Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

People are weird.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

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

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The revolution will be supervised.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

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

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Let’s finish the job.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 697: Ukraine Appears to Strike Into Russian Occupied Donetsk Oblast

War for Ukraine Day 697: Ukraine Appears to Strike Into Russian Occupied Donetsk Oblast

by | 49 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

The crest of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. A wine colored cross on a silver shield with the gold Uktainian Tryzub in the center on a circular blue medallion. A pair of silver maces and an upright sword are between the blue medallion and the wine colored cross.

Just a brief housekeeping note before we get started. JR in WVA and I used to email on occasion. I knew he was ill, hadn’t heard from him in several months, and between things going weird for me in the Fall of 2023 and not wanting to bother him, I let the contact lapse. I should not have done so. I was very sorry to read Watergirl’s post earlier. I want to extend my condolences to his family. May his memory be a blessing.

The Ukrainians appear to have hit back at recent Russian bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets in a reciprocal strike on Russian occupied Donetsk Oblast:

Reuters has the details.

Jan 21 (Reuters) – Twenty-seven people were killed and 25 injured when Ukrainian forces shelled the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the Donetsk region, said on Sunday.

According to Alexei Kulemzin, the city’s Russian-installed mayor, Ukrainian forces bombarded a busy area where shops and a market are located. Pushilin said the city was shelled by Ukrainian artillery.
Reuters photographs and video taken at the scene showed crying people, some of whom said they had lost relatives, and bodies lying on blood-soaked snow near one of the city’s markets.

Pushilin announced a day of mourning on Monday in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the name given to the part of the region Russia says it has annexed.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not address the attack but said that in a single day, Russia had shelled more than 100 cities, towns and villages in nine regions in Ukraine, and that the attacks in Donetsk region had been “particularly severe.”

Ukraine’s forces in the Tavria, or southern zone, said in a Facebook post that soldiers under its command were not responsible. “Donetsk is Ukraine!” it said. “Russia will have to answer for taking lives of Ukrainians.”

Pushilin said 18 of the injured were hospitalised and seven being treated as outpatients.
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the attack “a barbaric act of terrorism” by Ukraine that was carried out “with the use of weapons supplied by the West”.

“The Russian side categorically condemns this treacherous strike against the civilian population,” a ministry statement said.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, has voiced outrage in the past when Ukrainian attacks have killed civilians in Donetsk and other areas. Russia’s own campaign of air strikes and heavy shelling, however, has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

The governor of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region, Vadym Filashkin, said Russian attacks killed at least two people at two locations west of the city of Donetsk on Sunday.

At Kurakhove, about 45 km (28 miles) from Donetsk, shelling killed a 31-year-old man and injured another person, while a 62-year-old man was killed and a 70-year-old man injured at Krasnohorivka between Donetsk and Kurakhove, he said.

“I call on everyone who remains in Donetsk: evacuate!” Filashkin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Donetsk is one of four regions in Ukraine’s east and south that Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the U.N. General Assembly. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.

Today’s strike, provided it is actually verified as an Ukrainian one, comes on the heels of the Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia over the past several days. Including, perhaps, today.

Leningrad Oblast, Russia:

More on those after the jump.

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

Russia must feel and remember that the aggressor loses the most from aggression – address by the President of Ukraine

21 January 2024 – 21:35

Dear Ukrainians!

Another week of this war and our active actions, our defense, is coming to an end. Since the beginning of this day alone, there have been about 60 battles. The most intense hostilities are in the Avdiivka sector, as well as in Bakhmut, Maryinka, Kupyansk directions, and in the South of our country. There were more than 50 Russian strikes with multiple launch rocket systems alone, as well as dozens of air and missile strikes.

On this day alone, Russian savages shelled more than a hundred cities, towns, and our Ukrainian villages in nine regions: from Chernihiv and Sumy to Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad. The most brutal Russian attacks were in Donetsk region. Unfortunately, there are wounded and dead. My condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones.

Russia will be held accountable for all this terror – it must be. If it hadn’t been for Moscow’s decisions to start this aggression and this terror, thousands and thousands of people would be alive today. That is why it is so important to bring Russia to full, fair accountability at all levels. At the individual level, so that every war criminal is held to account, every terrorist. And at the level of the entire terrorist state – through its assets and capabilities.

