Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The words do not have to be perfect.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let there be snark.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 275: 9 Months and 1 Day…

War for Ukraine Day 275: 9 Months and 1 Day…

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Yesterday was the 9th month to the day of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion.

Tonight it is still dark in many parts of Ukraine.

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

Dear Ukrainians, I wish you health!

The key task of today, as well as of other days this week, is energy. From Wednesday to today, it was possible to halve the number of people for whom electricity is cut off to stabilize the system.

As of this evening, blackouts continue in most regions and in Kyiv. In total, more than six million subscribers. Almost 12 million subscribers were disconnected from the grid on Wednesday evening.

Most of the problems are currently in the capital of Ukraine, as well as in Kyiv region, Odesa region, Lviv region, Vinnytsia region and Dnipropetrovsk region.

Please, it is necessary to consume electricity sparingly in all regions, as before.

If you don’t have a power outage, it doesn’t mean the problem is over. Please, if you have electricity, this does not mean that you can turn on several powerful electrical appliances at once.

Spiked power draws are recorded every evening, which cause an increase in emergency blackouts. Now, as before, it is necessary to save energy.

Points of Invincibility are deployed throughout the country. But I know that, unfortunately, not in all cities the local government has done a good job. In particular, there are many complaints in Kyiv. In fact, only the Points that are deployed at the base of the State Emergency Service and at the railway station of the capital are normally provided, and other Points still need to be improved, to put it mildly. Please pay attention. Kyiv residents need more protection.

As of this evening, 600,000 subscribers have been disconnected from the grid in the city. Many Kyiv residents were without electricity for more than 20 or even 30 hours. I expect quality work from the mayor’s office. No one will forgive anyone for desecrating the Kyiv Points of Invincibility. Please be more serious. As well as lies in reports of various levels.

I was in Vyshgorod, Kyiv region today, where a Russian missile destroyed an apartment building and damaged the houses of an entire residential neighborhood.

Six people have been killed then, dozens have been injured. My condolences to the families of the victims. We do everything to help and we help.

I visited two Points of Invincibility in Vyshgorod: at the base of the State Emergency Service and at a local school. They are arranged exactly as it should be.

In total, there are now more than 4,000 Points in the country, and it is the responsibility of each local leader to ensure that everything that should be there for people really works.

I spoke today with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

I thanked her for the decision to provide a EUR 2.5 billion macro-financial assistance. They approved another EUR 0.5 billion by the end of the year and discussed the preparation of the support package for the next year.

They also agreed on new steps in energy support for Ukraine.

Today, I took part in the international symposium “The idea of Europe” in Lithuania.

I called on the partners to take new steps for the sake of our joint victory and thanked Poland and the Baltic States for their principled stance to cap the price of exported Russian energy.

I believe that the partners’ proposals to introduce a more significant price restriction for Russian oil than was sounded this week are quite valid.

In the evening, I signed another decree awarding our soldiers. Some 216 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were given state awards.

I would especially like to mention the fighters of the 71st separate hunting brigade and the 24th Aidar assault battalion for their bravery and effectiveness in destroying the enemy and conducting counter-offensive actions. As well as the border guards of the Lviv and Mohyliv-Podilsky detachments, who are ferocious in defense of the Bakhmut and Avdiyivka directions. Thank you, warriors!

Thank you to everyone who fights for our country! Who is doing everything to suppress the occupiers that are shelling, unfortunately, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and our other cities.

Thank you to everyone who works for Ukraine and Ukrainians! To everyone who brings heat, water, electricity and communication back to people.

Glory to our indestructible people!

Glory to all of you – well done!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s latest assessments of the situations on the Kinburn Peninsula and Izium:

FEBA is forward edge of battle area.

CONTENT WARNING: THE EMBEDDED VIDEO INCLUDES RUSSIAN KIAS!!

Ukrainian valkyrie!

The Kyiv Independent‘s Illia Ponomarenko makes an appeal:

Right now we’re providing generators, which are most definitely needed.

Yesterday, The Financial Times published an interview with President Zelenskyy. All of it is interesting, but this is the really good part:

The president said the attacks targeting civilian infrastructure showed Moscow had no intention of negotiating an end to the war.

Kyiv has been pushing back at perceived pressure to show its openness to an eventual negotiated solution to the war. Some western partners are concerned that any attempt by Ukraine to take back Crimea — annexed by Russia in 2014 and which it deems crucial for its security — could lead to a dangerous escalation by Moscow, possibly even the use of nuclear weapons.

As Ukrainian forces have made advances against Russian troops in the south and east, Ukraine’s military aims have hardened: it is seeking the return of territory occupied since February and land occupied in the 2014 Russian assault.

Zelenskyy acknowledged that the fate of Crimea was rising on the international agenda.

“I understand that everyone is confused by the situation and what will happen to Crimea. If someone is ready to offer us a way regarding the de-occupation of Crimea by non-military means, I will only be in favour,” said Zelenskyy. “If the solution [does not involve] de-occupation and [Crimea] is part of the Russian Federation, no one should waste their time on this. It’s a waste of time.”

