.
Only in the first half of today, our defense forces managed to shoot down six Russian cruise missiles and five Shaheds. Unfortunately, not all of those launched by terrorists.
We repeat to our partners again and again that only full protection of the Ukrainian sky will protect both Ukraine and Europe from many possible escalations of Russian aggression and will definitely encourage Russia to truly end the war. Not to the kind of propaganda that now sounds from the Kremlin about the alleged readiness for negotiations in order to buy some time and gather forces for a new offensive, but to real peace.
I would like to thank Finland and Sweden today for the decisions regarding the new defense assistance packages. This is very important. Each such decision of the states makes them co-creators of our victory and future peace.
Today I signed several decrees on awarding our warriors. 402 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were honored with state awards.
In total, since February 24, more than 32,000 Ukrainian men and women have been awarded for bravery in battles. 4950 of them – posthumously.
We must always remember how many people gave their lives to save Ukraine and freedom.
Eternal memory to all those whose lives were taken by Russian aggression!
Glory to all who gain victory for Ukraine!
Gratitude to everyone who helps us and works for the state!
Glory to Ukraine!
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessment of the situation in Kherson:
KHERSON AXIS/1510 UTC 17 NOV/ With targeting data provided by UKR Partisans and deeply inserted SOF, UKR conducted a precision strike fire mission on HQ elements of the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army, located in the city of Melitopol. 100 RU casualties reported. pic.twitter.com/uq8w0oY4Da
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) November 17, 2022
The Russians bombarded Ukraine again today:
The city of Dnipro. Ukraine. Today. XXI century.
Terrorists are still not being punished.
We will carry out justice.
We will protect the international order. pic.twitter.com/mLUMtyvfWh— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 17, 2022
Excellent job by air defense in Kyiv this morning
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) November 17, 2022
The Ukrainian air defense gets better and better with each attritional Russian terror wave. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/S2NCwIsDZb
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 17, 2022
The Ukrainian air defense is working but even when successful the debris is still a grave danger. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/jyGKreI9eg
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 17, 2022
The last reporting I saw indicates that the Ukrainian position on what landed in Poland is still that Ukraine’s intelligence indicates it was not a Ukrainian air defense interceptor, they have sent specialists to join the Polish investigation, and they will await the findings of the Polish investigation.
Ukraine’s foreign minister says Ukrainian experts are already on the ground in Poland and the two governments “will cooperate constructively and openly on the incident caused by Russian missile terror against Ukraine.” https://t.co/ncbMkTZStY
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) November 17, 2022
President Duda seems to be doing a good job balancing Poland’s domestic concerns and interests with maintaining support for Ukraine:
“It is an extremely difficult situation and it is not a surprise to anyone that there are emotions here," Polish President Duda tells reporters today. "[Zelensky] is going through everything that his nation is going through. It is his nation…for which he feels responsible."
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) November 17, 2022
The Guardian brings us details on the situation in Przewodów:
On Tuesday afternoon, for the first and only time since he moved to Przewodów, a small Polish border village, Father Bogdan Wazny said mass to an empty church.
Barely an hour earlier, a Russian-made missile had flown out of Ukrainian territory, killed two of his parishioners and shattered the illusion that geography and international law would protect the villagers.
“The physical border here also mentally separated us from the war [in Ukraine]. We always felt this way,” Wazny said, the day after the missile landed. “We never felt the danger here.”
Now however, fear, horror and a sudden swarm of police and military kept the faithful at home as news of their personal tragedy began ricocheting around the world, transmuted into a geopolitical crisis.
The nightmare Kyiv and its allies had warned about for months had become a reality: war in Ukraine had spilled over the country’s borders and thrust this sleepy hamlet, just four miles from the border, into the international spotlight.
“We talked about this before, but it never felt like a serious threat,” said Justine Mazurek, who was born in the village 71 years ago. “Of course, I was aware that the war is going on, but I never heard any explosions.”
A day later, she says she can still hardly believe that two men she knew well have been killed by a missile. “People are afraid but still haven’t had enough time to talk to each other, to process it.”
The village is small enough that everyone knew the victims. It has a registered population of 900 but only 600 actually live here – like swathes of eastern Poland, it has lost many of its young people to migration.
“We bumped into each other all the time and now they are no longer here,” Mazurek said, after attending mass where Wazny prayed for the dead – fathers and devout churchgoers who were killed as they worked at a grain sorting centre.
