(Image by NEIVANMADE)

As the clocked ticked over onto the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holodomor, Russia opened up on Ukraine with multiple waves of Shahed drones.

Overnight, russia launched a massive terrorist attack against Ukraine.

🇺🇦 Air Defense Forces shot down 74 out of 75 Shahed drones. 60 of them over Kyiv.
We are proud of our brave air defenders!
We are grateful to our international partners for their assistance in strengthening…

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 25, 2023

Shaheds shall not pass!

📷: Joint Forces Command pic.twitter.com/tqo0NfoFiV

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 25, 2023

74 is quite possibly the highest number of aerial targets shot down in a single air raid in history

The Germans lost 58 aircraft to enemy fire during Battle of Britain Day, the US lost 60 B-17s over Schweinfurt in October 1943 https://t.co/J64f9HUesN

— THEY/THEMARS 🇺🇦 #ArmUkraineNow (@Mortis_Banned) November 25, 2023

As I write this at 8:15 PM EST, Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Poltova Oblasts are once again under air raid alerts! As are Russian occupied Luhansk Oblast and Russian occupied Crimea.

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

Address of the President of Ukraine on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomors

25 November 2023 – 09:31

Fellow Ukrainians!

Dear people!

Every year at the end of November, a cold shiver runs down our spine. Regardless of the weather conditions and our location. With coldness in our hearts we are all united by a tragic date – the fourth Saturday of November. The Holodomor Remembrance Day. When we feel great pain and anger at the same time, as it is impossible to forget, understand, and especially forgive the horrific crimes of genocide that the Ukrainian people experienced in the XX century.

Men, women, children. Millions of innocent and murdered. Uncounted and countless. Uncounted at the time. When anything but the truth was written in the “cause of death” column. They callously “wrote off” thousands of people, did not consider it necessary to count, did not consider people as such. Countless in total. How many of them, starved to death, simply fell in the field, on the road, in their own yard? How many were not found? How many were not searched for? When the rulers had one need: for everyone to keep silent, and the relatives had neither the ability nor the energy to search for and prove the truth, and then there was no one left to search. How many are there?

No one knows the exact answer to this question. Just like the answers to other questions. How can one want to kill an entire people? To wipe out an entire nation? How can one take away the very last from people? The last food, the last means of subsistence, the last hope for life and the last chance for salvation? Normal people cannot imagine or understand this. But there is something we know for sure. They tried to exterminate us, to subjugate us, to torture us. They failed. They wanted to conceal the truth from us and hush up the terrible crimes forever. They failed. They wanted to confuse us, to mislead us, to make us not believe, to doubt, to forget, and therefore to forgive. They failed. And today, with utmost sorrow and respect, we honor the memory of millions of our people.

Today, as always, at 4 p.m. sharp, we will light the Candles of Remembrance. Many will be with their families, their children and grandchildren. Some of the young Ukrainians will see this candle for the first time. They will ask about it. And we will tell them the story. This candle will tell them a story that they should know, remember, and pass on to their children and grandchildren, who will tell it to their children and grandchildren. And as long as we keep lighting this fire, the memory of millions of our ancestors will not fade. Who were deliberately, premeditatedly and cynically pushed into the embrace of starvation. Because they were Ukrainians. Because they posed an ideological and class threat to the imperial entity, were free people in spirit, and therefore considered dangerous to the regime and its geopolitical intentions. And then, armed groups went from house to house and took away everything that could be eaten. And then the peasants fell to their knees, begging to leave at least some crumbs for their children, but the savages were ruthless. And then grandparents, parents, and relatives quietly “faded away” in front of their families, refusing to eat “so that the children could have more.” And then entire families, generations, streets and villages disappeared. A tragedy with not only millions of dead, but also millions of unborn. A tragedy that today makes us cry and remain silent, so quietly that the whole world must hear it. This is the sound of Ukrainian pain.

The ideologues, organizers, and perpetrators of those crimes have not been held accountable or punished fairly during their lifetime. But this does not mean that we should forgive and forget. Today, the names and biographies of all the perpetrators must be brought to justice. And they bear the punishment of shame, the stigma of their role in world history, the truth that everyone on the planet should know. The truth that today is the least that can be done to honor the millions of victims. Recognizing those terrible acts against Ukrainians as crimes of genocide is extremely important. This is not a formality. This is the attitude of the civilized world to the truth. This is a tribute to justice.

We thank all the states that have chosen justice and recognized it. Recognized it officially. Recognized the Holodomor as a crime against people, against history, against Ukraine. A deliberate crime. Exactly 30 years ago, Estonia and Australia were the first to do so. Then Canada, Hungary, and Vatican City did the same. Lithuania, Georgia, and Poland followed. Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico. Portugal and the United States of America. And when the war broke out, everything became clear to all those who had been in doubt. Everyone saw literally, live, in real time, what modern Russia, which calls itself the successor to the USSR, is capable of. Which enjoys being the heir to the worst crimes and murders of that era. Exactly murders. Attempts to destroy nations. And during these 2 years of full-scale war, almost as many states as since the beginning of our independence have now recognized the Holodomor as genocide. Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Iceland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, The European Union and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Justice is spreading around the world. The world needs to know about it, the world needs to recognize it, the world needs to remember it.

I thank everyone who, together with Ukraine, restores historical truth and justice. Who calls a spade a spade. And who does not allow the names of those guilty of genocide and war crimes to hide behind the lie of alleged non-involvement. 90 years ago, the world could not fully see what was really happening. Now there are no those who do not see. There are only those who choose not to notice. They are few. And there will be even fewer. The truth paves the way. On this path, the world must unite and condemn the crimes of the past. The world must unite and stop the crimes of the present.