President Zelenskyy, like Illia Ponomarenko in his appeal for Patriot systems, has identified a key issue – that far too many key decision makers who are not Ukrainians, not in Ukraine, and not under direct kinetic attack by Russia* are constantly worried about whether Putin will escalate if Ukraine or the states and alliances supporting Ukraine do something that upsets Putin. Yet the reality that we’ve seen over the past nine months is that whenever Ukraine crosses one of Putin’s self declared red lines in their self defense against Russia’s re-invasion or the US and our allies in providing support to Ukraine that Putin has deemed off limits, Putin does not escalate. He changes course, calls the change of course something other than what it is, such as retreats that are announced as good will gestures, and then continues attacking civilian targets: residential areas, the civilian power grid, the water supply, the food supply, hospitals, schools, etc.

One of, if not THE, key dilemma for the senior leader/decision maker, for the policy maker, and for the strategist is how much risk they are willing to assume. Right now the senior leaders/decision makers, the policy makers, and the strategists in harms way, as well as those closest to harm’s way – all of whom have the most to loose – are willing to assume far, far, far more risk than their counterparts who are safe and sound far away from the battlspace. That senior leaders, who are senior decision makers, and their senior strategy and policy advisors, men and women who sleep soundly in their beds thousands of miles away from where the missiles and rockets and bombs are falling, where the heat and water and electricity is out are more scared than the Ukrainians themselves is really telling. What is even more telling is that the much younger women leading three of the allies supporting Ukraine – Prime Minster Kallas, Prime Minister Marin, and President Sandu – whose states and people are far closer to the line of fire and far more at risk than anyone in DC, are far more steadfast and far less fearful and timid speaks volumes about the need for the American gerentacrocy, and their younger proteges, to end. The club they’ve created, which keeps everyone out that isn’t in the club or isn’t a protege or a protege of a protege, isn’t serving us well.

And if you were wondering, the Kremlin’s response was all too predictable:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new tweets from Patron’s official Twitter account, nor videos at Patron’s official TikTok posted as of 9:15 PM EST. So here’s some two tweet replies that Patron made to this tweet from Ukraine’s MOD:

Open thread!

* As I’ve been saying for at least six years, Putin both believes that Russia is at war with the US, the EU, and NATO and that the US leading our EU and NATO, as well as some non EU and non NATO allies, started the war. By and large, Putin has waged his defense against this “aggression” non-kinetically. He has weaponized all elements of national power – Diplomatic, Information, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Legal, while limiting the use of Military power to places where his actual or proxy forces can easily prevail, which was a key miscalculation in Kuwait – to wage what he has declared as a defensive world war.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Anoniminous

    Glad to see Putin’s supporters call for the liquidation of Ukraine as ‘genocidal rhetoric’ swells hit the mainstream media.

    Prominent supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin are using increasingly “genocidal rhetoric” when discussing and demonizing Ukrainians, analysts note, with some pro-war commentators cheering the concept of the “liquidation” of the modern state of Ukraine.

    With the scum taking over the House in 2023 it is important that what the Russians intend in Ukraine is hammered home.

  4. 4.

    Alison Rose

    Peskov can go eff himself. Every person in the kremlin could add their IQs together and it wouldn’t equal Zelenskyy’s. Also, when we hear all this “putin will escalate” crap, it makes me want to scream, and then the mendacity from the kremlin in response to the interview is just……I wish I had a punching bag. As you point out, the only escalation has been bombing hospitals and shit, and you know…maybe if we gave Ukraine what they’ve been fucking asking for, that wouldn’t be happening!

    This line:

    If you don’t have a power outage, it doesn’t mean the problem is over.

    rings quite familiar, as a Californian whose governor has to remind people that just because it rained for a day, it doesn’t mean the damn drought is over.

    I am glad he got to have a bit of enjoyment today visiting some “little Ukrainians” though :)

    Thank you as always, Adam. I wish you had a role in the Biden administration.

  5. 5.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I sort of wonder this missile war is some face saving way for the Russian leadership to excuse a negotiated end to the war.  On the other I watching a video that this all basically the only thing the Russian can do now between they’ve run out of AK-47s and their Dumb as Shit Never Tap Out  philosophy.

  6. 6.

    Carlo Graziani

    There’s a very good reply to the “diplomacy at any cost” crowd on the RAND Blog: What’s The Harm In Talking To Russia? A Lot, Actually.  A sample:

    Despite the way it is commonly portrayed, diplomacy is not intrinsically and always good, nor is it cost-free. In the Ukraine conflict, the problems with a push for diplomacy are especially apparent. The likely benefits of negotiations are minimal, and the prospective costs could be significant.