Russia must feel and remember forever that the aggressor loses the most from aggression. I am grateful to everyone who brings Russia’s accountability closer by all means – military, sanctions, legal, and political.

And we have already defined our Ukrainian priorities for the coming weeks. Our tasks are clear – both in terms of packages that will strengthen our position at the front, and in terms of political cooperation with partners, and in terms of what is needed for Ukraine’s financial stability.

A special priority is the European Union and relations with our closest neighbors. We are preparing more interaction and new communication, new important negotiations.

I am grateful to everyone who believes today, as they did last year and in 2022, that Russian terror must be defeated. Anything that strengthens Ukraine and protects our people adds strength to everyone in Europe and everyone in the world who values international law. Anything that weakens Russia and brings the war back home to Russia contributes to the stability of international relations and saves the world from even greater crises.

I thank everyone who fights and works for Ukraine! I thank everyone who saves the lives of Ukrainians!

Glory to Ukraine!

Christopher Miller has done a new interview with LTG Budanov, the Director of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence/HUR.

Here are some excerpts: (emphasis mine)

No light enters the office of Ukraine’s military spymaster, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov. The walls are fortified, the windows reinforced with sandbags, and the curtains drawn.

When Budanov, 38, arrived for a Financial Times interview, walking in through a doorway adorned with a religious icon, he immediately ordered an aide to turn off the lights. “I like the darkness,” he said.

As head of the defence ministry’s Main Intelligence Unit (GUR), Budanov has masterminded Ukraine’s covert war against Russia, becoming one of the most lionised figures in Kyiv’s fightback. The survivor of 10 known assassination attempts, he lives, more or less continuously, in this office on the outskirts of the capital, encamped with patriotic art and war memorabilia on the walls and his pet frog Petro swimming in a tank beside his desk.

Budanov’s métier is running attacks behind enemy lines in Russian-occupied territory and Russia itself. But the spy chief rarely takes credit for them, keeping Moscow and the rest of the world guessing about his directorate’s reach and abilities.

In his department’s latest feats this week, it flew attack drones as far as St Petersburg, striking an oil terminal, and targeted a gunpowder factory and an oil depot in Bryansk region, just north of the Ukrainian border.

The brazen tactics have at times irked Ukraine’s western backers; some fear it will provoke a brutal and perhaps even nuclear response from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The spy chief is unmoved by such concerns and vows to keep operating deep inside Russia to sabotage Putin’s war machine.

“We do not foresee any drastic changes in the near future,” Budanov said. “Everything we have done, we will continue to do.”

Budanov knows this will be a trying year for Ukraine, now fighting Russia for more than a decade since the Kremlin’s soldiers, without insignia, appeared in Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region.

“To say that everything is fine is not true,” Budanov said when asked about Ukraine’s much-vaunted counteroffensive last year failing to achieve its objectives. “To say that there is a catastrophe is also not true.”

Ukraine will still manage to keep Putin at bay, he predicted, and has already proved that “the whole legend of [Russia’s] power is a soap bubble”.

A former special forces soldier who fought in the Donbas in 2014, Budanov has himself taken part in secret missions, including in the occupied Crimean peninsula. His body bears the scars: shrapnel from an anti-personnel mine once struck near his heart, nearly killing him; he has broken both his neck and back; and he has been shot in the arm.

He was appointed to run the GUR by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2020. His covert operations — the Kremlin blamed the GUR for an explosion on the Crimean bridge in October 2022 — have revitalised the agency, which long played second fiddle to Ukraine’s much larger domestic security service, the SBU.

For this Budanov enjoys an almost cult status among Ukrainians, who share memes with his likeness on social media when military equipment explodes in Russia or Russian-controlled areas.

But it has come at a cost. When the GUR chief does step out, he moves with an entourage of bodyguards and intelligence agents. Of the many assassination attempts against him — which he describes as “nothing special” — the closest call came in 2019, when a bomb placed beneath his vehicle exploded prematurely. He was uninjured.

