Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I really should read my own blog.

Consistently wrong since 2002

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You can’t love your country only when you win.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republicans in disarray!

You cannot shame the shameless.

Everybody saw this coming.

No one could have predicted…

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 438: Air Defense Is Active Over Kyiv

War for Ukraine Day 438: Air Defense Is Active Over Kyiv

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Russia has once again opened up over Kyiv:

Here’s the current air raid alert map for Ukraine:

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

All those who help Ukraine restore security, who put pressure on Russia – all are defenders of peace – address of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

7 May 2023 – 20:22

Dear Ukrainians, I wish you health!

This week is coming to an end – a very fruitful one for Ukraine. And these days we are actively preparing for new events in May and June. We should make this time no less fruitful both in the supply of weapons for our soldiers, and in solutions for Ukraine, in negotiations with our partners.

An important legislative initiative for our society has been prepared. Sanction decisions against the aggressor are being prepared. We are waiting for international meetings of various levels in Kyiv. We are talking to our partners about weapons that will help us do more to restore peace.

This week, many of our partners led in helping Ukraine, helping Ukrainians. From the United States to New Zealand, from the Netherlands and Belgium to Croatia. Northern European countries – Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland. I thank the partners for every decision in support of Ukraine!

We are also working out in great detail new steps to help Ukraine with our other partners, we expect them in the near future – exactly what is needed for our strength on the front lines, for the defense of our sky, for justice against terrorists and for the faster restoration of peace for the entire Ukrainian land. I will definitely inform you about those decisions that can be discussed in public.

It is very important that the world knows about every fact of Russian terror against our people, that the world talks about what the terrorist state is doing, and how we protect life. I am grateful to everyone who helps us by spreading the truth about Russian strikes and shelling, about the brutality of the occupiers, which does not stop for a day!

Endless Russian terror against Nikopol, brutal shelling of the city of Kherson and the region, strikes on the city of Kharkiv and the region, terror against villages in the border areas of Chernihiv region and Sumy region, hell in Donetsk region… Only yesterday, and only in one Russian attack on Kherson region, nine Ukrainians were killed – they were engaged in demining, restoring safety for people. My condolences to the relatives and friends of the deceased.

Security is the main goal for Russia. Both in our country and everywhere in Europe, everywhere in the free world. Destroying security, bringing death and chaos is all a terrorist state does. And everyone who helps Ukraine restore security, everyone who strengthens partnerships between countries in Europe for the sake of security, for the sake of common strength, everyone who puts pressure on the terrorist state – all are defenders of peace. I thank everyone in the world who is with Ukraine, who supports our soldiers!

Glory to all our soldiers now in battle, at combat posts, and on combat missions!

I commend the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade and the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade for the successful destruction of terrorists in Donetsk region! Thank you, warriors!

The 57th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, 93rd Mechanized Brigade. Thanks to all of you, guys, for the heroic defense of the positions, and for exemplary resistance! Good job!

There are also results worth noting in the Tavria direction, there are also teams that have something to thank for today.

Paratroopers of the 79th Air Assault Brigade and gunners of the 55th Separate Artillery Brigade Zaporizka Sich – thank you, warriors, for your courage and strength!

Fighters of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade and Marines of the 35th Separate Marine Brigade named after Rear-Admiral Mykhailo Ostrohradsky – thank you!

Thank you to each of our soldiers, thank you to each of you for every success on the battlefield!

Glory to you, Ukrainian heroes!

Glory to Ukraine!

Colonel General Syrskyi visited Bakhmut. The Ukrainian MOD’s Telegram channel has the details:

Bakhmut:

Spirne:

Poland:

The Financial Times has a very good op-ed by Martin Sandbu regarding Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts. Here are some excerpts:

A spectre haunts every discussion of Ukraine’s future among its partners: the spectre of corruption. They see it — sotto voce, for now — as an obstacle to granting Kyiv EU membership any time soon and providing serious amounts of reconstruction funding without onerous red tape.

The concerns do not come out of nowhere. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index reliably places Ukraine far down its rankings. In 2022, it came 116th. But the clue is in the name. TI measures perceptions that have not kept up with Ukraine’s change since its “Revolution of Dignity” deposed Vladimir Putin’s stooge-president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

In Kyiv last month, Oleksandr Novikov told me surveys show many more people think corruption is prevalent than report experiencing it, and the willingness to break with a culture of graft is improving. Novikov directs the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, one of several recently created bodies which include a specialised prosecutor, court and investigative bureau.

