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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 276: Just a Quick Update Tonight

War for Ukraine Day 276: Just a Quick Update Tonight

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I have had a long, tedious, uncomfortable day. So just a brief update tonight.

We start with noting and remembering that this weekend marks the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor when Stalin created a famine in Ukraine.

Now a word of clarification.

My grousing about the risk tolerance in a number of NATO capitols was not a call to nuke Moscow. Nor for anyone else too. Nor for anyone else to call for them to do so. Rather it was to point out that one of the key concerns for senior leaders/decision makers and their policy and strategy advisors is how much risk to assume. As well as to state that in my professional opinion as a national security professional we have far too many who are willing to assume far too little risk. That was it. Im as frustrated, if not more so, as many of you, but let’s just chill out in the comments.

I also want to answer a question and respond to a comment.

First, lowtechcyclists question:

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.

Let’s take the last part first. We’re not sending anyone but the small number of military personnel assigned to the country team at Embassy Kyiv. The US Marine guards, the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attache, the Air Attache, and the Naval Attache. We’re certainly not going to send a company of combat engineers into an active war zone unarmed. That’s just the way it is.

Now, as for the first part, we and our allies and partners are getting humanitarian aid to Ukraine pretty quickly. Could we up the volume? Possibly. One of the major issues is despite the Ukrainians obvious need, only so much can be delivered and utilized at any one time. Moreover, everything we send just gets added to Russia’s targeting list. That’s not the Ukrainians fault, but the reality is that the humanitarian aid part of the support to Ukraine is far, far more perishable than it would be in other humanitarian aid and disaster response missions. Normally, a bunch of assholes with missiles, rockets, bombs, and artillery aren’t trying to blow up the generators and mobile water treatment equipment and mobile kitchens that are being delivered to0 and put to use helping the afflicted population.

I also want to briefly address this comment from 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.

Here too in reverse order. They’re not padding the number of missiles fired, based on every assessment I’ve seen, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

As to the old cruise missile they used, technically under treaty obligations because it could be fitted with a nuclear warhead the Russians were supposed to notify us that 1) they were going to use it and 2) provide documentation that it is not nuclear tipped. I doubt they did either.

And now that we’ve reached the first thing; all the recent reporting indicates that the Russians are desperate to get missiles from Iran in addition to the drones they’ve purchased. However, the Iranians have not yet agreed to provide the missiles. If everyone is lucky, the Iranians won’t.

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

Indestructible people of the indestructible country!

Today, we held the first International Summit on Food Security. We held it in Kyiv – together with our partners. And precisely these days were chosen deliberately, when we commemorate the victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

Ukrainians went through genocide. And today we are doing everything possible and impossible to stop Russia’s new genocidal policy. A new one – but similar to the one that killed millions of people in the 20th century. And we don’t just fight off aggression. Step by step, we are creating a system that will stop aggression, dismantle its consequences, and guarantee long-term security – the security of Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world.

Food security is one of the key elements of global stability. This is where Ukraine’s leading role is most evident. Thanks to our export grain initiative from three Black Sea ports, we sent about 12 million tonnes of food to the world market. 40 countries of the world. Of this amount, more than two and a half million tonnes are for countries that are not just short of food, but in a severe crisis.

As part of the UN Food Programme, we have helped countries where people are literally starving or on the verge of starvation. These include Ethiopia and Yemen. We also helped Somalia and Afghanistan. And this is just the beginning.

Today, we officially announced the launch of our new humanitarian initiative. Grain From Ukraine. And we already have agreements with many partners on joint work within Grain from Ukraine.

The European Union, the United States, France, the UK, Germany, Japan, Qatar, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia, Switzerland and others. More than 20 countries supported our food security summit. The total amount that we have accumulated for Grain From Ukraine is already about $150 million. Work continues. We are preparing up to 60 ships.

All of us together do not just send Ukrainian foodstuffs to those countries that suffer the most from the food crisis. We affirm that never again should hunger be used as a weapon. If it weren’t for Ukrainian food, if it weren’t for our joint leadership with our partners, social stability in such regions as North Africa or the Middle East would not have been maintained. This is exactly what Russia wanted. We must – and we can! – not allow this.

Today, I met with the Prime Minister of Belgium. We discussed our joint actions – and not only for the sake of food security. We signed a declaration on Belgium’s support for Ukraine’s full membership in both the European Union and NATO – this is an important signal. We discussed further political and defense cooperation, sanctions against Russia, the possibility of Belgium helping us through this winter.