His wife Marianna Budanova was less fortunate when she was intentionally poisoned with heavy metals in November, along with several GUR officers, according to the agency. “She’s getting treatment, she feels better now,” Budanov said. He declined to elaborate whether he or his wife was the intended target of the poisoning.

Budanov was reluctant to offer an assessment of Ukraine’s current military operations, deferring to the army’s general staff.

But he warned that “it is not even conceivable to think that we can do without mobilisation” — echoing the top brass’s call for more recruits. “The shortage [of manpower] is palpable,” he said.

Zelenskyy has said his army chiefs asked him to mobilise about 400,000 to 500,000 new soldiers to replace those killed or wounded, and to rest those involved in the most intense fighting.

A year ago, Budanov predicted that Ukrainian forces, riding high from successful 2022 counteroffensives that liberated much of the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, would push on all the way to Crimea.

Ukrainian troops never managed to decisively breach Russia’s heavily fortified defences: the frontline remains almost the same as it looked a year ago. But Budanov maintains he was not wrong.

“Although the original plans suggested something different, we kept our promise. This summer, our units repeatedly entered Crimea,” he said, referring to his commandos sneaking on to the peninsula to carry out raids on Russian bases.

Much, much more at the link!

Avdiivka:

Lviv:

What does Lviv look like at night? Many parts of old Lviv, especially the area where I Iive, look just like this. Beautiful single lane cobblestone streets. These side streets are very relaxing to walk down. In fact when I’m in the city center, I have my earbuds in and I’m often listening to classical music because it just fits the ambiance and architecture.

Sevastopol, Russian occupied Crimea:

In the last days, information was circulating that a Russian Tarantul-class corvette has been struck at the port of Russian-occupied Sevastopol by Ukrainian USVs. It was first brought up by the “Atesh” resistance group in Russian-occupied Crimea and caused the Russian regime to increase counter operations against them.

Satellite pictures showing the Sevastopol Bay back up the story that the Russian war ship has been indeed hit.

Source of pics: @InformNapalm

#Ukraine #Crimea #Sevastopol

Here’s more on the attack on the petroleum facility in Ust-Luga, which is in Leningrad Oblast:

 

Alaska:

I think he missed the cooling-off period a bit… But I would still take this and earlier steps seriously. Putin is signalling both to us and to the Russians. The Alaska sale has been a big meme in the Russian sphere for years and he is telling Russians he is willing to give it a go, even if just to earn himself some extra points domestically.

Here’s the rest of the quoted thread from the Thread Reader App:

check this out – it’s not a joke 🤣😂
Image
Image

seriously – it is not 😂

Btw. Do you remember the banners “alaska is ours” ? 🤣😂Image
btw. yes I know he doesn’t write directly about alaska, but pay attention to the text and the heritage to which the document refers, did the “Russian empire” sell anything else beyond alaska? 😄 
I love it when an unserious country tries to prepare a serious document….when qualified personnel have emigrated abroad.. and the document prepares by the alcohol and not the human 😂🤣 

I tried to approach the subject humorously. However, the topic is not a joke – it is serious and requires attention. More sources:

The solution? First, more consolidation of allies and Nato 🇪🇺. Second, more humanitarian and military support for Ukraine – third, isolation, more sanctions imposed on Russia.Image
It is worth adding that 2 weeks ago there was a documentary on Russian “state” ( propaganda ) television – titled : Russian alaskaImage

This also explains what we covered in the update the other night, which is billboards going up in Moscow with Putin’s statement that “Russia’s borders do not end anywhere.”

Leaving aside the obvious Sarah Palin jokes, I don’t think Alaska is in jeopardy any time soon. But it makes it clear that within Putin’s bounded rationality, which seems irrational to us, he and Russia are waging a defensive effort in the world war that he believes the US, NATO, and the EU started to destroy Russia in the late aughts.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos tonight, so here’s some adjacent material:

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  3. 3.

    Yarrow

    Thanks, Adam. Some Dem-related ad people should run ads showing how Putin wants to take Alaska back and is emboldened by Republicans refusing to fund aid to Ukraine.

