Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

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

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

“woke” is the new caravan.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

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

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 642: (Some of) You Have Questions, I (May) Have Answers

War for Ukraine Day 642: (Some of) You Have Questions, I (May) Have Answers

by | 33 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , , ,

Two nights ago and again last night way2blue asked the following question:

I was asking about Orban–who seems intend on thwarting Ukraine’s integration into the EU. Specifically next month’s vote to initiate the process. Just wondering how you see this political maneuvering playing out. The prospects for suspending Hungary’s voting privilege owing to failure to adhere to EU principles… [One can hope.]

Adam, I also read today that Orban is attempting to block Ukraine’s next step in obtaining EU membership.

I don’t expect that the EU is going to suspend Hungary’s voting privileges.  I do expect the appropriate folks will continue to work on Orban quietly and behind the scenes. The question is going to be what does Orban actually want in exchange for not making trouble here. Once the appropriate EU folks get that clarified, then we’ll have to wait and see if they go with carrots or sticks.

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

It is important for every community to do everything possible now to avoid casualties due to bad weather – address by the President of Ukraine

27 November 2023 – 22:14

Dear Ukrainians!

A few results of the day.

First. Since this morning I have been receiving reports on the situation in our regions affected by the bad weather. Almost 1,500 settlements in 17 regions were cut off from electricity. Power engineers are working everywhere to restore electricity supply. As soon as it is possible, electricity will be restored in every city and village. At the moment, hundreds of people and hundreds of vehicles of the State Emergency Service alone are working around the clock. The National Police and the National Guard are also helping. Public utilities are involved as well. I am grateful to everyone in the regional and local authorities who promptly joined in to help people and gives results. In every community, it is important to do everything possible to avoid casualties due to bad weather. Unfortunately, as of now, there are casualties. The highest number is in Odesa region – five people died. My condolences to the families and friends. At least 19 people were injured. Everyone has been provided with the necessary assistance. Operational headquarters at both the national and regional levels will continue to work until the situation is normalized. The epicenter of the cyclone is now moving to the northern regions – we are ready to help everywhere. There were also reports on helping drivers on blocked roads. I am grateful to the volunteers who support people in the communities. It is very important to take care of those who live alone, to help the elderly. Today I would like to recognize the entire staff of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, the National Guard and the National Police. They provide assistance around the clock. In particular, the emergency workers of the Odesa region. These days, Captain Serhiy Lisin, head of the guard of the 45th state fire and rescue unit, Master Sergeant Ruslan Buhayev, driver of the 7th state fire and rescue unit, Master Sergeant Petro Kalaman, electrician driver of the rescue department of the 20th state fire and rescue unit have particularly proven themselves. And also the national guardsmen: Soldier Serhiy Dimov, Captain Serhiy Melnyk and Colonel Volodymyr Lytvyniuk. I thank you and all your colleagues for helping people!

I also had important international conversations today. In particular, with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. We discussed the situation in the Middle East, current events and prospects. We also spoke about the development of our bilateral relations and joint work for the full implementation of the Peace Formula. Saudi Arabia has been very helpful in this area, and I am grateful for that. I also spoke with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. Of course, we talked about the European Union’s preparation of a decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine – we are doing everything our country has to do. We also talked about the continuation of the EU’s support for our country next year. Also today, I addressed the participants of the session of the International Maritime Organization, one of the most respectable institutions in the world that deals with security – maritime security. I informed them about Ukraine’s successes in the Black Sea – what Ukrainians have done to restore normal sea routes in the Black Sea. I thanked for the support of our efforts and called for bringing Russia to a just and well-deserved accountability for its aggression and terror, for violating all the fundamental freedoms and rules that underpin the international order.

