Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

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

“Squeaker” McCarthy

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The willow is too close to the house.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

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

Let there be snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I really should read my own blog.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

After roe, women are no longer free.

He really is that stupid.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 520: De Oppresso Libor

War for Ukraine Day 520: De Oppresso Libor

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Russia’s target today was Dnipro:

At least 9 civilians were injured as a result of yet another missile attack on the city of Dnipro. Among them are two children and a 77-year-old woman. The “high-precision” weapon used by russian terrorists hit an apartment building this time. Since this building was recently constructed, most of the apartments were not yet occupied, and thankfully human lives were saved as a result.

The reason Russia wanted to strike the State Security Services is that the latter have been doing a number on Russian military infrastructure in occupied Crimea over the last several weeks.

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

We are preparing quite important international decisions for Ukraine, for our warriors – address of President of Ukraine

28 July 2023 – 18:48

Dear Ukrainians, I wish you good health!

Today was an important and good day. In the morning on the occasion of Statehood Day, I had the honor to congratulate and award our defenders. Gold Stars to Heroes of Ukraine, Crosses of Combat Merit, orders of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, orders For Courage… I also had the honor of presenting honored marks of distinction to combat brigades and border units. Happy that we have such warriors.

I also handed over passports of citizens of Ukraine to our young boys and girls. Among them are the children of our soldiers, the children of our fallen heroes… Children. The state can and should open absolutely all opportunities for them to live in a dignified, civilized, and safe way. Live freely! For each new generation of Ukrainian men and women. And I really believe in these new generations, in our children. And I am grateful to them for their faith in Ukraine.

An important international meeting took place today. The Prime Minister of Qatar was in Kyiv – very fruitful negotiations. Most importantly, Qatar will be with us in implementing the Peace Formula, joins joint global efforts. We agreed on cooperation for the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. We discussed the situation surrounding the Black Sea Grain Initiative – it is very important that there are no shortages and crises provoked by Russia on the world food market. It is a matter of global stability. Thanks to Qatar for the responsible position.

And one more. Our international experts are preparing quite weighty decisions for Ukraine, for our warriors. We are doing our best now, we are doing it not publicly – so that the results of our warriors, which everyone will see, can also become the best.

I thank everyone who helps strengthen Ukraine! Thanks to everyone who is in battle now!

Congratulations again on the Day of Ukrainian Statehood and the Day of Christianization of Kyivan Rus!

Glory to Ukraine!

De Oppresso Libor!

Here’s an update on Ukrainian fencer Olha Kharlan:

Staromaiorske, Donetsk Oblast:

 

Taganrog, Russia:

 

Here’s the video with English subtitles turned on.

And the description from below the video:

“You came here to prison, you are nobody here, you will do what we say,” – this is how the Russians greeted two Ukrainian teenagers: 17-year-old Masha and 18-year-old Nastya from the Kherson region. The occupiers invited them to “take a vacation” in occupied Crimea, where the girls were forced to sing the Russian national anthem and pressured to become Russian citizens. At another facility, they were kept in cold rooms and threatened to be sent “to the pit,” where the other teenagers were allegedly tortured. See what the girls endured, how they kept their spirits up, and how they escaped in Slidstvo.Info’s first documentary film since the beginning of the Ukrainian war. Become a sponsor of this channel:  / @slidstvoinfo  

For you logistics aficionados, The Financial Times has reporting about the North Korean rockets the Ukrainians are using.

Ukrainian artillery crews have been firing rockets made in North Korea against Russian positions, turning Pyongyang’s munitions against the invasion forces of its ally President Vladimir Putin.

The North Korean arms, whose use by Ukraine has not been previously reported, were shown to the Financial Times by troops operating Soviet-era Grad multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) near the devastated city of Bakhmut.

The origins of Ukraine’s armoury highlight how Europe’s biggest land conflict since the second world war has become a mixed-up cauldron for generations of the world’s military equipment, ranging from ageing Soviet kit to modern precision weapons.