Today, a meeting of the Lublin Triangle took place in Kyiv – at the level of prime ministers – Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. They signed a joint statement on further support for Ukraine and the international legal order. So, today is a very busy diplomatic day. A day that strengthened both Ukraine and our partners.

Today, our power engineers continued restoring the system – and we now have more opportunities to generate and supply electricity. But, unfortunately, not enough to make the supply completely stable.

As of this morning, half as many subscribers have been disconnected from the grid than last night. However, in 14 regions and in Kyiv, there are still restrictions for more than a hundred thousand subscribers in each of the regions.

If consumption increases in the evening, the number of outages may increase. This once again shows how important it is now to save power and consume it rationally.

This afternoon, the enemy launched a missile attack on Dnipropetrovsk region – on private houses, on ordinary houses. There are wounded. They shelled Donetsk region, the south, and other regions.

Russia is turning this day – the day of remembrance – into a day of terror. The occupiers will definitely be responsible for all this. And we will drive them out of our land.

And one more.

Today, we managed to release 12 more Ukrainians from Russian captivity. Of them, three are civilians, two are officers, and seven are privates and sergeants. This week alone, we returned 98 of our people from captivity to Ukraine. We will return all the others.

Thanks to everyone who helps us!

Thank you to every leader who works with us for the sake of European and global security!

Glory to our soldiers and our indestructible people! Eternal memory to all those who gave their lives for Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine.

And please, today honor the memory of Ukrainian men and women, children and adults, whose lives were taken by the Holodomor-genocide.

Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessments of the situations in Bakhmut and Izium:

Dnipro:

Zaporizhzhia:

Looks like they had a Black Friday sale at the Army-Navy surplus store in Kherson!

Your daily Patron!

There is no new tweet from Patron tonight, nor a new TikTok, so these will have to do instead.

Touch not the cat but a glove!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    phein63

    For whoever wanted to send the “Corps of Engineers” into Ukraine:

    You may not know this, but since the Clinton Administration, US Army Corps of Engineers civilian employees can be ordered to deploy to hostile situations or lose their jobs.  I’m one who faced that after 9/11; only a heart attack prevented the then-40-something me from being sent to Afghanistan.   Most of the people who could be of use are greybeards, or worse, youngsters under 50 with families; most of us would volunteer (I’m too old now; they won’t take you after age 60 unless you can pass medical tests that rule out cardiac patients, diabetics, oncology patients, etc.).   But you would be asking civilians to deploy, not greensuiters.  The C of E just doesn’t have that many active duty military.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    Adam  do you have any comment on Prigozhin sending that “bloodied” sledgehammer to the EU?  If he wants to replace Putin someday, I don’t see how such a gangster-movie stunt does anything for his credibility.

  3. 3.

    phein63

    I’m also not sure most people realize what the Corps of Engineers mission really is.  Our unofficial motto is:  “We can help you spend that.”

    A large part of what we spend is for contractors and on contractor oversight.  And, yes, lots of contractors would be thrilled to deploy personnel to Ukraine at hazard duty rates (with the corresponding increase in overhead rates).

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Amir Khalid: He didn’t actually send it to the EU. The whole thing was a silly social media stunt. Remember he’s a criminal who managed to climb the Bratva’s ladder after he got out of prison.

  8. 8.

    Geminid

    @phein63: There are Army combat engineer units. But I think they are generalists who, to the extent they specialize, specialize in fortification, mining and demining, and logistics infrastructure (I’ve read that one unit’s specialty is rail transport).

    I expect there is proficiency at setting up small scale electrical systems, but most of the Army’s engineers probably only have a general knowledge in this area that does not equal that of civilian specialists,  who must number in the scores of thousands among just Ukraine’s NATO supporters.

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose

    That one cat is like LET ME AT THE INVADERS, I WILL DESTROY EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM.

    If anyone hasn’t seen this, and especially if you know any of those idiotic anti-work leftists who somehow think Stalin was a hero, Vox’s video from earlier in the invasion about the Holodomor was very informative for me.

    Thank you as always, Adam, and I hope tomorrow is a better day for you.

  11. 11.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Thank you as always, Adam.

    What’s going on in Belarus? Their foreign minister died suddenly today. Is Russia trying to pressure them into joining the invasion?

  13. 13.