In the last century, famine came from Moscow. Now we hear words of denial from there. And every one of these words of denial actually sounds like a confession – they need famine as a weapon for the future. Famine, cold, terror. Every ton of grain they have stolen now, the blockade of each of our cities, every Russian strike against our ports, against Ukrainian grain storage facilities and elevators, every “Shahed” that targets our logistics, and every Russian missile whose trajectory is against Ukrainian life is all the past that has returned since it has not been condemned in time. This is a process where the line of totalitarian Soviet policy and the line of modern Russian policy form the equals sign together. Evil was not stopped. Was not atoned for. And now we are stopping it.

This is a time of historical responsibility for the murderers and for those who chose to be followers of the murderers, who act in the same way as before. And justice is important not in 90 years, but now. Because although there are crimes that have no statute of limitations, justice must be timely. The sentence for evil must be timely. Justice needs living witnesses. Those who will see the Russian evil punished. And those who will tell not only about what our people went through, but also about how our people put a just end to the attempts to destroy Ukraine, to torture, subjugate or exterminate it. Ukraine will prevail. Ukraine will not fade away. Ukraine will preserve itself and the truth. And justice. And the words of one of the most famous novels about the Holodomor, The Yellow Prince: “Their evil will perish, but the truth will never” will become the living witnesses and the living truth of Ukraine, which endured.

May we always remember all our people who died in 1921, 1922 and 1923. In 1946 and 1947. And in the most terrible years of 1932 and 1933, the years of the Holodomor genocide.

May the warmth from millions of candles of remembrance warm millions of their souls.

May they all rest in peace!

The University of Minnesota’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies program has an excellent and accessible history of the Holodomor: (emphasis mine)

In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims of the Holodomor (literally “death inflicted by starvation”) were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 percent of Ukraine’s population in the 1930s. While it is impossible to determine the precise number of victims of the Ukrainian genocide, most estimates by scholars range from roughly 3.5 million to 7 million (with some estimates going higher). The most detailed demographic studies estimate the death toll at 3.9 million. Historians agree that, as with other genocides, the precise number will never be known.

By the end of the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidated his control over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Feeling threatened by Ukraine’s strengthening cultural autonomy, Stalin took measures to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry and the Ukrainian intellectual and cultural elites to prevent them from seeking independence for Ukraine.

To prevent “Ukrainian national counterrevolution,” Stalin initiated mass-scale political repressions through widespread intimidation, arrests, and imprisonment. Thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders, and Ukrainian Communist Party functionaries who had supported pro-Ukrainian policies were executed by the Soviet regime.

At the same time, Stalin decreed the First Five Year Plan, which included the collectivization of agriculture, effectively ending the NEP. Collectivization gave the Soviet state direct control over Ukraine’s rich agricultural resources and allowed the state to control the supply of grain for export. Grain exports would be used to fund the USSR’s transformation into an industrial power.

The majority of rural Ukrainians, who were independent small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted collectivization. They were forced to surrender their land, livestock and farming tools, and work on government collective farms (kolhosps) as laborers. Historians have recorded about 4,000 local rebellions against collectivization, taxation, terror, and violence by Soviet authorities in the early 1930s. The Soviet secret police (GPU) and the Red Army ruthlessly suppressed these protests. Tens of thousands of farmers were arrested for participating in anti-Soviet activities, shot, or deported to labor camps.

The wealthy and successful farmers who opposed collectivization were labeled “kulaks” by Soviet propaganda (“kulak” literally means “a fist”). They were declared enemies of the state, to be eliminated as a class. The elimination of the so-called “kulaks” was an integral part of collectivization. It served three purposes: as a warning to those who opposed collectivization, as a means to transfer confiscated land to the collective farms, and as a means to eliminate village leadership. Thus, the secret police and the militia brutally stripped “kulaks” not only of their lands but also their homes and personal belongings, systematically deporting them to the far regions of the USSR or executing them.

These mass repressions, along with manipulation of state-controlled grain purchases and collectivization through the destruction of Ukrainian rural community life, set the stage for the total terror – a terror by hunger, the Holodomor.

The Holodomor

Ukraine, with its history of resistance to the Soviet rule, was a threat to the Soviet regime. Fearing that opposition to his policies in Ukraine could intensify and possibly lead to Ukraine’s secession from the Soviet Union, Stalin set unrealistically high grain procurement quotas. Those quotas were accompanied by other Draconian measures intended to wipe out a significant part of the Ukrainian nation.

In August of 1932, the decree of “Five Stalks of Grain,” stated that anyone, even a child, caught taking any produce from a collective field, could be shot or imprisoned for stealing “socialist property.” At the beginning of 1933, about 54,645 people were tried and sentenced; of those, 2,000 were executed.

As famine escalated, growing numbers of farmers left their villages in search of food outside of Ukraine. Directives sent by Stalin and Molotov (Stalin’s closest collaborator) in January of 1933 prevented them from leaving, effectively sealing the borders of Ukraine.

To further ensure that Ukrainian farmers did not leave their villages to seek food in the cities, the Soviet government started a system of internal passports, which were denied to farmers so they could not travel or obtain a train ticket without official permission. These same restrictions applied to the Kuban region of Russia, which borders Ukraine, and in which Ukrainians made up the largest portion of the Kuban population – 67 percent.