The broader judicial sector still has to be cleaned up, but anti-corruption campaigner Daria Kaleniuk told me it is going in the right direction. “There’s a lot of corruption in Ukraine, but we admit this is a problem and we are working on solving it.” The very fact that it’s being talked about, even in wartime, is a sign of health. “Nobody speaks of corruption in Belarus — or Russia.”

Nor are Ukraine’s partners entirely spotless. As one policy thinker in Kyiv told me, corruption is a woolly concept ranging from state capture to “giving your doctor a box of chocolates”. (In the NACP surveys, a sixth of respondents reported encountering corruption in the past year — but the definition spans both bribery and vaguely “using connections” to secure a public service.) In economic terms, using public power for private gain is like rent extraction or barring competitors from entering a lucrative trade. And entry barriers, rent extraction and private capture of state powers exist everywhere.

Just observe US politicians’ abject dependence on donations from American oligarchs, the funding scandals of one French president after another, Italy’s dysfunctional judicial system, Britain’s egregious Covid procurement practices and House of Lords seats for party donors, and Germany’s decades-long subordination of geopolitical policy to corporate profit opportunities in dictatorships.

I was told of Ukrainian companies trying to enter large EU countries’ markets, only to be given an unofficial list of local companies to partner with or the name of a specific law firm to retain before the bureaucratic obstacles to doing business would clear.

These practices are no excuse, but would hardly even register as corrupt among those who wring their hands over Ukraine. Yet they are as pernicious to a liberal market democracy as many of the challenges that Ukrainians, to their credit, are trying hard to address.

Much, much more at the link!

Last night in comments Damien asked:

One thing I would like to ask is whether there might be one evening before the offensive officially kicks off where you could offer a deeper dive into more of your professional opinion and assessment of where the war stands, and what you would expect for the counter-offensive?  I for one would deeply appreciate a trusted, experienced voice laying things out in a way that brings some measure of coherence to what we’re reading and seeing.

Let me break this into the two separate questions you’ve asked.

The first is where do I think the war stands now. My assessment, solely from looking at all the same open source news reporting, analysis, commentary, and think tank reports I reference here and that are available to anyone who knows what to look for and where is that a lot more is going on that appears. A lot of the reporting focuses on two things: Bakhmut and wherever Russia has bombarded Ukraine on any given day. Basically we’ve got war reporting done like local crime reporting in the US. If it bleeds it leads. Or ledes in this case. When there was a lot of activity at Vuhledar, we got a lot of reporting and social media mentions of Vuhledar. Same for Soledar. That’s why we’re seeing spot reporting about stuff going on in Kherson on the banks of the Dnipro once or twice a week. Basically what we’ve got are closeups of the leaves on specific trees, not the trees, not the forest, and not the ecosystem or biome. As such it is hard to see the bigger picture. But we have some glimpses. The US, NATO, and non-NATO allied weapons systems are finally starting to come online even if their provision is still too slow and not enough are being provided. The Ukrainian troops that have been run through intensive combined arms training in the several different NATO member states – Britain, Poland, etc – are moving back into theater and going through their final prep for whatever is going to happen once the ground dries out and mud season ends. My professional assessment is Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion looks frozen, but that it is not and it is, in reality, far more dynamic than it appears.

And this leads into my answer to Damien’s second question about what to expect from the counter-offensive. The honest answer is I expect the unexpected. Every piece of reporting we have, including interviews from President Zelenskyy and Major General Budanov, as well as complaints from “unnamed US officials” make it very, very, very clear that the Ukrainians are not telling the US much of their plans. The Ukrainians have rightly surmised that America’s exceedingly large national security sector is unwieldy and, as a result, leaks too often and too much. From official leaks on background to the mess made by Airman Teixiera. And because we’re only seeing pieces, both in the reporting and in what the Ukrainians are showing, it is impossible to know what their actual campaign plan is. General Zaluzhny, Colonel General Syrskyi, and Major General Budanov seem to have done an excellent job moving beyond the Soviet and post-Soviet legacy professional military education and training they were exposed to over the course of their careers. Almost every Ukrainian Soldier, Marine, Airman, or Territorial Defender who has signed up to fight since 2014 were never exposed to this hidebound, hierarchical, and static system. So the Ukrainians have that going for them.