    Frankensteinbeck

    They’re not padding the number of missiles fired, based on every assessment I’ve seen, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

    I’ve been wondering about exactly this since they started the general bombardment.  It doesn’t seem like even a fully functioning super power could throw away armaments like that and keep replacing them, and logistics is Russia’s weakest point.  Even if the infrastructure targeting wasn’t a waste of targets, which is an open question, trying to keep doing it over and over as a campaign instead of a brief, strategically chosen period seems to this laymen like throwing desperately needed resources into a dumpster.  A flaming dumpster.  It’s hard to imagine Iran could keep Russia supplied, only slow the supply collapse.

  16. 16.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    It doesn’t seem like even a fully functioning super power could throw away armaments like that and keep replacing them, and logistics is Russia’s weakest point.

    Knowing nothing (b/c I sure ain’t an expert), perhaps what’s going on is:

    1. they’re (or, erm Putin is) “pot-committed”: at this point, losing is too costly, so they gotta do what they can to try to win
    2. and since actual military action against military targets seems to not be working, they’re trying something else.

    “We must do something; this is something; LET’S DO IT!”

    [but hey, I’m just a spitballer on the Internet, so whatdoIknow?]

  17. 17.

    Anonymous At Work

    Bigger picture question is what repercussions are there for Putin to ignore international law, international treaties, etc.?  Nuclear-capable cruise missile use is a treaty with US, a formal causus bellus but Putin knows we won’t use it and enough incoming Republicans will oppose helping the Ukraine because Biden supports Ukraine.  To me, what’s galling and giving me trouble is the deliberate targeting of civilians.  What good is a UN Resolution softly condemning it?  Are the only repercussions that helping Vlad now puts you on the list of bad guys for the future?  That’s not a short list nor does it see much action later, especially if you have oil or geopolitical importance.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget to note the date. So I went looking for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporting and because I was rushing didn’t note it was from five years ago.

  19. 19.

    Carlo Graziani

    One thing that emerged from the long NYT Magazine piece on the Ukrainian rail system’s respose to the war is that the country actually does have capable, dedicated civilian engineering groups who are perfectly able to respond quickly and flexibly, McGyvering any needed component to bring functionality back as rapidly as possible, giving the system great resilience. The article only described the train network, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to generalize the point to power generation.

    The point being, I don’t think that any infusion of technical manpower is necessary. Any and all resources requested for the purposes of restoring service should be rushed in, of course, but I would imagine that those would be far more likely to be engineering supply items.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    Short ISW thread –

    Russian forces are likely using inert Kh-55 cruise missiles in their massive missile strike campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure, further highlighting the depletion of the Russian military’s high-precision weapons arsenal. https://t.co/uW5qFUVx5D pic.twitter.com/JXg1B40lyY

    — ISW (@TheStudyofWar) November 27, 2022

    2/ The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on November 26 that Russia is likely removing nuclear warheads from aging Kh-55 missiles and launching the missiles without warheads at targets in #Ukraine.

    3/ The UK MoD suggested that Russian forces are likely launching the inert missiles as decoys to divert Ukrainian air defenses.

    4/ Ukrainian officials have since mid-October reported that Russian forces have extensively used the non-nuclear variant of the missile system, the Kh-555, to conduct strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure since mid-October.

    5/ The Russian military’s likely use of a more strategic weapon system in the role of a decoy for Ukrainian air defenses corroborates @TheStudyofWar’s previous reporting that the Russian military has significantly depleted its arsenal of high-precision missiles.

    6/ The use of more strategic weapons systems in support of the campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure suggests that the Russian military is heavily committed to the strike campaign which it still mistakenly believes can generate strategically significant effects.

    All of this seems to be a continuation of the story from November 17 about russia using Kh-55s with dummy warheads (apparently because they don’t have a conventional warhead for it that fits). I don’t know if there’s newer information now, or if subsequent reports are trying to dot i’s and cross t’s.

    Slava Ukraini!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    Dan B

    @Cameron: Low on missiles and ammo, very low on socks and winter coats, low on food, low morale while Ukraine receives supplies from the west and they are strategically making it difficult for Russian troops to get supplies of the basics.  I would guess that Ukraines military has better capability of Winter warfare since the funds didn’t disappear in overseas banks.

  22. 22.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anonymous At Work: Perhaps it all depends on the outcome of the war, and Russia’s exit state ?  If they’re beaten to a pulp, a vassal of China, perhaps they’ll be ignored and derided by other power players ?  It seems pretty clear that their “near abroad” is all getting pretty damn restive, all finding other patrons so they don’t gotta kowtow to Mother Russia anymore.  Maybe the day comes when enough countries DGAF what Russia thinks, that they just start sliding down.