One was married to a woman who worked at the school, so overnight, principal Ewa Byra switched from overseeing education for 71 students to organising psychological support for a traumatised community.
“We [in Przewodów] managed to calm down after 24 February [when Russia invaded Ukraine] despite the fact that we live next door to the war,” Byra said. “The emotions had subsided and we managed to cope. But yesterday’s event awakened those emotions again.”
The school, where a poster reading “safety above all” hangs in the main hall, had already closed for the day when the missile hit, but the next day it stood empty again, with parents too frightened to send their children to classrooms just a few hundred metres from the site of the explosion. “It was too fresh. This is a very hard experience for them,” said Byra.
She has already started connecting children and their parents to psychologists and experts in trauma, who have come from larger cities nearby. “Psychological help began today,” she said, describing an online meeting to connect people with first, basic support.
Byra expects the recovery to be hard for a community now living with the reality that the war has crossed the border once, and may do so again. “We are trying as much as possible to keep life normal – the children’s feelings are the most important thing.”
Much more at the link!
It appears that Israel may have finally decided that all the fence straddling regarding support for Ukraine has caused too much chafing:
Almost immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel’s fence-sitting strategy has been a source of tension with the United States. This policy, said to be taken to avoid angering Putin while he wields influence over Israel’s northern border defense, was chosen by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Then-foreign minister Yair Lapid played the “good cop” by speaking more sympathetically about Ukraine and even daring to criticize Russia’s actions.
However, when Lapid became prime minister in July, Israel’s policy remained the same, continuing to refuse to supply any significant military assistance – specifically, anti-missile systems – to the embattled Ukrainians. He resisted private and public entreaties coming from Ukrainian leaders, including its Jewish president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the news that Russia was using Iranian weaponry and cooperating closely with Israel’s fiercest enemy did not seem to make a difference.But now, as the Iran-Russia alliance grows stronger, comes the revelation that Israel’s stance may be shifting under increased pressure from the Biden administration.
Yossi Melman reports exclusively that Israel has now agreed to finance unspecified “strategic materials” worth millions of dollars to the Ukrainian war effort, after the U.S. pushed Lapid’s government to ally more closely with NATO and the West. A delicate diplomatic dance is clearly happening behind the scenes, as Israel does its best to shape a policy that will placate Biden without angering Putin.
More at the link.
Britain is ramping up production of artillery rounds:
Britain has sent at least 16,000 artillery rounds to Ukraine since the start of the war.
However, heavy use of these cannons has run down artillery stockpiles in the West. In the summer, Pentagon sources told the Wall Street Journal that US stocks of 155mm had become “uncomfortably low” after it shipped 806,000 rounds to Ukraine. It can take up to 18 months from order to delivery of the munitions, the newspaper reported.
Artillery, especially unguided shells such as the six-inch-thick, waist-high 155mm calibre, has been key to the successes of both Ukrainian and Russian offensives in the war.
BAE Systems declined to comment. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The UK has enough weapon systems to defend our national security, while fulfilling our commitments to Nato and Ukraine.”
News of the letter of intent comes as doubts emerge that the UK will stick to former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s pledge to dramatically increase Britain’s spending on defence.
Rishi Sunak refused to commit to a pledge of spending 3pc of national output on defence as he announced a new order for submarine-hunting frigates to add to the Royal Navy.
If anyone was wondering, here is a detailed diagram of how air defense works:
How the missile defense system works. pic.twitter.com/Gv1WOglVtV
— Giant Military Cats (@giantcat9) November 16, 2022
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Open thread!
dmsilev
So, I assume that in that missile defense explainer, a key part of the system is the giant laser pointer that projects a red dot onto the target?
Amir Khalid
It’s good to learn that Ukraine is joining the Polish investigation into the missile that hit Przewodów. That means Ukraine and Poland will jointly own the investigators’ findings, whatever they turn out to be. It would not be good for Ukraine to fall out with one of its staunchest allies in this war.
Alison Rose
If I could get explainers of all military things using cats, I think I’d understand them better.
Glad to see Israel is finally maybe starting to do something. Who knew they could feel shame! Or at least, recognize the political necessity of pretending they do.