Ruslan, a Ukrainian artillery commander, said the North Korean munitions were not favoured by his troops because of their relatively high dud rate, with many known to misfire or fail to explode. Most were manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s, according to their markings.

One Ukrainian Grad unit member warned the FT not to get too close to the rocket launcher when the crew fired the North Korean munitions because “they are very unreliable and do crazy things sometimes”.

The gunners were among artillery units supporting Ukraine’s assault on Russian forces on the northern and southern flanks of Bakhmut, which is in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Journalists for Getty Images and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty photographed Ukrainian forces in possession of North Korean munitions in the southern Zaporizhzhia region in late June and earlier this month but did not identify them as being from North Korea.

The Ukrainian soldiers said the rockets had been “seized” from a ship by a “friendly” country before being delivered to Ukraine. They declined to provide further details.

Ukraine’s defence ministry suggested the rockets were taken from Russian forces. “We capture their tanks, we capture their equipment and it is very possible that this is also the result of the Ukrainian army successfully conducting a military operation,” said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister.

“Russia has been shopping around for different types of munitions in all kinds of tyrannies, including North Korea and Iran,” he added.

More at the link!

I suppose it all depends by what “making its way into the Russian army” means.

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    Thanks for the update, Adam. Fuckkin Russians – they just showing their colors boldly this whole war.

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    I saw a report that North Korea has supplied Russia with few munitions thus far. They may have already shipped some of their excess to Iran, years ago.

    That could have been the first leg of the journey taken by the rockets the Ukrainians are using. There were reports of the US intercepting at least one ship loaded with munitions sent from Iran to the Houthi government in Yemen.

    The Houthis and their Saudi-backed opponents seem to be observing the ceasefire brokered this spring by Oman. So that’s some good news. Libya seems to have stayed quiet as well. Neither conflict looks likely to be resolved anytime soon,  but sometimes a frozen conflict is not that bad a thing.

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose

    The occupiers invited them to “take a vacation” in occupied Crimea, where the girls were forced to sing the Russian national anthem and pressured to become Russian citizens. At another facility, they were kept in cold rooms and threatened to be sent “to the pit,” where the other teenagers were allegedly tortured.

    JFC. Big tough men, doing this to teenage girls. And this is the side a number of elected GOPers wanna be on. They care so much about a hypothetical teen cis girl maybe possibly losing a sporting event to a trans girl, but they don’t give a single shit about actual teen girls being kidnapped and tortured by an army of psychopaths commanded by evil incarnate.

    Video of Zelenskyy handing out the passports to the kids.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The utter scum that are the tankies are oblivious to the fate of Ukrainian children kidnapped and deported to the “New White Homeland”.

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    I remember reading that the influence of Instagram but especially TikTok has caused kids all around the world to take on a sort of “upper-middle-class youth” mentality and culture, so that everywhere in the world, the same memes, fashion, culture, are taking hold.  [Don’t wanna go to far with that, but] It sure seems like Ukrainian youth are remarkably like American youth.  I mean, these young soldiers don’t seem alien or foreign in any real sense.  Maybe their grandparents seem from a foreign country, but the 15-40 demographic?  Nah, they’d fit in on any American street with no changes and accent and language.

    It’s interesting.

  16. 16.

    Bill Arnold

    @japa21:

    Always interesting when you can use a sacr3ed religious holiday to say FU to Putin.

    There are many many ways to say FU to Putin, and to the Russian Federation.

  17. 17.

    The Pale Scot

    One of Russia’s most notorious cannibals

    WTF? There’s a whole bunch of Russian cannibals on the loose?

    When I went to Twitter to see what was going on in Ukraine, all of my follows (Intel Crab, Darth Putin, Rob Lee, etc) had no or very few current posts, they are all year old. I thought Musk had gotten a phone call from Putiput offering a diamond mine or something. The sports blog I read said Twitters all fuck up right now so that’s nice. I guess Adam seems to not have this problem

  20. 20.

    Jay

    @The Pale Scot:

    Bunch of “meat cubes” being shipped back from Ukraine.