    I’ve read enough of Window on Eurasia and Kamil Galeev to be convinced that for the sake of the subject peoples of the Russian Empire, that empire needs to cease to exist.  At that point, sure  the Moscow/St Pete region would have some weight, but who would take it as seriously as they take Russia today?  It’d be stripped of its oil resources, for one thing (most of that is out East, in lands populated by ethnic non-Russians, IIRC)

    ETA: “for the sake of the subject peoples” and for their possibility of having decent lives and autonomy.  So that they are not merely meat for Moscow.  Which is what they are today.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Chetan Murthy: No, as I repeatedly explained in the first weeks of the war, Putin’s strategic context for the re-invasion is that either he gets Ukraine or no one gets it, including the Ukrainians. So he’ll destroy it to force the Ukrainians to capitulate. The second order effect is to also create multiple new refugee crises in Europe to destabilize the EU while also creating an energy crisis for the EU and a food crisis and famine for much of the world. Which, of course, is needed for the multiple refugee crises for the EU.

  24. 24.

    Spanky

    @Chetan Murthy: Or, if you’re commanding RU forces in Ukraine and Vladdy tells you to do better than the line of former commanders (and where did they disappear to, hmmmm?), you do something if just to buy time.

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    You are using logic – vlad is trying to destroy a country that he can’t steal because his under paid, under equipped, under trained forces, methodologies  and resources are useless to accomplish the task so he’s figuring if he can’t have it he’ll destroy it. He’s a toddler in an adult body, if he can’t have it no one can. He’s not a leader, he’s a con man, dictator, and ass, who is used to stealing whatever the hell he wants, money, power, a country and his greed has caught up with him, out run him. If anyone in Russia was up to the task they would relieve him of his ability to breathe and end this madness but he’s made a lifetime of being the ass in power and while he’s shown that before, he’s now trying to prove it completely by stealing an entire country. And very likely to fail.

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ruckus:

    You are using logic – vlad is trying to destroy a country

    No, Vlad makes perfect sense to me, or at least I find his dumbass, narcissistic decision making easy to follow.  This isn’t about why he’s doing it.  I’ve been curious about the practical end result, that he may soon no longer be able to do it.  As a layman, I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure looks like it must be.

  29. 29.

    phein63

    @Geminid:   Infantry are 11B, combat engineers are 12B (military occupational specialty [MOS] designations).   [I was an 11B2P when I separated, for what it’s worth.]  Most infantry divisions have attached 12B units.

    But sending combat engineers would be sending combat troops into a combat zone.  I think the current administration would rather send volunteers, if at all, into Ukraine proper.  There are plenty of US troops in Romania and Poland at present, if that is needed.

  30. 30.

    phein63

    @Adam L Silverman:   I work in a C of E lab, and we have many, many co-workers who volunteered for tours in the Afghan and Iraq areas of operation.   The emphasis is on volunteered.  I signed up for Afghanistan, but turned 60 before the paperwork could be approved, and watched as a couple of my co-workers took the support mission to Bagram and Kandahar.

  31. 31.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Frankensteinbeck: I think Adam’s thoughts are more on point, but I did see one military analyst speculate the Russia targeting Ukraine’s utilities was an attempt to 1) cause Ukrainian civilian morale to collapse, and 2) weaken Ukraine’s ability to respond in a spring offensive. I.e. if there’s no electricity, it’s harder for the Ukrainian military to communicate, harder to move troops around, harder to run factories needed to supply the war effort, etc. The analyst didn’t think it was necessarily a sound strategy — i.e. strategic bombing to destroy civilian will hasn’t really worked in the past — but it was the only sort of actual strategy they could infer

    Obviously those goals aren’t mutually exclusive with what Adam has described.

  32. 32.

    Ruckus

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I’m not saying he WAS trying to destroy it, I’m say he’s NOW trying to destroy it.

    He’s lost the war, his forces are extremely ineffective and equipment poor and under trained. His concept of government, which is to steal the top 75% of everything and turn a blind eye to actually running the country has made him extremely wealthy and powerful. It seemingly has given him a very narrow view of his country as far more resilient and powerful than it actually is and that everyone would do every single thing he wants. IOW he’s a dictator.

  34. 34.

    ByRookorbyCrook

    The civilian infrastructure bombing campaign is to try and save some of the annexations by forcing a negotiated cease-fire. This is why they spend mobliks like water in Bakmhut, not for the strategic importance, but as a psychological scar to Ukraine. The Ruscists are losing everywhere else. The photos and videos of the terror bombing and destruction of Ukrainian towns are with the hopes of the West trying to push Ukraine to the table so Putin can pause, regroup, and try again.