Today I also held a preparatory meeting on various international events planned for the coming weeks and until the end of the year. We clearly see the Ukrainian perspective and what is needed to achieve our goals. Every day we work with our partners to provide new defense support packages for our warriors. I signed another decree on awarding our soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with state awards – 115 servicemen. In total, 64,258 servicemen from all the Defense and Security Forces of Ukraine have received state awards since February 24 and up to now. Massive bravery, massive resilience, massive determination to ensure that Ukraine gains the upper hand in this war. I thank everyone who is fighting for Ukraine and Ukrainians! I thank all the commanders who care about the lives of soldiers! I thank everyone who is focused on making our country stronger – our entire country. You cannot win this battle alone – we can only do it together, everyone who cares about one another and Ukraine.

Glory to Ukraine!

⚡️”Don’t tell me that you can’t afford to mobilize your industry and will so that Ukraine wins.”

Retired British general Sir Richard Barrons addressed European officials and opinion leaders at a forum in Lucerne, Switzerland.

“You imagine an economy of 15 trillion euros a year. Give me 75 billion euros a year for 2-3 years, and I will make sure that the Ukrainian army wins. It’s not about whether it’s affordable. It’s about choice, about competence “, – he said.

👉
@Flash_news_ua

Here’s General Sir Richard Barrons’ full address:

Here’s a longer take on Orban from Illia Ponomarenko:

Hate to break it to all those newly-minted Ukraine experts like this guy Viktor Orban, but there IS, and there always HAS BEEN a “battlefield solution” for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Moreover, it’s possible and affordable for the Free World, and them motherkissers know this perfectly well.

That’s why they can’t stop whining about a “ceasefire”, a “compromise,” “concessions for peace,” or a “realistic approach” — or, what’s even more cynical, they try to pretend they act in good faith and have some high moral ground to lecture those stupid little Ukrainians on how they need to surrender to Russian occupation to “save lives.”

Especially now that the Free World is being tempted to go the easiest way of having a raw deal with the devil.

They know that, and they keep pushing those weak spots.

Over the last 20 months, Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated that a “military solution” is a thing — when it has the instruments necessary.

It did so as it derailed and defeated Russia’s blitzkrieg in North Ukraine in March 2022, particularly at Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy, and inflicted devastation the Soviet/Russian military hadn’t seen in decades.

It did so later on by having the Russian military drastically exhausted in the Battle of Donbas between April and August 2022 and stabilizing the front line.

I did so in September 2022 by successfully accomplishing an offensive operation in Kharkiv Oblast, which ultimately set the Battle of Kharkiv as a Ukrainian victory, liberated most of the oblast, and brushed off Russia’s key supply line and the north axis of its effort to encircle Donbas.

Remember all those stupid posters “Kherson is Russia forever”?

Yeah, you were right to forget — because on November 11, 2022, we were jumping around in joy and popping up champagne to celebrate the Ukrainian military retaking the only regional capital Russia had managed to capture since February 24.

Ukraine has repeatedly proved the “military solution” possible by having mastered dozens of Western-provided weapons & hardware items, from advanced tank killers to artillery pieces, radars, armored vehicles, air defense, cruise missiles, rocket systems, etc — and moreover, setting a range of milestones in the practice of modern warfare and military history.

Ukraine did so by still holding on, staying an organized firm nation, and fighting despite everything for over 600 days against the world’s leading nuclear power with the 3rd largest military spending.

This recitation can go on and on. The history of the last 20 months is the story of Ukraine achieving so much with so little it has.

No one’s talking about the Ukrainan military putting the flag over the ruins of the Kremlin.

What needs to be done is inflicting Russia’s military in Ukraine a kind of defeat that would greatly undermine Russia’s ability to go on with this war — militarily, socially, economically, politically, and logistically — and make the Kremlin seek negotiations, with Ukraine speaking from a position of strength.

Moreover, a “battlefield solution”, i.e. derailing Russia’s ability to wage large-scale wars for years to come is effectively the ONLY way to ensure peace and prevent yet another, an even more bloodletting European war within a short period of time.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t give a flying fuck about all the “tragedy” of the war he unleashed or about all the “loss of life” on his hands.

