Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

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

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

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

So many bastards, so little time.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

No one could have predicted…

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 686: Kharkiv Comes Under Fire, Again!

War for Ukraine Day 686: Kharkiv Comes Under Fire, Again!

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Screen shot of new artwork by NEIVANMADE. The background is black. In the bottom foreground are grey Ukrainian homes and apartment buildings being bombarded by red Russian missiles with the Special Military Operation "Z" symbol on them. Above the missiles, written in red is the word "Ruzzians". Below the buildings being attacked is the statement "Turns Homes Into Graves".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Russia opened up on civilian targets in Kharkiv again:

More on this after the jump.

President Zelenskyy addressed the both the Ukrainian and Lithuanian people today during his visit to Vilnius. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

Together we are changing history for the better – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech to the public of Lithuania and Ukraine

10 January 2024 – 17:03

Sveikinu tave, Vilniau, sveikinu tave, Lietuvos tauta!

Days before, Vilnius experienced an especially cold spell. The next few days may also be very cold. But today, it’s significantly warmer, – a symbolic change indeed. When we stand together, even the cold retreats.

And I am confident, so will Russia.

We cannot mark a specific day when this will happen, nor can we detail every aspect of how it will unfold. But we know it will happen.

Our freedom will prevail – and there will be that day, the first day after this war. Our day.

When in ’89, ’90, ’91, the Baltic peoples first among nations, enslaved by Moscow, openly embarked on the path to restoring real state independence, Ukrainians were inspired by your courage and your anticipation – anticipation of the future.

You desired freedom above all else. And you knew, once your freedom was safeguarded, it would define a prosperous fate for you.

And so it did.

We are all grateful for that courage of yours, which helped change history for the better.

Now, we find ourselves at an even more pivotal historic moment. Now, risks are even higher.

Now, all of us are facing a much more malicious Russia.

As Moscow tries to resurrect its old empire with the whole range of modern weapons, our Ukrainian courage also helps you. Our common unity is also a security guarantee for you. The resilience of our warriors is also your resilience. And our Ukrainian sense that Russia will not withstand if we keep striking, also confirms our common rightness. The rightness of our shared historical choice – to be independent. To be in Europe. To be among equals and therefore, peaceful.

This will happen. And to this end, we must do everything possible in maximum unity for as long as it takes to achieve our goal. There will be no more empire.

Those who instigated this aggression against Ukraine clearly envisioned how they wanted the first day after Ukraine to look.

They dream of humiliating our nation. They kill without hesitation. They deported hundreds of thousands of our people, adults and children. They wanted to erase everything our culture stands on.

They brutally torture our people – thousands held captive – simply to avenge Ukraine’s existence. Such is the level of Russian evil.

And if a catastrophic day – the day after Ukraine – ever came to pass, Russia would ensure it continued. There would be a day after Moldova. Then, a day after the Baltics. A day after Poland… A day after many others.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan already hear Russia disparaging their independence. Moscow has no respect for the nations of the Caucasus and there is a clear Russian desire to manipulate all.

And it is dangerous for everyone to stay silent, to stay aside or alone.

When everyone helps one, the freedom of each wins. This rule has worked repeatedly throughout history. It will work now too – for all of us.

Any empire is built on the cornerstone of freedom’s definitive defeat, and Moscow needs to subjugate our state for this very reason.

But together, we are changing history for the better.

There won’t be a day after Ukraine. There will be a day after the war. After Putin.

It will be a day of our guaranteed security. And your inviolable freedom. And peaceful life for Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden. For all states whose fate Russia now tries to drown in doubt.

It will be a new day of opportunity for Belarus – an opportunity Belarus deserves.

A day of newfound strength for our entire Europe, which defending against Russian hybrid attacks is learning true unity… A unity that makes our continent a global defender of freedom. A unity, complete with Ukraine. With Ukraine in the European Union, with Ukraine in NATO, with Ukraine in peace.

Dear friends! 

We all know the steps needed. We all know what we can lose and what we can gain. We all know the day we desire. And we must get our job done. We must do everything for the victory.

I thank you, the people of Lithuania, for everything, for supporting Ukraine. Thanks a lot and big applause to you! Thank you, Gitanas, my friend! I am thankful to your family, your loved ones, all people who have been standing with Ukraine for all these days and months of our war for freedom, our fight for independence! I thank you all for being here, for having Ukraine in your heart all these months and years of war. Thank you for standing with Ukraine!