  36. 36.

    Jay

    @Anonymous At Work:

    there are two UN’s.

    The UNSC, that has actual powers, but has Russia on the committee,

    with a veto, over everything,

    and the UNGA, which is basically a global debating committee, in control of a bunch of UN Orgs, that afterwards, can apply bandaids to the problem, through orgs like the UNHCR, etc.

    The UN is not a democracy.

    Sorry for the short posting. I am a bit out of it with a flu, ( not a cold, 3 Covid tests so far say it’s not Covid, and T is having a bit of a “episode”.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @phein63: I think one reason US  support of Ukraine is accepted and backed by a majority of Americans is that we are not deploying troops to this war zone. Any good the Army’s engineers could do would be outweighed by the risk to domestic political support for the President’s Ukraine policy.

    If there is a shortage of skilled manpower in Ukraine, perhaps it could be made up by volunteer civilian utility workers. There have already been many foreigners volunteering for Ukrainian army service. Governments have been reluctant to encourage military volunteers, but encouraging and even subsidizing volunteers for infrastructure repair might be a different story. It would still be a risky undertaking, but there is a very large pool of qualified people and some might be willing to take the risk.

  39. 39.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Chetan Murthy: I think this is not wrong.

    The Russians need a theory of victory, or at least a theory of how the war ends on terms acceptable to them. They don’t have much to work with. The last such theory was “the West will capitulate when NATO fractures, as Europe freezes in its inflationary recession and gas shortage, whereas we will just outlast them by force of will.” Then Europe filled its tanks with gas, NATO held firm, and the Russians took two ass-kickings in the field of such colossal proportions that they were forced to admit that they were fighting a “War” and strip Leningrad metro stops of 19-year olds to find enough warm bodies to try to stave off defeat.

    The current bodged-together theory, so far as I can tell, is influenced by the same school of energy thinking that taught them that their mineral wealth was the key to ruling the world — and, incidentally, which blinded them to the necessity of moving their economy up the value chain from the extractomomics that makes them so vulnerable to export control sanctions. That school says that the world runs on energy, so if you want to bring your enemy to heel — or at least  make him amenable to reason —  you destroy his energy resources.

    The advantage of this theory is that at least the Russians have the tools (missiles, drones) to carry out its prescriptions, at least for now. So that part is OK. The disadvantage is that the theory is obviously wrong, for the same reason every “Air power will win the war” theory has been wrong since Giulio Douhet started the venerable tradition of wrong air power dominance prophecies in WWI. The Ukrainian reasons for prosecuting the war are unaffected by the misery inflicted on civilians, as those civilians themselves would be the first to affirm.

    But a good theory has a bureaucratic momentum of its own — witness the effort by the US to dissuade/deter the North Vietnamese over the three-and-a-half years of Operation Rolling Thunder, none of whose various phases were conspicuous for their success. The Russians probably have charts and metrics that assure them that the campaign is succeeding. What else could such a chart say?

  41. 41.

    MobiusKlein

    As for why the US and NATO don’t supply all the munitions possible, I wonder if some tech is reserved for non nuclear escalation.   By having additional levels we can escalate, it can apply some deterrence, without needing to go ballistic, so to speak.

  42. 42.

    Anoniminous

    Russia has lost the war. Ukraine will, eventually, liberate their territory north of Crimea and, eventually, Crimea. The question is how much damage, suffering, and blood Putin is determined to inflict before the rotten little shit gives it up, is removed from power, or dies.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, the world continues to get smaller and ever-more connected… Reuters:

    SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Protests against China’s heavy COVID-19 curbs spread to more cities, including in the financial hub Shanghai early on Sunday, nearly three years into the pandemic, with a fresh wave of anger sparked by a deadly fire in the country’s far west.

    The fire on Thursday that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, has sparked widespread public anger as many internet users surmised that residents could not escape in time because the building was partially locked down, which city officials denied.

    The fire, and a denial by authorities that COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue, has fuelled a wave of civil disobedience unprecedented in mainland China since Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.

    In Shanghai, China’s most populous city, residents gathered on Saturday night at the city’s Wulumuqi Road – which is named after Urumqi – for a candlelight vigil that turned into a protest in the early hours of Sunday.