He only needs “negotiations” and “a ceasefire that Ukraine doesn’t want” to let his military get a respite from hostilities, regroup, rearm, reinforce — and launch a new attack on Ukraine.

After the initial defeat of his ‘special military operation’ and numerous mortifying setbacks in Ukraine, it’s very personal to him and his bruised ego.

He wants and needs Ukraine in ashes coughing its own blood.

In February 2022, he took the biggest gamble of his life and he very suddenly lost.

Now he’s a hostage of the mess of his own making, and he will not stop until he’s stopped. He’s in power in the Kremlin and alive as long as the war goes on and he’s not yet the one who led Russia to a humiliating strategic defeat to its former colony.

And surprise-surprise, Ukraine doesn’t want to die to make things easier for somebody. At all.

So any sort of speculations on “putting this war to an end via concessions”, “a diplomatic solution”, etc is nothing but escapist sweet talk ignoring the grim reality, to say the least.

Those not happy about the state of things are more than welcome to send their complaints and grievances to Vladimir V. Putin in the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia.

There’s nothing that stands in the way of Ukraine willingly getting this giant problem effectively solved militarily — nothing but the lack of the Free World’s leadership, resolve, the ability to finally get out of its comfort zone and stop being obsessed with excessive risk management and the paralyzing fear of historical decisions.

Since February 24, 2022, we’ve made a grand way forward together. It’s been way too long and history-making to just drop it and give up in the middle of it.

Chronically half-hearted decisions, painful procrastination, keeping heads deep in the sand, looking for easy solutions, and pleasing domestic extremists openly advocating the aggressor are just taking us nowhere.

Yes, the West can give Ukraine everything it needs to save itself and ensure sustainable peace instead of a hoax that will inevitably end up with many crying “WE TOLD YOU!”

That’s why the enemies of the Free World can’t stop talking it out of this.

 

Kyiv:

Princess Olga in a bulletproof vest and a Ukrzaliznytsia car under fire on Mykhailivska Square – the realities of 2023 #Київ

Odesa:

Avdiivka Front:

Russian occupied Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast:

Elsewhere in Russian occupied Donetsk Oblast:

Russian occupied Crimea:

First tweet from the thread, the rest from the Thread Reader App:

2/ A post from Mash, pictures of the barrages with spikes surfaced online. They were scheduled to be placed near the Kerch–Yenikale Canal under the Kerch Bridge to prevent USV attacks by Ukraine, which in the past has been successful in rendering the bridge unusable for months.Image
3/ Upon further investigation using Planet 3M imagery, these booms have started to be placed near the canal, defending the bridge from other attacks in 3 separate lengths, allowing easy removal if ships pass through the path.Image
4/ After acquiring a SkySat satellite image, the booms bear similarity to the ones being placed at the Sebastopol port; one can even note the barrages that are connected to them via a cable to ensure the booms stay in place and allow easy control to change their positions.Image
5/ A timelapse of the region using Sentinel-1 SAR due to cloud cover in many Planet 3M images was used to show the defenses’ progression accurately. A custom script allows easy delineation of the bridge and the boom barrier.  
6/ Nevertheless, I have also added a Planet 3M time lapse of the region for the October to November timeframe, which shows how the barrier is removed to allow easy passage of ships. The barrages play a vital role in this matter. 
7/ In the recent storms that ravaged the regions of Crimea, the booms have either been washed away due to rough seas or have been removed to prevent any damage to the booms. The storm has filled the water with silt, making it harder to know the status of the placed defenses.Image
8/ Thus, I can confidently say that these booms were present to defend the bridge from USV attacks from Ukraine. Only time can tell what the results from this Russian “innovation” will yield when the next attack against the bridge comes. 
@HamWa07 @VelvetBlade @Tatarigami_UA @jekubi @exit266 @MT_Anderson @Dmojavensis @VeritasViper @Schizointel @CovertShores @scil_int 

Ryazan, Russia:

Sochi, Russia:

Turkey:

From The Financial Times:

Turkey’s exports to Russia of goods vital for Moscow’s war machine have soared this year, heightening concerns among the US and its allies that the country is acting as a conduit for sensitive items from their own manufacturers.

