Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

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

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 471: I Got an Email from Patron!

War for Ukraine Day 471: I Got an Email from Patron!

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I woke up this morning to an email from Patron! Here’s what it says:

Привіт, то Патрон пише.

Я хочу особисто подякувати вам за ваше добре серце і за те, що підтримали мою ідею.

Надсилаю вам більше фото з дітками, які проходять лікування в лікарні “Охматдит”. Вони щасливі отримали бокси з подарунками, які ви для них оплатили.

Дякую за те, що ви такі добрі носики.

Щирий лизь! 👅

Патрон.

Hello, this is Patron writing to you.

I want to personally thank you for your kind heart and for supporting my idea.

I am sending you more photos of the children who are being treated at the Okhmatdyt hospital. They were happy to receive the boxes of gifts you paid for them.

Thank you for being such kind noses.

Lick!👅

Patron.

So that was a nice start to the last day of the week!

For those of you who thanked me for the updates last night after I’d racked out: thank you for the kind words and you are all most welcome!

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

We see heroism of our soldiers and are grateful for every minute of their life, which is the life of Ukraine – address of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

9 June 2023 – 20:02

Dear Ukrainians, I wish you health!

I just held a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The situation on the front line is the main focus. Reports from commanders of task forces, the Commander-in-Chief, Defense Intelligence, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Strategic Industries, Ministry of Internal Affairs.

We focus our attention on all directions where our actions are needed and where the enemy may suffer certain defeats. Our defensive actions, active actions, our gains on the front lines.

We discussed in detail the supply and distribution of ammunition, the strengthening of our artillery, and anti-aircraft defense.

I spoke today with the Prime Ministers of Japan and the Netherlands.

I briefed them on our rescue operation in the southern regions, about our urgent needs. There is a willingness to help Ukraine, and I am grateful to the partners for this. There are decisions regarding humanitarian support packages.

With the Prime Minister of Japan, we discussed preparations for the Global Peace Summit and a conference in Japan on the reconstruction and transformation of our country after hostilities.

We talked with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands about our further defense cooperation, coordinated our positions before the next Ramstein meeting. We are moving step by step in strengthening our air shield. We discussed the coalition of Patriot systems, the training of our pilots.

Today, there is a very important decision of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands regarding the Scythian gold collection. The Ukrainian collection. The collection kept in our Crimea, but which cannot yet be returned to Crimea for an obvious reason: it cannot be given to the occupier, the robber.

Of course, it will be in Crimea, when the Ukrainian flag will also be in Crimea.

Actually, the highest court of the Netherlands confirmed this logic. And this is another proof that the Dutch people, the Dutch society and the state really know how to be leaders in defending the rule of law and the values of civilization.

I thank everyone who fought for this decision, our team at the Ministry of Justice that worked for this result. We will protect justice step by step.

Today, there is also a new security support package from the United States for over $2 billion. Missiles for Patriots and other air defense systems, strengthening our defenses on the ground, enhancing the strength of all our soldiers. Thank you, Mr. President Biden, thank you to both parties of Congress and to all Americans who want freedom to win as much as Ukrainians do.

Of course, during the day I receive reports about the rescue operation in Kherson region and Mykolaiv region, about the state of the Kakhovka reservoir – in fact, its remains.

An enormous amount of challenges. But we are working to overcome them at all possible levels. And the main thing is that now there is a public potential to do it.

Caring for each other, working in unity, protecting people and life. These are our principles, the principles of struggling Ukraine. They, our principles, are now 100 percent effective. And I am sure: no matter how difficult it may be, we will overcome the consequences of this disaster and all Russian evil.

I thank everyone in the world who is already helping and who is asking Ukraine how to help. I’m thankful to everyone who is already participating in the rescue operation, who is helping people as best they can. Help people, animals, all living things. I also thank all those who encourage international organizations, foreign leaders, and other states to see what happened and call things by their names. Russian terrorists must be held accountable for everything they have done.

And separately – for our soldiers, for all those who are in particularly tough battles these days.

We see your heroism, and we are grateful to you for every minute of your life – a life that is truly the life of Ukraine. Because Ukraine is as free as you, our soldiers, are strong. Ukraine is defended as much as you, our soldiers, are effective.

Everyone who is fighting now is a fighting Ukraine. Thank you for this! Glory to all who fight and work for our country!