    As a large group of police looked on, the crowd held up blank sheets of paper – a protest symbol against censorship. Later on, they shouted, “lift lockdown for Urumqi, lift lockdown for Xinjiang, lift lockdown for all of China!”, according to a video circulated on social media.

    At another point a large group began shouting, “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping”, according to witnesses and videos, in a rare public protest against the Chinese leadership.

    The police tried at times to break up the crowd.

    […]

    Recognizing that this is one reporter’s view, China is seemingly having increasing difficulty walking the tightrope of controlling political discussions and narratives while also having all the benefits of instant ubiquitous communications via the Internet. VVP is having that difficultly as well…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    Chetan Murthy

    Watling thread on General Winter. I’m starting to read it, figured it was worth sharing.

    There has been a lot of discussion around the effects of winter on operations. I thought I’d outline a couple of aspects of winter fighting that are both critical and often under appreciated. BLUF: Winter will likely favour the Ukrainian military. 1/17
    — Jack Watling (@Jack_Watling) November 27, 2022

  45. 45.

    Carlo Graziani

    An interesting metereological observation, via ISW:

    Ukrainian and Russian reporting from critical frontline areas throughout eastern and southern Ukraine, including Svatove, Bakhmut, and Vuhledar, indicates that operations on both sides are currently bogged down by heavy rain and resulting heavy mud. Temperatures are forecasted to drop throughout Ukraine over the next week, which will likely freeze the ground and expedite the pace of fighting as mobility increases for both sides. The temperature in areas in Ukraine’s northeast, such as along the Svatove-Kreminna line, will dip to near-or-below-freezing daily highs between November 28 and December 4. It will likely take the ground some days of consistent freezing temperatures to solidify, which means that ground conditions are likely to be set to allow the pace of operations to increase throughout Ukraine over the course of the weekend of December 3-4 and into the following week.

    Mud is only one factor, of course. By now there are very likely miles of engineered defensive positions along likely attack routes. The prospect of diving into those must be daunting, and doesn’t really seem like the UA’s style in the war so far.

    But it’s hard to be strong everywhere, and a great deal depends on what the operational objective is. A city, such as Starobilsk, is relatively easy to defend. A 60 km N-S stretch of critical railway, on the other hand, is much harder to cover, especially when all the fields are hard-ice and tank-tread friendly. That’s my little obsession talking to me again…

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @Chetan Murthy: Kinda relatedly, …

    Бажаю всім бадьорого та продуктивного дня!🔥🔥🔥

    Вірте в Захисників України!🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/5SHy3eYQRA

    — Олександр Колим (@OleksandrKolym) November 26, 2022

    That looks like a miserable, scary job – and there isn’t that much snow yet.

    The Google machine translates that as:

    I wish everyone a cheerful and productive day!🔥🔥🔥
    Believe in the Defenders of Ukraine!🇺🇦

    (via ErikAukan – (he of the tapestries))

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    Chetan Murthy

    Just in case some don’t know about these: These are two Twitter lists curated by Josh Marshall of TPM.  The first is analysts; the second is political commentators and various foreign policy bigwigs.  I’ve found that neither seems to have any Nazis, and generally there don’t seem to be any ads or things like that.  I check them about once or twice a day.

    https://twitter.com/i/lists/1500581907238731776

    https://twitter.com/i/lists/1494877848087187461

  50. 50.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Another Scott: It looks like the kind of thing that seems straightforward when one trains for it, then fills with fucking-up opportunities the moment one has to do it for real, and the only people who know that they are actually competent are the ones who have had to do it multiple times, against real opposition, and are still alive.

    I’m pretty sure I’d lose track of the number of rounds I fired. What are those guys supposed to do when they poke around another corner and they’re on empty?

  51. 51.

    Anoniminous

    This and this isn’t WW 1. Pictures taken in the trenches outside Bukhmut. Trying to attack in those conditions is freaking stupid. The Ukrainians are going to have to wait for the mud to freeze to resume mobile warfare.

  52. 52.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anoniminous: Do you remember the pics and short video clips of the UA AF training Chechen volunteers in how to clear rooms ?  *Extensive* training.  That video of the guy clearing the trench reminded me of that.

  53. 53.

    Windpond

    @Adam L Silverman  I am an accomplished lurker who faithfully reads and appreciates your Ukrainian posts every night. I keep feeling Ukraine is being ghosted globally and as the Russian war drags on the world seems to be looking down at its feet, shuffling, whispering, ‘we’re doing all we can’ when in reality, it is not. Ukraine is helped, but with restrictions. How can that continue with months of winter ahead and the GOP about to take over the House?