A thing that I noticed recently that’s bothering me: Zelenskyy’s FB posts generally have first Ukrainian and then English, but FB will often automatically translate the Ukrainian text. Sometimes it’s a little off from his English portion, but close enough. However…it translates place names into russian versions, like in this one where in Ze’s English portion, he wrote “Dnipro” but when FB translated the Ukrainian portion, they have “Dnieper” – and I also saw one with the Kyiv/Kiev thing. It recognizes that the language is Ukrainian, so I don’t know why this would be happening, unless the actual words in Ukrainian script can easily be translated either way? If G&T or another Ukrainian speaker has thoughts, I’d be interested. Because my first reaction was to be like “fuck you Zuck”.
Even your “brief” posts are always incredibly substantive and helpful, so of course, thank you as always, Adam.
trollhattan
Truly admire this guy’s outlook.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1592983193652953089?cxt=HHwWgoDQ7cnxtJssAAAA
Anoniminous
Hot news:
“Vadim Boyko, a Russian colonel with ties to Putin, and who was involved in this autumn’s mass mobilization, has “committed suicide” in his office in Vladivostosk. Col. Boyko is reported to have shot himself five times with his service pistol.”
5 shots? Nothing suspicious THERE! (nope, nope, nope)
wombat probabilty cloud
@Anoniminous: Comrade Boyko was always calm under stress, not to mention his good aim!
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: That’s beautiful.
zhena gogolia
@Anoniminous: In the back, no doubt.
Elizabelle
@Anoniminous: Excuse, me I think that needs a link.
Was a bathroom window involved, also?
trollhattan
@wombat probabilty cloud: “Is now conveniently located next to thirteenth story window, through which Comrade Boyko improbably propelled himself during self-shooting.”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
If I feed my cats growth hormone, how soon could they be deployed? I keed! I keed!
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
It reminds me of the old joke that we might have believed it was an accidental shooting if he hadn’t stopped to reload.
Gin & Tonic
@Alison Rose: The only way to turn “Дніпро” into “Dnieper” is if you are lazy, stupid or malevolent. Since Zuckerberg is involved, I’d bet on the trifecta.
Anoniminous
@Elizabelle:
Here you go
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Here you go: https://zona.media/news/2022/11/16/tovvmu
Fake Irishman
@dmsilev:
*golf clap*
Sir, please see Anne Laurie on the Mezzanine level to collect your prize of one internet.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: That made me a little verklempt.
Alison Rose
@Anoniminous: That’s gotta be one for Guinness.
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic: As I said, that was my instinctive response. I wish it had been wrong, but…….not surprised that it was right. Grrr.
CaseyL
Looks like we need more Giant Military Cats!
I’m very glad Ukraine and Poland are investigating the shelling of Przewodów together.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: Yeah, no way that happens by accident.
zhena gogolia
I can’t say how excited I am to see people correctly using the Polish letter “ó.”
Amir Khalid
@Anoniminous:
The story at the link says he was found with four guns next to his body. Hmm. If you’re going to execute a person and stage it as a suicide, why four guns?
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
English has the very bad habit of continuing to use outdated names for foreign locations, e.g. Rome for Roma, Cologne for Köln, Vienna for Wien, etc. In many cases, these are the way the place is called in some other language. For example Cologne and Vienna are from the Latin names for those places. Unfortunately, we’ve accepted the Russian versions of a lot of Ukrainian place names, and it’s hard to root those out. I don’t know if this shows any kind of malevolence, but it certainly shows laziness and indifference to the big issues.
Cameron
@Amir Khalid: Why would Russian assassins be any more competent than Russian military leaders?
Dan B
From the Farrer (sp?) map it looks like UKR are going after the peninsula on the south side of the river as was speculated. They then drive up the RU defensive lines.
Thanks for this post. Short is fine and still very informative!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron: More practice.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I think the casual attitude toward getting the details right is part of the message. They want people to know they can be murdered with impunity.
Dan B
@Cameron: I wonder if the assassination was by Russians who did not want to be drafted into the meat grinder.
Anonymous At Work
Adam,
Between the HQ strike that at least injured 100+ RU, and the soft landing of UA SOF on Kinburn, does it look like UA is settling into creating another meat-grinder for RU forces? Pay the butcher’s bill or we’ll land light vehicles and repair the bridges?
Also, Pfarrer was reporting a top Colonel in charge of recruitment “committed suicide” with 5 rounds from his revolver. How long until the RU domestic side gets becomes unsustainable?
Anoniminous
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe somebody was sending a message?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Yes, I think so too, but surely five bullets from the one gun would suffice.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: And yet nobody writes “Peking” or “Bombay” anymore.