The growing trade, and the corresponding rise in imports to Turkey of 45 civilian materials used by Russia’s military, has undermined US and European attempts to curb Moscow’s ability to equip its armed forces, fuelling tensions between Ankara and its Nato partners.

In a sign of how it has become a priority in Washington to rein in this trade, Brian Nelson, US Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, will visit Istanbul and Ankara this week, where he is set to discuss “efforts to prevent, disrupt and investigate trade and financial activity that benefit the Russian effort in its war against Ukraine”.

It will be Nelson’s second trip to Turkey this year and comes amid indications that some dual-use parts — identified by the US and its allies as being of particular value to the war — are being transported directly to Russia even when they have been labelled as going to another country.

Efforts to cut off this ghost trade to Russia have been complicated as the items have both commercial and military applications.

In the first nine months of 2023, Turkey reported $158mn of exports of 45 goods the US lists as “high-priority” to Russia and five former Soviet countries suspected of acting as intermediaries for Moscow. That was three times the level recorded over the same period in 2022, when the war in Ukraine began.

The average figure for 2015-21 was $28mn, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from customs database Trade Data Monitor.

The 45 categories of goods, which include items such as microchips, communications equipment and parts such as telescopic sights, are subject to US, EU, Japanese and UK export controls aimed at preventing them from entering Russia. But these can be circumvented by companies using middlemen structures to disguise their ultimate destinations.

Turkey’s imports of high-priority goods from G7 countries are up more than 60 per cent so far this year compared with the same periods between 2015 and 2021 to nearly $500mn.

The trade flourishes by exploiting regulatory gaps between US export controls and EU enforcement, according to Emily Kilcrease, director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think-tank.

“With some of the third-party countries like Turkey, we’re really at a weaker enforcement position than we’d ultimately like to be,” said Kilcrease, a former deputy assistant US trade representative. “We really have to lean on those countries to take enforcement actions in their own jurisdictions, to get at the specific entities that are facilitating the trans-shipment.”

Turkey, along with the United Arab Emirates, often serves as an intermediary destination for Russian entities seeking to exploit multistage import routes to get around controls, said a European sanctions official. It was particularly used to procure European goods, the official added.

Official data from Turkey showed a surge in declarations of exports of high-priority goods to ex-Soviet nations Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but those countries’ statistical agencies have not recorded a matching rise in imports.

These large discrepancies suggest that items reported by Turkey as destined for intermediaries were instead being transported directly to Russia, analysts said. Kazakhstan recorded high-priority goods imports from Turkey of $6.1mn in the year to September, but Turkey’s data shows exports of those goods to Kazakhstan amounted to $66mn over the same period.

“It’s obvious these goods are going to Russia,” said Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics think-tank and vice-president for foreign policy at the Kyiv School of Economics.

More at the link.

For you drone enthusiasts:

And for you HIMARS fans:

Obligatory:

Just a quick update on the Israel-Hamas truce before we finish up for the night. For a second day in a row Hamas had held up their transfer of hostages. The sticking point this time is that they’re still not returning mothers with their children.

They also did not release the Thai hostages that they agreed to release:

Hamas is also playing games with the transfer of the hostages to ICRC control:

All of this is Sinwar trying to demonstrate dominance.

Israel and Hamas have, apparently, reached an agreement for a two day extension of the truce.

The issue will be, as I indicated last night, is that Hamas does not know the whereabouts of 40 or more of the women and children hostages. So they’ve either found another twenty, or they’re playing games. We’ll know sometime on Wednesday which one it is.