  54. 54.

    Anoniminous

    @Carlo Graziani: ​
     
    It’s called “Reconnaissance By Fire.” The idea is to force the enemy to reveal themselves by firing back. In trench warfare the front two soldiers have rifles, front guy firing, second guy keeping a full magazine. They are backed-up by at least one grenadier ready to pull and toss into a bay occupied by the enemy.

    Trench Warfare 101

  55. 55.

    way2blue

    I just finished watching the film, Mr Jones, last week about the Welsh journalist who alerted the world to Stalin’s Holodomor.  Had to take a break in the middle as it’s so devastating.  So bleak.  And so on point.

    via Wikipedia  »

    Jones … travels unofficially to Ukraine to discover evidence of the Holodomor, including empty villages, starving people, cannibalism and the enforced collection of grain. On his return to Britain, he struggles to get his story taken seriously. The film ends by recording that Jones died while reporting in Inner Mongolia with a guide who was secretly connected to the Soviet secret service.

     

  56. 56.

    Anoniminous

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I thought it was training as well.  The trenches are too clean for one.  For another I didn’t see evidence they tossed a grenade down that little wooden door they passed.  In a real clearing operation not ensuring your six would be bloody stupid and get people killed.

  57. 57.

    West of the Rockies

    Remember the reports of an ill and infirm Putin?  Evidently that was crap.  Too bad.  I wish he was in endless physical, psychological, emotional, and social agony.

    I have no idea what repentance and redemption would look like for such a heinous person.

  60. 60.

    pieceofpeace

    Thank you, Adam.  You’ve provided information useful to me for basic (and a whole lot more) understanding of what’s going on about Ukraine.  Also thanks to those who comment their knowledge or question to assist with clarifying,

  62. 62.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @way2blue: According to Kotkin in Waiting for Hitler, the NKVD  documented cases of cannibalism and sent them to Stalin during the Great Famine and the Commies hand waved it away by telling each other the Ukrainian farmers were such rabid reactionaries they would rather slowly starve themselves and their families to death than let farm collectivization succeed.

  64. 64.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Another Scott: The trigger that set off the wave of geographically disparate protests in China was not actually the residential building fire that killed 10 people in Ürümqi in Xinjiang, but the absolutely obtuse response by the municipal authorities to the incident which refused to take any responsibility. That really set off all of the pent up frustrations & resentments that has been building due to the increasingly frequently & longer lasting area lock downs since the arrival of Omicron.

    The central government carefully loosened restrictions in mid-Nov., in response to both the increasing economic pressure & shifting popular opinion, hoping for a controlled & phased exit (though it would not admit to doing so publicly), but the virus had other ideas. The incredibly transmissive Omicron variants (most infectious in human history) resulted in rapidly escalating case counts as soon as the loosened policies were implemented. The foreseeable development drove many local authorities to reimplement soft lock downs, often via verbal instructions to community offices because the new loosed policies has forbidden wide area lock downs. The local authorities are charged w/ the inherently contradictory mandates to both protect the economy & keeping a lid of explosive spread, which w/ the latest Omicron variants are not feasible. These latest developments are the final straw that broke the back of the credibility & popular compliance w/ the restrictions, at least in urban areas. The rural population largely supportive, I think, because these restrictions have kept COVID-19 from most of these areas, & they know how much more scarce health care resources are in rural China compared to urban China, which is already scarcer compared to the developed world.

    The censors on social media are running in overdrive to keep popular discontent from reaching critical mass & exploding, but have also allowed enough less incendiary content through so the population can vent. Not a peep, yet, on traditional state media.

    I think the tightrope walk through the exit wave will be the challenge for the CCP regime. The vast majority of current popular discontent is still directed to leadership at community, sub-district, district & municipal levels. The video of protestors in Shanghai chanting “Down w/ the CCP! Down w/ Xi Jinping!”, likely making the rounds on your Twitter feed, is of a few hundred people who smartly staged their protest a few hundred meters from the US Consulate. The central leadership give guidance (sometimes deliberately vague & self-contradictory), & leave the execution to lower levels, thus they can disown any failures & thrown the lower authorities under the bus. The coming tumultuous period through the exit wave, however, will be much harder for the regime to navigate.

