Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

No Justins, No Peace

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

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

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 568: Russian Occupied Crimea Under Threat

War for Ukraine Day 568: Russian Occupied Crimea Under Threat

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Ukraine struck Russian military targets in Russian occupied Crimea overnight.

More on this after the jump.

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

We need a powerful system of the warriors’ rights protection in the defense sector itself – address by the President of Ukraine

14 September 2023 – 22:11

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

A few highlights from the day.

Our country celebrated the Day of Tank Forces today for the first time. Previously, there was a Soviet date for the professional day of tank forces. And now there is not just a motive to give a Ukrainian meaning to all such days, not just the desire of our people, but also the specific result of the Ukrainian warriors that should be honored at the level of the entire state.

I honored our tank crewmen with state awards. Soldiers, sergeants, officers. Our bravest warriors! With the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Order “For Courage”, and the medal “For Military Service to Ukraine”. Two warriors – Sergeant Vladyslav Simak and Senior Sergeant Oleh Palamarchuk – received the Crosses of Combat Merit for their bravery and efficiency. I thank you guys! I thank all Ukrainian tank crewmen! It is very important that our tank forces are constantly progressing – training and using more advanced and modern tanks in combat. There will also be Abrams tanks under Ukrainian flags – we are constantly reinforcing our warriors.

I held a meeting with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine and discussed some key issues. The decisions that our society in general and Ukrainian warriors in particular expect from the Ministry of Defense. The Minister will present them upon finalization of all the details. Today, I would like to emphasize the joint work of Rustem Umerov and the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets on such a new institution as a military ombudsman. This is truly necessary. We need a powerful system of the warriors’ rights protection in the defense sector itself.

Today I met with representatives of the Ukrainian Jewish community – rabbis from different cities of Ukraine, and our warriors. It was a very warm meeting on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. It is important that all communities in Ukraine are united in the goal of defending Ukraine and ensuring a normal life for all our people. I awarded the warriors with state awards – the Orders “For Courage”. I thanked the representatives of religious organizations for supporting people here in Ukraine, supporting the state, and telling the whole world – the entire Jewish community of the world – the truth about Russia’s aggression and terror.

Today we have a good result in our cooperation with the International Criminal Court. A result that brings accountability for Russian war crimes closer. The International Criminal Court has opened a field office in Ukraine, and it is the largest ICC office outside of The Hague. And it is great that there is full and coordinated cooperation between the Prosecutor General’s Office, all Ukrainian law enforcement institutions and the International Criminal Court. It is this cooperation that helps us bring the moment of justice for Ukraine and all our people who have suffered from this war closer – the moment of lawful and deserved sentences for Russian criminals.

One more thing. The entire staff of the Security Service of Ukraine and our Navy should be specially commended for this. I thank you for today’s triumph – the destruction of the occupiers’ air defense system on the land of our Crimea. It is a very significant achievement, well done! Glory to all who fight for Ukraine! And thank you to everyone who helps!

Glory to Ukraine!

Yevpatoria, Russian occupied Crimea:

Sevastopol, Russian occupied Crimea:

 

Andriivka:

Orikhiv Axis:

Velyka Nosilka-Vuhledar:

The Black Sea:

Naval News has more details:

Two Russian ships, the tanker Yaz and the suspected arms runner Ursa Major, are headed to Istanbul where they will leave the Black Sea. Evidence suggests that, at the same time as the cruise missile attack on Sevastopol, they were targeted by Ukrainian maritime drones.

The first indications of the attack, shared with Naval News, came before 3am local time on September 13. By morning imagery of fierce fires in Sevastopol were coming in, and it soon emerged that two Russian Navy vessels were hit. The cruise missile attack on Sevastopol got world attention. A Russian Navy landing ship and a submarine were damaged, possibly destroyed.

Taking these vessels out of the fight is a significant success for Ukraine. But there is a lot which has been going less reported. Ukraine also attempted to thwart Russia’s vital weapons and military fuel supplies which flow in and out of the Black Sea.

Simultaneously with the cruise missile strike there was an attack by Ukrainian USVs (maritime drones). It is likely that the USVs (uncrewed surface vessels) were targeting key Russian ships sailing across the Black Sea.

The attacks are part of a wider shift in the Black Sea. The launching of ten Storm Shadow or SCALP-EG cruise missiles can be tied back to the destruction of an S-400 system in northwest Crimea on August 24. Together with prying Russian surveillance systems off gas platforms offshore, this will have contributed to the Ukrainian jets’ ability to operate over the water. Russian air defenses remain a serious threat, but Ukraine is gaining space.

