(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Here is President Zelenskyy’s full press conference/interview with English subtitles from yesterday:
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
Dear Ukrainians, I wish you health!
The tenth package of EU sanctions against Russia for starting the war was approved today.
The tenth and obviously not the last package.
Sanctions will continue to be introduced so that nothing remains of the potential of Russian aggression.
Now, new sanctions steps are in the tenth package, powerful, against the defense industry and the financial sector of the terrorist state and against the propagandists who drowned Russian society in lies and are trying to spread their lies to the whole world. They definitely won’t succeed.
Our diplomats and the entire state are working to extend global and, in particular, European sanctions to the Russian nuclear industry, Rosatom, all those involved in the missile program and nuclear blackmail of the terrorist state. The partners – the United States, the UK – have already made relevant steps. We expect the appropriate steps from the European Union.
Of course, we will continue working on Ukraine’s sanctions against Russian entities and all those who help them. The appropriate decisions will be made.
Our resolution, adopted at the UN General Assembly, gave a very good diplomatic impetus this week. The resolution on peace for Ukraine, on the territorial integrity of our state, and protection of international law against Russian aggression. In fact, we see that the essence of our Peace Formula is becoming the basis of specific international political and legal decisions, and the world majority supports them.
I thank each of the 141 states that supported our resolution. I thank every leader of the states and every nation who value freedom and international order equally with Ukraine.
Of course, every success of our diplomats, every foreign policy opportunity for our state, and every manifestation of world attention to Ukrainians is based on the resilience of the people of Ukraine, the resilience of our soldiers.
On the fact that Ukraine is strong and constantly getting stronger. The world loves the strong. And helps the brave.
The global center of strength and courage is now right here, in Ukraine, right in our people who defend our state. Who defend our land, our Donetsk region, our Luhansk region, all our lands, where very tough and painful battles continue. I thank each of our soldier, everyone who steadfastly, strongly, and bravely defends our positions in Donbas, destroys the enemy, and I thank you for such a powerful result in the east.
The result in the east, so that, consequently, we have the result in all other directions as well.
Today, I will honor the fighters of the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade and the 77th Separate Mobile Airborne Brigade for their heroism and effectiveness in the battles near Bakhmut. Well done, guys!
Gunners of the 55th Zaporizhzhia Sich brigade, marines of the 35th Separate Brigade named after Rear-Admiral Ostrogradsky, infantrymen of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade named after Handziuk, and the 72nd Separate Brigade named after Black Zaporozhians, as well as paratroopers of the 79th Air Assault Brigade – all in Donbas – I thank you, guys, for the worthy repulse of the enemy!
I especially would like to thank today all servicemen of the Engineering and Aviation Service of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. All those who work on the ground, so that Ukraine wins in the sky.
Today is a professional holiday of our military aviation engineers.
These are people, whose expertise and reliability fully confirmed our ability to defend the sky. I thank everyone who makes this engineering aviation contribution to the approach of our victory!
Glory to everyone who is now in battle!
Thank you to everyone who helps defend Ukraine from Russian aggression!
Bright memory to all the heroes who gave their lives for us, for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessment of the situations in Kreminna, Vuhledar, and Bakhmut:
KREMINNA /1610 UTC 25 FEB/ UKR forces broke up a large RU assault south of Kreminna. 70 RU dead were left on the battlefield after the attacking force was defeated. UKR carried out 20 aviation strike missions & artillery/missile forces targeted RU troop concentrations. pic.twitter.com/g1ycTXLAcX
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) February 25, 2023
VUHLEDAR /1650 UTC 25 FEB/ During 23-25 FEB, RU 155th Naval Infantry Brigade resumed probes against Vuhledar. These once again came to grief in the extensive minefields south of the urban area. Morale in the Russian unit is abysmal; a mutiny was reported earlier this week. pic.twitter.com/NsAejkOB5r
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) February 25, 2023
BAKHMUT /1450 UTC 25 FEB/ RU has cut the M-03 HWY between Dubovo-Vasylivka & Pidhorodne. RU continues to sustain heavy losses in attacks S of the HWY. UKR air defense reports downing a RU Mi-24 helicopter [24 FEB], 2 ‘Lancet’ loitering munitions and an ‘Orlan-10’ recon UAV. pic.twitter.com/UslEl7XqgT
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) February 25, 2023
Vuhledar:
In Vuhledar Russians continue to use the same insane and useless “tactic” of rushing over open field against Ukrainian defense lines and minefields, just to trash their remaining vehicles and to crawl back to their lines. They don’t learn.#Vuhledar #Donetsk #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/YBQ7MOTNB3
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) February 25, 2023
The Telegraph has reporting of one family trapped behind the lines in Russian occupied Mariupol. Here are some excerpts:
Vitaly Chechelyuk excuses himself and picks up the phone: another telemarketing call. His daughter Alina is annoyed: ‘Dad, why do you even answer calls from unlisted numbers?’ Vitaly stares at the phone: ‘What if it’s Maryana?’
Vitaly is a father of two. His youngest daughter Alina, 16, lives with him and his wife Natalya, but their eldest, Maryana, who turned 23 last month, is missing. He hasn’t seen her since April.
His mobile phone screensaver is a picture of her: she is petite and pretty, her straight blonde hair falls to her waist. She was a good student, he says, a kind soul.
Maryana, a police detective, was caught up in the siege of Mariupol’s steel works last year and survived, only to be arrested by Russian intelligence afterwards and held in detention. That was nine months ago – they have no idea where she is today.
She is one of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian civilians who have gone missing after they were abducted or detained following interrogations at Russia’s notorious ‘filtration’ camps. The camps were set up to screen every Ukrainian leaving the country and weed out soldiers and government officials, and yet most of those now missing are ordinary civilians.
These are the invisible victims of Russia’s war with Ukraine: they do not face any charges. Nor are they prisoners of war. There is no paper trail for them in the Russian justice system.
‘It was so cramped and uncomfortable,’ recalls Alina. ‘And it was too cold to take off your trousers fully [at bedtime]. You’d go to sleep and it’d be all quiet – then the bangs would go off again.’ She pushes her hair behind her ears. It is long and blonde, identical to her elder sister’s.
During that first week, an eerie sense of normalness pervaded. Grocery shops in Mariupol remained open, residents who hadn’t fled crept out of their shelters and dashed for supplies. Vitaly would hurry across the street to the family’s apartment for lard and tinned vegetables.
