A quick note/reminder: You DO NOT need to go and watch the videos or look at the still imagery of traumatized Ukrainians or Ukrainian military wounded in action or civilians wounded in Russian strikes. That is not going to help Ukraine or Ukrainians and is only going to mess you up. I watch and look at this stuff and try to make the best judgements as to what should be included here to keep you informed and what is, essentially, akin to torture porn. I’ve seen the video of the shell shocked and terrorized family trying to make it out of Avdiivka in their car with their dogs. I saw it when it was first posted several days ago. I chose not to include it. You DO NOT need to subject yourselves to it.
Last night in comments Dan B asked:
If congress comes back on the 28th I believe they have to pass a continuing resolution or something similar on the 1st of March. If they make extraordinary demands like zero Ukraine funding, total closure of the “border” (ever heard of airports dofusses?), defend the IRS, federal abortion ban, etc. There’s no time for the White House and Senate to maneuver. Suddenly we’re looking at the potential for the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency plus a potential worldwide recession, piled on top of all the current recessions. Blame gets piled onto Democrats with help from right wing and corporate media who, foolishly believe the GOP would never really do this but were ‘forced’ by the Democrats failure to work with the other side. This seems like the kind of brinksmanship and hostage taking that a religious zealot over his depth and in serious trouble of being deposed would eagerly grab ahold of.
Any thoughts / corrections?
Quite simply they’re out of time. The stepped CR stupidity that Johnson went with to avoid being yelled at by members of his caucus expires on 1 March and 8 March. The 1 March date covers four federal agencies, while the 8 March date covers the rest of the federal government including the DOD. The House will have exactly one working day – 29 February – to either do the appropriations bills for those four agencies and all the others or a new stepped CR before those two shut down on 1 March. The most recent reporting indicates the House GOP is not going to take up funding the US government until March.
Mike Johnson and House Republican leadership are going to be in Miami Florida this weekend at a leadership retreat.
Michael McCaul said his understanding is Johnson doesn’t plan to have Congress work on possible supplemental until after govt funding bill in March.— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 16, 2024
I don’t know exactly how it works, but think the Dems should move now on a discharge petition because sense I got from McCaul is House GOP will at earliest have something by April, and it is very much a maybe.
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 16, 2024
wasn’t clear to me from McCaul if April is the “drop dead” date for some more moderate House GOP who want to support Ukraine, after which, if Johnson has not moved anything, they’d be willing to get on board a Dem led bill. seems awfully late
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 16, 2024
I’m expecting they’ll miss the 1 March deadline, but will claim it’s no big deal because it’s only four federal agencies – Agriculture-Rural Development, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, Energy & Water, and Transportation-HUD – run hard up against the 8 March deadline and then who the hell knows. I’ve got a PhD in political science, I’ve taught the federal budgeting process at USAWC, and I’ve worked with senior GOs to explain the Defense budgeting and appropriation cycle to non-subject matter experts and I honestly have no idea if the extremists in Johnson’s caucus have forced all of us not just to the budgetary and appropriations cliff’s edge, but over it. I’m not sure that Johnson can get another continuing resolution through the House to keep the government open until he can get the actual appropriations bills through. The Senate has had all of their appropriations bills done for a long time now, the problem is the Republican majority in the House. What I do expect is March will be eaten up by dealing with the expiring CRs, the inability of Johnson and his GOP majority to actually produce the individual appropriations bills, using both expiring/the stepped CRs as hostages and then bundling them with military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and humanitarian aid for Gaza as additional hostages. The last couple of times the House Democrats tried a discharge petition, they failed to get even the four or five Republicans necessary for it to pass. So I don’t expect that will work any better now.
Also, please remember, that President Biden and his team agreed to a sequester in the legislation that raised the debt ceiling, supposedly as the same form of inducement to the GOP to avoid having their priorities defunded too, similar to what drove Obama to agree to one. If the individual appropriations bills or an omnibus appropriations bill does not pass by April, the entire Federal government gets an arbitrary across the board 1% haircut in May 2o24. This is not just another hostage for the House GOP majority to take, but WAS JUST AS FUCKING STUPID AN IDEA FOR BIDEN TO AGREE TO AS IT WAS WHEN OBAMA DID IT!!!!
As I’ve repeatedly stated, because Biden’s legislative strategy to get additional funding for Ukraine was bad, because it was predicated on the Democrats retaining control of the House or the reasonableness and good faith of a GOP House majority after January 2023, neither of which were logical assumptions, no matter how decent a person Biden is, the Ukrainians are now on their own. All they’re going to get out of the US is thoughts and prayers.