Anonymous At Work
@Dan B: Kinburn Pennisula is swamp. Like invading the mouth of the Mississippi by landing troops there (minus the alligators and bull sharks). Not solid enough for the heavy stuff and Ukrainian forces lack the landing craft to do a massive D-Day style strike.
D-Day struck where there were few waiting Nazis; there’s no part of the south bank of the Dneiper unwatched by RU forces. Russians want a large scale pitched battle; they have the raw numbers; Ukraine doesn’t.
Anonymous At Work
@Amir Khalid: I’ve been joking that the next step is 7 bullets from a 6-shot revolver to the back of the head as a “suicide”. Not sure if it’s lazy or brazen, but Putin only is as subtle as required.
Amir Khalid
@zhena gogolia:
It was easier to copy and paste “Przewodów” from the post than to remember the spelling.
BeautifulPlumage
And this news from Michael Weiss “Exclusive: Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow” Twitter with link to story:
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1593409122099159040?cxt=HHwWgICzifDJ9pwsAAAA
Alison Rose
@Roger Moore: That may be true, but at this point in the war, it has been made quite clear what the proper Ukrainian spellings of these places are, and people continuing to use the russian ones don’t have any excuses, though they continue to try to make them.
bbleh
By all accounts the MILCAT Mk IV has more than proven its worth, especially given that its operational requirements are limited to less than a ton per day of kibble (plus a few kilos of intermediate-grade tunite).
Amir Khalid
@Alison Rose:
And some even still say “the Ukraine”.
Alison Rose
@Amir Khalid: Which makes me want to scream.
Andrya
@Roger Moore: The russian government makes a practice of assassinating people using methods that make it clear that the russian government is behind the hit. For example, the attempted assassination of the Skirpals (who survived, but another person died) was by Novichok nerve agent- not available to an ordinary criminal. The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko used polonium, again only available to governments. I’m sure it is for the reason you gave, to communicate that they can kill anyone, any time, any where- even in the UK.
Timill
@Roger Moore: That’s hardly unique to English, though. If you catch a train from Venezia to Monaco, you’ll wind up in Bavaria not the Riviera. If you head for Mons from France, you need to look for signs to Berg once you’re over the Belgian border.
And those are just two that I remember from travels around Europe back when…
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I very seldom see or hear “the Ukraine” these days. The thing with Dnipro, though, is even if you do just a letter-for-letter substitution from Ukrainian to English, you get “Dnipro.” All six of the Ukrainian letters have a direct English analog – there’s no ї or й or ж to confuse the transliteration. Дніпро –> Dnipro.
Dan B
@Anonymous At Work: Pfarrer’s map says UKR Naval units are active off the Kinburn Peninsula. If it’s swampy it would also be trouble for RU forces as they could only get small numbers at a time.
Gin & Tonic
@Dan B: I mentioned the other night, it’s a barrier beach. Think Kitty Hawk or Fire Island. A thin spit of sand with salt marshes on one side.
2liberal
MTG is pushing to eliminate aid to Ukraine. What’s the plan for the lame duck session, and will the R leadership support this next year?
Omnes Omnibus
@Timill:
The French keep calling the British capitol Londres.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
And Egyptian football commentators tend to call my favourite team “Liberbool”.
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic:
I mostly see it in comments on FB posts from NPR and such, where the comment also makes it sound like the person just woke up last week from an 8-month nap.
Amir Khalid
@2liberal:
Is she going with McCarthy’s “no blank cheque for Ukraine” line, or is she explicitly pro-Russian like Tucker Carlson?
Gin & Tonic
@Alison Rose:
You have my deepest sympathy.
OverTwistWillie
@Anoniminous:
Or somebody wanted his racket.
bbleh
@2liberal: aw this is just more performative BS for the nihilist nutballs. “See how outrageous I am? Whoooo!” Matt “Not Yet Indicted For Interstate Underage Sex Trafficking” Gaetz was in on it too. And McCarthy (to everyone’s total surprise) is already backing away from his “no blank check for Ukraine” remarks, saying now that they were merely indicative of the importance of carefully scrutinizing federal spending, blah blah and so forth.
IOW, pay it no mind.
OverTwistWillie
@Anoniminous:
Or somebody wanted his racket.
frosty
You and I must have read different histories of D-Day. They were certainly waiting at Omaha Beach. The other beaches may have been less bloody but they weren’t undefended.