But Russian forces were gaining. By 2 March, the city was encircled. As food supplies dried up and shops shut, desperate locals began looting closed businesses for whatever they could find: tinned vegetables, flour, fruit juice, grain.
Vitaly found a warehouse stocked with frozen food. ‘The locks were picked or smashed and inside were industrial freezers, tall as a one-storey house, shelves full with frozen meat and fish.’ Desperate, and increasingly hungry, they stocked up.
On 6 March, the bombing appeared to have stopped. It was, Alina recalls, finally quiet. She asked her father if she could go to their apartment with him for clean clothes, but as they crossed the yard, more shelling began. They dived inside, sheltering in a corridor.
‘It was so loud, I’ll never forget it,’ Alina says. ‘We stood there shaking: It’s like you’re on a moving train, everything is wobbly.’
What she remembers most is the Orthodox cross, nailed to a nearby door. After a while, she started to pray.
It would be 30 minutes before the shelling stopped and they returned to the shelter, broken glass from smashed windows cracking under foot.
The same evening, the community centre roof caught fire. Most people there sought shelter in a municipal building nearby but, believing it was too exposed, Vitaly took his family to a different basement. It was a squalid, damp space, there was no light and the cement walls were punctured with rusty beams.
Determined to make the best of it, Vitaly found rolls of electricity cable and wooden planks and fashioned them into beds.
Days soon took on a new routine: Vitaly woke at 5am or 6am, and lit a campfire just outside the building, improvising by stacking bricks and placing a barbecue grill on top, and used it to boil water for tea and coffee.
The family mostly subsisted on porridge and tinned vegetables, or grilled meat from the warehouse. Maryana and Alina passed days reading novels or chatting to neighbours. If someone managed to ascertain what date it was, they’d make a note. Otherwise, they had no sense of time. Days blurred into one.
By late March, the weather had warmed. Fearing their shelter was an artillery target, the Chechelyuks decided to find a new one but, as they ventured outside, they had no idea what to expect. It was their first time outside in a month. The road was littered with fallen power lines and debris, buildings were scorched or destroyed by bombs. Charred carcasses of tanks lay around and on the pavements were dead bodies of locals, some covered with pieces of cloth or wood.
The city’s water supply was, by now, dangerously low. Shops had long been emptied, radiators drained of water, even toilet cisterns had run dry. The Azovstal steel works, home to underground cisterns of water built for emergencies, was the only lifeline.
Travelling there was a Russian roulette of a journey, as the area was often shelled. Even so, the spot by the cisterns was often busy, as locals turned up with plastic bottles. The Chechelyuks decided to take their chances.
Natalya waited in the basement while Vitaly and the girls went. ‘There were lots of dead bodies near the cover of the cisterns,’ recalls Alina. ‘We closed our eyes and walked like this.’ She covers them with her palms.
Vitaly began lowering five-litre bottles into a well, while Maryana and Alina went to find phone signal. Maryana had, since the start of the invasion, kept an unused SIM-card for emergencies; she decided to call a family friend to ask if they knew of any safe evacuation routes.
The sisters found their way to the steel works’ factory workshops, and had just begun climbing a ladder in hope that they’d find signal higher up, when they heard screams. Next came a thud: Russian jets started dropping bombs on the factory.
‘People started running in all directions,’ Alina says. ‘We ran too – we had no idea to where, we just followed those in front of us. We couldn’t even look back for Dad because there was a crowd.’
Maryana and Alina ended up in the maze of bunkers beneath the steel works, where Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion, the last of the Ukrainian resistance, were hiding out. Meanwhile, Vitaly, by now distraught, was scouring the mammoth factory for them.
Hours later, desperately hoping they’d gone home, Vitaly returned to his wife. ‘When I saw it was just Natalya, we started panicking.’
The day after the family were separated, Donetsk separatists climbed into the basement where Vitaly and Natalya were sheltering, and ordered everyone there to evacuate the city ahead of a Russian ‘cleansing operation,’ aimed to crush the last pockets of resistance.
‘We were told we’d be shot if we stayed,’ says Vitaly. ‘But we knew we’d go back as soon as we could to look for the girls.’
For hours they queued for ‘filtration’ security screening, a humiliating process involving body searches and interrogations, from where they were to be sent to a Russia-controlled part of the Donetsk region. But instead Vitaly and Natalya decided to drive back to Mariupol and see what happened to their house, hoping it was intact.
When they arrived, Natalya’s heart sank. A bomb dissected the block: half was intact while the other half, including their old apartment, was destroyed. In the charred rubble they could just make out the next-door flat. The neighbour, an elderly woman, had been buried alive in bed. Slabs of concrete and bricks piled on top of her and mattress springs lay all around.
To this day, Vitaly struggles to articulate how he felt by what he saw.
Among the pile of black bricks and cement, Natalya recognised a few mauve tiles, as well as a familiar kitchen chair. ‘My lovely house, my lovely kitchen… I loved it so much,’ she says. ‘We worked so hard for this house. [Russians] just trampled on the life we built.’
Suddenly shelling rang out in the distance and Tafik, their chihuahua, ran away. ‘We were upset beyond words,’ Vitaly says.
The couple returned to Mariupol twice to search for the dog, facing death threats at checkpoints. ‘We were almost killed because of Tafik.’
But on the second search, as Vitaly walked into the apartment block, there was a familiar whimper. Tafik, terrified and covered in soot, ran over.
‘We were so glad he was alive.’ Vitaly smiles. ‘We thought, things have to get better now.’
Vitaly and Natalya settled in a village near the Russian filtration camp. Desperate for news of their missing daughters, they scoured the internet, using a neighbour’s wi-fi, for news, and were delighted to discover that Maryana had logged into a messaging app an hour earlier.
‘We were going crazy,’ he says. ‘[So] it was such a relief. Maryana replied that they were both alive and well, I was so happy.’
Still sheltering in the freezing bunkers at Azovstal, Maryana and Alina were compulsively scrolling the mobile phone for news of an evacuation. ‘We were so exhausted. We couldn’t wait for it to be over,’ says Alina.
One day, they finally received good news: an Azov soldier told them that the UN and the International Red Cross had brokered a deal to extract civilians from the steel works and escort them to Kyiv-controlled territory.
On 1 May, Alina, Maryana, and a few dozen others, left their bunker and walked out of the plant. It was a bright day and they were elated to see sunshine after a month underground, but when they reached the factory gate, something felt wrong.
‘There was no one there except us. Not a soul,’ Alina says. ‘All we saw were cars smashed into the fence, ammunition, shells on the ground and massive craters from aerial bombs.’