    Bσɳƙƚαʋισυʂ 🐺 NAFO Aɠҽɳƚ
    @Anonymo64294991
    Jul 22
    Replying to @blackintheempir
    Remember when ruZZia had 240,000 men that weren’t meat cubes on a pallet?

  21. 21.

    karen marie

    @Another Scott: I no longer have an account there and rarely click through but a change I noticed yesterday/today from last week/week before last is a complete absence of visible replies. Very surprising given the topical nature of the tweets.  I assumed it was a “you can’t see replies because you don’t have an account” thing.

    Whatever.

    I feel really gross and dirty clicking through.  My goal is to never click through to that cesspool again.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @The Pale Scot: @Another Scott: @Jay: @karen marie: If you’re going to Nitter, you may have to try a few different instances/servers until you find one that is working. Every time Musk has them screw around with Twitter’s code it takes a while for Nitter to catch up. As far as I can tell the extension available in the Chrome store has not kept up, so you’ll have to do it the hard way. For some accounts, everything from the past 20 to 40 tweets is showing up in the “Tweets” category for the given account. For others, you get stuff from 2022 or 2021. You’ll need to click on “Tweets and Replies” and that should allow you to see all the recent stuff.

  27. 27.

    Hangö Kex

    Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was photographed in St Petersburg during this week’s Africa-Russia summit.

    He was seen shaking hands with Ambassador Freddy Mapouka, a presidential advisor in the Central African Republic (CAR).

    The image was posted on Facebook by Dmitri Syty, who reportedly manages Wagner’s operations in CAR.

    It is the first confirmed sighting of Mr Prigozhin in Russia since Wagner’s failed mutiny in June.

    …

    In St Petersburg, Prigozhin was also photographed with the head of Afrique Media, a Cameroon-based pro-Russian TV outlet, where he has been interviewed at least three times this year.

    …

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66333403

  28. 28.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Adam L Silverman: so the same glitch from a week ago where every timeline was messed up and you needed to use tweets + replies to see anyone’s current tweets.

    Interesting. Concerning. Looking into it

  29. 29.

    Steppanhammer

    Very, very happy to get a swift and decisive statement from the IOC. The FIE’s reversal statement is pretty mealy mouthed CYA stuff, but pleased with the effective result. When you’re making the IOC look swift and unambiguously morally correct, you’ve really screwed up.

    Also, it’s worse than it already looked:

    Source wishing to remain anonymous confirmed the meeting covered by Pianeta Scherma.
    “Kharlan had communicated her decision to the officials of the FIE – International Fencing Federation, but pointed out her desire not to shake hands with opponent at the end of the match, in order to understand what this would entail, and what impact it would have on her World Championship and on that of the Ukrainian Women’s Sabre Team. From leaders of the FIE she received reassurances on the possibility of greeting by offering the blade, as happened during the pandemic.”

    Kharlan was set up. I have seen another source saying she spoke with not just FIE leaders but the president directly.

    Another fun factoid: the Russian in Smirnova’s coaching box?

    Nobody’s ever seen him coach before.

    This is not that large a sport and, at the international level, very well connected. Everybody knows who everybody is, especially the coaches, and this comment is coming from a long time national coach. And this is at the World Championships?

    Unfortunately, this is not the first Russian corruption instigated fencing drama, and probably won’t be the last – but if only all of Ukraine’s problems were of such a scale. =/

  30. 30.

    Hangö Kex

    Also, YLE reports Prigozhin offering Wagner’s help to the coup in Niger (based of AFP/AP, in Finnish; tried to find a corresponding article in English on BBC and found the one in #27 which seemed worth sharing in its own right).

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Hangö Kex: It sounds like there are rivalries among the Nigeran armed forces, so Wagner might pick a side there. The US has a military presence in the country including 3 drone bases (I think one of them is CIA). So this could get interesting.

  33. 33.

    patrick II

    In the end I think the goal o of Prigozion’s rebellion was to get himself unentangled from Ukraine and back to more profitable benlives.