    First, the argument that most wars end with diplomacy and so, therefore, will the war in Ukraine is misleading at best. Some wars—such as the U.S. Civil War and World War II—were fought to the bitter end. Others—like the American Revolution, the Spanish-American War, World War I, or the First Gulf War—were won on the battlefield before the sides headed to the negotiating table. Still others—like the Korean War—ended in an armistice, but only after the sides had fought to a standstill. By contrast, attempts at a diplomatic settlement while the military situation remained fluid—as the United States tried during the Vietnam War and more recently in Afghanistan—have ended in disaster. Even if most wars ultimately end in diplomatic settlements, that’s not in lieu of victory.

    At this particular moment, diplomacy cannot end the war in Ukraine, simply because Russian and Ukrainian interests do not yet overlap. The Ukrainians, understandably, want their country back. They want reparations for the damage Russia has done and accountability for Russian war crimes. Russia, by contrast, has made it clear that it still intends to bend Ukraine to its will. It has officially annexed several regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, so withdrawing would now be tantamount, for them, to ceding parts of Russia. Russia’s economy is in ruins, so it cannot pay reparations. And full accountability for Russian war crimes may lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials getting led to the dock. As much as Western observers might wish otherwise, such contrasts offer no viable diplomatic way forward right now.

  7. 7.

    Alison Rose

    Oh BTW for any of our resident Ukrainians or Ukrainian speakers: In this video, I believe the text on screen reads “The boy asked the President when Ukraine would win” (which I figured out without machine translation, woot), but I’d love to know how Ze responded.

  9. 9.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: The missile strikes certainly represent a Russian effort to force an end to the war by coercing the Ukrainians into submitting to some kind of negotiation process at which they imagine they would have the upper hand. You can tell how frustrated they are at how poorly it’s working by Peskov’s bitching about Zelenskyy.

    It’s also a bit of a window into the bizzarrely detached world-view that the Russians still cling to. They still believe that control of energy is the secret to world power, and they’re acting on that belief as if it is the key to defeating Ukraine — deprive them of energy generation and of course they will come to see reason. It’s as if the past 9 months of their vaunted “energy weapon” going slack in their hands hasn’t registered at all.  They’re still sure that’s how the world works.

  10. 10.

    Another Scott

    Related thread on ISW’s Twitter thing today that I found interesting.

    23 NOV Assessment🧵

    The #Kremlin has not backed down from its maximalist goals of regaining control of #Ukraine but is rather partially obfuscating #Russia’s aims to mislead Western countries into pressuring Ukraine to sue for peace. https://t.co/wIGGtkG8w2 https://t.co/xxMA1TwbBc

    — ISW (@TheStudyofWar) November 25, 2022

    2/ #Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on November 21 that changing the current government in #Ukraine is not a goal of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, observing that Russian President Vladimir #Putin “has already spoken about this.”

    3/ #Putin said on 26 OCT that #Ukraine has “lost its sovereignty” and come fully under NATO’s control. He again rejected Ukraine’s sovereignty on 27 OCT, saying #Russia “created” Ukraine and that the “single real guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty” can only be Russia.

    4/ #Putin has also consistently upheld his talking point that #Ukraine is a Nazi state that must be “denazified.” Putin’s demands amount to a requirement for regime change in #Kyiv even if he does not explicitly call for it in these recent statements.

    5/ The fact that Peskov refers back to these comments by #Putin makes reading any serious walking-back of Russian aims into Peskov’s comments highly dubious.

    6/ The #Kremlin’s obfuscation of its aims likely intended for a Western audience is nevertheless confusing Russian war supporters.

    7/ Peskov’s statement likely aimed to mitigate the effects of Vice-Speaker of the Russian Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev’s pro-war rant declaring that #Russia can only normalize relations with #Ukraine following the capitulation of the Ukrainian government.

    8/ The two contrasting statements confused the pro-war community. A #Wagner Group-affiliated milblogger sarcastically observed that #Russia is aimlessly fighting a war without a clear goal in response to Peskov’s statement.

    9/ @TheStudyofWar has reported on similar reactions to the Kremlin’s decision to exchange Ukrainian prisoners of war from Mariupol, whom Kremlin officials and propagandists vilified as “Nazis” and ”war criminals.”

    10/ The #Kremlin’s hesitance to publicly commit fully to an extreme nationalist ideology and to the war is also bewildering propagandists who preach such ideology to the Russian masses.

    11/ Russian political and military “experts” on a Russian state TV show pushed back against Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s claim that #Kherson Oblast is fully Russian, which would justify the use of nuclear weapons.

    12/ The “experts” said that the use of nuclear weapons to defend territory that is not fully occupied is irrational and even said that NATO poses no threat to #Russia.

    13/ Russian propagandists have been making outlandish nuclear threats & accusing NATO of planning to attack Russia throughout Putin’s regime and especially before and during the invasion of Ukraine; such dismissal of common Kremlin talking points in such a forum is unprecedented.

    14/ @TheStudyofWar has also previously reported that Russian extreme nationalist ideologist Alexander Dugin accused Putin of not fully committing to the pro-war ideology.

    15/ #Putin has generally sought to balance extreme nationalist talking points to gather support from the nationalist-leaning community and a more moderate narrative to maintain the support of the rest of the Russian population.