The upshot is a spectacular strike on Sevastopol, Russia’s main naval base in the region. Current information suggests that 5 Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer jets launched 10 missiles. Some of the missiles were shot down, but several hit the dry dock. There the Project 775 Ropucha Class landing ship Minsk was reduced to a twisted wreck. Most of the superstructure was razed, with the main mast left leaning precariously to starboard. Nearby the Project 636.3 Improved-Kilo class submarine Rostov-on-Don was hit. Again, the damage is believed to be significant.

More at the link!

From RBC-Ukraine:

Ukrainian Defense Forces struck two Russian patrol ships in the Black Sea on Thursday morning, September 14, according to Ukrainian Armed Forces StratCom.

According to the statement, the strike was carried out on two Russian Vasily Bykov patrol boats, causing them certain damage.

“On the morning of September 14, 2023, the Defense Forces attacked two patrol ships of the project 22160 Vasily Bykov of the occupation fleet of the Russian Federation in the southwestern part of the Black Sea,” the message says.

Vasily Bykov class ships are a series of Russian patrol ships (corvettes) of the 3rd rank. They are equipped with guided missile weaponry for both close and long-range naval operations. These were the first Russian ships to employ a modular weapons concept.

Destruction of the Minsk landing ship

A missile strike was delivered on the bay of temporarily occupied Sevastopol. As a result of the attack, a submarine and an enemy landing ship were damaged, as well as the ship repair plant named after Ordzhonikidze.

RBC-Ukraine confirmed this information with the Defense Intelligence.

For more details on this historic strike, you can refer to the RBC-Ukraine article.

Here’s an interesting analysis of Ukraine’s offensive by Ben Barry, the Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies:

There is more to Ukraine’s counter-offensive than many people appreciate.

There is much reporting and commentary on the ground attacks against Russian front-line defences. Recent Western media reports suggest that Ukraine’s slow progress with its counter-offensive has frustrated some unnamed defence officials in the United States and Germany. But this attention overlooks the much less reported, though no less significant, effort that Kyiv is devoting to its deep battle. Those efforts – conducted at long range, over a protracted timescale, against adversary elements not engaged in the close battle – may set Ukraine’s forces up for breakout success or at least to significantly diminish Russia’s combat power.

While Ukrainian forces have been inching forward in the close battle, pushing through Russian defensive belts that combine linear trench systems, extensive minefields and anti-tank obstacles, Kyiv has also been relentlessly pursuing attacks on a multitude of targets at distance, spanning from the Donbas to Crimea to Moscow. Kyiv probably calculates that these attacks will erode Russian morale and increase pressure on its commanders, while also weakening the enemy’s forces by disrupting their command, control, supply and movement.

What’s unfolding

To carry out the deep battle, Ukraine is drawing on a range of Western-provided and home-grown equipment. Those include strikes by rocket artillery, including precision munitions, such as GPS-guided M982 Excalibur shells provided by the United States, and guided-rockets, including those fired from HIMARS launchers. More recently, Ukraine has used United Kingdom-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles to attack Russian ammunition dumps and bridges. Ukraine has also modified S-200 Gammon air defence missiles into surface-to-surface rockets to strike targets at range; Moscow claims to have shot down at least some of them.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian partisans and special forces have conducted bombings and assassinated pro-Russian officials far behind enemy lines. Some special forces recently made a foray into Crimea, raising the nation’s flag in the Russian-occupied territory to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day.

The attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea and in the Black Sea, where Ukraine has deployed uninhabited vessels to successfully target the Black Sea Fleet, are complemented by deeper attacks into Russia itself. These include a range of drone strikes, sabotage and incursions by proxy forces.

Signs of success

Ukraine’s deep battle campaign has shown signs of success in disrupting both Russian military operations and the country’s daily routines. Ukrainian military chief General Valery Zaluzhny has said that attacks on Russia itself are designed to undermine the country’s ‘sense of impunity’ as Kyiv aims to heap political duress on Moscow to augment the military pressure from the counter-offensive.

Repeated drone attacks on Moscow have struck buildings and temporarily halted flight operations at airports serving the Russian capital. Attacks like these, or those on the Soltsy-2 air base south of St. Petersburg where a Tupolev Tu-22M bomber was destroyed, offer more than psychological effects. They may force Russia to redeploy air defence systems away from Ukraine and drive Russia’s air force to operate from further behind the front line.