Glory to Ukraine!

The Netherlands step up!

Here’s the full text of President Rutte’s tweet:

The consequences of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the Ukrainian region of Kherson are enormous. @LSchreinemacher and I just spoke to President @ZelenskyyUa, assuring him of the Netherlands’ assistance wherever it is needed. We will be providing water pump installations, and
@KNBRD rescue boats will be made available for emergency assistance and evacuation. We will continue to stand by Ukraine.

And here’s the full text of Minister Reznikov’s tweet:

The free world continues investing in the #UArmy and Ukraine’s victory. We can win this war and restore peace in Europe. Weapons, ammo, and equipment bring us close to this goal. Thank you to @SecDefLloyd J. Austin III and the American people for another package of security assistance!

Late last night I saw mention that NORSAR, a Norwegian seismic detection agency, had stated they had detected an explosion at the Kakhovka dam on their monitors that aligns with when the dam would have been blown up. I decided to wait and see what today brought. Here’s what they’ve concluded:

Here’s their write up:

Data from regional seismic stations show clear signals on Tuesday 6 June at 2:54 local time (01:54 Norwegian time). Time and location (coordinates: 46.7776, 33.37) coincide with reports in the media about the collapse of the Kakhovka dam. The signals indicate that there was an explosion.

The magnitude estimate is between 1 and 2.

The figure below shows signals from the Bukovina (BURAR) seismic array, a station that is approximately 620 km from the dam.

UPDATE:

Based on new analysis, we have also observed weak signals from an earlier seismic event from approximately 02:35 (local time in Ukraine) originating from the direction of the Kakhovka Dam.

 

Uman, Cherkasy:

Huliapole, Zaporizhzhia:

Zviahel, Zhytomyr

Oleshky:

Hola Prystan:

Kherson:

Jane Lytvynenko and her colleagues at The Wall Street Journal have produced and WSJ has published/posted a new documentary on Wagner PMC:

South Central Russia:

Getting a little exercise at HIMARS O’Clock!

United24 is running a lifeboats for Ukraine fundraiser:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

@patron__dsns

♬ безсоння – 🧿

There’s no caption to machine translate, but the song chosen is Insomnia.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    You may notice in the photos and dispatches from the flooded areas the total absence of any UN agency or the Red Cross.

    It is hard to convey the contempt and derision Ukrainians have for those bodies right now.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    God, that dog rescue video!! The sound of animals scared or in pain just eviscerates my heart every time. Same with the looks on the faces of the people being evacuated through such terrifying paths. The amount of nationwide collective trauma that is being inflicted is too immense to even quantify, especially considering there’s no way to know when the cause of it will end.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  6. 6.

    Dan B

    It was hard watching the young guy who caught the water bottle explaining calmly how they finally went to the neighbor’s attic.  Now they will likely lose their home.

  7. 7.

    Alison Rose

    @Gin & Tonic: I saw that a UN official was defending their “response” (such as it is), because of course. Orgs like that almost never seem to think criticism of them is valid, even when the facts are pretty clear. He seemed to basically call Zelenskyy (who of course was just on the ground there) a liar, not directly but implicitly, insisting that UN workers are totally all over the place right this minute. If that were true, the Ukrainian government would be praising them.

  9. 9.

    mvr

    Thanks for this update and the many previous.  Usually I don’t have much useful to say in response but I do appreciate having them and the work that goes into them.

  11. 11.

    Jay

    Went looking for it, couldn’t find it. Fuck Elon Musk.

    Photo’s of UN vehicles tagged by taggers from UN to Useless. Not just Ukraine.

  12. 12.

    japa21

    So apparently all sides of the political spectrum are now united against the UN, even if for totally different reasons.

  13. 13.

    Dan B

    Adam;  Congratulations on your letter from Patron.  He (handlers) probably have no idea of the wonderful effort you put towards covering events in Ukraine.

  14. 14.

    Anonymous At Work

    Is there something the US Army Corps of Engineers can do to assist in aftermath of dam destruction?  Or is there an international equivalent that can be used to get into the area and do what it can to start cleaning, detoxifying, etc.?  I hate the idea of Ukraine not only bearing the cost of the clean-up but having to delay until combat operations have left hte area AND the area has been swept for mines, etc.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dan B: I’m sure they have no idea and I’m also sure it is a standardized response. But it was nice to wake up to.