  4. 4.

    teezyskeezy

    I’ve been making sardonic anti-Trump “Alaska oblast” jokes since 2016, but in Trump II maybe it’ll be too serious for that kind of dark humor.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    Reuters photographs and video taken at the scene showed crying people

    [insert Loki “Yes, very sad. Anyway!” gif here]

    I don’t think there’s ever been a better example of “don’t start none, won’t be none” then when russians get all weepy and sad or mad about Ukraine strikes.

    I am always and forever a combination of all four of those cats. Although the glass would be filled with cranberry juice.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  6. 6.

    Jay

    @Yarrow:

    My thought, when I heard the news, was that Canada should send the PPLI, the Rocky Mountain Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders to the Alaska border crossings,

    set up filtration camps to make sure that “Little Green Men” arn’t sneaking in, or American 5th Columnists,

    just to amp the story up in US media, which has ignored it.

  7. 7.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Adam L Silverman: Was the Ukrainian artillery strike really into civilian areas of Donetsk? Not sure I want to take the city mayor’s words at face value. If so, very bad idea by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, however understandable (but still inexcusable) the urge for retribution for Russia’s terror strike campaign may be. Not to mention it would be a waste of precious artillery shells.

    Attacking Russia’s industrial & energy export infrastructure, OTOH, is not only legitimate but also a great way to leverage limited resources for the highest impact. Pay back for Russian attacks on Ukrainian grains export infrastructure, to boot.

    It’s pretty clear that Russia has been denuding the defenses for the rest of the country to concentrate on the Ukrainian battlefield. Yet another reminder that Putin does not actually fear NATO invasion. He probably fears Western subversion of his rule & encouraging separatism from the current iteration of the Russian Empire.

  8. 8.

    Windpond

    I have lived in Alaska for 50 years. Putin and his buddy, TFG, have always fancied that which wasn’t theirs. I have no illusions Putin would give taking back Alaska a go especially if his pal was in the White House.

  10. 10.

    Chris

    IIRC, there’s a belief in at least some Islamic fundamentalist circles that any land that was at any point under Muslim rule is rightfully theirs in perpetuity; ergo, the Daesh crowd believes their caliphate should include not only Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, but also Spain, Bulgaria, India…

    Seems clear that Putin et al believe effectively the same thing about lands under Russian rule.

  11. 11.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    No, they won’t. That’s 3 full time companies, 450 full time soldiers. Amongst those three regiments are 4500 active reserves and then there are all of us whom are no longer active reserves.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Alison Rose: Regardless of its temporary occupation, Donetsk is Ukraine, and there are Ukrainian patriots living there. If Ukrainian forces really did fire artillery at civilian areas, that was a profoundly bad idea. I hope it’s not true.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    I remember what happened to the last nation that invaded Alaska, and it wasn’t even a state then.

    Vlad just needs some Trump Sharpies to perfect his map-editing game. Rather disturbed how many quirks those two have in common.

  16. 16.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    The Alaska threat is pretty funny (in a way) and the idea that Ruzzia has no borders is a fucking laugh. That’s not to say that Ruzzia isn’t a threat, it is. The way that everyone is following Crazy Vlad into Hell makes it clear that Comrade Pootie can do whatever he wants and his complaint people will bend to his will. No wonder he thinks he can threaten the world, his people cower before him.

    Ruzzian propaganda is a laugh though. The over the top way of portraying things is lame as fuck, like the billboard with the plane and parachutists all around it. How in the fuck are the parachutists getting out in front of the plane they jumped from? Or is that plane piloted by drunken Ruzzians and it’s plowing through a bunch of parachutists who had just jumped out of another plane? Propaganda fail.

    Oh, and FUCK Putin, FUCK his toady puppet Trump and FUCK the Ruzzian-loving  Republican party.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Jay: I was joking. But, I had no idea the Canadian Army has atrophied so much! These proud regiments are down to company sized active duty formations?!

  18. 18.

    Bill Arnold

    Poking a bit at the Decree about former imperial and/or USSR territories, here are a few pieces.
    Tass. (Note: The hostname resolves to a Russian IP address, for those who are concerned about such things for whatever reason(s). )
    Russia to allocate funds for search of Soviet, Imperial Russian property abroad – A relevant decree, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, will allocate funds for the purpose to the Department of Foreign Property of the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation (18 JAN, 2024, TASS)

    The funds will be allocated to cover expenses related to “the process of searching the real estate property owned by the Russian Federation, the former Russian Empire, the former USSR,” as well as for “due registration of [property] rights” and “legal protection of this property.”
    Another decree allocates funds to cover the department’s expenses for maintaining and using Russia’s federal property abroad.