At the time of the Holodomor, over one-third of the villages in Ukraine were put on “blacklists” for failing to meet grain quotas. Blacklisted villages were encircled by troops and residents were blockaded from leaving or receiving any supplies; it was essentially a collective death sentence.

To ensure these new laws were strictly enforced, groups of “activists” organized by the Communist Party were dispatched to the countryside. As described by historian Clarence Manning:

“The work of these special ‘commissions’ and ‘brigades’ was marked by the utmost severity. They entered the villages and made the most thorough searches of the houses and barns of every peasant. They dug up the earth and broke into the walls of buildings and stoves in which the peasants tried to hide their last handfuls of food.”

To escape death by starvation, people in the villages ate anything that was edible: grass, acorns, even cats and dogs. Contemporary Soviet police archives contain descriptions of the immense suffering and despair of Ukrainian farmers, including instances of lawlessness, theft, lynching, and even cannibalism.

This Famine, the Holodomor, resulted in widespread deaths and mass graves dug across the countryside. The official registers did not give a full accounting of what was happening across Ukraine – deaths often remained unregistered, cause of death was missing – to conceal the true situation.

At the height of the Holodomor in June of 1933, Ukrainians were dying at a rate of 28,000 people per day. Around 3.9 million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor of 1932-33 (as established in a 2015 study by a team of demographers from the Ukrainian Institute of Demographic and Social Studies, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill).

While Ukrainians were dying, the Soviet state extracted 4.27 million tons of grain from Ukraine in 1932, enough to feed at least 12 million people for an entire year. Soviet records show that in January of 1933, there were enough grain reserves in the USSR to feed well over 10 million people. The government could have organized famine relief and could have accepted help from outside of the USSR. Moscow rejected foreign aid and denounced those who offered it, instead exporting Ukraine’s grain and other foodstuffs abroad for cash.

Most historians, who have studied this period in Ukrainian history, have concluded that the Famine was deliberate and linked to a broader Soviet policy to subjugate the Ukrainian people. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of Soviet government archives (including archives of the security services), researchers have been able to demonstrate that Soviet authorities undertook measures specifically in Ukraine with the knowledge that the result would be the deaths of millions of Ukrainians by starvation.

“The Terror-Famine of 1932-33 was a dual-purpose by-product of collectivization, designed to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and the most important concentration of prosperous peasants at one throw.” –Norman Davies, Europe, A History.

From the Holodomor Education and Research Consortium: (emphasis mine)

The famine of 1932–33 in Ukraine, called the Holodomor (a word coined in the late 1980s, meaning a famine deliberately initiated to cause suffering and death) can be considered genocide according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in light of Article 2 (c). This clause identifies as genocide deliberate actions that create conditions of life leading to the physical destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnic, religious or racial group.

The famine in Ukraine began in late 1931 during the Soviet Union’s first Five-Year plan, which called for rapid industrialization and the forced collectivization of agriculture. During the collectivization drive that began in 1929, private farms were abolished, and in their place state-owned and collective farms were established. Ostensibly run by the collective farmers themselves, the collective farms were actually controlled and monitored by Soviet or Communist Party officials. At the same time, successful, well off-farmers, labelled kulaks (according to the Soviet regime, these were exploiters of poorer peasants), were persecuted, stripped of their possessions, arrested and deported. Many were sent to far-off lands, and some were even executed. In practice, any farmer opposed to collectivization, even if not well off, was often labelled a kulak or kulak supporter.

When famine broke out in Ukraine—triggered by confiscatory measures taken by Soviet officials to fulfill unrealistically high grain collection targets in the wake of the substantial drop in agricultural production—top Soviet Ukrainian government leaders informed the Kremlin of starvation, requesting aid and a reduction in the grain quota for the country. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, called instead for an intensification of grain collection efforts. He also voiced his distrust of Ukrainian officials, suspecting many of them as nationalists, and expressed fear that opposition to his policies in Ukraine could intensify, possibly leading to Ukraine’s secession from the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s response was catastrophic for Ukraine. Under his urging, the Soviet leadership passed draconian laws and adopted punitive and repressive policies, ostensibly to help meet the grain quota. Special teams were sent to the countryside, headed by Stalin’s top lieutenants, to collect more grain, even though farmers had little stored for the winter and spring months ahead. Even seed grain was taken, and fines in meat and potatoes were instituted for those who had not fulfilled the grain collection plan. Other foodstuffs were also confiscated by search squads.

Unsurprisingly, the situation in the Ukrainian countryside became desperate by winter. But the regime did not relent from its policies of confiscation, punishment and repression. On January 22, 1933, in response to large numbers of hungry Ukrainian farmers leaving their villages in search of food, primarily to Russia, the Soviet leadership issued an order prohibiting their departure from the republic. Around the same time, Stalin began replacing some of Ukraine’s leaders and changed state policy that had supported the development and use of the Ukrainian language. A campaign of persecution and destruction of many Ukrainian intellectuals and officials who were accused of being Ukrainian nationalists also began.

The famine in Ukraine subsided in summer 1933 as that year’s harvest was gathered. By that time, resistance in the countryside had been broken. Demographers estimate that close to four million residents of Ukraine, mostly Ukrainian peasants, perished as a direct result of starvation.