Operationally more relevant, though, are attacks on Russian logistic nodes crucial to its forces in southern Ukraine. Supplies for these forces can flow from Crimea, but Ukraine has successfully degraded vital infrastructure, such as bridges into Southern Ukraine and across the Kerch Strait, through missiles and uninhabited boat attacks. The alternative route is the M14 road to Kerson that travels through Mariupol and Melitopol, Ukraine does not need to capture this road to disrupt it as a supply line but might choose to do so by capturing Russian territory that would act as a springboard for long-range artillery rockets, underscoring how close and deep battle can support each other.

More at the link!

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    The Pale Scot

    I need to apologize to ya’ll, a couple of days ago I wrote something so nasty that WaterGirl deleted it. I don’t remember what it was because I was deep in my cups. I stopped drinking a few years ago (diabetes). But I lost a lot of weight and my blood sugar is ridiculously normal so I started up again. Obviously can’t hold it anymore ‘cause I woke up in my undies on the living room floor. I’ve pretty much left the internet other than BJ and LGM. Before I comment here I just wanted to Mea Culpa. Sorry guys,

     

    I’m going to post this a couple of times

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    It’s a grinding operation, but if Ukrainian forces can keep the Russians engaged along the front and seriously degrade the Russian’s logistic capabilities, then something has to give on the Russian side.  Breakthroughs don’t happen until they suddenly do.  The Ukrainians are setting themselves up for one.

  3. 3.

    Alison Rose

    Some pics from Zelenskyy’s meeting with the rabbis. I love seeing him do this, especially after being called a Nazi and a disgrace to Jews by putin and his minions. Look at him being such a nice Jewish boy here. And to the russians, I say: Zol er krenken un gedenken.

    Also, just got a NYT notification this minute that Zelenskyy will be in Washington next week:

    Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will visit Washington next week following his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly, according to three U.S. officials.

    Mr. Zelensky’s plan to appear in person before the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, as part of the U.N.’s annual gathering in New York City, was previously known. But his follow-on trip to Washington — where he is expected to meet with President Biden at the White House and members of Congress on Capitol Hill — has not yet been announced officially.

    Of course, this being the FTFNYT, they followed this with “It comes as the Biden administration works to shore up support for Ukraine amid a grinding Ukrainian counteroffensive that has so far yielded disappointing results. Mr. Zelensky insists that Ukraine can still make major gains.” Go fuck yourselves. I’d like to see anyone working at the paper manage even one-millionth of what the Ukrainians have done.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    @The Pale Scot: I didn’t see whatever it was, but from what I’ve seen from you in general, you are typically not a dick. Good on you to recognize when you messed up, but don’t spend too much time berating yourself. You’re human, you’re allowed to mess up. Hopefully the silver lining of this will be that you put the cups away for good. I know that’s easy for me to say as someone who drank a total of maybe six ounces of alcohol freshman year of high school and hasn’t had a drop since. But it sounds like you don’t want to be the person who left that comment, and I think that will help you on this path.

  7. 7.

    frosty

    @The Pale Scot: Obviously can’t hold it anymore ‘cause I woke up in my undies on the living room floor.

    I never quite got there!But close!! I don’t recall any off-putting posts but thanks for the explanation. You’re not in my pie filter (only one or two are) but I’ll try to remember to keep you out of it. If I can remember LOL.

  8. 8.

    Yarrow

    @The Pale Scot:  Thanks for the apology. It was pretty awful. I didn’t know the comment had been deleted. I hadn’t seen that side of you before and didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know where it came from but it’s clear alcohol can unleash some dark thoughts.

  9. 9.

    frosty

    @Alison Rose: ​ I know that’s easy for me to say as someone who drank a total of maybe six ounces of alcohol freshman year …

    I hit every kegger my first few weeks of college and have kept it up in some form for 50 years (but not that level thank FSM!). Good on you!

  10. 10.

    YY_Sima Qian

    OT: The Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu (only elevated at the beginning of the year), has not attended public functions for the past 2+ weeks, and Western intelligence assess that he is under investigation. This follows the removal of the former FM Qin Gang & the top leadership of the PLA Rocket Forces in the past 2 months.

    The nature of the investigation is unknown. Li came out of the PLA’s  procurement organization, so it would not be surprising if he is targeted for past corruption. However, all of these figures are recently promoted, presumably of proven loyalty to Xi. At the very least, there is clearly something amiss w/ the vetting process.