Glory to you!

Glory to Ukraine!

The cost:

From Reuters: (emphasis mine)

KYIV, Jan 10 (Reuters) – After her younger brother was killed in November fighting Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Anna Birzul spent two days stricken with grief.

Then she sprang into action, penning a petition asking President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to award 29-year-old Bohdan Krotov the highest military honour, Hero of Ukraine.

“We buried him on the 26th, and already on the 27th I had written it,” said a tearful Birzul, 35, standing at Krotov’s grave in a Kyiv cemetery.

A portrait of the combat medic, smiling, hung beneath a fluttering Ukrainian flag that featured his Interior Ministry unit’s insignia.

Birzul’s petition is one of at least 2,000 submitted, usually by a relative or a friend, since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion calling on Zelenskiy to honour a fallen soldier with the award.

Fewer than 400 service members have been named Hero of Ukraine since the war began, many of them posthumously, for valorous acts such as helping thwart enemy advances.

The petitions, introduced in 2015 as a platform for popular appeals to the president, are not a formal part of the nomination process for the award, which was established in 1998.

When Ukrainian troops were fighting a lower-intensity insurgency by Moscow-backed separatists, appeals were registered sparingly.

Now, new petitions appear almost daily from grieving widows, mothers and children – first on the president’s website, then splashed across social media – and have become a common ritual in a war that has rallied the nation but shows no signs of abating.

They offer a window into the collective trauma Ukrainians are living through, and underline how virtually every soldier who is killed in battle is seen as a “hero” for helping to defend the country from invading forces.

The government does not disclose its losses, but Western intelligence services have estimated that tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.

Birzul described her brother, who joined an assault brigade before Ukraine began a counteroffensive last June, as cheerful and selfless. He had been sensitive and supportive when they were young and lacked a strong father figure.

Krotov, who commonly went by the name Hlib, dreamed of starting a family of his own, she said, but while at war he felt a sense of purpose.

He had hauled wounded men off the battlefield and rescued them under heavy fire, Birzul wrote in her petition. His comrades-in-arms recalled him fondly, “with tears in their eyes”.

He saved four people the day he was killed, Birzul told Reuters, citing Krotov’s fellow soldiers.

Like some others, Birzul has promoted her appeal widely on social media, urging friends and followers – among them public figures – to share it on their own accounts.

It is a race against time, she said, to collect within 90 days of publication the 25,000 signatures needed for consideration.

More at the link!

The stakes:

From Politico EU:

BRUSSELS — One of Europe’s most senior politicians recounted how former U.S. President Donald Trump privately warned that America would not come to the EU’s aid if it was attacked militarily.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was also present at a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” Trump also said, according to Breton. “And he added, ‘and by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,'” Breton said about the tense meeting, where the EU’s then-trade chief Phil Hogan was also present.

Breton told the anecdote at an event in the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday, just days before the Republican Party holds its January 15 caucus in Iowa, the opening contest in Trump’s bid to win the Republican nomination for a run at returning to the White House. Party members will cast their votes for candidates including Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who both trail way behind the ex-president in opinion polls.

Brussels is rife with fear about the possibility Trump will return to the U.S. presidency.

As the commissioner in charge of the EU’s industrial policy and defense agenda, Breton has pushed for the EU to boost its own self-defense capabilities amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, and on Tuesday floated a €100 billion fund to ramp up arms production in the bloc.

“That was a big wake-up call and he may come back,” Breton said about Trump. “So now more than ever, we know that we are on our own, of course. We are a member of NATO, almost all of us, of course we have allies, but we have no other options but to increase drastically this pillar in order to be ready [for] whatever happens.”

I want to be very clear here: I have significant issues with Biden’s senior natsec team, as well as the strategies they’ve undertaken in regard to supporting Ukraine, but in regard to natsec policy and strategy I am very glad he is president right now and not Trump for the reasons outlined in the Politico EU article.

Kharkiv:

Serebryansky Forest, Luhansk Oblast:

Kyiv:

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

Magyar’s Birds continue their hunt!