Any discussion of the famine as genocide should begin with a review of the ideas of Raphael Lemkin, a legal scholar who was the “father” of the UN’s genocide convention. In a speech delivered in 1953, he called the USSR’s policies toward Ukraine under Stalin “the classic example of Soviet genocide.” He viewed the famine in Ukraine as a key component of what he called the “Ukrainian genocide,” which he understood as a series of actions that also included the destruction and subjugation of Ukraine’s intellectuals and political elite, the liquidation of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and the government-directed settlement of Ukraine’s farmlands by non-Ukrainians, which took place in the wake of the famine of 1932–33.

In assessing the charge of genocide, one should recognize that it carries legal and political implications, and thus could be controversial. Political figures and entities have sometimes made statements or offered opinions on specific cases where the question of genocide has been raised. This is true of the famine in Ukraine. In 1988, a special commission of the US Congress established to investigate the Ukrainian famine concluded that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932–33.” In 2006, Ukraine’s legislature, the Verkhovna Rada, adopted a law that called the Holodomor genocide. Some countries, like Canada, have adopted resolutions or statements recognizing the Holodomor as genocide. However, Russia’s national legislature, the Duma, stressed in a declaration that famine in these years was a pan-Soviet tragedy and denied that the Ukrainian situation was specific.

Controversy can also occur because of a lack of consensus among scholars. There is general agreement among scholars that the Holodomor resulted from the actions of Soviet authorities and was thus man-made and avoidable. However, some scholars as well as political figures have argued that the charge of genocide in Ukraine cannot be substantiated because famine occurred at the same time in other republics of the Soviet Union, including Russia. It has also been argued that the famine was used as a weapon aimed against peasants as a social group, and not against Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Two scholars of the Soviet Union, Robert E. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, have argued that the Soviet leadership caused the famine partly through “wrongheaded policies,” but that it was “unexpected and undesirable.” The famine, they argue, was “a consequence of the decision to industrialise this peasant country [the Soviet Union] at breakneck speed.”

The Italian scholar Andrea Graziosi, in support of the genocide interpretation, has argued that in assessing the issue one must take into account the extremely high mortality rate in Ukraine—triple the mortality rate in Russia. This was caused by the additional measures taken by Soviet authorities that intensified the famine in Ukraine. Graziosi also stresses Stalin’s understanding of the peasant and national questions as closely linked in largely peasant-based countries like Ukraine. He thus concludes that the Ukrainian villages were “indeed targeted to break the peasants, but with the full awareness that the village represented the nation’s spine.”

There are other arguments to be made in favour of the genocide interpretation. Grain exports continued during the worst months of the famine, and Soviet government reserves contained enough grain to feed the starving. When aid was first authorized in February 1933, it was selective, and not nearly enough grain was released to save millions from starvation. The mobility of Ukraine’s peasants was blocked through the January 22, 1933 decree depriving them of possible access to food in other regions of the Soviet Union. It is also clear that Stalin in 1932 was worried about losing Ukraine, tied the shortfall in grain collections in Ukraine to perceived failures of the republic’s leadership, and referred to this to justify removing some of Ukraine’s leaders when he replaced them with loyal followers. He also saw resistance in the Ukrainian countryside to grain collection as motivated by both class antagonisms and nationalism. If one considers the anti-Ukrainian measures he promoted, including authorizing persecutions of Ukrainian intellectuals and of the more nationally oriented political leadership, the overall anti-national thrust of Stalin’s decisions in 1932–1933 becomes more evident. Finally, news of the famine was suppressed in the Soviet Union, offers of outside aid were refused, and until the late 1980s the Soviet government denied that a famine had even taken place.

Holodomor Memorial Day is a terrible reminder that russia for centuries have been turning food into weapon.

90 years ago, the Stalin's regime has committed an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Between 1932 and 1933, millions of our people died of a man-made famine.… pic.twitter.com/2HH0yENbCg

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 25, 2023

Holodomor Memorial Day is a terrible reminder that russia for centuries have been turning food into weapon.

90 years ago, the Stalin’s regime has committed an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Between 1932 and 1933, millions of our people died of a man-made famine. The memory of those innocent victims lives on in our hearts.

Today, russia continues the Stalinist tradition. They are destroying our granaries, elevators, and ports and attacking ships with food in the Black Sea.

Thanks to the bravery of the Ukrainian Defence Forces, we are squeezing the russian fleet from the Black Sea. Thanks to the help of partners, our air defense units are covering the infrastructure where the grain corridor begins. We are doing everything so that the horrors of the Holodomors, which Ukrainians experienced, do not affect anyone on earth.

The cost:

A family story from the Holodomor in my home village in Donbas:
A woman next door quietly singing a lullaby and rocking a cradle with the skeleton of an infant in it.
She had lost her mind from starvation and was ignoring the fact that her baby died many months before.

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) November 25, 2023

If a crime goes unpunished, it will be repeated. Once again, Russia is committing genocide#HolodomorRemembranceDay pic.twitter.com/LFdP8mIXhm

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) November 25, 2023

Kyiv:

Aftermath of Shahed strike on kindergarten in Kyiv. Russian army must be proud of their achievement pic.twitter.com/VFt9bweACB

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) November 25, 2023

Russians carried out the most massive kamikaze drone attack on Ukraine. 75 drones were launched. Most of them were aimed at Kyiv.
Also, as can be seen from the wreckage of Shahed-136 found in the Kyiv region, it was painted in a black color, most likely in order to reduce the… pic.twitter.com/YJ8dxfuEVm

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) November 25, 2023

Krynky, left bank of the Dnipro, Russian occupied Kherson Oblast:

Magyar’s Birds are still on the hunt!