The bottom line is I’m expecting the unexpected. I do not know if what the Ukrainians are planning can be executed in such a way as to end this war in 2023 or if it will just set the conditions for it to happen in 2024, but I think after the past fifteen months that Ukraine’s National Command Authority, it’s military, and the personnel in them have earned the benefit of the doubt. I think it is also important to remember that whether we like it or not the Russians are going to get a vote.

The last point I would make is that the fastest way to end this is for the US and our NATO and non-NATO allies to get the sticks out, pick up the pace of the aid we’re providing, and give the Ukrainians everything they could possibly need as fast as they can take it. You want to end the major aggressor in the global campaign to promote illiberalism and managed democracy, then make sure the Ukrainians can defeat Russia thoroughly and completely.

I’m not sure if those are satisfying answers, but they’re honest ones.

And Damien, thank you for the kind words last night. You are most welcome.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

As there are no new Patron tweets, I’m going to repost Patron’s Twitter appeal from last night:

There is no new video from Patron tonight, so here’s some adjacent material from the Ukrainian Army Cats & Dogs Twitter feed:

Open thread!

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  • Adam L Silverman
  • Albatrossity
  • Alison Rose
  • Carlo Graziani
  • Chetan Murthy
  • Feathers
  • Gin & Tonic
  • Jay
  • Jerzy Russian
  • Lyrebird
  • Manyakitty
  • Mike in DC
  • oldster
  • way2blue
  • YY_Sima Qian

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    33Comments

    1. 1.

      Jerzy Russian

      Christ almighty, the bad news keeps coming.  More bombs and drones over Ukraine, more and more shootings here, the use of cars as mass murder weapons, and so on.  When will it end?

      Reply
    2. 2.

      Lyrebird

      The honest answer is I expect the unexpected.

      Thanks as usual Adam for your unflagging work here.

      I have been wondering if you’d want to each evening remind us & include that quote you put in last week sometime from the very high-ranking woman in the Ukr military, I am sorry I am blanking on her name or title, but it was something like, “Y’all can stop with the guessing what our big counteroffensive move will be, because a. we are not planning a big move we are planning hundreds according to contingincies and b. we sure as heck are not telling you ahead of time!” Only in nice professional MoD speak.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      Albatrossity

      Clarence and Ginni Thomas have pretty much ensured that the USA has no business accusing other countries of being corrupt. And they are just the latest poster children…

      Reply
    5. 5.

      Alison Rose

      Thank you for your insight, Adam. For the reasons you mentioned, I’m perfectly fine with Ukraine not telling us and other Western countries all the details on what they’re doing or planning, because how can they trust the leaky ships and blabbermouths running around? It also strikes me as a bit odd that people think we ought to be privy to every bit of info we want. Why on Earth? They don’t need to earn the aid by giving us answers. This isn’t the Bridge of Death in Holy Grail or something.

      Also too, this was an exquisite way to put it:

      Basically what we’ve got are closeups of the leaves on specific trees, not the trees, not the forest, and not the ecosystem or biome.

      The former-English-professor’s-assistant in me says kudos for that line.

      I am very not shocked by the prigozhin switcheroo. The orc could down a whole bottle of Metamucil and still be full of shit.

      Olena Zelenska and PM Shmyhal visited Ukrainian troops training in the UK. (First half is just some clips of them with music, second has comments from Olena.)

      Thank you as always, Adam.

      Reply
    6. 6.

      Mike in DC

      I would think that making the Russian position much more difficult and the Ukrainian position a bit easier would be kind of a minimal goal here.  I’m perfectly fine with a two step invader removal process, with the follow up happening next summer.

      Reply
    9. 9.

      oldster

      I can predict what Zaluzhny and Budanov are going to do, in roughly the same way that I can predict what Magnus Carlsen is going to do on his next move.

      The trouble is, that if I can think of it, then he has already thought of it, *plus* the next five moves that I have not thought about. And he’ll make a different move instead. Or he may make the same move, but for reasons that I cannot fathom.

      The fact is, Zaluzhny and Budanov have simply shown themselves to be much better chess-players than I am, time and time again. And much better chess-players than the Russians are.

      I wish them best luck on the counter-offensive. I suspect it has already started. The Russians will not see it for some time. And then it will be too late.

      Reply
    12. 12.

      Gin & Tonic

      On that Polish APC training video – the Polish word “rosomak” or its Ukrainian equivalent “rosomakha” mean “wolverine.”

      Reply
    13. 13.