Carlo Graziani
I wonder what munition is supposed to have been used for Pfarrer’s “precision strike fire” in Melitopol. So far as I can see, at the moment Melitopol is outside of HIMARS range of any part of the front. Perhaps an airstrike? I don’t think MIG-29s are usually rigged for those, but I could be wrong. Or some kind of custom special SOF job? Pfarrer doing his customary vague, detail-and-source-free work…
Geminid
I’m glad to see the grain deal was extended, for at least three months I believe. The Turkish President has a bad enough name that people may not want to give Recip Erdogan credit for anything, but I’ll give him credit for his role here.
When Russia suspended the shipments, Erdogan and his Defence Minister made it clear to their Russian counterparts that cessation of the grain shipments was unacceptable. They organized a convoy and when it sailed they presented Putin with a fait accompli.
I would note that Erdogan’s determination was backed up by Turkey’s large and capable military establishment. Russia cannot afford a war with Turkey in the western Black Sea.
Pride and stubborness are probably two of Erdogan’s larger faults, but I think that in this instance they were assets.
wombat probabilty cloud
@bbleh: But, critical to plan for adequate litter supply lines!
Captain C
@Anoniminous:
Next line: “Ballistics showed that Boyko used five different service pistols, showing typical Russian dedication to getting a job done.”
Origuy
Facebook uses an open-source deep-learning translation tool. I think it’s a similar tool to Google Translate, but with a different database. Google Translate is trained by comparing a text and its translations; I think they started with the procedings of the Quebec legislature and moved to UN documents. Probably Facebook Translate hasn’t seen enough translations from Ukranian to English that contain those names. It would be interesting to compare Zelenskyy’s speeches in Ukrainian translated by Google and by Facebook.
Carlo Graziani
Per today’s ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment:
The footnote [16] points to https://t.me/millnr/9740%C2%A0;%C2%A0https://t.me/kommunist/13307, a Telegram link in Cyrillic, I presume Russian. I would be very grateful if a Russian-literate person here were to indulge my little obsession, and furnish a translation of any portions that seem relevant to strikes at or near Starobilsk. Attention to rail targets would be interesting too, of course.
Origuy
Twitter, by the way, uses Bing Translate. Facebook used to use Bing (a MS product), but changed a while back.
Rebelsdad (fka texasboyshaun)
@Anoniminous: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!
Origuy
YouTube Just rick-rolled the Internet.
Carlo Graziani
@Carlo Graziani: It occurred to me to transcend my old-person habits and try this newfangled “google translate” thingy, which produced something usable.
Alison Rose
@Origuy: Okay, so…obvs I get the Rickroll but what was the set-up meant to be? Like, what is “just in case” referring to?
Kyle Rayner
@Alison Rose: I’ve seen lots of people tweeting what they want to be their LAST tweet “just in case” twitter ends overnight.
Origuy
@Alison Rose: I assume it means “just in case Twitter disappears”. People have been tweeting their Mastodon ids and other ways of following them all day
Edit: Also what Kyle said.
Anonymous At Work
@frosty: The fortifications were impressive 55 years afterwards when I toured but Calais made Omaha Beach look like, well, a beach.
Steeplejack
@Anoniminous:
Even the LBC story does not say, “Col. Boyko is reported to have shot himself five times with his service pistol.” That’s only in the Chuck Pfarrer tweet. Stupid attempt at humor clouding the facts (such as they are).
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
The likely explanation is that the assassins didn’t care about staging it as a suicide. That is more likely a face-saving story from the authorities.
cbear
@Carlo Graziani:
Slagging Mr. Pfarrer again tonight are we, Mr. Graziani? Among many other insults you have directed his way, several weeks ago you basically accused him of being motivated to cover the war by his quest to build his Twitter audience, retweets, fame etc..
I often wonder what Lieutenant Pfarrer would think (or write) were he to come here and critique your writings, analyses, and predictions? I think he might have quite a bit to work with.
Just a thought.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
So why do you use “Zelensky” instead of “Zelenskyy”?
Steeplejack
@Timill:
“Londres” for “London” in Spanish.
Feathers
@Alison Rose: Rumors are flying, but it seems clear that only a minority of employees have agreed to Musk’s demand that they agree to long hours or be assumed to quit. Silicon Valley reporter tweeting that non of the card keys work, so remaining employees had to use a saw to get out of the parking garage. Also everyone in payroll quit as well as the entire tax compliance department.