Magyar’s bird recorded another destroyed T-90M tank of the Russian army. The clip is part of a longer footage, showing several destroyed Russian vehicles and even a large antenna near Krynky.

Source: https://t.co/O9svf9wIzV#Ukraine #Kherson #Krynky pic.twitter.com/EyTvsEtiM1

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 25, 2023

Avdiivka:

The Russian losses at the Avdiivka sector continue to be so extraordinarily high that even Russian war correspondents such as Romanov are not mincing words.

This particular Russian column has been torn apart and on the ground I see patterns which tell that a cluster munitions… pic.twitter.com/mugZ7TJ7wO

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) November 25, 2023

The Russian losses at the Avdiivka sector continue to be so extraordinarily high that even Russian war correspondents such as Romanov are not mincing words.

This particular Russian column has been torn apart and on the ground I see patterns which tell that a cluster munitions attack was also involved.

Source: Telegram / Romanov

#Ukraine #Avdiivka #Donetsk

The Ukrainian grain corridor in the Black Sea:

Ukraine agreed with its partners to receive warships to ensure the safety of vessels in the "grain corridor" in the Black Sea.

Zelensky's direct speech: "We agreed with our partners and will accompany the ships at sea to guarantee their safety.
We already have specific… pic.twitter.com/E1usQQ7FeG

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) November 25, 2023

From the President of Ukraine’s website:

Ukraine expects additional air defense systems from its partners to protect the grain corridor, Odesa region – President

25 November 2023 – 19:26

Ukraine expects additional air defense systems to protect the grain corridor in the Black Sea and Odesa region, and relevant agreements with partner countries are already in place and being implemented. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made this statement during a meeting with media representatives following the second international summit “Grain from Ukraine” in Kyiv.

“We still need a very specific number of systems with a very specific name. The request has been made. We have a positive response when these systems start to protect that region. Because both the corridor and the people there are important. Our people in Odesa region are important to us. Air defense is in short supply, but… What’s important is that we have agreements, we have a positive signal, and the corridor is operational,” the Head of State said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that despite all the challenges, the grain corridor continues to function, and Russia currently does not exert strong influence on its operations.

“We have a clear corridor and cooperation for its use with Bulgaria, Romania, and Türkiye. We have agreements with the United Kingdom, involved in insuring this corridor. Corresponding results should be. I have an agreement with several states regarding the robust escort by Ukrainians, a convoy. We are already receiving appropriate naval boats for this purpose,” the President said.

Additionally, the Head of State said that the volumes of Ukrainian product transportation by rail through Moldova and Romania are inc

Tatarigami takes apart The NY Times‘ reporting that there have been more women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in the past fifty days or so than in the past twenty-one months in Ukraine. First tweet from the thread, the rest from the Thread Reader App:

I'm disappointed by the misleading article from NYT with a sensationalist headline, inaccurately claiming "In less than two months, more than twice as many women and children have been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after two years of war." Here's why it's inaccurate🧵: pic.twitter.com/SL1BegBEVC

— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) November 25, 2023

2/ The article asserts that “More than twice as many women and children have already been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after almost two years of Russian attacks, according to United Nations estimates. To verify this claim, I checked UN-provided numbers

3/ Firstly, the given number is not verified; it’s a claim from the Gaza Health Ministry, provided to the UN. This is markedly different from UN-verified deaths in Ukraine, as one is a claim from an involved party, while the other represents independently verified casualties.

4/ In addition to the UN, independent 3rd parties tried to civilian losses in Ukraine, particularly in Mariupol. The AP discovered more than 10,000 new graves in Mariupol alone, suggesting a death toll potentially three times higher than the initial estimate of at least 25,000.

5/ When assessing unverified numbers from officials (consistency in data sources), it’s important to compare them with Ukrainian statements. In a February 2023 statement, the Ukrainian war crimes prosecutor estimated that over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. 

6/ Moreover, in an August 2022 article, NYT stated, “And in Mariupol …. Ukrainian officials believe that at least 22,000 people were killed. They cite witness accounts, satellite imagery of mass graves, and footage showing bodies in the streets.”

7/ This is not a competition over civilian losses. An inaccurate methodological approach leads to false conclusions, whether deliberate or not, and undermines what’s left of the credibility of news sources like NYT. 

Adding links to source materials:https://t.co/R0DWZ8eaZJhttps://t.co/4Rb7fcSks0https://t.co/D8RQ0i5a5Thttps://t.co/xh7jvBFD4O

— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) November 25, 2023

Before I switch to a brief update on the Israel-Hamas truce, there are two questions from last night’s comments I want to deal with.

First up, NotoriousJRT:

This is a sincere question. What does it mean to be / go “on a war footing?”

The first thing would be actually accepting that we are in a world war. That Putin began it, sometime after his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference when he declared war on the US, EU, NATO, and “the West.” That this war is primarily not being fought with military power, but with other means. Specifically the other elements of national power. However, the major kinetic theaters of operation are Ukraine, Syria, and the Sahel. That the US and its allies and partners have been attacked and are still being attacked. That as a result of this war the global system has already been changed and will continued to be altered. That if we do not recognize what is going on and defend ourselves and our allies, then we will continue to lose this war and have no hand in shaping the global order that emerges from this war. A simple, compelling, direct and accurate strategic narrative needs to be created and then repeated at every opportunity. The US defense industrial base also needs to be put on a war footing. We need – and I hate this term – moonshot program for dealing with disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop and that needs to include dealing with deepfakes and the emerging large language models being mislabeled as AI. Finally, NATO Article 5 needs to be invoked.