      Lyrebird

      @Chetan Murthy: ​  Yes!! Thanks!!and…@Adam L Silverman​  has the confirmation. ETA: Further thanks! Strength to you!
      Here’s the interview. I did a double-take at the source, because there happens to be another news org called “Pravda” at another location, but this’ one’s Ukrainian:

      “We shouldn’t publicly boil down the counteroffensive to particular large-scale advances, because we are talking about the strategic goal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to free all our territories. We aim at freeing our territory and stopping the enemy in their advances.
      That is, to speak of the counteroffensive in such a narrow manner is not right. It is a colossal variety of actions and measures done by the Armed Forces…
      You have to understand that the Armed Forces of Ukraine today are not prepared for a particular line of action, but rather for a full-scale liberation of our territory, not just a counteroffensive…​

      Reply
    15. 15.

      Chetan Murthy

      @YY_Sima Qian: I have read credible accounts that this is just the US & West signaling to the Global South that we’re not warmongers, we really do want peace.  Etc, etc.

      Reply
    18. 18.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Chetan Murthy: I’ve read that, & have speculated along those lines myself. However, such messaging would be more effective coming directly from SecState Blinken, von der Leyen, or Charles Michel, rather than through anonymous leaks to the press.

      & the WJ article is the 1st time I am hearing European officials suggesting that “freezing” the conflict is a desirable outcome, which is a terrible message to convey at this moment. We should only be discussing “freezing” the conflict if the Ukrainians believe it is in their interest to do so.

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Jay: Thanks for posting heads-up notices for Perun’s YT presentations. They are time-consuming deep dives, but worth the effort. He’s very knowledgable, yet very careful to distinguish what is known and understood from what is not, a rare and valuable trait among those who trade on their professional qualifications to comment on the war.

      Reply
    20. 20.

      Chetan Murthy

      @YY_Sima Qian: okay, i’ll express my own hopes and beliefs. I would hope that by using deniable cutouts to push this message, what the Biden administration is doing is leaving breadcrumbs for people in the global south to believe that the US wants peace, while making sure that all official actionssupport Ukraine.Frankly, I think peace comes one Russia is beaten into a pulp and not before. But unfortunately there seem to be a lot of lily liver assholes in the global south who think differently. Oh well.

      Reply
    21. 21.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Carlo Graziani: It is not clear Perun has any professional qualifications, certainly does not trade on them if he does. Which is all the more remarkable given how many of people w/ professional qualifications have acted (treating Ukraine as another grift opportunity). His is some of the highest quality analysis (& easily digestible, too!) out there.

      Reply
    23. 23.

      Carlo Graziani

      @YY_Sima Qian: Right before the upcoming offensive scrambles everything is the silly season for loose talk. Nothing anyone say now means anything, because of the current imponderables that will become ponderable in late June or July, and the new reality by August or September. Then the concept of  “freezing” the conflict will have context and meaning. At the moment it’s just politicians, senior officers, and civil servants issuing CO2 in the presence of whichever journalists are buying them drinks.

      Reply
    26. 26.

      Carlo Graziani

      Next week, temperatures in high-60F—mid 70F (18C-24C), both for Kupyansk and Zaporizhzhia. Minor rain, but by-and-large the air should be steadily sucking the moisture out of the ground. Shouldn’t be long now.

      Reply
    30. 30.

      way2blue

      @oldster:

      I dearly hope lots more is happening out of public view.  Ukraine keeping their cards close to the chest is reassuring.  Slava Ukraini.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      Carlo Graziani

      Every piece of reporting we have, including interviews from President Zelenskyy and Major General Budanov, as well as complaints from “unnamed US officials” make it very, very, very clear that the Ukrainians are not telling the US much of their plans.

      In my opinion, this is unlikely to be true. Among the most valuable forms of assistance that the US can offer Ukraine is large-scale wargaming capability—in the run-up to the offensive it’s probably worth more than Patriot batteries. In February or March, there were some media reports that such joint games were in progress. This would mean that there are people in DOD who have a pretty good idea of the options that Ukraine is looking at, and of their chances of success.

      However, it is equally likely that this information is very closely held, and that anyone who breathes a word of game readouts to a journalist can be certain of taking up residence in Fort Leavenworth very soon thereafter.

      Reply
    32. 32.

      Feathers

      Reading tonight’s update, I couldn’t help but thinking that of all the sci-fi and cyberpunk I’ve read and watched, none of it prepared me for one of the defining visuals of 21st century warfare being pictures of troops with puppies they’ve rescued.

      Reply

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