They walked for a kilometre along a deserted road, boiling hot in their heavy winter clothes, until they reached some buses, which were supposed to evacuate them. Suddenly, a group of Russian soldiers with white armbands emerged from the buses and ran towards them.
‘It was the scariest moment,’ recalls Alina. ‘It was as if we were taken to an execution.’
Maryana begged her sister to pretend she was crying. ‘Either they were going to shoot us or take pity on us,’ Alina says. ‘So I started crying.’
The soldiers reached for their rifles: ‘I thought: That’s it. This really is it. It is over.’
But the Russian soldiers only wanted to warn them about landmines in the area.
Ushered onto the buses, Alina and Maryana were told they were being taken to Zaporizhzhia, a city in central Ukraine under government control where they expected to reunite with their parents. ‘I thought we’d get there, have a nice bath, lots of food and go for a walk,’ Alina says.
She remembers looking back at her city one last time, as the bus drove away: the steel works were shrouded by explosions and fires, and black smoke rose over Mariupol but beneath it, the first greenery of spring was just visible.
It was early afternoon when the bus stopped. Rather than Zaporizhzhia, it deposited them 160 miles away at a Russian filtration camp in Bezimenne where the officers, Ukrainian separatists, told them to strip off so that they could check if they had bruises from machine guns. Alina tried to protest. ‘I said: “I’m 15.” But they didn’t care.’
Ushered into a camping tent, a makeshift interrogation room, the sisters were questioned about their allegiance to Ukraine. When the interrogator found out that Maryana was a police detective, things took a turn.
‘They kept asking, “Do you know where your sister worked, what, where, how and why…?” I started yelling, “I’m a minor”.
‘Maryana was so nervous she started shaking, and I got so mad.’
The interrogation lasted for hours. Eventually they were sent to wait in an old Soviet bus, then Maryana was called back to the tent alone. That was the last time Alina saw her.
When Alina realised her sister had been taken away, she rushed to the tent and shouted at some officers, who were outside it, smoking. They told her Maryana had been taken to Donetsk. ‘I started crying, I kept saying, “Give me my sister back”.’
Meanwhile, Vitaly and Natalya were on their way to Belarus, in search of safety. Desperately worried about their daughters, they’d look online for news of them. Then, one day, they received a call from a Russian official. ‘We’ll give you 24 hours to make it here [to the Bezimenne camp or] your daughter [Alina] will be sent to an orphanage.’
They were more than 600 miles away but they set off immediately. Their car had broken down so they took trains and hitchhiked. It would be 36 hours before they reached the camp and were reunited with Alina.
Maryana, they were told, had gone for additional checks. ‘We thought we would have her back [soon],’ says Natalya. ‘But we never got her back: not in the next few days, not next month, not even now.’
The office of the Ukrainian ombudsman for human rights has logged at least 20,000 Ukrainian civilians who are currently held in Russian facilities, having been detained in Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine.
At a meeting last month, Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, pressed his Russian counterpart for information about the whereabouts of these civilians. ‘The Russian side agreed to find out where they are, in what condition and why they are being held,’ Lubinets said. There have been no updates since.
Human Rights Watch has accused Russia of forcibly moving and interning civilians, calling it a war crime, in a report published in September. Just 132 Ukrainians of the estimated 20,000 held were released in prisoner swaps.
‘People like Maryana are at great risk: no one knows for sure where they are. They have no clear legal status,’ says Yulia Gorbunova, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. ‘This is an illegal practice.’
Maryana’s parents have spent months petitioning government offices in Russia and Ukraine for information about her detention. They still don’t have a definitive answer. The Russian government has told them in official letters that they have no information about Maryana’s whereabouts.
At their new home in Switzerland, the Chechelyuks have tried to recreate a sense of their old life. In the kitchen, traditional meat jelly is cooling and Natalya is stirring gravy on the stove to serve with boiled beetroot and cabbage rolls, typical Ukrainian dishes.
Vitaly explains that he had no idea whether his eldest daughter was alive until last summer when his phone rang. It was Maryana.
‘Where is Alina?’ was the first thing she said.
In the 30-second call Maryana sounded nervous and upset. Vitaly told her that they were all ok and Maryana started sobbing; then the line went dead. Six months on, there have been no more calls.
All the family has to go by is word-of-mouth news from former prisoners. In October, a woman phoned them to say she had been held in the same cell as Maryana in Donetsk. A month later, a Ukrainian marine, released in a prisoner swap, contacted Vitaly on social media to tell him Maryana had been in a cell near his at a facility in Russia’s Volgograd region. Both said that Maryana was in high spirits and trying to help other prisoners.
But last month, Vitaly’s lawyer received an official letter from prison authorities in Volgograd saying Maryana was not there.
The Ukrainian government has added Maryana’s name to the list of POWs but every time a prisoner swap is negotiated, her name is not included for the exchange. The Chechelyuks struggle to understand why a 23-year-old junior police detective would be important enough to be held hostage for so long.
‘She’s just a young girl. I don’t know what they want from her.’ Natalya breaks into tears at the kitchen table. ‘Why can’t we get an answer to where my child is and why she is behind bars? I just don’t know who to turn to. We’re at a dead end.’
They try to recreate a semblance of normality. When they were offered annual passes for the local swimming pool last year, they gratefully accepted, asking for four: one for Maryana too. They haven’t used them yet – they won’t until all four are reunited.
‘We’re not here to have fun,’ says Vitaly. ‘Things will change as soon as Maryana returns: then we can get our lives back again.
‘[But until then] I just don’t allow myself any breaks or rest. We are always waiting.’
Much, much more at the link!
In every war there is always partisan underground resistance. Basically you can look at the different types or levels of war – interstate, revolution, rebellion, insurgency, and terrorist campaign – as nesting dolls. Interstate war, which is high intensity warfare (among a bunch of other things) will often contain within it attempted revolts, rebellions, insurgencies, and/or terrorist campaigns. All of which are low intensity warfare. We’ve been covering the partisan underground low intensity warfare being waged by Ukrainian SOF and Ukrainian partisan underground in Russian occupied Ukraine for months. However, one of the things I’ve been watching for for a year now, but not seeing much if any reporting or information on was anti-Putin Russian partisan underground activity. Some of the reasons for that are obvious: any news of these activities will get people killed. So it is in everyone’s, including Ukraine’s, interests to not talk about it even if it is going on and you know it is going on. Part of it is that given the nature of Putin’s Russia this activity is limited because undertaking it can and will get you imprisoned or killed. So when I see reporting on it, I pay attention.