Second, Traveller:

Why do Russian Soldiers keep marching into such misery?

There are four different dynamics at play here. The first is that, and I did an entire portion of an update about this, the Russians have been indoctrinated from a young age into the cult of Russian militarism rooted in an ahistorical and mythologized history of World War II. The second is they’ve been propagandized to believe that part or all of Ukraine is actually Russia. So they actually think they’re fighting to preserve the Russian world/Ruskiy Mir.

Cemetery in Kostroma for the Russian 331st Regiment which took catastrophic losses when Putin recklessly threw it into a meatgrinder in the hope of taking Kyiv "before lunch".

The same people who could be building a prosperous Russia will be remembered in history as invaders.… pic.twitter.com/NYtclu96YX

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) November 24, 2023

Cemetery in Kostroma for the Russian 331st Regiment which took catastrophic losses when Putin recklessly threw it into a meatgrinder in the hope of taking Kyiv “before lunch”.

The same people who could be building a prosperous Russia will be remembered in history as invaders. Putin decided this.

Yet the individual filming is still convinced that someone attacked his family and religion in Kostroma.

Third, a very large number of Russian military personnel are not actually ethnically Russians, they’re ethnic minorities. Mostly semi-Russified ethnic mongols from places like Buryatia and Tyvan. These Russian soldiers, sailors, and marines come from long traditions of military service combined with an overpowering economic dynamic: there are no jobs in the ethnic republics on the southern border of Russia. So serving in the Russian military is a means to earn the money to support oneself and one’s family while also honoring your family’s martial tradition.

Fourth, the convict soldiers. The calculus here seems to be better to take one’s chances on the battlefield than to rot in a Russian prison. Because if you survive you get a pardon, a bonus, a stipend, etc.

Just a brief update on the Israel-Hamas truce. There was a bit of a kerfuffle today. Hamas decided to flex its muscles and announced today’s transfer was off because Israel was not sending enough humanitarian relief supply trucks to northern Gaza and because the Palestinian prisoners were being released in the wrong order. Israel gave them a deadline to release the hostages or the the truce was over. The Biden administration and the Qataris got involved and managed to resolve the kerfuffle. While delayed, the hostages and prisoners were swapped and, for now, the truce still holds.

Sinwar appears to be enjoying his current power over Israel and the US.

💥In case you wonder what it means that Hamas is calling the shots: The delay in releasing the hostages was announced after Israeli families were dispatched to local hospitals to await their loved ones. https://t.co/Bc3S1gSNeq

— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي💙 (@NTarnopolsky) November 25, 2023

The Israelis, however, are accusing Hamas of violating the truce because they released a twelve year old girl but not her mother. President Biden also seems to be a bit miffed that Hamas has still note released any of the American-Israeli dual nationals.

Nadav Eyal of Yediot Ahronot reported via tweet thread on Israeli military thinking regarding the truce and what comes next. It’s grim reading. The BLUF is that Israel expects to get 70 to 80 hostages back at most. If that happens, there will be a three to four day extension of the truce. Once that’s over, Israel is going to go in hard and with overwhelming force. Reading between the lines, my professional takeaway is they want the women and children out because they don’t expect the rest of the hostages (the men) will make it.

Here’s the translation into English from the Thread Reader App:

1/From a column in latest news in the Shabbat supplement.
The kidnapping deal washes the country in a sea of ​​tears and post-trauma. The slow release, bit by bit, with names being transferred to the families the night before, will be shocking and heartbreaking. He reminds us all that October 7 is not over. It continues, as long as the war takes place – and as long as the abductees are imprisoned in the tunnels, in the “underground”. Contrary to what is implied by the media discourse in recent days, the hope of many in the defense establishment and the government is that the deal will continue. even drag. that after the agreed 4 days of truce, Hamas will agree to release more hostages, and will ask for more days. In fact, this is the assessment presented to the government: that Hamas, at the moment, can and wants to release more than 50. The number ministers quoted to me is 70-80; “And we hope more”.
The explanation for this is painful. After the ceasefire, whether it lasts for a few days and ends with the return of about 50 abductees, or lasts for 10 days (which is the estimate in the War Cabinet) and releases much more, the IDF will move to the next phase of the war. He will be difficult, operationally. Complex, unusual, fiery moves are expected. The security system will have to prepare for them. The truce has advantages in this respect – advantages that were presented to the cabinet and cannot be detailed. What can be said is that the IDF has accurate estimates – how many tanks will be damaged. What are the attribution scenarios for attrition in SAD – that is, for soldiers who, God forbid, will be killed or injured. So far, the operation in the Gaza Strip is beating the grim calculations; The number of casualties, and the damage to the equipment, are in the lowest part of the estimates prepared by the IDF’s arms that deal with planning and force building. This indicates exceptional planning and fighting abilities, and sacrifice. But there is no guarantee that it will continue like this, and the battles are expected to be challenging.

2/ “Therefore, as many as we manage to get out of our abductees now, we will be able to operate more easily from an operational point of view,”, commented one senior official, “and the truth must be told: there are no guarantees that we will be able to return everyone who is not released now. After all, this is a war whose ultimate purpose is the destruction of the Hamas army and the elimination of Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Daf. So we are willing to give it time, try to immediately release everyone possible. Because the next step is about to happen. No matter what”.