    16/ Russian military failures & the sacrifices #Putin is demanding of the Russian people to continue his disastrous war are bringing his deliberate obfuscation of war aims into sharp relief, potentially fueling discontent within critical constituencies.

    understandingwar.org
    Institute for the Study of War

    It seems like Stein’s Law has to come into force about this russian double-talk at some point, but when that point is is anyone’s guess…

    Eyes on the prizes.

    Slava Ukraini!

    Thanks Adam.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    sab

    @HinTN: I love our gerontocrat Biden.

    In the general scheme of things Putin isn’t even old. Republicans think he’s barely old enough for Social Security.

  13. 13.

    Ishiyama

    The Kinburn operation is a threat to the entire defense line on the Dnipro. A serious breakthrough there will change things quickly.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Ukraine absolutely should be getting any defensive system it asks for, & any offensive system that has 300 km range or lower.

    The bigger problem is probably the rate at which NATO stocks are being drawn down, & the slow pace of replenishment from ramping up production. Weapons systems are worthless w/o appropriate munitions.

    The situation is probably causing sleepless nights for Pentagon planners planning for a potential war against China across the Taiwan Strait. In that kind of conflict, all of the useful smart munitions will be expended in a matter of a couple of weeks, & that’s assuming no significant losses due to strikes on depots. After that supply becomes a trickle compared to demand. Same applies to China, but the fear in the Pentagon is that China has much greater industrial capacity to support war production in an extended conflict. The semiconductors used in smart munitions are mature nodes that China entirely self-sufficient in. To degrade China’s industrial capacity requires massive strikes deep into the Mainland, which greatly increase risk of escalation to nuclear exchange. Perhaps saner heads will prevail long before it becomes a war of attrition.

    A war against Iran would be less daunting (relatively), but extremely daunting nonetheless for similar reasons.

  19. 19.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chetan Murthy:
    Though it is increasingly hard to justify not supplying Ukraine with longer-range precision-guided artillery rockets and perhaps also cruise missiles and longer range drones.
    Russia is showing zero restraint; attacks on civilian infrastructure far from front lines are clear-cut war crimes, and the probability that they are not committing additional war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian targets like residential apartment buildings is approximately zero just based on the number of successful hits on such residential civilian targets.

  20. 20.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Bill Arnold: I’m in complete agreement with you and YY Sima Qian both about supplying Ukraine with more defensive and offensive weapons.  But Winston is  *explicitly* arguing “us” to “end this war in a day”.  That’s madness.

    That said, like you I am frustrated that we’re not delivering more anti-air weaponry to Ukraine.  And *tanks*, ffs.

  21. 21.

    West of the Rockies

    I wonder if Mother Russia would turn on Putin faster (or embrace him more tightly) if Russian soil experienced an iota of what they’ve inflicted.  Oh, so sorry, Russians, but you’re going to be without heat and food for a while.  Kthanksbye.

  22. 22.

    Winston

    Not saying we should nuke them. Saying we should take out their launch sites. If they nuke us for that, then we should send them back to the stone age.

  23. 23.

    Bill Arnold

    @Winston:

    Like turning the lights out in Russia

    The US is also vulnerable to such attacks. Also, long range energy (oil, gas, electric) and communications (fiber cables) infrastructure is vulnerable, both intra and inter country. Thought the Russians underestimate the vastness and lack of defenses of their own infrastructure. (11 time zones in the Russian Federation. So many long long pipelines!) Also, some Russians underestimate American ruthlessness and competence.

  24. 24.

    Jay

    Another Putin fake show. Those women are actresses. Those 2 are an example and but even the others have been identified. It is so revealing that with more than 80.000 killed Russian soldiers Putin couldn't find (or risk) to sit with a few widows. Pathetic to the core. https://t.co/n0IcpcxpLi pic.twitter.com/cssstKyEzB— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 25, 2022

    Russian propaganda using same actors and actresses over and over again is by far something new. They just do this so blatantly that it is an insult of anyone’s intelligence. pic.twitter.com/iIRBTyaPI9— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 25, 2022

  25. 25.

    Shalimar

    @Winston: You know you die when we send them back to the stone age, right?  Finito.  Your life is over, along with hundreds of millions more.  Are you really that impatient to die?

  29. 29.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Shalimar: I remember early-on, I thought about buying iodine pills and taking them over to my sister’s house (she has kids), but I decided: “hell, we’re all in metro SF; if the big one drops, we’re all dead in the first 30 sec,  why bother with iodine pills”.

    Yeah: it won’t take much to end our lives.  Thank goodness we won’t survive: the living will envy the dead.

  32. 32.

    Winston

    @Chetan Murthy: Who doesn’t think we are already heading there? For Christ sake the America First movement is already back from the 40’s this time headed by Putin. See Maddow/Ultra.

  33. 33.