    The anti-corruption Drive was dialed back a bit during the 3 years of “Dynamic COVID Zero”, where every part of the Party-state bureaucracy was mobilized to implement & sustain the policy. Now, it appears Xi is making up for the lost time, again.

    Of course, like the FM post, in the CPC Party-state the DM is merely an executor of policy, & is outranked by members of the Central Military Commission. Unlike Qin, Li is not a member of the State Council, so he is even lower ranking in the government bureaucracy.

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    I hope Xi is not getting Stalin disease and purging people out of paranoia.  Honestly, I think this is a really strong reason for term limits for the most powerful positions.  Having some retired leaders around reminds the current leader that retirement is an honorable option, and it gives the people one step down a plausible hope of advancing peacefully.  Peaceful transfer of power that doesn’t require someone to die has a lot to recommend it, and it was a huge step backward for China that Xi didn’t leave that way when he should have.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, I closed the thread when he called Mearsheimer “probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today.” Hope I didn’t miss anything important.

  17. 17.

    Alison Rose

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Then there’s Kissinger, in 2014  He warned that “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” and that it therefore needs a policy that is aimed at “reconciliation”. He was also adamant that “Ukraine should not join NATO”.

    LOL fuck off and die already you sack of shit. (Kissinger, not you, Omnes!) So, because one country demands ownership of another, we should just give in rather than help the latter retain their sovereignty? When in history has placating bullies been the smart path?

  18. 18.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Roger Moore: We are still only talking about a half dozen persons out of many hundreds of bureaucrats at a similar level of standing.

    Xi does not have the level of standing, credibility, power & control that Stalin or Mao enjoyed, to be able to conduct a purge of that scale & survive. His anticorruption campaign starting from 2013 had the support of most of the CPC leadership at the time. Indeed, the collective leadership invested Xi w/ the more highly concentrated power to do exactly that, after they realized that the deeply entrenched corruption & policy paralysis that built up during the Jiang/Hu decades threatened regime legitimacy & viability.

  19. 19.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Roger Moore: However, Xi de-institutionalizing (for the time being) the succession process has embrittled the regime , creating new vulnerabilities.

    As often happens in human endeavors, alleviating one problem set creates another .

  21. 21.

    Gin & Tonic

    Here is a link to a Kyiv Independent-produced documentary (on YouTube) called “Bullet Holes,” subtitled “An investigation into Russia’s systemic killings of Ukrainian children.”

    Please do not click on my link unless you are *really* emotionally prepared to absorb that content. It’s an hour, and it’s not fun.

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic:   Yeah, you got the gist. My response to my friend was:

    But the US did not push NATO to expand into Ukraine. OTOH Russia invaded a sovereign state with the intent of absorbing it and wiping out its language and culture. Further, Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine on a daily basis.

    I think I hit the main points.

  24. 24.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus: Gack indeed!

    I hope Prof. Chomsky sees himself being put in the same group as Kissinger, though, though it’s unlikely anything could shame him into better behavior.  Should seriously just bask in the adoration of his groupies, maybe he has grandkids to play with, and stop boosting RU.

    Rnaud is probably a lot younger than those two and has no excuse!  Not that anything excuses Kissinger for his choices.

     

    ETA: sounds like you took a high road and did not spam him with NAFO memes & examples of how RU itself has expanded NATO!

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Lyrebird: Some years back we had a regular commenter who got really upset when I referred to Chomsky’s position at MIT as a sinecure. But it’s the textbook definition.

  26. 26.

    wjca

    The International Criminal Court has opened a field office in Ukraine, and it is the largest ICC office outside of The Hague

    Definitely glad to see this.  Obviously action from the ICC should happen.  Good to see that there is actual action on it.

  31. 31.

    Lyrebird

    @Gin & Tonic: commenter who got really upset when I referred to Chomsky’s position at MIT as a sinecure

    Well I have met a few of his students who felt he was a hard worker who put time into guiding them, so I can imagine quibbling with you, but not to the point of getting upset!

    I did not know much at the time, and I thought all famous professors were into having a cult of personality.  Yuck.  I would have gotten a lot farther in academe if I liked that stuff.

  36. 36.

    Lyrebird

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m pretty sure he has emeritus status (retired) by now.  Wikipedia says he retired in 2002.

    As a (former?) linguist myself, I enjoy exploring words and questions like, is it a sinecure if the person used to work hard in that position?  Note: I am entirely in agreement with @zhena gogolia: about destroying linguistics, at least in the US.  Chomsky’s autocratic approach, encouraged in his students, drove far better people than me out of the field.