    No one in China or the world is ready for the exit wave, & its implications. The CCP regime has spend most of its energy maintaining the “Dynamic COVID Zero” strategy to stave off the inevitable, rather than using the time bought to prepare for the inevitable. The vast majority of people in China (& around the world) clamoring for China to end the restrictions are not mentally prepared for the overwhelmed health care system & the disruptions to logistics, supply chains, & corporate operations that is baked in. They are under the delusion that when restrictions are lifted, it will suddenly be rainbows & unicorns. For every tragic instance of people denied care during lockdowns because of the lack of a recent negative PCR test, it will be times 10 or 100 because people are denied care because the hospitals are full…

  66. 66.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian: What I don’t understand, is why the Chinese government hasn’t taken this enormous amount of time they bought with Zero Covid, and used it to vaccinate their population with effective vaccines ?  I mean, by this point there are vaccines like the one developed by the Baylor College of Medicine’s School of Tropical Medicine, that require only old-skool tech — surely they could have manufactured enough vaccine, and if they’re capable of literally welding people into their apartments for lockdown, then they ought to be capable of forcing people to take the shot ?

  67. 67.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: I’ve been meaning to ask, is your network access to the outside world likely to remain stable should the CCP find it expedient to start temporarily throttling connectivity? I can’t say how likely that is — it would certainly disrupt a lot of business — but maybe political panic could drive strange decision-making.

  68. 68.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chetan Murthy: > 90% of the Chinese population have taken 2 shots, > 65% have been boosted. The perversity is low vaccination rate of the > 80 y.o. cohort, at ~ 65% w/ 2 or more shots & ~ 30% boosted. That is not for the lack of trying, the government has implemented an assortment of carrots & sticks over the past 6 mo. The few times local authorities tried to implement vaccine mandates , there were immense popular pushback, & the experiments were quickly cancelled. There are few things more likely to push Chinese people into revolt than perceived threats to their children & their elders. As the Chinese vaccines are still under EUA, there is no legal basis for mandate. Furthermore, vaccine advise from the Chinese medical profession is still extreme cautious for anyone w/ underlying chronic conditions, precisely those most vulnerable to COVID-19. Under such circumstances, & w/ risk of infection virtually nil under successful “Dynamic Zero COVID”, any elder who dies after mandated vaccine shots will be blamed on the government. Lack of government transparency means there is fertile ground of rumor mongering & CT. I have recently encountered this myself. I have had to remind people that > 2.5B shots of Chinese vaccines have gone into arms in dozens of countries around the world. If there is any notable health risks, they would have been noted.

    For those who think western mRNA vaccines is the silver bullet solution (they are helpful at the margins but certainly not silver bullets), the stronger side effects will only scare off the elders even more.

  69. 69.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani: VPN connectivity has actually stabilised after the 20th Party Congress. I doubt connectivity will be threatened, unless there is massive blood on the streets. Such action would be open admission that the regime is facing a dire threat. Modern Chinese social & economic lives are so tied to mobile APPs (much more so than anywhere else) that a black out will grind much of the social economy to a complete halt.

    The only precedence is the internet black out covering all of Xinjiang in 2009, following Uyghur pogroms targeting Han Chinese in Ürumqi on 7/5, & reported Han reprisals in the following days. That black out lasted a year.

    Incidentally, Modi seems to have borrowed those lessons for Kashmir. There was a months long black out in the region, after New Delhi separated Jammu from Kashmir & ended their nominal autonomous status.

  70. 70.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Anoniminous:

     

    “I skipped that day.”

    And you didn’t stay late another day to make it up.

    tsk, tsk, tsk

    The kidz. These daze.

    Ya send them to school, buy them books … and all they do is eat the covers.

  71. 71.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: OK, good reassurance.

    Should a time arrive when you think you’d like to explore experimental connection alternatives that might be below the authorities’ VPN radar, just to have a backup option, we should have a side-channel discussion. Possibly G&T could be involved, as well as some of the other technically literate folks here.

  73. 73.

    Bill Arnold

    It (Great Firewall/GFW) is part of a continuing arms race.
    E.g. 1.5 months ago:
    Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China (Rita Liao, Zack Whittaker, October 5, 2022)
    “Starting from October 3, 2022 (Beijing Time), more than 100 users reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked,” writes GFW Report, a censorship monitoring platform focused on China, in a GitHub post.

    Some technical speculation here. (Looks like a GFW upgrade of protocol detectors.)
    [Github, October 4, 2022] Large scale blocking of TLS-based censorship circumvention tools in China #129

    Also concerning is that China is sellng GFW services to other governments.

  74. 74.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Bill Arnold: The more reputable VPNs that one purchases are generally more reliable. Even then, upgrades need to be uo to date to account for the updates to the GFW.

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