    Jay

    Let there be light!Part of new deliveries/promises to deliver generators to Ukraine.South Korea – 20 generators 450-500 kWDenmark – A truckload of generators arrived for 2-nd time in a weekFrance – 100 powerful generatorsUSA – (USAID) 80 generatorsGermany – 100 generators pic.twitter.com/LsXUj98l9W— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) November 25, 2022

  35. 35.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: Yeah. This is probably the real sticking point with respect to supplying ATACMS to Ukraine — very low existing munition stocks and no supply chain to make more, with a replacement weapons system at least one year out. Given the recent near-war hysteria in the Indo-Pacific, it’s likely that US DOD officials are not enthusiastic about sharing them with Ukraine.

    I don’t really understand the anti-air situation, though. It shouldn’t be a capability issue.

  36. 36.

    Yutsano

    @Winston: ​ Forgive for sounding impertinent but…

    WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

    No one is surrendering. Zelenskyy is still encouraging the people of Ukraine to fight. The US is still fully behind the Ukrainian war effort. I’m not seeing any notions of “surrender” anywhere. So given that, where is that idea coming from?

  37. 37.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Yutsano: ISTR that Winston has form, and maybe we should all stop feeding the troll.  I’m putting them in the pie filter.  [I also have been guilty of feeding the troll tonight]

  38. 38.

    Shalimar

    @Winston: So basically you’re just like Putin.  You don’t mind hundreds of millions of people dying since you expect to die soon anyway no matter what.

    Being just like Putin is not a compliment.

  41. 41.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Shalimar: A week-or-two ago, we did the same thing, and when Adam came back in the morning, he marveled at how many comments, what *percentage* of comments, was consumed by this troll.  We should try to do better.  *I* should try to do better.

  42. 42.

    Bill Arnold

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Yeah. This is probably the real sticking point with respect to supplying ATACMS to Ukraine — very low existing munition stocks and no supply chain to make more, with a replacement weapons system at least one year out.

    Though the Ukrainians have form for target selection, and would make very effective use of even a very limited number of such missiles. And Ukraine having any such missiles would encourage Russians to move their logistics nodes further away.

  43. 43.

    Winston

    Yeah, it’s just okay if Russia kills and torchers  10.000s of Ukrainian civilians, babies and destroys their power plants, but if it threatens yours, you will do nothing about it. even though you have the power to prevent it. If your wife was being raped, you watch, you pieces of shit cowards.

  44. 44.

    Carlo Graziani

    Oh Christ in a fucking tutu. Winston the imbecile Troll is flooding the thread with his usual brain-damaged effluent, and of course plenty of folks can’t resist “educating” him, even though you all know he’s an ineducable, mean-drunk-aggressive dimwit who will just automatically gainsay anything you write without reading or understanding any of it. Whenever he shows up, thread signal-to-noise nosedives straight to zero — he’s like a one-man YouTube comments section, whose appearance corrupts the rest of the thread.

    You could just ignore him, you know. I’m off to bed.

  49. 49.

    Chetan Murthy

    From last night’s dead thread: a tweet-thread about General Winter and maybe he’s a Ukrainian patriot:

    Reasons the winter months will kill 100,000 russian soldiers:

    1) lack of winter clothing for russian troops = death by hypothermia
    2) garbage russian logistics = lack of warm food, tea, heating materiel, sleeping bags = death by hypothermia
    3) no shelters and dugouts for
    1/4
    — Thomas C. Theiner (@noclador) November 25, 2022

    Worth a read.

  50. 50.

    Chetan Murthy

    the little boy with the thousand-yard stare, in better circumstances (perhaps)

    A photo of little Glib from the liberated Kherson became viral.
    Glib does not like photography, because in life he is very smiling and cheerful, despite everything. Our journalist met with him and made a new photo. pic.twitter.com/ygYXSDUmoZ

    — The New Voice of Ukraine (@NewVoiceUkraine) November 25, 2022

  52. 52.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Given the recent near-war hysteria in the Indo-Pacific, it’s likely that US DOD officials are not enthusiastic about sharing them with Ukraine.

    That is certainly happening, if anonymous (& often overlooked) comments by Pentagon officials in news articles are to go by. Another one of the unintended side effects of the recent hysterical “near war” narrative wrt Taiwan that has been coming from parts of the administration.

  54. 54.

    Winston

    @rachel: You gotta figure out who are the trolls. Those who are permitting the atrocities because they are cowards or those who are opposing the atrocities. See WWII and listen to Rachael Maddow Ultra. You got a lotta Nazis posting on this site saying it’s okay for Russia to commit atrocities.

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    @Carlo Graziani:

    History rewards dictators for a while, right up until the moment it doesn’t. They gain until their methods of theft of a country and it’s people costs them far more than it could possibly gain them. And every time, it kills a huge number of people on both sides but the last time they try it, usually more on the dictators side. And it’s usually because they are so over confident and ignorant of their own power. Some times it’s like the current war, where the dictator and his high up supporters have stripped the vast majority of the people of any reason whatsoever to support the dictator in any way and it almost always ends in the dictator being killed by one of his most rabid supporters. vlad seems to understand this a bit more than many of the dictators that have been in his current position. But all that does is delay the inevitable. And usually not all that long. Sure he has supporters, because they get little chance to hear anything other than his BS and his death squads. But at some point for someone, none of that is more important than ending this BS.