Vuhledar front:

Here’s the machine translation of Stenenko’s tweet:

Destroyed Russian artillery does not happen a lot 💥

Another Russian Msta-S self-propelled gun was burned by Shadow soldiers!
The installation in the firing position burned out after a few hits and will never harm anyone again.

It took 4 of your FPVs to destroy the self-propelled guns. One is not always enough. That is why the army needs more drones!

Russian occupied Crimea:

Obukhovo, Moscow Oblast:

Nizhny Tagil, Russia:

For you logistics enthusiasts, Military Ukraine has some interesting details by Andriy Haruk on Russian armor. (machine translation)

How many tanks are left in Russia? A question that often arises in discussions, and to which it is simply impossible to find an exact answer – she probably does not even know the shogu with the gerasimov. However, attempts to count tanks do not stop. Today we will analyze one of them – report of the French OSINT cell ARI, published on August 31, 2023.

The French tried to figure out how many tanks the Russians have at storage bases. I must say that the numbers here are very « jump» – for example, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated this number in 2022 at as many as 17.5 thousand tanks, including 200 T-90, 3 thousand T-80, 7 thousand T-72, 2 thousand T-64, 2.5 thousand T-62 and 2.8 thousand T-55. However, these calculations are very inaccurate, as they start from estimating the number of tanks released during the USSR.

Estimates of last year’s Military Balance anniversary are much more modest: about 2,000 tanks in the storm and up to 5,000 in storage. However, its authors take into account models from T-62 and above – but in reality the Laptenogi not only have hundreds of T-54/55 in warehouses, but also already use them at the front! Interestingly, in 2022. Military Balance wrote about 13.7 thousand Russian tanks, but in this case did not count T-54/55.

ARI experts in their calculations used satellite images taken between April and September 2021. Complemented their information from social networks. Calculations were made at ten central storage bases out of 22 available in the Russian Federation – on them, an estimated 95% of tanks.

So what could be counted? 5538 tanks, of which 4347 – identified by type. It is clear that these are tanks that are stored in the open air. At the studied bases there are also canopies and boxes, the capacity of which is estimated in 1950 cars. However, some of these premises should be allocated for repairs, and some are probably not occupied by tanks, but by other machines. Taking into account the above, the number of tanks in storage can be estimated at a maximum of 7 thousand, but probably – about 6 thousand.

More at the link!

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos today, so here’s some adjacent material from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    dimmsdale

    Adam, thanks again for your work. I just finished scraping excerpts from your long post last November (referencing among other things Beau and Allison Gill) adding it to my small home-made Adam Silverman Digest of pertinent responses you’ve published. I refer to it fairly often, since it’s so hard (for me at least) to keep tabs on it all. Appreciate your work beyond my ability to thank you.

  3. 3.

    Alison Rose

    God, Trump is just an execrable piece of shit. It will never stop being utterly disturbing to me that so many people admire that. What the fuck is wrong with the human race.

    (That’s rhetorical. Don’t answer. There aren’t enough pixels.)

    In today’s edition of Auto-Translation Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing: On Zelenskyy’s FB post about his visit to Lithuania, he (well, whoever handles his social media) captioned the photos in Ukrainian and English, as usual. In his Ukrainian caption, it begins with “Перший закордонний візит у 24-му році”, and in his English caption, he wrote “The first foreign visit in 2024”. However, FB’s auto-translation of the Ukrainian put it as “First overseas visit in 24 years”. Not quite the same thing! I also tried Google and it gave me “The first foreign visit in the 24th year” which is…slightly less wrong but still not right.

    There’s also this lovely short video of his visit to a Ukrainian Community Center in Vilnius, where he greeted some kids and others there.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  9. 9.

    CarolM

    Adam, I don’t comment very often but I read your posts every day and I just wanted to de-lurk to add my gratitude for all the work you do to bring this information to us.

  14. 14.

    Alison Rose

    @Gin & Tonic: Right, that was part of my amusement. I don’t have a degree in Geography or anything, but as far as I can tell, Lithuania is not across an ocean from Ukraine. And then the “24 years” thing, too. Not the best job, translation bot!

    To note: “foreign” was part of Zelenskyy’s own caption in English.

  15. 15.

    wjca

    @Adam L Silverman: But AI is going to revolutionize everything this year.

    The thing most likely to get revolutionized this year is the view of what AI is currently able to accomplish.  Eventually, it will probably be able to do great things.  If not all of the wonders currently being hyped.  But that is not even close to now.