For those who think Bibi is done or is going to somehow go away easily, Bibi has other ideas:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

A new video from Patron’s official TikTok!

@patron__dsns

:(

♬ where is my mind piano version. – i love you too much <3

If one of our Ukrainian readers would be so kind as to put the translation of the text in the video into a comment, I would greatly appreciate it.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  4. 4.

    Gin & Tonic

    The text overlaid on the Patron video, with some liberties:

    There lived an old grandma
    And with her lived her dog
    She loved her dog
    and her dog loved her

    One fine evening grandma
    baked a tasty pie
    she left the dog in the house
    while she went out on the porch

    Returning she exclaimed:
    Oh the pie has disappeared
    And poor, poor doggie
    Went to bed hungr

     

    NB – translating poetry is hard.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    then we’ll have to wait and see if they go with carrots or sticks

    I for one would very much enjoy seeing Orban beaten with sticks. And by “sticks” I mean branches from the largest trees in Hungary.

    I appreciate Ponomarenko’s righteous rants because he’s not afraid to just tell people “you’re full of shit and you can fuck off” but to also explain why they’re full of shit and should fuck off.

    This made me sniffle a bit: (just a photo of the man at the link)

    “If you’re wounded and hear Serhii’s voice, you can relax because everything will be fine.” Serhii, 23, and during several days of intense battles, he saved over 80 comrades’ lives.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    Late in last night’s thread there were a couple of comments concerning the Finnish Parliament’s Speaker’s address to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada in flawless Ukrainian. Since my sleep/wake schedule doesn’t correspond well with China or Finland, conducting a conversation with those interlocutors is hard. Nevertheless, I will add some remarks today, and hope they see them later.

    First, Hangö Kex commented that Jussi Halla-aho had a scholarly background in Old Church Slavonic, and that this required(?) him to know Ukrainian. But that’s really not the case – Old Church Slavonic is a predecessor to a number of Slavic languages, but being fluent in the descendants is not necessary, just as it isn’t necessary to be fluent in modern English in order to read Old English. Disclaimer: a long time ago, I was able to read Old Church Slavonic, but that has atrophied with time. But knowing that language is a bit like knowing ecclesiastical Latin – it may give you some direction with modern descendant languages, but it doesn’t help much.

    The thing with Ukrainian (and Russian) is that it is strictly phonetic – what you see is what you get. Pronounce every letter and you’ve pronounced the word; no tricks, no silent letters, no combinations you have to guess at (like bough, cough, dough.)

    Then YY_Sima Qian asked about the alleged syntactical difficulty of Russian and whether Ukrainian is similar. First, asking a native speaker about syntactical complexity is not usually illuminating. That said, for someone who speaks only Amerenglish, the concept of noun cases and the corresponding declensions can be a challenge; having three noun genders and seven cases is something you have to learn, and that may take a bit. But the rules are regular and well-documented – and pretty similar between the two languages. Semantically they differ more, and vocabulary can diverge quite a bit. Are they “difficult”? I don’t know. More difficult than tonal languages, like MSM or Vietnamese? More difficult than non-Indo-European languages like Hungarian?

  8. 8.

    Andrya

    @Gin & Tonic:   The US State Department maintains a list (link)  rating languages by difficulty for English speakers to learn, from Category 1 (easiest) to Category 4 (super hard).  Both Ukrainian and russian are in Category 3.

    Edited to correct typos.

  9. 9.

    Jay

    Sergiy Kyslytsya 🇺🇦
    @SergiyKyslytsya
    10h
    This publication of @nytimes is quite important for a whole set of reasons. Possibly, however, not for ones intended by the editors. One important take from it is that the russian women aren’t against the war of aggression launched by putin and apparently supported by the population at large. The women in russia are in fact of the opinion that the invaders are “heroes” who just need to be rotated. In the words of one of the female supporters of the war: “If he did something heroic, spilled blood for his country sincerely, then maybe it was time to return to his family, make way for someone else, but that’s not happening.” This message is reinforced by another quote from the publication: “The groups protesting take pains to stress that they are not unpatriotic and that they strive to respect the law. They say they are simply asking that the Kremlin introduce troop rotations.”