  16. 16.

    NutmegAgain

    So much here! Thanks for additional fundraising links. The rescue org that I do stuff for is currently full to the gills, and my current foster monster (OK, massively cute pupper) paid his visit to the “tutoring” shop today. So animals who need stuff are on my mind. And then again the hideousness of Russians attacking the rescuers is just beyond everything. I have no words. There’s another video floating around of a 93 yo man who survived WWII, has so far survived the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and was injured (but OK) while being rescued from the flood waters. As for the UN and the ICRC, well, obviously, fuck them. I will be super discriminating with my donations in future

    eta–Adam, even getting an auto-response from a superstar like Patron is pretty glamorous! And well deserved, as are all the thank-yous, along with mine.

  20. 20.

    Anonymous At Work

    Reports are showing offensive-like actions in a few areas like Vuldehar, Bakhmut, etc.  Any plan behind it or is the plan to break-through first and then pour through the gap?  Against an enemy with sizable fixed artillery but not much else, how well do those ideas work?

  21. 21.

    Maxim

    I got the email from Patron too. So nice to see, when most of the news from Ukraine makes my heart ache.

    Thank you, Adam, as always.

  23. 23.

    trollhattan

    @Anonymous At Work: Believe they’ll probe in numerous locations across the enormous frontier, presumably in a planned sequence, and then exploit weaknesses with forces held in reserve. It’s the ultimate cat-and-mouse and as the images of recently destroyed Ukrainian armor demonstrate, some of these probes will not go well because many of the Russian defenses are stout and well equipped.

  24. 24.

    Bill Arnold

    Looks like the dam collapse/explosion timeline still isn’t fully publicly sorted out.
    The Russian propagandists/apologists are/will be trying to fend off at least 6 lines of evidence/priors pointing to demolition by Russia:
    (1) Reports of explosions by locals.
    (2) Reports in 2022(?) about Russian placement of demolition charges in the dam.
    (3) The data analyzed by NORSAR from sensors in Romania that are clear (to them) explosion signatures.
    (4) The reported US infrared spy satelite data. (Not released.)
    (4a) From parsing the US statements, perhaps other US intelligence as well,
    (5) The reported Ukrainian intercepts of Russian soldiers boasting about the demolition.
    (6) The extreme difficulty/risk(of getting caught) of a hypothetical covert Ukrainian op to place demolition charges inside the dam.
    (6a) The lack of evidence for sufficient external explosives delivered by e.g. artillery. (Dams are not easy to destroy this way.)

    (7) The cynics can add vigorous Russian denials plus exultation in Russian propaganda outlets.
    (8) The cynics can also note that the USSR perpetrated a similar dam demolition in WWII to slow an advance by Germans.
    (9) The cynics can also note that Russians have been all in on destroying Ukrainian infrastructure including power generation infrastructure.

    I see Aric is due-diligence keeping open the possibility of dam collapse due to overflow, high water levels and minor shelling damage. Good form.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Anonymous At Work: ​
     
    A fairly standard approach is to push all over the place to force the enemy to keep their troops in place. Then you hit them hard in a few places to try to force them to commit their reserves. If the enemy has to commit all their reserves before you’ve committed all of yours, you can then hit them somewhere they’re weak and achieve a breakthrough. The key is in choosing the earlier points of attack so you can get the enemy to commit their reserves somewhere other than where you really want to achieve your breakthrough.
    So you shouldn’t be surprised if Ukraine starts pushing in many different places, so it’s difficult at first to see where the attack is supposed to go. If you can figure out what’s going on, the Russians probably can, too, which is exactly what Ukraine is trying to avoid. If the attack is well planned, we won’t be able to figure out the real target until it’s too late for the Russians to do anything about it.

  27. 27.

    trollhattan

    @Bill Arnold: My SWAG is they envisioned less damage and then discovered to their amazement that a small waterworks failure quickly becomes a large, uncontrolled one once the force of water takes over. Like being a little bit pregnant.

    Bears repeating the reservoir was enormous and the amount of water released by the breach inevitably took on a life of its own. Kakhovka Reservoir impounds 15 million acre-feet, as much as California’s five largest reservoirs combined.