Despite what Musk may think, a service like Twitter does require active tending to stay up.
Hard to find the tweets because my feed is hundreds an hour of people saying goodbye and listing their other social media accounts.
Alison Rose
@Kyle Rayner:
@Origuy: Aaahhh okay, thanks. Extra LOL then :P
kalakal
@Timill: Then there’s the Etats Unis – French for a country in North America
Ivan X
@Roger Moore: Concur. I think about this all the time. I’m not about to start calling Mexico “Mehico” even though it’s spelled the same. I still order Peking Duck. Like, sure, if Ukraine wants Ukrainian names for things, I’m gonna try to honor that as best I can, but I don’t think anyone needs to have a tomato thrown at them if they say “Chernobyl” because that’s what they’ve heard all their life. It is not a hill to die on if good intents are there. TLDR: Of course make the effort to say the right thing, but let’s not lose our minds if someone doesn’t. It’s hard to just unprogram oneself overnight (and it’s easy to feel righteous towards others because they didn’t do something right).
ETA: Thanks for your comment. I think it was reasonable without being retrograde
ETA ETA: I’m not defending saying the wrong thing when you know it’s the wrong thing. I say Kyiv 90% of the time but in a chat with a friend yesterday I said Kiev. I’m saying we can be forgiving when people fuck up by using what they’ve known for most of their lives. If they’re making the effort, that’s what matters to me. If they’re defending the right to not give a shit, that’s not good enough.
Shalimar
@Carlo Graziani: Pfarrer’s sources seem to be primarily Telegram posts in Russian and Ukrainian, which you or I can’t read. He isn’t just making shit up to piss you off.
glc
@kalakal: Well … either les Etats Unis, or, if you insist, the les Etats Unis … no way you get to drop the French article there.
Also, too, l’Ukraine, la Russie.
And la covid (though at the moment everyone seems to say “le”, notwithstanding).
Be that as it may.
There are four valid romanization systems for Russian, four for Ukrainian, with some overlap. Two for Chinese with particular rules for surnames, but which one you should use depends on whether they are associated with the mainland or Taiwan (and if no longer living, and famous, what the usage was during their lifetimes, possibly, or personal preference if ascertainable).
Mostly the wrangling is confined to editorial staffs and style guides. But efforts are indeed made.
Ivan X
@Amir Khalid
@Alison Rose:
Do we have to do this? We pride ourselves on not being purity ponies over here. Where is someone’s intent, is what I ask. If you want to defend your righteous right to say “The Ukraine” or “Kiev” then you’re an ass. If you simply do because it’s what you’re used to, and it’s a mistake, and if it’s even what Facebook’s stupid AI does in translation, it’s kind of a raindrop versus a missle. Let’s not lose the forest for the trees. We should all know better, and we do all know better, but we still get it wrong, and what’s important is not what we say, but what we do. If someone stands with Ukraine, I get that it’s disrepectful to not call its places what they want them to be called, but I also think that what’s important is that someone stands with Ukraine.
Benno
@Cameron: and we Gen X kids grew up terrified of these people. I take some comfort now in my middle age that at least my potential death at their hands will be a punchline to some short-lived internet meme.
Benno
@Steeplejack: but Russian reporting does say that five shots were heard. I presume then that there was a shoot-out as four others tried to disarm comrade Boyko as he tried to shot the hostage.
Steeplejack
@Benno:
I wasn’t questioning the five shots, rather the statement that Boyko shot himself five times.
Benno
@Steeplejack: Pfarrer may have overstated things, as Carlo among others would argue is his tendency, but I gathered the rest of us were just having a lark.
2liberal
Thanks for the explanation!
Steeplejack
@Benno:
Yeah, I get it. But there have been (too many) instances where people have missed the humor and run amok with bullshit stories. And my responses have been to serious comments, not jokes.
dr. luba
@Gin & Tonic: It’s not just Zuckerberg. Google Translate, while doing place names well, transliterates Ukrainian names via Russian transliteration much of the time: Г –> G (instead of H), И –> I (instead of Y).
FB translate is much worse at translation, turning innocent poems into risqué ones. But the newer version of GT “guesses” at words if they are not in its database (often horribly incorrectly), rather than admitting it does not know…..
dr. luba
@Roger Moore: And yet English quickly accepted Beijing for Peking, Chennai for Madras, etc.