    Now vlad may not go out this way but falling out of 5th floor windows seems to be a staple of Russian failure.

  58. 58.

    livewyre

    @rachel: To answer seriously – partly because there’s a tricky line between letting disinformation stand vs. letting it derail an actual conversation, and partly because provocation works.

    Whatever reason someone might have for wading in and stirring up trouble, chances are they’ll persist in doing it and adapt their tactics until they get a response. Sincere righteousness becomes indistinguishable from paid or recreational manipulation. That’s something that has to be handled as a community, or on a technical level if social measures aren’t up to it. We’ll have to see what works in this case.

  59. 59.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Carlo Graziani: ​
     

    While I fully agree with almost all of the material you quoted, I have to take exception to this:

    Russia’s economy is in ruins, so it cannot pay reparations.

    One big reason Russia’s economy is such a disaster is that the oligarchs have stolen so much of its wealth. The solution? The West should steal it from the oligarchs, and give it to Ukraine.

  60. 60.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    I saw that in Josh Marshall’s Ukraine list. Apparently Russian soldiers are already dying of hypothermia in nontrivial numbers. I said a few days ago that I expected this would eventually happen, I’m just surprised it’s happened so much, so soon. I was really thinking it would take another several weeks.

    As I said over there under my Twitter handle, I do feel sorrow for the desperately unprepared Russian conscripts. But Ukraine is fighting for its very survival here, and has every right and reason to take full advantage. The Russian conscripts might want to try surrendering before they freeze to death, or are mowed down by a Ukrainian offensive that finds them too cold and weak to even fight back.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    Adam, what I’ve been wondering is, is there more the U.S. and European allies could and should do to help Ukraine deal with the damage to water and electrical infrastructure? Hell, I’d be all for sending the US Army Corps of Engineers over there (unarmed of course) with the materiel they needed to help repair water lines and power plants.

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Many oligarchs have had their assets in western countries frozen. But how much has been merely frozen, and how much actually confiscated? Soviel ich weiß, merely frozen assets are still technically the oligarch’s property. I think many countries would need to go through some sort of legal process to claim such assets, before they can liquidate them and direct the proceeds to Ukraine as war reparation.

    Also, not all these assets are easily liquidated. The market in superyachts, for example, is probably quite limited, and a glut in supply wouldn’t help their sale price. Ditto high-end real-estate. I’m not at all saying these assets shouldn’t be confiscated, just that you’d have a lot to do to get them, or the money they’re worth, to Ukraine.

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    So far, I’ve seen no reports that Russia has used Iranian surface-to-surface missiles. They were said to be part of a weeks-old arms deal between the two countries. I wonder if the hold up is a matter of deployment and training, or some other factor.

    Meanwhile, Russia shows signs of scraping the bottom of its missile barrel. I read a report last night that Ukrainians identified the remnants of an old cold war-era cruise missile of a type tasked with carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile had no warhead of any type, though, and it’s thought to have been used as a decoy.

    Or maybe some command was padding its number of “missiles fired.” There may be a spirit animating Russian military commands akin to passive aggression.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @Amir Khalid: Also, I think that Ukraine has the trained personnel to make the necessary repairs. Replacement equipment and material could be a problem, but this is something the US and NATO countries can supply. Perhaps utilities can second willing volunteers to work in Ukraine.

    Any contingent of US Army personnel would become a top targeting priority for Russia. An unlucky hit could create real domestic political problems for the Biden administration, and further Russia’s strategy of sapping Western support for Ukraine’s war of survival.

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    @Amir Khalid: And I want to congratulate you and your nation on its (finally) successful Parliamentary election. I hope the new governing coalition is durable and productive.

    These days I do not take viable democracies for granted, and I think the result in Malaysia was a victory for everyone woldwide and should be celebrated as such.

    I hope you keep us informed of major developements in your country, political and otherwise. I need to know more about the people and events in other nations. And I may not be the only one who can use a break now and then from my own country’s contentious political scene.

  67. 67.

    Tony G

    @Carlo Graziani: These are excellent points.  From my point of view, the “diplomacy at any cost” rhetoric that we’ve been hearing from the usual suspects since February amounts to code-words for “Ukraine must surrender immediately”.  In a limited sense these people are correct — an immediate surrender by Ukraine would stop the war — but it certainly wouldn’t stop the killing by the Russian invaders.

  70. 70.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Bupalos:

    After the Putin regime expires we’re probably going to need to think of Russia the way we thought of Germany after WWII rather than the way we thought of Germany after WWI.

    By the end of WWII, German cities were leveled, its armed forces were pretty much gone, and its government had entirely collapsed. Simply filling the void with Allied supplies and leadership largely set the path for the two post-war Germanys.