    Bloomberg, paywalled.
    Putin Orders Hunt for Property of Russian Empire, Soviet Union (January 19, 2024)

    – President directs officials to search for Russian assets
    – Russian empire extended over eastern Europe, Finland at peak
    …
    An order from the Russian president published late Thursday allocated funding for a state unit to conduct searches for property abroad and ensure Russia’s ownership rights are registered. The document didn’t indicate the size of the budget for the operation or what kinds of property are being sought.

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: +1  It does not sound to me like something that Ukraine would do.

    KyivIndependent.com:

    […]

    The Kyiv Independent could not verify Pushilin’s claims.

    The press office of Ukraine’s Tavria Group, the military units fighting on the southeastern front lines, issued a statement denying involvement in the attack.

    “Russians are spreading information about a strike on the market in Donetsk,” the statement read.

    “We responsibly declare that the forces under the control of the Tavria military unit did not engage in combat operations in this case. Donetsk is Ukraine! Russia will have to be held accountable for the lives of Ukrainians that were taken.”

    In the Ukrainian-controlled area of the region, Oblast Governor Vadym Filashkin reported on Jan. 21 that Grad rockets fired by Russian troops killed one person and injured another. He urged all remaining residents to evacuate the oblast.

    […]

    Pushilin was found guilty of collaboration on Dec. 27 and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for his role in Russia’s occupation of Donetsk Oblast.

    Peace and comfort to the innocents.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Right now, the Russian military is in no position to prevent the Alaskan National Guard (w/ an assist from the USN) from invading Chukotka & marching down toward the Russian SSBN base at Petropavlosk-Kemchatskiy. Well, aside from Russian nukes.

  21. 21.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chris: This notion is pretty common among ultranationalists and/or religious fundamentalists, be they Russian, Han Chinese, Indian Hindu, Jewish Israeli, Turkish, or member of ISIS.

    If such notions are not as prevalent elsewhere, it is because in these other countries such fantasies are too fantastic for even feverish dreams.

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    A short blog from August at the AtlanticCouncil.org:

    UkraineAlert

    August 11, 2023

    Why Putin’s Russia cannot accept its borders
    By Glenn Chafetz, John Sipher

    To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”

    The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.

    Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.

    It was the era of Mongol rule and not the Kyivan Rus inheritance that paved the way for the rise of the Russian Empire. Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.” His expansionist vision has been embraced by virtually every subsequent ruler of Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation.

    Ivan III’s quest to acquire new territories, often under the guise of “reuniting the lands of the ancient Rus,” continues to this day and has had a profound impact on world history. As Historian Stephen Kotkin has noted, “Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.”

    Few of the peoples inhabiting the lands Ivan III and his successors claimed saw themselves as Russian, at least not before they were “gathered.” At the time of Ivan III’s death, Muscovy covered less than a fifth of the area of today’s Russia; notably, it did not include the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus, or all of Siberia. Crimea, about which Vladimir Putin rhapsodizes, was not part of the Russian Empire until Catherine II took it from the Crimean Khans in 1783.

    If Putin is concerned with righting historical wrongs, he should give Crimea back to the Crimean Tatars. He won’t do this, of course, because the dynamic of imperial conquest and Russification is a key component of legitimacy for Putin, as it has been for almost all of Russia’s rulers (Yeltsin and Gorbachev partially excepted). Russia expands because its rulers need an external threat to justify their autocracy. This was as true for the Soviet period as it had been for Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.

    Putin’s Russia laments the loss of imperial glory, and has never come to terms with its repressive past. The security-expansion paradox driving Russia’s foreign and domestic policies is a vicious cycle that all empires experience to one extent or another. Acquisition creates threats inside the newly acquired territories and on the expanding borders of the growing empire. Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

    This dynamic can end in two ways: Either through external containment or internal democratization. The latter has proved problematic for the Russian people, and is not something Russia’s neighbors should count on happening any time soon. The former has worked before, during the Cold War.