"Volunteers interviewed for this article said they felt helpless when the war began, and assisting Ukrainians in Russia was their only way of dealing with fear, guilt, despair and anger." https://t.co/aorHGvyapD
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) February 25, 2023
Here’s The Washington Post reporting that Joshi is referencing:
The independent volunteers do all kinds of things. Some work from home processing help requests. Others help care for pets, gather food, clothing and medicine, or deliver to makeshift warehouses. Hosts who open their doors to Ukrainians or drivers who transport them across the Russian border face the steepest risk as they are ones interacting directly with refugees and the authorities.
None of the volunteers’ activities are illegal but amid Russia’s wartime laws anything that involves Ukraine and does not fit with the current pro-war patriotic fervor is sensitive and regarded unfavorably by the security services.
“In our country, any volunteer organization or any kind of attempt to self-organize is like a red rag for a bull,” a Ukrainian-born volunteer in her late 50s, who has lived in Russia for most of her life and has a Russian passport, said. She was at a stop along the snowy highway on her way to bring nine Ukrainians to the Finnish border from St. Petersburg.
The Ukrainian-born volunteer said she makes the trip about five times a month, each time a gamble. A lot could go wrong: the car might swerve on the snow-covered road, its battery could die in the bitter cold, a tire could burst. The Russian border guard might be in a bad mood, a refugee might carry too much money through customs or do something else to attract undue attention.
The volunteer recalled one passenger, an older man, getting so drunk during the wait at the border that he tried to bum a cigarette from a Federal Security Service (FSB) guard, risking the whole operation.
“As long as you are here in my car and we have not reached the Finnish border, you listen only to me,” the volunteer strictly admonished her passengers as a family boarded her minivan at St Petersburg train station.
Whether refugees make it across the border in many ways depends on the volunteer.
At the same time it launched the war in Ukraine, Moscow tightened the few loose screws across civil society, demonstrating through dismantling opposition and human rights groups that it will not tolerate any dissent.
The Kremlin’s desire for total control in a wartime setting has targeted official volunteer movements, forcing some to work in exile or shut down completely.
Those now aiding Ukrainians are split into two contrasting camps: “official” groups, like the one run by the governing United Russia party, and “unofficial” networks with no hierarchy or affiliation.
The “official” groups help Russian authorities place Ukrainians in temporary shelters, where they are insistently offered Russian passports that make subsequent travel to the European Union nearly impossible. These groups deliver aid to occupied areas of eastern Ukrainian territories that the Kremlin now refers to as “liberated.”
Having passed the ideological check, they have no issue fundraising or talking publicly about their work.
The “unofficial” volunteers materialized primarily to close the gaps left by official aid groups: They bring phones to replace those seized by Russia at the border, find veterinarians for sick pets, obtain hard-to-find medicines, and do myriad other tasks, some mundane, others lifesaving. They also offer a lifeline for those seeking shelter in a country that invaded their own. They charter buses, buy train tickets or drive Ukrainian families to the border.
In some towns, the “unofficial volunteers’” were forced to halt their activities after pressure from local law enforcement. Last May, police came to a temporary shelter in Tver, northwest of Moscow. They questioned Ukrainians about an independent Russian volunteer, Veronika Timakina, 20, asking if she was “engaged in campaigning activities,” took photos of them or invited them to join any political party, Russian news outlets Verstka and Mediazona reported.
And here is The Economist‘s video reporting on the same topic. Description first, video after:
The invasion of Ukraine left Russians with a stark choice: carry on as normal or make a stand against the war. But speaking out in Russia carries huge risks. How is the opposition managing to resist the regime – and at what personal cost?
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
There’s no new tweets from Patron tonight, but here’s some dolphins in Kharkiv:
Covering the war sometimes gives the chance to experience precious moments. Like meeting these dolphins in Kharkiv. The family could not be evacuated because baby dolphin Mriya (Hope) was born on April 15 and they stayed in the city during the most brutal Russian attacks. pic.twitter.com/qVjOedRgbu
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) February 25, 2023
But there is a new video at Patron’s official TikTok:
@patron__dsns А, ой🫢 #песпатрон
The caption machine translates as:
Uh, oops. 🫢 #песпатрон
Open thread!
Friday Came A Day Late This Week
Kent
Here is a question for military historian types. Something I have been wondering.
How much do resistance fighting and resistance movements help in the progress of a conventional war.
Take WW2, for example. We have heard endless mythical stories about the famous French Resistance. But realistically speaking, how much did the French Resistance accelerate the D-Day invasion? I suspect not in the slightest. And how much did resistance activities accelerate the drive of Patton’s Third Army towards Paris in August 1944? A day? A week? At all?
Same thing with the Partisan bands that operated in Belarus and Ukraine against the occupying Germans. Did they accelerate the Soviet offensive (Operation Bagration) even one day?
Steve in the ATL
Has a time seen this book of photos of Ukraine and its people? By a German dude. Looks pretty good, if you’re into photography, as many of us here are.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Depends on the partisan activity. The one detailed below was very effective.
Tom Levenson
Thanks Adam, as always, for these posts.
It is good (and important) to hear the stories of Russia-based resistance. And better still to hear of Ukraine success in the field.
Meanwhile–eff India and its latest gesture towards normalizing Russia’s current territorial grab.
Wapiti
@Kent: I don’t know that the partisans change the timetable at all. I’ve heard the theory that partisan forces tie up enemy forces that are required to keep supply lines open, so fewer forces are available on the line.
Chetan Murthy
@Tom Levenson: Some wag pointed out that all the people who run India — all their kids, all their friends’ and associates’ kids, all go to the West for educations and careers. It is the *utmost* in hypocrisy to side with the enemies of the West, given that.
Send your kids to Moscow for their educations and careers, Modi & Co, and see how long that lasts.
trollhattan
Posted this in the last thread, but belongs here instead. Ted Big Brain Cruz, everybody.
https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1629130275908198403
Steve in the ATL
@Tom Levenson: agreed. In protest, I am not wearing any madras clothing this winter.
Alison Rose
We talk here a lot about the putin-loving assholes in this country, mostly on the right but some on the supposed left, and many of us have felt baffled as to why they wouldn’t be on the side of the (at least on the surface) underdog in this fight. Americans usually love a story like that, especially conservatives who live in a fantasy land where they (who are largely white, cis, straight, etc) are somehow always the poor downtrodden ones under the evil boot of *checks notes* drag queens and environmental activists and whatever, fighting against their imagined oppression.