    None of that is likely to be the case for Russia at the end of this war. While I agree with suggestions that we avoid creating a situation that will result in an even worse Russia wrt to it pursuing even more international aggression, I don’t understand how the comparison with Germany post-WWI vs post-WWII is instructive. Help me out here – I’m obviously not understanding your position.

  71. 71.

    Tony G

    @Chief Oshkosh: That’s right.  The reason why Germany and Japan could be essentially re-built as non-aggressor nations after World War Two was that both countries were essentially destroyed by 1945.  Whenever Russia finally withdraws its forces from Ukraine, Russia (if it remains intact) will remain what it has been for decades — a deeply dysfunctional kleptocracy with nuclear weapons.  It will continue to remain a problem on the world stage.

  75. 75.

    Geminid

    @Chief Oshkosh: I’ll jump in, and observe that the terms imposed on Germany after the First World War included massive financial reparations and stringent limitations on its military establishment. Germany was also forced to concede Alsace and Lorraine, and was prohibited from stationing military units west of the Rhine, in the so called Rhineland.

    When Germany sued for an armistice in early November, 1918, its territory was still uninvaded, and it had not been decisively defeated. They probably could have fought on into 1919 and possibly ought the Allies to a standstill at the western German border.

    Historians like Liddell Hart attribute the plea western commanders made to the Berlin government for an armistice to a loss of nerve. But German revanchists blamed the government, in the “stab in the back” narrative.

    This was not the case in 1945. Germany had been invaded and its military resistance utterly crushed. The large territory of East Prussia were lost forever and its inhabitants were made refugees. All but the most fanatical of its citizens understood that their government, and by extension almost all of themselves, bore the responsibility.

    The western allies required relatively few reparations, and in fact within a few years the US was financing Germany’s reconstruction. The Soviet stripped a lot of valuable equipment and material from the areas it conquered; they got good at this when they were invaded four years before and had to remove there own factories out of the invader’s path and east to the Ural Mountain region.

    Another distinction between the aftermaths of these wars is that in 1945 the victors retained ultimate civil authority into the 1950s. By contrast, the victors of 1918 left Germans to their own devices in the political sphere. But no matter what government the Germans chose, the crushing reparation debt imposed by the Allies ensured that no government could be successful.

    That said, I don’t think either of these outcomes is a likely scenario for Russia. Russia will not be conquered from outside and have a government imposed on it like with Germany in 1945, and the world economy is very different from that of 1918 so far as enforcement of reparations would go. Nations like China, India, Brazil and others will continue to trade with Russia, sanctions or no, and will not act as collection agents for reparations.

  76. 76.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @rachel: only ‘cause I’d still like to see the responses of the valued commenters to take on the vile, genocidal fucker; and when I pie HIM, I lose them, too.  Hey, Watergirl— can that be changed so that the pie only applies to the original fuckstick?

  77. 77.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Amir Khalid: ​

    And if they get attacked by Russia? Sending in the US Army Corps of Engineers can happen only when the war is over.

    Same thing could be said about our embassy in Kyiv, but we’re there and open for business.

    No need for them to even be wearing uniforms – they can be detailed to civilian duty there, or something like that. (Not all of them are in the military anyway – my sister was an engineer with the Corps for over 30 years, and didn’t spend a moment of her life in any of the armed services.)

    @Geminid: ​
     

    Also, I think that Ukraine has the trained personnel to make the necessary repairs.

    I’m sure they do, but they’ve got to be a bit overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of repairs that need to be made. It’s not like they could have staffed for this level of destruction; their staffing levels were surely oriented around being able to expeditiously handle the normal outages that happen in peacetime, rather than having shit blown up on a regular basis.

  79. 79.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Amir Khalid:

    Many oligarchs have had their assets in western countries frozen. But how much has been merely frozen, and how much actually confiscated? Soviel ich weiß, merely frozen assets are still technically the oligarch’s property. I think many countries would need to go through some sort of legal process to claim such assets, before they can liquidate them and direct the proceeds to Ukraine as war reparation.

    In the US, part of the issue with the “frozen -> confiscated” legal transition appears to be that such a transition would authorize any party with a legal grievance against Russia to sue in a US court for all or a portion of those assets. The MH-17 victim’s families would get in line, as well as victims of violence in Syria, Chechnya, etc.

    What I’ve read is that the administration prefers to wait until some legislation (possibly ratifying an international accord) is in place to bind those funds to Ukrainian war reparations before allowing them to be “exposed” by seizing them.

  80. 80.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Bupalos: ​
     

    @lowtechcyclist: After the Putin regime expires we’re probably going to need to think of Russia the way we thought of Germany after WWII rather than the way we thought of Germany after WWI.

    The difference being, we occupied Germany (excepting the former East Germany of course) after WWII. I’m not sure that’s something we’re capable of doing, just due to Russia’s sheer size, even if they miraculously surrendered to NATO and asked us to do that.