    Modern Russia remains an empire and does not see itself as a Great Power unless it dominates its neighbors. Consequently, Russia will continue to threaten, attack, and absorb its neighbors until the West acts collectively to contain it.

    Russia and its apologists will complain that containment ignores Russia’s legitimate security concerns. This is a canard because Russia’s security concerns constantly expand. In reality, Russian leaders have absolutely nothing to worry about if they return to their country’s internationally recognized 1991 borders. The West has always respected these borders; it is Russia that has not. Until modern Russia moves beyond its deeply ingrained imperial identity, this is unlikely to change.

    Glenn Chafetz has more than 30 years of experience in government, academia, and the private sector. He is now director of 2430 Group, a non-profit that helps defend the US private sector from state sponsored threats. John Sipher worked for the CIA’s Clandestine Service for 28 years. He is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment.

    “Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow.”

    [ rofl ] I can see VVP spluttering on seeing that line.

    This piece explains a lot, to my gut anyway.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Since the late 80’s, Canadian Regiments are down to in most cases, a single company of full time soldiers. That still gives us 68,000 active duty. The Seaforth Highlanders, on paper, have 8 Companies, but 7 are Reservists who actively train twice a month, and for 1 full month in summer.

    Starting with the Yugoslav Wars, and since then, Reservists would be called up for 6 month or longer deployments, to fill out mixed Brigaides, so we all got good with internal cooperation.

    If we need to, we can muster 576,000 in 24 hours. About twice that in 48 hours when us no longer active Reserves show up.

  24. 24.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Jay: That actually sounds like a good system, & one that disincentivizes unilateral foreign military adventures.

  25. 25.

    Origuy

    @Bill Arnold: Perhaps the Pushkin Museum would like to return the Treasures of Heinrich Schliemann’s Troy excavations, which SMERSH took “for safekeeping” in 1945. There was a sign in the museum saying that the guardian of the treasures, Dr. Wilhelm Unverzagt had asked the commander of SMERSH to safeguard them He believed that they would be returned eventually and  would be safer than in in the chaos after the Battle of Berlin, but the Russians denied for years that they had them. Whether they should be returned to Germany or Turkey is an open question.

  26. 26.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    BTW, once you are in a Regiment, you are in The Regiment, for life, (aside from criminal convictions). It is still very “British”.

    I have aged out, but I still range shoot a couple of times a month, and get in 4 HALO drops a year to keep my certs up. I do it with a couple of other old farts from the Regiment to keep the costs down. I keep my IDFA Class 4 certs up every year.

  27. 27.

    wjca

    @YY_Sima Qian: If Trump wins in Nov., those troops will be needed on Canada’s southern borders.

    No doubt one of the reactionaries around TIFG will decide to revive “54-40 or fight!”

  28. 28.

    Yutsano

    *ahem*

    The last time I checked there were three Army bases and at least three Air Force bases in Alaska. Uncle Vladdie ain’t gonna get far in that situation.

  29. 29.

    Pissed off Ukrainian

    Re: “Ukrainian” strike on Donetsk. I can see the Ukrainian command thinking: “We hit an oil processing facility, an air defense systems plant, an ammo plant, an A-50 radar plane, a landing ship, but it feels like something is missing. Bingo! Let’s hit a Saturday market in Donetsk and kill two dozens civilians, just like Russians did in Grozny, Kherson, Zaporizhia. Because why the hell not? We’ve got unlimited missiles to waste.”

  32. 32.

    wjca

    @Gin & Tonic: Regardless of its temporary occupation, Donetsk is Ukraine, and there are Ukrainian patriots living there. If Ukrainian forces really did fire artillery at civilian areas, that was a profoundly bad idea. I hope it’s not true.

    Given the Russian military’s track record, it is not impossible that one of their missiles aimed at Ukranian cities just missed.

  35. 35.

    wjca

    @Jay: You got 49, that’s all you are ever going to get.

    No reason any sane person would want to change the status quo there.  Unfortunately “any sane person” is far from universal.  Even on this.

  40. 40.