Reading the above line from Zelenskyy, I think at least part of the issue is that these dipshits have a completely warped idea about what “strong” looks like. To me, in this war, strong is the smaller, less powerful, less equipped country that has been giving what for to the larger bully with like 16 million tanks or whatever the hell. Strong is the populace refusing to back down and using everything they have to defend themselves, their families, their homeland. Strong is holding fast to true human values even when put to the test. But to the putin groupies, “strong” is playacting. It’s having the appearance of might when there’s no reality to back it up. Similar to why they love TFG. Strong is big talk and threats and inflicting as much harm as you can, even though most of that harm is being done to people in a worse position than them. Strong is just about who is punching harder, never mind that it’s all punching down. It’s disheartening. If they actually valued real strength, they would realize with which side in this war it resides.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Carlo Graziani
@Kent: It depends on expectations, and on the degree of control and repression exercised by the occupier.
The French resistance did not really ever act directly against the Wermacht, SS, or occupation police in a militarily effective manner. On the other hand they could provide invaluable intelligence support, as well as shelter for inserted Allied SOF, at enormous personal risk. And in the run up to D-Day, when the Allies were engaged in a project to create a “railway desert” between France’s interior and the Channel coast—principally by strategic bombing— the Resistancee contributed by acts of rail sabotage.
By contrast, Tito’s Communist resistance in Yugoslavia asked no quarter of the Germans, and gave none. They ignored German reprisals against civilians, so effective in other German-occupied lands at demoralizing and suppressing partisan activity, and instead used the terrain and popular support to make the whole country unsafe for Germans travelling in less than fully combat-loaded platoon strength. Tito’s partisans tied down many German divisions in Yugoslavia that the Nazis could have wished employed in defending their French fortress, or in shoring up the Eastern front.
The Italian partisans were totally useless, good only for generating post-war nostalgic folk songs.
Steve in the ATL
@Alison Rose: for the record, your comment last night was pure gold:
Anoniminous
@Kent:
Effectiveness depends on a host of factors and not only those regarding the resistance movement. The Dutch resistance reports the 9th and 10th SS panzer divisions were in and around the Market-Garden drop zones of the 1st British Parachute division were ignored by the Brits and they paid the price.
kalakal
@Kent: It varied. For all the heroics current opinion is that the French Resistance didn’ t have that much effect. They tied up some troops, carried out sabotage & provided intelligence but not on a war changing scale.
Yugoslavia was a completely different case. There large numbers of Axis troops were engaged in heavy combat and suffered sizeable casualties
Geminid
@Kent: When the U.S. 3rd Army broke out of Normandy and raced across Central France in August, 1944, US officers credited French fighters with keeping their southern flank safe. One described them as worth 20 divisions, mayby an exagerration but not that much of one. The Army Air Force had a lot to do with this as well.
Fighting alone, lightly armed special forces and partisans cannot do much. I think we’ll get a better sense of their value if and when the Ukrainian Army launches attacks that pierce the southern front. That may be what the irregular forces are waiting for.
BeautifulPlumage
@Steve in the ATL: I just took a look at that thread and agree, great description.
MagdaInBlack
@Adam L Silverman: That caught my interest. I saved it for later. Thank you.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: Can’t watch. Life is too short.
🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: But, you know — there is an incalculable value in having people who have the guts to resist. It can’t all be reduced to whether or not they have an effect. I feel this way about a lot of Russian resistance over the past 20 years. People gave their lives. Is that worth nothing, just because the percentages are small and the effects hardly discernible?
ETA: And of course we know the percentage of French who were resistance is smaller than we had been led to believe. Doesn’t matter with respect to those who were.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent:
In addition to what others have said, there is psychological value to stressing out the enemy and providing an outlet for patriotic people in occupied countries. Simply being annoying and adding inconvenience makes it harder on an occupier. How much? Somethings are hard to quantify.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: @Omnes Omnibus: GMTA
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
You know of what you speak!
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep!
Jay
@Kent:
it really varies on the Nation, the group, the external support, the internal support, etc.
The French Resistance Groups like many, varied greatly in their politics, effectiveness and security. The Communists were “most” effective in many regards against the Nazi’s and Vichy. The Royalists almost useless, and some groups had the unique goals of ensuring that other Resistance Groups did not operate in their areas, that allied airmen and pow’s were hustled way, asap, and that SOE agents, were sent elsewhere to “help”, all to minimize any reprisals.
Some groups, like the JNA, were full fledged Armies, some groups like the Polish Home Army and the Italian Communists were betrayed by their earstwhile allies, some groups like the Greeks, spent the war fighting each other more, and Albanian banditry than Nazis. The Allied invasion of Southern France rolled really quickly, because the French Resistance had already seized many of the villages and towns, were contesting the cities, and had gutted German supply.
It really varied.
In Belarus, they are ineffectively blowing up railroad tracks, but also burning down switching cabinets and blowing up the occasional bridge and culvert. It does slow down Russian transports.
ColoradoGuy
Regarding the notorious LARP thread, I wonder if it was a hybrid troll/chatGPD content generator. At times, it seems like real human was typing, then quickly veered off into AI gibberish. It feels like it was a test of some kind.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I learned it from you, Dad!
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: Oh I agree. I wasn’t dismissing the French, Dutch, Danish, Greeks etc etc who resisted. They undoubtedly helped to win the war. I’m not expressing my opinion, there has been considerable revisionism about WW2 resistance movements, particularly the French, in large part as records become available as a reaction to the ‘Hollywood myth’. We can try, and usually fail, to quantify their material effect, what we can’t do is measure their moral effect. Brave men & women throughout occupied Europe risked, and often met, a hideous fate, for our freedom. That we can’t reduce to a %.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Russian you tuber deep dive into Putin’s “Special Operation” anniversary speech and concert. It’s,..quite something, apparently you can get Russians to do almost anything for the equivalent $6.50 USD.
https://youtu.be/BOswv8c3QVE
Amir Khalid
The press conference video has not been made available in my country.
BeautifulPlumage
Speaking of punching nazzzeeees, I’ve watched this a few times today https://twitter.com/lyndastraffin/status/1629219734167093250
zhena gogolia
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I just watched a video from Navalny’s group where they interviewed by phone a woman who was there. She described how people started leaving when the buckwheat porridge and tea ran out at the “field kitchen.” Sad.