  39. 39.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Omnes Omnibus: 

    It’s a grinding operation, but if Ukrainian forces can keep the Russians engaged along the front and seriously degrade the Russian’s logistic capabilities, then something has to give on the Russian side. Breakthroughs don’t happen until they suddenly do. The Ukrainians are setting themselves up for one.

    100%. However, if breakthrough conditions should occur, it might not be immediately apparent, certainly to outside observers, and possibly even to UA forces at the spear tip.

    I’ve been trying to think of leading indicators that could be monitored that might presage a breakthrough. A sharply decreased rate of Russian artillery fires would be an obvious sign of their logistics going south, of course.

    However, there may be another indicator worth watching: As Pfarrer’s Orkhiv map shows, the Russians are attacking the base of the salient in some force, hoping to pinch it off. For this necessary task, they necessarily need to use troops previously allocated to a defensive role (or, as Gerasimov likes to imagine, to “active defense”) in straight-up offensive ops, perpendicular to their prepared defenses. Should a crisis develop for them at the southern end of the salient, however, they are certainly going to need to recall those forces to shore up their failing defenses. So perhaps something to watch for is a cessation of Russian envelopment efforts at the salient’s base. A few days of no activity there could be a portent of a last-ditch effort to stave off a breakthrough.

  40. 40.

    Shalimar

    @Gin & Tonic: You got further than me.  He lost me when his first citation was George Kennan at 94 years old.  The George Kennan who looked at a Russia that was about to install Vladimir Putin as their leader and thought they had an advanced democracy already after under a decade.  No thanks

    edit: my first reaction was actually “George Kennan was still alive in 1998? That cannot have been true.”  Alas, it was.

  41. 41.

    Geminid

    Reuters reports that the US Treasury Department will impose sanctions on 150 entities for violations of US ruled regarding illegal trade. These include 5 Turkish companies and an individual. One is a shipyard for repairing sanctioned Russian ships while several companies are being sanctioned for shipping dual-use electronics. The sanctions package also include two Finnish trading companies for exporting dual-use electronic components to Russia.

    Also, Politico.EU has published an interesting interview with Armenian PM Nikol Pashninyan. In it he says  “As a result of events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed.” Pasninyan said that since “Russian peacekeepers have failed in their mission in Naghoro-Karsrabakh” Armenia must fix its relations with Azerbaijan itself.

    Pasninyan is referring to the inability of Russian peacekeepers to maintain transit through the Lachin corridar to the enclave of Atsakh, which has been blockaded by Azerbaijani forces since December. A compromise with Azerbaijan allowed one Russian aid truck to enter Artsakh on Wednesday, using a route through the Azerbaijan town of Aghdan, but as of yesterday the Lachin Corridor was still blocked. It was supposed to be opened within 12 hours of Artsakh unblocking the Aghdan route.

    Russian relations with Armenia have cooled, with Russia complaining about shipments of humanitarian aud to Ukraine and an “official”  visit by Pashninyan’s wife to that country; Armenia’s withdrawal of its representative to the Russian-led CSTOL military alliance; and exercises by US and Armenian troops near the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

    Those exercises, “Eagle Partner 2023,” involve 84 US soldiers and 150 Armenian and are focused on peacekeeping missions.

  42. 42.

    Bill Arnold

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Some years back we had a regular commenter who got really upset when I referred to Chomsky’s position at MIT as a sinecure. But it’s the textbook definition.

    That one (who claimed to be a retired MIT professor) was fun to argue with. (Once jokingly suggested that kids should read classical anarchists, and even anarchist articles “in the original Yiddish for extra credit”.)
    A subsequent site rebuild appeared to have obscured the identity a bit, making nyms case-insensitive. Appeared to be a sly ref to “meta”.

  43. 43.

    azlib

    I wonder if the US and other militaries are paying attention to the deep campaign. Seems the ability to take out high value targets with cheap weapons combined with the global communications and surveillance infrastructures available today radically change how a military conducts operations.

  44. 44.

    NutmegAgain

    Somehow I missed the Chomsky kerfuffle. I lived in the same town with the Chomskys for many many years. I came to detest them as neighbors when they objected to people parking on their cul-de-sac in order to access town conservation land. (An entrance on a path was right there.) Then to make it worse, they pressured the town’s conservation commision to forbid any dog walkers in the evening and on weekends. So if you wanted to walk your dog there, you could only go between 9-5. Terrible neighbors, just awful as people. Selfish, haughty, and no interest whatever in the realities of the rest of us little people.

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