  34. 34.

    Hangö Kex

    @Geminid: Indeed:

    The U.S. has operated drones out of a base it constructed in Niger’s remote north as part of counterterrorism efforts in the vast Sahel. The fate of that base and other U.S. operational sites in the country after this week’s coup isn’t immediately known.

    “It is too soon to speculate on any potential future actions or activities,” a spokesman with the U.S. Africa Command, John Manley, said in an email. He said approximately 1,100 U.S. personnel are in Niger.

    https://apnews.com/article/what-to-know-niger-attempted-coup-security-a229a854e625eb8e15cd2a8c65048bd1

    This AP article also quotes Prigozhin who appears to side with the coup. The BBC article above makes it plain that he is still in pretty good standing (or at least tolerated) in Russia despite the recent mutiny.

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Hangö Kex: Syti is not running things, he’s senior, but you want Mikhail Potepkin. The latter is the guy coordinating everything across the Sahel.

    One of Wagner’s remaining official Telegram channels, Orchestra Wagner, claimed credit for the coup yesterday. Stated clearly it was planned in coordination with the Malian junta, which is controlled by Wagner’s front COSI run by Alexander Ivanov, who is in CAR. Among his other duties, Syti translates for Ivanov.

  38. 38.

    Hangö Kex

    @Adam L Silverman: It seems Prigozhin has not been easy to sideline although there was ample reason to do it even before the mutiny. Could be that these lieutenants of his are fiercely loyal and they themselves can’t be sidelined without compromising the foreign operations they run?

  40. 40.

    phdesmond

    tonight historian H. C. Richardson writes:

    While it is not clear that the Wagner Group was involved in the government overthrow in Niger—the French newspaper Le Monde says there are no obvious signs of Russian involvement—some of the militants have been waving Russian flags, and Prigozhin yesterday took credit for the coup.

    “This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin said on social media. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.” This boast could well just be Prigozhin trying to rebuild his brand after his march on Moscow, but both Mali and Burkina Faso have turned toward Moscow after the coups there, and there is reason to think the same could happen in Niger.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @karen marie:

    Nitter “harvests” Xcretions from the Dead Bird Site.

    It gives nothing to the Apartheid Failson’s site.

    If there are people whom you used to value on the Xbird site, you can find them on Nitter.

  42. 42.

    Jay

    @Sebastian:

    according to one site I saw, Wagner has political, military, media and economic dominance in 9 nations.

    It has political, media and economic dominance in 5 more nations.

    It has political and media dominance in 4 more nations.

    So all told, roughly half of Africa.

  45. 45.

    patrick II

    @Jay:

    Back when Russia was a Communist country their subjugation of Africa would have been met with much more U.S. and allied resistance.  Now that they are Fascist, not so much. Partly because with the cold war “over” we aren’t paying as much attention, partly because Fascism isn’t as much an anathema to some of our politicians, and partly because it seems more insidious — not as black and white as a communist takeover — merely insertion into important power points in a country, particulrly money and militry.

  46. 46.

    catfishncod

    @patrick II:  Fascism is less annoying to some of our politicians because it’s less annoying to their backers. Whether it’s a Wisconsin representative, a racist Mississippi senator, or a California governor, scratch a rabid hotbed of anti-Communism and you’ll find deep pockets underneath.

    Likewise, it’s only “more insidious” to them because it’s using tools similar to their own preferences. A military junta that’s coordinating with a Russian mercenary base sounds pretty insidious to me. But I don’t have offshore bank accounts funneling extra “free speech” through media operations to amplify my opinions.

    As for Allies, I can’t imagine the French, for one, being terribly happy with such a state of affairs…

  47. 47.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Hangö Kex:

    @Adam L Silverman:

    And Blinken’s response is that we’re not the baddies here since we provide so much food to the region.

    Seems to me that, yeah, you may not be the worst baddy in a situation, but at some point the apparent obtuseness to the war going on all around you starts to suggest that maybe you’re not the right guy for the times.

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