Alison Rose
@Steve in the ATL: LOL thanks. I’m still trying to figure what in the entire hell that conversation was about.
delphinium
@Alison Rose: Big talk, threats, and bullying are the calling cards of weak, small men. And yet, unfortunately, playacting “strong” rather than actually being strong appeals to far too many.
I still laugh when Putin scoring 8 goals in a hockey game was supposed to demonstrate his prowess and not of course that the players on the other team were letting him slide by.
Alison Rose
@ColoradoGuy: I actually posited this myself in the thread. It wasn’t just that he was babbling, his sentences literally barely made sense. Like when you feed something through a handful of languages in a translator app and then back to English.
Adam L Silverman
@MagdaInBlack: I used to use it in my lessons at US Army War College.
Jay
Alison Rose
@delphinium: Yeah, pretty easy to score goals when the other side is afraid they’ll be chucked out a window if you lose.
But all of putin’s displays of supposed manliness have always looked utterly pathetic to me. The shirtless horse riding, for example. Like, I’m not trying to body shame, but my dude, you do not have the body you think you do.
Jay
Kent
@BeautifulPlumage: This is my favorite Nazi punching video
https://youtu.be/ou8dzHD-Da0
Jay
Ohio Mom
@Kent: Let’s not forget, in World War II, members of various undergrounds saved the lives of many Jews, see for example, this recent obituary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/world/europe/adolfo-kaminsky-dead.amp.html
That doesn’t answer your question, did any underground ever change the course of a war but it was important work in itself.
Another Scott
@delphinium:
Red carpets are sneaky… (0:33)
Cheers,
Scott.
kalakal
@Kent: Lol!
Jay
Anonymous At Work
What’s up with France, Germany, UK, etc. talking “peace” between Russia and Ukraine? I can understand China’s “peace” resolution, to give it an excuse to sell things to the Russian at a premium and extract even more from them long-run. The EU and that hanger-on in the UK all know better.
Jay
Steve in the ATL
@Alison Rose: some people didn’t heed the warning at Woodstock: “don’t eat the brown acid!”
Jay
@Anonymous At Work:
politicians always jaw-jaw about “peace” when there is a war on. Even the Bushie’s and Putinists do it. It’s just pablum at this point
As Yi Sima pointed out, China was just babbling the ususal BS about “peace”, it’s nothing solid, it’s not a proposal, it’s just an “affirmation”,
“You is kind, you is smart and people like you!”.
delphinium
@Another Scott: Ha, ha. Though, I do wonder which poor sod got punished for that.
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: I think I figured out the problem, at least partially. He has this project, into which he has evidently poured substantial effort, and having been so deeply involved really lost sight of the need to explain to others just what it was about. I’ve seen that before, while helping people craft presentations or articles about things that they’ve worked on extensively. They know they need an introduction to set the stage for their audience, but they’ve been enmeshed in the thing for so long that ‘obvious’ background which ‘needs no explanation’ really does need to be explained or the audience gets lost immediately.
kalakal
@Kent: One act of resistance that has been described as possibly changing the course of WW2 occurred in Yugoslavia March 27 1941. The Yugoslav govt was desperately trying to stay neutral but were under immense pressure from the Nazis to ally. The Germans particularly wanted to move troops through Yugoslavia to assist the screwed up Italian invasion of Greece. On March 25 the Yugoslav Govt succumbed to pressure and joined the Tripartite Pact a sort of pro Axis non belligerancy. On the 27th aided by a popular uprising the Yugoslav army overthrew the govt, and the new regime refused to ratify the pact. Hitler seems to have gone ballistic and ordered that “Yugoslavia must be crushed” and ordered the delay of Operation Barbarossa by 4 weeks.
The Nazis invaded Yugoslavia on 6th April and armistice was signed on the 17th.
There has since been endless speculation as to what would have happened had Barbarossa started 4 weeks earlier and the Nazis had that extra time before the Russian winter
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, this. If this is what India wants then we need to review our relationships with their country. This conflict is showing us who is for democracy and freedom and who is aligned with empire.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: Exactly.
Jay
Sebastian
Apologies for getting late into the thread. I was busy with an operation.
@kalakal:
OMG you just gave me the best birthday present ever. Belated, for my 50th, but considering the heft, I am ok with that!
Thank You! You really saved what looked like a disaster for a moment.
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: Yeah, I could understand that. Although even after may of us were like “dude we don’t even know what the project is or what you need help with or anything” he just keep acting like an angry baby and then called us all stupid.
Alison Rose
@Jay: That screenshot appears to be fake. There are people in the replies with the flag in their name saying they’ve never seen such a warning.
Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
since Independence and Division, India has relied on the Soviet Union, later Russia, for arms and support. It has only been in the last few decades, where “The West”, became a “safe space” for Indians.
kalakal
@Sebastian:
Happy Birthday.
Glad to have helped
Jay
@Alison Rose:
it may be, it may not be. Twitter has become more than a little “twitchy”. My twitter, which I don’t really use, is on a “time out”, for a post I made 4 years ago, that twitter gave me a time out for, 4 years ago, but is now in time out again, backdated to Feb 19, 2019, almost like somebody rebooted an old patch of software.
Jay
patrick II
@Wapiti:
The Viet Cong did alright.
Another Scott
KyivIndependent.com:
Burns’ statement isn’t surprising to me (after all, Biden and Blinken most likely heard it from him), but it keeps getting a little more specific every time it comes up – “Chinese leadership”. So it’s not just some little factory operating under the radar (as I thought might be a possibility a few days ago).
We’ll see how this goes…
Slava Ukraini!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@patrick II:
the Viet Cong barely survived Tet and relied more and more on the NVA. The Viet Mihn manged to outlast the French, with significant Soviet and Chinese support.
Steve in the ATL
@Alison Rose: to be fair, air of us are pretty stupid….
Jay
@Another Scott:
“Considering” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
That USA Today visual piece is well done. The ones with a slider are particularly effective/horrifying. You can repeatedly watch the effects of Russian “liberation” on small towns.
Here’s the link from the tweet:
Lives lost, cities leveled: A visual look at the war in Ukraine one year later – Before and after images reveal the mass destruction in Ukraine that continues one year after Russia invaded. (Ramon Padilla, David Baratz, Feb. 23, 2023)
Geminid
@Geminid: There is at least one important difference between present day Ukrainian partisan forces and their French counterparts in 1944, and that is the effectiveness of their opposition. The German formations fighting the French were for the most part well-led, battle-tested units with the will to fight.