And it took a literal war for Wikipedia to overcome the Russophiles in its ranks and allow the use of “Kyiv” and “Kharkiv.”
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Machine translation has a sort of inertia to it, much like human brains do. I was trained for thirty or forty years to think that the territory between the Russian Socialist Republic and the Black Sea was “the Ukraine”, and I still have to occasionally remind myself that it’s no longer proper to use “the” with “Ukraine”. I’ve also still got “Peking” and “Bombay” stuck in my head, too, along with the old term for the Romany people.
That’s no excuse for not trying to get it right once you’ve been educated on how things have changed, but in the case of machine translators, I have to remember that calling them “artificial intelligence” is giving them too much credit, and you can’t attribute malice to a machine, and programming them is very much subject to Hanlon’s razor.
Geminid
@Anonymous At Work: The Germans had their 15th Army manning the northern sector, and the 7th Army manning Normandy. Calais might have been more fortified, but Omaha Beach was very well covered by machine guns mortars, and 88mm guns. By midmorning, General Bradley was considering whether or not to send follow on troops onto the stalled beachhead.
Then U.S. Navy destroyers took the bull by the horns and, sailing within 1000 yards of the beach suppressed the German fire with their 5 inch and anti-aircraft guns. By afternoon troops had taken the bluffs and were moving inland. The German Army kept the Allies bottled up in Normandy for the next six weeks, though.
The potential for a second landing over the northern beaches kept 15th Army units out of the fight. A prolonged disinformation effort by American intelligence played a role here. Voluminous radio traffic convinced the Germans that a mythical American army commanded by George Patton was poised to assault the 15th Army’s positions. When Patton did show up it was in Normandy, just as the U.S. collapsed Germany’s front with Operation Cobra.
Carlo Graziani
@cbear:
What you refer to as “slagging” is the outcome of an exercise that always begins with taking one of Pfarrer’s (factual) claims seriously, to try to understand what it means, and running into a brick wall within one or two steps because unlike many other on-line sources of information on the war, he is lazy, sloppy, and furnishes no details on where his specific information came from — which, if you had any experience of reasoned, evidence-based discussions directed at gaining understanding, you would recognize as the signature of the bullshit artist.
As an example, in the specific case of “Ukrainian precision fires” targeted at Melitopol, if such fires were in fact occurring, it would be a new fact of enormous consequence in the war, and something worth pursuing (this may not have occurred to you). Having flagged this as significant on a pass through Adam’s post, I then found that I couldn’t confirm the claim, or even understand what it meant in detail.
This is, as I wrote, typical of Pfarrer. A big, showy claim tossed off carelessly, with no thought to providing evidence, and assuming that appeal to his authority will suffice. I can tell that it does suffice for you. But then, our intellectual standards are different. “Appeal to authority” doesn’t work where I come from.
As to what he might write of my writings, I have plenty of critics right here who are a lot smarter and more knowledgable than he is.
Carlo Graziani
@Shalimar: I don’t doubt that the source is ultimately Telegram. However, I found yesterday (I know, I’m old) that it is very easy to put the text of a Telegram post through Google Translate, if some Russian speaker flags them for you as interesting. I’d give Pfarrer more credit for finding those posts himself if he showed them, and showed his work. The fact that he doesn’t is, as I said earlier, the mark of someone who deserves a burn notice as an analyst, whatever his credentials as a military officer.
JanieM
@Ivan X: Thank you.
cbear
@Carlo Graziani: Lol. The hit dog hollers. I won’t waste my time replying to you in depth on a dead thread, but I do look forward to you soon blessing us with another post filled with analyses and preditions that ultimately prove hilariously wrong.
Have a nice day, Carlo.
Bill Arnold
@cbear:
Still don’t have an explanation for what weaponry was used in “a precision strike fire mission on HQ elements of the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army, located in the city of Melitopol” – not within range of the HIMARS/GMLRS that Ukraine is known to have, according to the map (with a scale) that was provided.
Have only found this in the general press, which may be the same mission:
The General Staff has confirmed that on 15 November the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed the headquarters of a Russian unit in Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia Oblast).
So could have been an air strike with e.g. laser-guided bombs. Very risky mission if so. But if it was not an air strike that required a close approach, then the Ukrainians may have some longer-range high precision artillery/rocket artillery weapon. Hence the irritation about the tweet. (I was irritated with that ambiguity, too, TBH.)