No one is willing to guarantee when the next release deal will come, but it is worth mentioning things that I have written in these pages before: the War Cabinet does not rule out, and will not rule out in the future, the possibility of the top Hamas going into exile (provided that its rule is eliminated in the Gaza Strip), in exchange for the return of hostages.

The clearest and most justified fear is losing momentum. From the photos and videos that will come out of the devastated north of the Gaza Strip. There is a gap between the world and Israel. In the diplomatic community, also in the West, the truce is seen as a first step towards the day after. In Jerusalem – more correctly, in the pit in Kirya – they say that such a day is beyond the mountains of darkness of Hamas. American Secretary of State Lincoln will be here this week. He will hear an unequivocal, unbroken, coordinated war cabinet: the war continues. The Pentagon and Linken are trying to figure out: how will Hamas be defeated in the southern Gaza Strip, when it is actually in a humanitarian crisis, with many hundreds of thousands who have lost their homes, in extraordinary density, and the IDF is supposed to – somehow – cleanse the area of ​​terrorists.
There are answers to these good questions, but it is not certain that they will convince the Americans. 

3/At the same time, President Biden – the closest to Israel and its redemption – is taking hits in the polls. Official, governmental Israel has abandoned any pretense of winning the international narrative competition. The emphasis on the horrors of October 7, Israeli representatives report, is not of interest to the media in the various countries as it was in the past. With the resumption of fighting, Israel will go through a phase: the sympathy it received among Western leaders will erode, for some significantly (Emmanuel Macron) and for others less so (Rishi Sunak in Britain). Until now, almost an idyll has prevailed in Israel-US relations during the war, mainly because of the circumstances of the murderous attack on Israel. Doubt it will last. In the First Lebanon War, the tensions between the US and Menachem Begin’s government reached such a point that President Reagan sent a letter to the Prime Minister in which he threatened that the continued Israeli invasion of Lebanon would “exacerbate the most serious risk to world peace, and to the tensions that already exist in Israel-US relations”; At the end of the first month of the war, when Begin arrived in the US to meet with the president, the White House canceled the meeting (and then retracted it).
**
A large part of the American frustration is Netanyahu’s refusal to engage in a real and deep way in the day after the Gaza Strip – and also to give a description of such a vision to the world. They are looking for an answer to the following test question: “We will eliminate Hamas in Gaza and then….. (complete the sentence)”. Within the Israeli system there are sources who say that the prime minister not only refuses to engage in this – he actively thwarts discussions on the subject. “We don’t have a political arm,” says a senior Israeli, “and that’s stupidity.” If we talk about a vision for a Gaza free from Hamas, we will explain that it needs to be rebuilt, we will explain that we will not stay there, it will divert the fire from the war, from the civilian casualties. It gives perspective. And it also leaves a vacuum to be filled by other players”.
This process has already begun. The Saudis, for example, are quietly dealing with the question of what should be their place in the new Gaza. In Riyadh, they are talking about the possibility of bringing back Salem Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister who was removed because of a dangerous tendency towards integrity and intolerance of bribery. Another example of filling the vacuum: an interesting meeting took place this week in Doha, Qatar. On the one hand, senior Hamas officials Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh. On the other side: members of Muhammad Dahlan’s party, the same Dahlan they threw out of the Gaza Strip in the putsch against Fatah in 2007. Dahlan himself was not present, which is strange; The rank of Hamas members was extremely senior. Did Hamas want to warn Dahlan that he would not agree to be the new ruler in Gaza, after the overthrow of their regime there? Or alternatively, do they want to reach an agreement with Dahlan on such a possibility, which would allow them to continue managing the strip when there is a “front” Seemingly legitimate? (Dahlan is considered corrupt and ineffective; what’s more, he is connected to Marwan Barghouti, a center of power on Palestinian Street and the main hope of Fatah).
President Biden talks about “Revitalized Palestinian Authority” that you rule the Gaza Strip. What does that actually mean? After a reform that will not allow the transfer of wages to convicted prisoners? Deleting the incitement? fight against corruption? Replacing Abu Mazen? At the moment, Israel is not ready to officially conduct this dialogue. And you can understand why: the day Netanyahu – who still doesn’t understand that his career is over – engages in this, his government will fall apart. The extreme right will happily agree to replace him with another Likud man, who will swear, simply, that there will not be any independent Palestinian government in Gaza – and certainly not the Rash.
** 