This is not the case with the Russian forces who will oppose the Ukrainian partisans. Last fall, the Russians proved adequate in their fighting retreat in the Kherson sector. A few weeks before that though, they were routed east and south of Kharkiv. Even at their best, the Russians were nowhere near as efficient as their German counterparts were 78 years before them.
Modern weaponry like Stingers and Javelins may give Ukrainian special operations forces and partisans an edge the French Resistance lacked. But the biggest variable will be the capability of the forces they will contend with: how hard and how effectively the Russians fight. That will be tested when Ukraine breaks through a sector of Russian front this Spring, and the special operators and partisans currently behind the lines join the fight in full force.
Tony G
“In Vuhledar Russians continue to use the same insane and useless “tactic” of rushing over open field against Ukrainian defense lines and minefields, just to trash their remaining vehicles and to crawl back to their lines. They don’t learn.” I don’t pretend to know much about military history, but wasn’t the last military force to use this “tactic” the Imperial Japanese Army with their banzai charges? And didn’t they abandon this tactic by 1944 because they realized that it was insane? Does the Russian Army have any competent officers at this point?
Another Scott
@Jay: The Administration has been pretty clear that they’re trying to prevent it from moving beyond consideration to reality.
Cheers,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kent: As many have said, “partisan/guerrilla” warfare cover a wide range of activities from low intensity to high intensity. The French/Dutch Resistance engaged low intensity warfare of sabotage & intelligence gathering. It is always difficult to quantify the impact from such low intensity activities. However, warfare is all about statistics, & anything that increases the friction for enemy operations is helpful, & victory is born from hundred of factors that increased the friction for the enemy while reducing it for your own side.
The Soviet partisans on the Eastern Front (particularly out of the Pripyat Marshes) fought at higher intensity, & caused greater disruption of German operations in some areas.
At the higher end of “partisan” warfare are Tito’s army in Yugoslavia & the Chinese Communist forces behind the Japanese front lines. The forces fielded large regular formations on top of vast irregular troops. They fought pitched battle up to regiment or brigade sizes (sometimes divisions). (Of course they fought battles of maneuver, & avoided positional warfare if at all possible.) They fought from liberated areas & fought in contested areas, & constantly sought to ex both by extending operations into occupied areas. Their value came in the form of contesting & denying the occupying forces the control & exploitation of territories & their associated economies, they were actually tying down significant enemy troops.
Tito received a lot of material support than Mao (whose isolated base areas & partisan zones saw no supplies from the KMT, the U.S. or the USSR), so the former’s kinetic activities increased as the war went on while the latter decreased. After the U.S. entry into the Pacific War, especially after Midway, both the CCP & the KMT started to preserve their forces & materiale for the inevitable civil war that was to follow. The KMT still fought vigorously to reopen a land supply corridor through Burma & against Japanese offensives (though w/ inconsistent effectiveness, see Ichi-Go). The CCP vigorous expanded the territories & populations under its control, at the expense of the increasing demoralized IJA occupiers & puppet governments, eroding the latter’s control to large cities & townships & main transportation arteries in between. In 1945, it was not unusual for starved IJA garrisons in outlying cities/townships to trade arms & munitions to the Communist forces controlling the surrounding countryside, in exchange for subsistence level of food supplies.
The exploits of the Chinese Communists during the Anti-Japanese War is not well known in the West. Much of the traditional Western historiography on the China Theater (to the extent there is one) was biased toward the KMT perspective, which tended to denigrate the Communist effort. Likewise, the CCP historiography/propaganda tended to denigrate the role of the KMT in the front lines (at least until the late 80s). Both tended to greatly exaggerate their roles, while deemphasizing the fact that China’s ultimate victory in Ww II came as the result of the (mainly) U.S. victory over Imperial Japan in the Pacific. By the same token, Western histories of WW II tend to dismiss the efforts of both the KMT & the CCP, ignoring the fact that China had been waging high intensity warfare against the encroaching IJA since 1931, & especially since 1937, w/ only limited assistance 1st from Nazi Germany & the from the USSR (which stopped after the USSR signed a non-aggression treaty w/ Imperial Japan in 1940). Substantial Western aid did not come until after Pearl Harbor. In terms of industrial capacity, in 1937 China was as badly outmatched by Imperial Japan as Imperial Japan was by the U.S. in 1942.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
History is not a great guide here.
Ukraine has long-range precision guided munitions, and so partisans can spot/geolocate high-value targets, report them through ordinary encrypted communications mechanisms, and perhaps subsequently observe/confirm the destruction of those targets.
The riskiest equipment involved is binoculars/spotting scopes, though phones best be solidly secured and/or kept clean of incriminating information. Also, opsec/comsec mistakes can be fatal.
japa21
Just wanted to make the obvious point that based on this post, it is obvious that not all Russians are bad people and agree with Putin. For all those that have said otherwise.
Kent
The other difference that occurs to me is that the composition of the occupying army is dramatically different.
In France, Germany had something north of a million troops engaged in occupying half the country (the other half was Vichy) and who were not engaged in combat until after D-Day. That is a lot of troops to spread out and control the population plus all the Gestapo and other paramilitary forces.
By contrast, Russia has what? 300,000 troops total in Ukraine and the vast majority are combat troops and combat support troops on the front lines, not occupying forces guarding every street corner in every city. I’m sure Russia has lots of other police and paramilitary operatives involved in occupation. But their numbers don’t remotely stack up to what the Germans had. So it might well be easier for Ukrainian resistance to operate. And with modern satellite and cell communications, easier to coordinate than during WW2 when radios were big and heavy and easy to triangulate.
kalakal
@Kent: Maybe the classic example is the Napoleonic Peninsular War which gave us the word Guerilla. It was said that “The French only ruled the ground on which the shadows of their bayonets fell”. The regular Spanish Army was hopeless but the Guerillas ensured that for the French “Large armies starved, small armies were defeated” . They indirectly were of great help to Wellington as he chopped up the French forces in Spain. Known as the Spanish Ulcer the Peninsular War is reckoned to have inflicted 1/2 a million casualties on Napoleons army over 5 years
Adam L Silverman
@Sebastian: I have your email. I will get back to you in a day or so. Things have been a bit busy here.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
Something that is often missed in these types of questions/answers is that it wasn’t any one person/resistance group that made a huge difference it was all of them together, often unknown to each other. Wars are seldom won on one point/action, they are won by consistent and often small details/actions that work against the tide but add up to significant resistance to overcome an enemy.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: It certainly means that Burns is not likely referring to the alleged Bingo deal to supply Russia w/ suicide drones.