    (Yes, I did pick up on the sarcasm in your comment.)

  16. 16.

    YY_Sima Qian

    For all of my criticisms of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy, I too am relieved he has been in the WH & not Trump. If Trump had won reelection, I expect the US would be in a hot conflict w/ Iran by now, & possibly NK & the PRC. He certainly would have done as little as possible to help Ukraine, which would have fractured NATO & ruptured US-EU relations, & fomented chaos in Europe. The US would probably be in escalating trade wars w/ not only the PRC, but every single one of its trade partners. (Not that Biden has deescalated many of the trade wars.& skirmishes that Trump had started, might you.)

  17. 17.

    Carlo Graziani

    @wjca: 

    Eventually, it will probably be able to do great things. If not all of the wonders currently being hyped. But that is not even close to now.

    This iteration of “AI” (a term that I dislike intensely, but which makes for very funding-agency-friendly PowerPoint) is never going to get close. The reason is that under the hood are statistical learning models, and “learning” is a different cognitive process than “reasoning”.

    The result of this difference is that if a reasoning agent is tricked into uttering nonsense, it will likely notice the error (and, in the case of humans, possibly the humor). But modern “AI” will in the best case segfault, and in the worst case utter confident nonsense.

    A colleague of mine asked Chat-GPT to derive the wave equation starting from the Maxwell equations (this is a first-year physics graduate student exercise, essentially the explanation for light propagation). The result was extremely persuasive, professorial-toned, perfectly pedagogical pile of bullshit, with the result that after a series of nonsense steps, a nonsense equation was confidently asserted to be “The Wave Equation”.

    That was about a year ago. I just asked Chat-GPT “What is tan(1E+99)” —a Feynman question, the answer to which should be “that value is not computable with modern computational resources”. After a 60-second pause, I got “Internal Server Error”, meaning that all Chat-GPT’s possible responses slammed up against OpenAI’s safety checks (the actual AI architecture is surrounded by ad-hoc safeties, because people have been gaming it so hard).

    It kind of pisses me off that the academic CS people who do this kind of research prostitute their work to create false impressions of reasoning, and it really worries me that many appear to delude themselves that their systems are somehow reasoning. Something reform is decidedly necessary in this “science.”

  18. 18.

    wjca

    @Carlo Graziani: This iteration of “AI” (a term that I dislike intensely, but which makes for very funding-agency-friendly PowerPoint) is never going to get close. The reason is that under the hood are statistical learning models, and “learning” is a different cognitive process than “reasoning”.

    This iteration of AI isn’t really artificial intelligence.  It’s just Large Language Modeling.  Which, as you say, is never going to get close.

    I’m not sure that academics, as opposed to sales teams, are responsible for generating the confusion.  But at this rate, we’re going to need a new term to label what AI used to mean.

  19. 19.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani Completely agree. The LLM based AI can be very useful, even powerful, tools if used right & w/in their limitations. But they are not “intelligent” in any context other than “AI”, & has no path toward true intelligence.

    That these LLMs can seem to be so convincing in mimicking “intelligence” & “creativity” to laymen’s eyes speaks more to how little of what we do are truly original, as opposed to reshuffling information that is already out there, & more often than not in uninteresting ways.

  20. 20.

    Carlo Graziani

    @wjca: 

    This iteration of AI isn’t really artificial intelligence. It’s just Large Language Modeling.

    What I mean, by “the current iteration of AI” is broader than LLMs, transformers, and so on. I mean all current machine learning, and Deep Learning in particular.

    The entire subject is founded on statistical learning. Which I work on, and love, but which has very clear and well-defined limitations that are obscure even to its own practitioners, in my professional opinion.

  21. 21.

    way2blue

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That reminds me…  a Polish American friend explains:

    Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz means “He who buzzes.”

    Not sure is his name is relevant to the film though…

  22. 22.

    way2blue

    @Carlo Graziani:

    I saw a talk recently that used ‘deep learning’ to map out fire-damaged structures in Lahaina from aerial imagery.  Along with the iterations to tune  results to better match FEMA’s ‘ground-truthing’.  My son is hoping to use it to identify & map invasive species from aerial imagery.  Seems to have very cool potential even if still in its infancy.

Comments are closed.