    So don’t get misled! It’s not just putin’s war, it’s the war of millions of men and women in russia – mothers, wives, daughters, sisters… It’s also regrettable that the @nytimes has failed to highlight it, reducing the reporting to just one aspect of the problem. Nevertheless, it does collaterally brings you to the above conclusion even if it’s not perhaps intended by the authors

    nytimes.com/2023/11/27/world…

    https://nitter.net/SergiyKyslytsya/status/1729180398825922813#m

  12. 12.

    Lyrebird

    @Gin & Tonic: Thanks!  I also have trouble keeping up, partly bc I should be working right now, but I really enjoy learning more about Ukrainian language and culture.

    @Andrya: Interesting.  I mean, if it’s the DLI, they have the data, but I would think that Swahili would be way harder to learn than Mandarin.  (G&T, the rumor I heard was thaat Swahili has not three but eight noun classes – aka grammatical gender).  Or Vietnamese.

  13. 13.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose: Dara Massicot has some thoughts on this: https://nitter.net/MassDara/status/1729266168723112382#m

    TL;DR this isn’t going to go anywhere, b/c the wives and mothers of these mobiks want their men back, and they only way to do that is to send other husbands and sons to replace them.  *Their* wives and mothers aren’t going to sit still for that (that is to say, for a new mobilization).  From Chris_Owiki, we get: https://nitter.net/ChrisO_wiki/status/1729212025669321003#m

    wherein I learn that the Kremlin has told regional governors to stuff these families’ mouths shut with money.

  14. 14.

    MobiusKlein

    I mentioned to my wife the whole bit about “Does Hamas even have those hostages available?”.
    Her reaction was a bit of incredulity, and also asking me for the source.
    I saw the FT – Financial Times – reference, but that notion is not widespread in her media ecosystem. Mostly MSNBC / CNN / WaPo, etc.
    What wider sources should I share with her (and others) corroborating the hostage finding issues?

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MobiusKlein: The Financial Times reporting directly quotes from the Emir of Qatar, who is both acting as mediator and one of Hamas’s long time patrons. Not sure how much more vetted, reliable source she would want.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: As someone who has had six dogs – the current two are dogs five and six – that’s not how dogs work. But I’ll talk your word for it.

  24. 24.

    way2blue

    Thanks Adam.  I just wish the NATO expansion (e.g., Sweden for now) and EU membership for Ukraine would speed up.  The dithering.  It’s wearing.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    So weird thing, just connected the past couple of days.

    Mom told us Baba Yaga stories as kids, came from her dad.

    Her Dad was a refugee from WWI, brought here by the Salvation Army, then into a coal mine at 14 years old.

    Some documents record his last name as Slopack, some, as Slovak. Canadian Immigration was not great with names, and that may just have been his first name added to a region name.

    Family tradition holds that he was either AustroHungarian Bohemian or AustroHungarian Slovene.

    Baba Yaga is not part of those oral traditions under that name or major aspects of that myth.

    So where was my Grandfather from?

  26. 26.

    dr. luba

    @Gin & Tonic: Russian is not purely phonetic–it’s got a few weird quirks like the occasional pronunciation of Os as As.

    Also, I found this:

    It has been said that Russian spelling is phonemic, not phonetic, and that is an apt, if somewhat unclear, description.

    Since the pronunciation of many Russian vowels changes depending on whether they are stressed or not, and since stress shifts are common in Russian noun and verb paradigms, it would be extremely difficult (and probably hopelessly complicated) for Russian spelling to be truly phonetic. Instead, Russian tends to spell each phoneme as it would sound if it were stressed.