However, if the CIA & western intelligence is coming from the Russian side of the discussion, then they are likely seeing things through the lens of possible Russian wishful thinking. Furthermore, the CIA used to have a network of informants burrowed deeply into the apparatus supporting the central leadership, taking advantage of massive corruption, collective leadership & factional infighting. That network was rolled up in 2010, there is no indication if & to what extent it might have been reconstituted. We have seen reporting that such penetration is extremely difficult under Xi’s more centralized authority, post anti-corruption campaign, & heightened geopolitical rivalry.
There is the suggestion floating around that China has assessed that there is no possibility of Putin winning, & is looking at providing Russia w/ substantial qty. of munitions/drones/comms gear to force a stalemate, then ceasefire & negotiated settlement. However, that is a level of risk taking we have not observed from the CCP regime or from Xi, certainly not in an area far from Chinese borders & where China for not have a direct stake. It is also unlikely to be effective, considering that the Russian military faces equally daunting challenges in dearth of useful personnel & poor command & control.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: I am not sure that Congress Party would be doing anything differently here.
NutmegAgain
@YY_Sima Qian: A few people knew a little bit … My father was in a group that flew the Hump in WWII (India up over the Himalayas into China. Principally supplies for the KMT.)
His take was that the KMT were caching away a good percentage of the stuff the USAAC flew over, against the time they would use it fighting the Communists. I don’t know if that was GI common wisdom, or an opinion he formed later. After the war he became a historian, studying Russian military history (17th-19th c.). Alas, he’s been gone a long time.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia was definitively one of the most effective and feared movements.
YY_Sima Qian
@NutmegAgain: I remember you mentioning it before. It was a good take. Chiang Kai-Shek tried hard to prevent any US supplies reaching the Communist. Eventually the US Army & State Dept. sent the Dixie Mission to the CCP stronghold at Yan’an. They recommended supplying the Communist, precisely w/ the precedent of Tito in mind. During the McCarthy era, every member of the Dixie Mission was run out of USG.
Ksmiami
@Jay: and that’s why Russia needs to be disbanded and reorganized- it can’t continue as is.
Uncle Cosmo
My usually-marginally-informed guess is that the revisionism these days is in part a long-delayed reaction to a statement de Gaulle made right after WW2 to the effect that all the French resisted the German occupation. Utterly untrue – there was a merde-tonne of collaboration and anti-Semitism in the France of that period, waaaaay beyond Vichy and Petain – but in hindsight probably a necessary fiction to keep the Maquis and the collaborators from tearing the Hexagon apart in a postwar civil war.
glc
@BeautifulPlumage:
Old favorite
kalakal
@Uncle Cosmo: And you’d be pretty on the ball. There was a ton of factions in the resistance which limited their effectiveness and there was a lot of collaborators.
I’m not belittling the Maquis, they took appalling risks and deserve all the praise going for their courage.
In Greece the resistance spent far more energy on fighting opposing factions than it did on fighting the Germans
Gin & Tonic
It’s late and we just got home from a concert, so maybe the full version will be for another time, but resistance and insurgency have a long and proud (even if not very militarily effective) history in Ukraine. Conditions are different now in uncountable ways, though, and the Soviet Union which crushed the post-WWII Ukrainian Insurgent Army is no longer. Kent hits on the important points above – occupying a hostile nation takes a lot of troops, and russia ain’t got ’em. And with Poland now in NATO and not the Warsaw Pact, that border looks a lot different in terms of movement of resources.
Gin & Tonic
Unrelated, I got a fundraising mailer from the International Rescue Committee. There’s a separate insert, big letters saying “CRISIS IN UKRAINE.” Ok, sez I, then I read “February 24 marks one year since the conflict in Ukraine began.” Say what? How, pray tell, did this “conflict” begin? You won’t find the words “invasion” or “russia” anywhere. I read the whole thing.
Well, that’s one way to assure they’ll never see a penny. If you’re going to fundraise on a “crisis” then it’s important to call things by their proper name.
Tomorrow I’ll send them a clear and direct letter expressing my views.
Chetan Murthy
@Gin & Tonic: I would think that there are many excellent charities working to help refugees from and in Ukraine. Like WCK, MOAS, and I’d bet I could think of a few others given a little time.
sab
@Gin & Tonic: Also too “activities”in 2014 in Crimea and Donbas never happened?
Uncle Cosmo
Ded thred, I know, but…
Communists vs restore-the-monarchists IIRC. Churchill had to pop into Athens late in the war (might’ve been on the way back from Yalta) to chivvy them both into fighting the Germans more than they fought one another. (I recall seeing a photo of that meeting, held in candlelight at IIRC the British embassy because the power was out.)
Same to some extent in Yugoslavia – Tito and the Communist Partisans on one side, Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović and the royalist Chetniks on the other. Compounded by the fact that the monarchy “Uncle Draža” wanted to restore was the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty not exactly beloved by the Croatians, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians who made up the bulk of the Yugoslav population.
Nazi reprisals that massacred several thousand Serbs convinced Mihailović that the smartest play was to hunker down and wait for the Allies to liberate them, but meanwhile he decided the real enemy was Tito. The Brits originally backed the Chetniks, but Churchill (no lover of Communism, mind you) switched support to Tito after reports that the Partisans were effectively fighting the occupation forces while the Chetniks increasingly collaborated with Italian and German occupation forces and the fascist Ustaše running the rump state of Croatia to fight the Partisans.
kalakal
@Uncle Cosmo: Not quite ded. Yep, spot on!
Bill Arnold
This hasn’t been dropped in a Ukraine thread. Worth a read.
Interviews “with more than 30 key figures of the U.S. government and Western allied response.”
‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine – A first-ever oral history of how top U.S. and Western officials saw the warning signs of a European land war, their frantic attempts to stop it — and the moment Putin actually crossed the border. (Politico, GARRETT M. GRAFF, ERIN BANCO, LARA SELIGMAN, NAHAL TOOSI and ALEXANDER WARD, 02/24/2023)
Another Scott
Galeev has a fresh thread up.
“Make Siberia Great Again!!”
Interesting – in an – there’s a 0.01% chance of it happening in my lifetime, and what army is going to make it happen, and what happens afterwards – thought experiment kinda way.
There are some decent replies in the thread.
Cheers,
Scott.