    Chris

    @Another Scott:

    Correct me if I’m repeating anti-Russian propaganda, but wasn’t Muscovy’s eventual ascension also tied to having been the favorite regional leg-breaker for the Mongol overlords, and therefore in the best position to fill the vacuum when Mongol rule grew weak?  Like a scaled-up version of Henry Fonda overthrowing his railroad baron employer in Once Upon A Time With The West.

  41. 41.

    Carlo Graziani

    I’m going to go out on a limb and state that the Alaska thing is Putin’s idea of “Just fucking with you.” He’s a Prince Among Assholes, but he’s not an idiot. If I had to guess, there’s some vague equivalence in his mind between the US contesting Russian primacy on its land borders and Russia making claims on the North American continent. This is just a way of expressing that point. Which is to say, it’s not the suicide note it would otherwise be if Putin really were announcing a drive to reclaim Alaska.

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @Chris: No idea.  I’m not a student of this stuff.

    Made me look… Wikipedia.org:

    The influence of the Mongol invasion on the territories of Kievan Rus’ was uneven.[20] Colin McEvedy (Atlas of World Population History, 1978) estimates the population of Kievan Rus’ dropped from 7.5 million prior to the invasion to 7 million afterwards.[21] Centres such as Kiev took centuries to rebuild and recover from the devastation of the initial attack. The Novgorod Republic continued to prosper, and new entities, the rival cities of Moscow[20] and Tver,[citation needed] began to flourish under the Mongols.[20]

    Moscow’s eventual dominance of northern and eastern Rus’ was in large part attributable to the Mongols. After the prince of Tver joined a rebellion against the Mongols in 1327, his rival prince Ivan I of Moscow joined the Mongols in crushing Tver and devastating its lands. By doing so he eliminated his rival, allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to move its headquarters to Moscow, and was granted the title of Grand Prince by the Mongols.[22]

    As such, the Muscovite prince became the chief intermediary between the Mongol overlords and the Rus’ lands, which paid further dividends for Moscow’s rulers. While the Mongols often raided other areas of Rus’, they tended to respect the lands controlled by their principal collaborator. This, in turn, attracted nobles and their servants who sought to settle in the relatively secure and peaceful Moscow lands.[20]

    Although Rus’ forces defeated the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, Mongol domination of parts of Rus’ territories, with the requisite demands of tribute, continued until the Great stand on the Ugra river in 1480.[22]

    Historians argued[by whom?] that without the Mongol destruction of Kievan Rus’, the Rus’ would not have unified into the Tsardom of Russia and, subsequently, the Russian Empire would not have risen. Trade routes with the East went through Rus’ territory, making them a center of trade between east and west. Mongol influence, while destructive to their enemies, had a significant long-term effect on the rise of modern Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.[23]

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Carlo Graziani:

    The “Alaska is Ruzzia” (along with other parts of the world) is actually something within Ruzzia so it’s not just him fucking with us but fucking with a lot of people.

    Vladdamned Pootie is playing to his people with drivel like this, thus the “Ruzzia has no borders” crap . Fucking with us is an added bonus for the Dictater of Ruzzia.

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … France24.com:

    Melbourne (AFP) – Ukrainian qualifier Dayana Yastremska upset former champion Victoria Azarenka to surge into the Australian Open quarter-finals on Monday

    Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    bjacques

    About Russian property abroad, there’s a building in Amsterdam once owned by the Russian government that was squatted and the city isn’t in any hurry to evict the squatters.

    As for Alaska, Putin made similar trolling comments several years ago, and an enterprising employee at the National Archives found the receipt!

  47. 47.

    YY_Sima Qian

    WaPo article on the strikes on the Houthis:

    As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for sustained campaign
    Officials say they don’t expect operations in Yemen to last years, but they acknowledge it’s unclear when the group’s military capability will be sufficiently eroded
    By Missy Ryan, John Hudson and Abigail Hauslohner
    Updated January 20, 2024 at 6:51 p.m. EST|Published January 20, 2024 at 6:26 p.m. EST

     

  48. 48.

    Freemark

    @Chris: To be fair many people of Jewish faith believe the same thing. Of course the area covered by that is much smaller.

Comments are closed.