4. Pay attention – the situation in Judea and Samaria.
It’s not every day that a demonstration is organized near the house of an IDF general during a war. This happened this week, in Moshav Horeshim, not far from the house of the Central Command Major, Yehuda Fox. We are not talking about Palestinians or Israeli Arabs of course; If they had thought of such an act, it is likely that the police would have made arrests quickly. It was Daniela Weiss, and with her dozens of women and children from the settlements, mainly from Samaria. They came to protest, following shooting attacks, for what they called “allowing the free movement of Arabs on Judea and Samaria roads in a way that endangers the lives of the residents”. And in the words of Weiss into a blue-gray megaphone: “The Arabs are not allowed to leave their homes. They will stay at home and we will move freely. “He who shows mercy to the cruel, ends up being cruel to the merciful.” Another protester accused the General of the Central Command of “endangering the lives of our children, and he does nothing”.
“Nothing”. unbelievable. The IDF is at war, also in Judea and Samaria. Almost 2000 arrested, over 200 dead Palestinians, airstrikes, including from warplanes – inside the West Bank. Since “protective wall” There was no such thing. The facts will not convince the delusional; Major Fox has long been the object of an inciting and ugly campaign; Unfortunately it doesn’t just come from hillbillies. Security was recently attached to it. The IDF denies that the fear is of an attack by the extreme right. They say there that this is a protocol that was implemented because of the fear of Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Daniela Weiss’s big moment in the war was in the “New Yorker” magazine. the prestigious; Someone was looking there with candles for a figure that would harm, in fact, her statements, Israel during the war. Weiss was found suitable and delivered the goods: she announced that the Land of Israel is actually from the Euphrates River to the Nile. The reporter opened brackets and explained that this is an area that is under the sovereignty of “many Arab countries”, far beyond the State of Israel and the territories. Weiss got 15 minutes of attention. Haters of Israel were given an interview by Pantheon, and shared it enthusiastically on Instagram and Twitter – proof, they said, of what Israel really is.
The situation in the territories is very explosive. Three miscalculations calculated by Yahya Sinwar. The former did not correctly assess Israel’s response to the massacres by Hamas, and its determination to use extraordinary force to destroy the army it built. The second calculation was that Israeli society is divided and fragmented, and its cracks will grow following the Hamas attack. The third calculation, and the most important of all, was that Hamas would start a war, and many would join. The West Bank will burn. Hezbollah will join in full force, and maybe Iran too. The peace accords will collapse.
The most essential part for Hamas, the closest, is the West Bank. War expansion in the north is a matter that the Americans are trying to limit. The peace agreements seem stable in the short term. A significant weak point for Israel is the possibility that a third intifada and actual fighting will develop between Hebron and Ninen. And there, the writing is on the wall.
The situation on the ground shows escalation. There is an increase in terrorist attacks by the Palestinian terrorist organizations, which are determined to bring to an end the atrocities committed in the Gaza Strip. The IDF is working aggressively to suppress the possibility of an organized Hamas uprising, and there is a fear of a popular uprising against the Palestinian Authority. The IDF is actively preparing for the possibility that the Israel Defense Forces’ security forces will turn against Israel. At the same time, Jewish nationalist crime is on the rise. The American administration is extremely anxious about the possibility of the fall of Abu Mazen, and the activity of Jewish extremists. From Washington, the same Washington that fiercely defends Israel 24/7, almost daily messages come out protesting “settler violence” on the bank President Biden and Secretary of State Lincoln made it clear that the Palestinian Authority will be the future address for the government in Gaza. For this to happen, according to them, it must change. But above all – to survive.
These are not exactly the plans of the settlers, who see the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as a potentially deadly event like Hamas. The leaders of the settlement are working to establish facts on the ground, on a historical scale. As reported here a few weeks ago, throughout Judea and Samaria, planning and construction rules of various kinds are now regularly being broken. New roads and roads are being paved, including on private lands, without permission. The supervision unit of the Civil Administration functions with a missing composition; Her friends are in the reserves. Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Council, is working to stop and thwart any olive harvesters near the settlements; He speaks of Muskim as “Hamasnik terrorists”. There are many more weapons circulating in the field; It is a security necessity, but it is used to threaten Palestinians in the harvest. The security establishment says that “since the beginning of the war, there are settlers – those who give the settlement a bad name – who are taking advantage of the war to break the law, for clearly illegal actions”.
Take an example. Last week, 3 new buildings were placed in Chomash, one of them, a wooden structure, on private Palestinian land. The civil administration took care of that. A few days ago, the same officials tried to move 3 more caravans to the Yeshiva in Chomesh, again without permission. Security forces were deployed there to thwart this event. 

5. “Instead of the IDF being focused on their constant attempt to prevent terrorist attacks,” officials on the ground say, “they are sent to deal with violations of the law by Israelis. These events damage Israel’s legitimacy in the war, and they put sticks in the wheels of the security system whose role is to protect the settlers and uphold the law. These are harsh words; You can understand why. An outbreak in the West Bank will force the IDF, which is fully retired, to significantly increase the order of its forces in Judea and Samaria. It will be difficult to wage a war on three fronts.
The situation in the Palestinian Authority is already difficult, even before the clashes between the harvesters and settlers, the blocking of roads, the expansion of outposts. Internal assessments given to senior officials in Israel provide a detailed breakdown: in the West Bank business community they estimate that the situation is on the verge of an explosion, among other things in light of the difficult economic situation and dysfunction of the banking system. The Palestinians who talk to Israeli officials report a severe pessimism, an acute fear of settler actions, a growing awareness of the illegal settlement incursions. The main concern is that Palestinian work in Israel will not resume for a long time, and a major source of income for Palestinian society will evaporate. It is estimated that unemployment in the West Bank jumped by tens of percent in the last month; It is a catalyst for violence. The Authority loaned money for development projects in Gaza; That’s about a billion dollars lost. The large companies in the West Bank sent about half of the workers on forced vacations. The consensus among prominent Palestinians is that the Israel Defense Forces functions in only one sense: as a (partial) security contractor for Israel. The Palestinians who talk to Israel, and want cooperation with it, predicted that the Haggadah is on the verge of an explosion – against the PA, or against the IDF, or against both. For the attention of the Cabinet and Reh: None of you will be able to claim that such a warning was not given. 

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

SES (State Emergency Service) it’s almost like SOS. We try to handle all the SOS signals from our country. Proud to be one small part of this colossal work❤️ @SESU_UA pic.twitter.com/qi0vVlfrHq

— Patron (@PatronDsns) November 24, 2023

Open thread!