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I’m not sure the Russians can maintain their current level of infrastructure attacks, at least without substantial supply of guided missiles to them by Iran. A lower level of attacks will be countered more effectively by Ukrainian defenses which are still being built out.

    If there is a shortage of skilled workers this would be better made up by volunteers from the larlge untility work forces of Ukraine’s allies. Governments can ecourage and subsidize this.

    While sending a few companies of US Army Engineers into this war zone would be quick and easy, it would be far more problematic. The American public’s support of our role in Ukraine is founded partly on the fact that we have no troops deployed to Ukraine.

    This dynamic would apply equally to personnel repairing civilian infrastructure. They would be eagerly targeted by Russia. Putting them in civilian clothes would make no difference in this respect, and also would cause resentment among Americans, especially if some Engineers are killed.

  82. 82.

    Carlo Graziani

    Right. Apologies, again, for last night’s outburst. I must be getting some kind of new evening cranky that I ought to address.

    As an amusing side-note, it occurred to me this morning that so many people have mentioned this “pie filter” thingy by now that some kind of cumulative relevance threshold has evidently long zoomed by, whereby I should probably find out what that is. I figured it couldn’t be that hard, since everyone else seems to know about it. But oddly enough I couldn’t find a site documentation page. Searching the site I found multiple pages yielding plenty of evidence that hundreds of BJ users had been happpily using it for years, requesting features or, enigmatcally, “adding quotations”, but I still could not figure out how to get started. Google, even with “site:balloon-juice.com”, was no help.

    It was starting to feel like failing the most basic of competence tests, and I definitely didn’t want to ask. Which, when I finally remembered seeing the image of that incongruous pie-like confection followed by the boldfaced title “Filter” prefacing EVERY SINGLE SET OF COMMENTS THAT I’D EVER SEEN HERE, seemed like a sound judgment. I’m a bit embarrassed that it never occurred to me to wonder why baked goods haunted the site so, but then this place has a lot of quirks.

    Good-bye Winston, you meringue, you blancmange, you tropical fruit tart. I hardly knew ye, and yet even that was far too much for a well-balanced digestion. Bugger off to 8chan, where your tribe awaits you for a festive round of turd-flinging.

  85. 85.

    Ruckus

    @Carlo Graziani:

    So sorry that you didn’t know how the pie filter works. It is one of the things here that makes this such a great site. It’s effectiveness is far more than one could imagine without use. Yes it seems a bit of a issue that someone can’t get to say their piece but they still can, just no one has to listen. I have 5 people in my pie filter, because every single time they show up they create chaos and anger in normally rational people. Of course a good part of the time that’s what they want or the only thing they know how to do. I’d bet that of people that use the pie filter most have a very similar listing. Not a large number but likely a rather large consensus among the masses that those chosen belong behind baked goods.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @Winston: ​
     

    You got a lotta Nazis posting on this site saying it’s okay for Russia to commit atrocities.

    This is an open and blatant lie, Winston, and is only part of why you are in the pie safe, so that I only read a very few posts you put up now~!!~

    And thanks to Watergirl for her work, (and Cleek~!!~) implementing the new and improved pie safe filter system, by far the best such system on the innertubes!!

  87. 87.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    @Geminid:

    Thank you for your good wishes for Malaysia. They are much apprrecciated.

    And Geminid is far from the only person glad to hear that your homeland has a new government following the election.

    Congratulations to you and the new prime minister! And do keep us posted on your local news~!~

  88. 88.

    J R in WV

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Which, when I finally remembered seeing the image of that incongruous pie-like confection followed by the boldfaced title “Filter” prefacing EVERY SINGLE SET OF COMMENTS THAT I’D EVER SEEN HERE, seemed like a sound judgment. I’m a bit embarrassed that it never occurred to me to wonder why baked goods haunted the site so, but then this place has a lot of quirks.

    Good-bye Winston, you meringue, you blancmange, you tropical fruit tart. I hardly knew ye, and yet even that was far too much for a well-balanced digestion. Bugger off to 8chan, where your tribe awaits you for a festive round of turd-flinging.

    OK, Carlo, this post is hilarious… thanks so much for sharing your confusion, and the moment when your confusion ended. So funny~!!!!~  And now all those trolls will be GONE for you, unless you occasionally toggle some not pie-filtered fellow Jackal to see what they have to say to the pied ass this time.

    I have old trolls in my pie filter list that have been gone for a very long time. Most of them do leave, forever, once enough Jackals have put them away and no longer reply to their insane rants. So Long, Winston…!!

  89. 89.

    Tony G

    @lowtechcyclist: That’s right.  To my knowledge, Russia has never been occupied by a foreign power, largely due to its sheer size.  Plus: thermonuclear weapons.  The best that can be hoped for is for Russia to (hopefully soon) be chased out of Ukraine, and then contained in the future.  There will (fortunately) never be another World War 2, because of the existence of nuclear weapons.  People smarter than me have pointed this out many times, but, ironically, the existence of nuclear weapons has probably saved tens of millions of lives by preventing World War 3.  (So far, anyway.)

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