    Thus for the noun дело the nominative and genitive singular forms are дело and дела. The genitive ending is –a, but both forms are pronounced alike since the stress is on the first syllable; to spell both forms the same just because they’re pronounced the same would cause more confusion than anything else, since the proper endings for the nominative and genitive cases are -o and -a, and the fact that they are pronounced alike here is only due to the vagaries of stress and is, in a certain sense, incidental. The nominative plural is дела, which is spelled the same as the genitive singular but the stress has moved, and the pronunciation of the -a has changed.

    The problem for the learner is knowing where the stress falls. If that seems frustratingly complicated, take comfort in the fact that Russians sometimes don’t get the stress right either, especially with those longish, bookish words that you rarely hear spoken out loud.

  28. 28.

    Yutsano

    Japanese has its own quirks (verbs and adjectives can be present or non-present, that’s another little quirk of Japanese) plus it’s agglutinative, which means verbs can get VERY long. I’m too exhausted to think of a good example right now, but yeah. Linguistics is fun.

  29. 29.

    sab

    @Yutsano: Linguistics is fun. I took latin in high school. My siblings did not. My older sister (age 72?) started learning Mandarin Chinese in college. She has been fluent for many years. One of the most difficult languages for Americans and Europeans to learn.

    But she does not understand declensions at all, because that is not in the Chinese language at all. So anything in eastern  European languages is incomprehensible to her.

    She doesn’t even know what declension means, although she uses it with English pronouns.

  30. 30.

    Origuy

    @Martin: DLI ranks Finnish category 3, the same as Russian and Ukrainian. From the little I know of Finnish, it’s very phonetic and the stress is always on the first syllable. Finding the stress of a word is hard even for Russian native speakers. There is no grammatical gender; he and she are the same word. There are more noun cases than most other languages, but there some patterns to them. That’s as far as I got in Duolingo Finnish.

  31. 31.

    Origuy

    I meant FSI when I said DLI. DLI is the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. A friend of mine learned Polish there when she was in the Army.

  32. 32.

    Eyeroller

    @Origuy: Nighttime threads are always dead by the time I get to them.  And I’m not a linguist, just somebody interested in the topic. But it sounds like a lot of the “difficulty” classification is based on acquiring the sounds so that one doesn’t have a heavy accent, not so much on grammar.  The Slavic languages are grammatically closer to the ancestral Indo-European than are its Western European descendants, which have lost most or all of the cases and do verbs a little differently, plus, of course, Slavic languages evolved themselves (possibly along with the Baltic languages).  Finnish is not Indo-European, has a lot of cases, a system of “vowel harmony” (which accounts for some of the patterns) etc.  I haven’t seen any lists so I wonder how they would classify the difficulty of languages like most Native American families, which are agglutinative to a very high degree (and some are both agglutinative, in which phonemes are just stuck together, and fusional, which means cases and verb conjugations).

  33. 33.

    Bill Arnold

    Adam may cover this, but if not, maybe of interest:
    Threadreader for a twitter thread on Israeli intelligence failures re Hamas pogrom

    Ch12 received leaked emails fom 8200[1]! Even more details on the intelligence failure. Keep in mind this is but one piece of a big, seemingly dysfunctional, machine.
    A female NCO, who has been behind some other leaks to journalists (with certain other comrades) has sent new details including internal correspondence. She is from the professional corps and specialist in hamas tactics.
    Her first report in July was titled “death in the kibbutz at any price”. It detailed lengthy Hamas exercises in late May. The drills showed mounted and motor forces simulating the capture of a kibbutz. They practiced attacks on aircraft and a sikorsky ch-53 (one was hit on 7/10).

    (There is more at the link)
    [1] Unit 8200 (Hebrew: יחידה 8200, Yehida shmone matayim “Unit eight two-hundred”) is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for clandestine operation, collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance.

Comments are closed.