  29. 29.

    Chetan Murthy

    @trollhattan: I don’t know for sure, but I read somewhere that the reservoir behind the Kakhova dam was the size of San Francisco Bay.  Which is …. wow.

  31. 31.

    Nelle

    In 2018, I went from Odessa to Kherson (by water), then up the Dnipro to Zaporizhzhia (based there for three or four days while we traveled out to villages where our ancestors lived – in my case, to my father’s village), then up to Dnipro for a day or two, and finally on northward to Kyiv.  A beautiful river.  Some of the reservoirs felt as wide as seas.

    I struggle to comprehend the vastness of the destruction.

  32. 32.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:

    My SWAG is they envisioned less damage and then discovered to their amazement that a small waterworks failure quickly becomes a large, uncontrolled one once the force of water takes over. Like being a little bit pregnant.

    Good odds that this will become the consensus(well, most popular) theory, given only the current evidence.
    Basically, an intended engineered threat of a massive dam failure to disrupt the Ukrainian counteroffensive, that became an actual massive dam failure.

  33. 33.

    Kyle Rayner

    @trollhattan: That was the picture that formed in my head the first night we heard the news, after Maxim linked to this alleged timeline of events in the comments. It kinda stayed rattling around in my head, regardless of what everyone else has been positing.

  34. 34.

    Chetan Murthy

    A couple of nights ago, someone here mentioned how this resembled Katrina.  I’ve read that on the right (Ukraine-controlled) bank, things are somewhat under control, people are getting evacuated, etc.  On the left bank?  Ugh.  Katrina indeed.  I read a post on Reddit’s Ukraine subreddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/145n9cn/hundreds_of_dead_bodies_are_already_being_found/ ) that hundreds of dead are showing up in Oleshky alone.  It’s horrifying.

    And the world is doing nothing.  Nothing.  Ukraine is alone dealing with this.  As someone in Ukraine pointed out, when other natural disasters happened, Ukrainian rescue teams boarded planes, boats, trains, and got there to help.  This time?  Crickets.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chetan Murthy: This isn’t a natural disaster.  It is a war crime.  It is also in the middle of a war zone.  People and organizations that might be willing to risk their lives to help people in the case of a natural disaster may not want to do that kind of thing while also being shot at.

  36. 36.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: There’s always an excuse for why nothing can be done.  Round up all the fucking oligarchs and their children, strip ’em of every asset, every house, every stock, every company, and send ’em back to Russia.  Impound every ship that ever docked in Russia since the war started.  Every goddamn one.  Keep going until Putin buckles.

  37. 37.

    bjacques

    Reading Zelenskyy’s comments about Dutch aid, I’m glad that government’s doing at least one thing right. I support the Socialist Party, but—bless ‘em—they’ve been hapless for years now.

    And if the High Court finally found in favor of Ukraine on the Scythian gold, that’s very welcome news. It had a few more weeks to go at the antiquities museum (Allard Pierson) in Amsterdam when the Little Green Men invaded in 2014, so I rushed to see it. Exquisite. Russia immediately made a play for that gold, but the museum and the Dutch government called “rot op Rusland” on that. Took years to get through the courts since Russia had the best lawyers oligarch money could buy.

  38. 38.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Roger Moore: A key enabling factor working in the UA’s favor is their interior lines of communication, channeled along their dense and highly efficient rail network. It allows them to commit reserves to any promising theatre, as well as shift forces from one theatre to another, far more quickly and efficiently than is possible for the Russians. This considerably enhances their chance to produce a breakthrough by reinforcing success, and to feed troops there for exploitation.

  40. 40.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: How do you get Putin to back off from the disaster area (so rescue workers can come in)?  You take everything he has in the West away from him, blockade his ports, cut off all access to the Western economy, force him to relent.

    Yes, I know we can’t do that, b/c we’ve got too many damn traitors in the West.  Too many people who want to continue supping at Putin’s table, getting fat off his bribes.

  41. 41.

    Geminid

    German military* commentator @tendar linked to a Reuters story this morning. It reported that Kazakhstan President Tokayev will not attend the St. Petersburg economic forum next week. This was seen as Tokayev further distancing himself from Russian President Putin. An additional factor occurred to me: maybe Tokayayev wasn’t sure he would leave St. Petersburg alive.

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