This is the price of the House GOP majority’s extremism combined with the Biden administration’s strategic naiveté.
WH: “This morning, Ukraine’s military was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka after Ukrainian soldiers had to ration ammunition due to dwindling supplies as a result of congressional inaction, resulting in Russia’s first notable gains in months.”
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 17, 2024
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address to the Munich Security Conference earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump. Please keep in mind that Putin declared war on the US, NATO, the EU, and the post-WWII rules based order at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. Here’s the transcript of Putin’s 2007 speech and here’s the video.
Do not ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourself – why Putin is still able to continue it – speech by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Munich Security Conference
17 February 2024 – 12:45
February 24th could have marked the end of the world as we all know it. A world of rules. Rules that are meant to protect life.
Our resistance, with the support of our partners, has put on hold the destruction of this system – a rules-based world order.
2024 must become a time for a full restoration of a rules-based world order.
Ladies and gentlemen!
It is not the rules that define the world’s life that should remain in the past, but rather such Russia that doesn’t respect the rules should remain in the past. And we can ensure this. Not just by doing something. But by doing everything necessary.
The Conference today represents different parts of the world and many nations. Among us, there is no one for whom the ongoing war in Europe does not pose a threat. This war defines more than just the place of Ukraine or entire Europe in the world. This is Russia’s war against any rules at all.
But how long will the world let Russia be like this? This is the main question today.
The longer this Russian aggression against the rules-based world order continues, the greater are the changes it provokes.
Perhaps, people will have to live in a world where local wars will not remain local – any outbreak of a war risks turning into a global catastrophe.
Perhaps, the weaponization of food or migration will break existing regional balances and undermine many political systems – not only in Europe but also in the Middle East. In Africa. In the Americas.
Perhaps, Europe is facing times when the question of invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty will not be a question for Washington at all but rather for European capitals.
There are hundreds of such “perhaps”. On February 23, 2022 none of them existed. Now they are a part of reality. And what do we lack in this reality? Security. Neither for the largest nor for the smallest state. We must make security a reality again.
Ladies and gentlemen!
Are you ready to leave behind everything you value in life in the world of yesterday? Ukrainians will not do it! This is our response. The year of 2024 demands your response – from everyone in the world.
If we do not act now, Putin will manage to make the next years catastrophic for other nations as well. Intelligence communities are aware of this.
Ukraine has already shattered myths with which Russia tried to cloud reality and which the world, unfortunately, believed. The myth that Russia could capture another country in a few days or weeks whenever it wants. Ukrainians have been holding for 724 days. 724 days!
Would you have believed 725 days ago that this was even possible?
We have demolished another insane Russian myth about Ukraine as supposedly “not a real country.” And it was in Russia that a massive mutiny began, leading to the capture of cities, internal fights, and an armed march on Moscow. This is a typical sign of a not a real state.
We have ruined the myth that Russian weapons supposedly have some advantage over Western ones. In reality, Russia is worse in all respects. That’s why for the first time in Russian history, Putin bowed to Iran and North Korea for help.
There was a myth that Europe is too weak to defend itself. Instead, Europe has become a global force overcoming dependencies on Russia. Europe now demonstrates that our community deserves to be called Euro-Atlantic. There are two coasts. Nearly 80 years of preventing a continental war in Europe relied on the strength of the American coast. Now we see that the European coast can also be the force that prevents chaos. Every defense coalition we have created proves this. Every security agreement we have signed implements it. We already have such an agreement with the UK. And I am grateful for the security agreement with Germany that we signed with Olaf in Berlin a day before. We signed a security agreement between Ukraine and France with Emmanuel in Paris. And this is just the beginning of implementing agreements based on the G7’s security declaration.
We were told for a long time – go to Putin so that he would allow the restoration of cargo movement in the Black Sea. In our Black Sea. But we did it without Putin. More than twenty-three million tons of cargo have been transported through the Black Sea and the Ukrainian export corridor. Since the beginning of this year, there is already normal shipment of goods to China, Spain, Egypt, Türkiye, Italy, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Libya, and others.
Some claimed that there is no effective defense against Russian missiles. We know for sure, all of us, – with “Patriots” and some other Western air defense systems, any Russian missile can be shot down. And if there are enough air defense systems in Ukraine, we will be able to bring home millions of Ukrainians, millions of our people, millions of our refugees. And thank you for your attitude in all your countries to our people. Thank you very much! But I hope they will come back. We will do everything for this. And, of course, our economy will be able to regain independence from external support.
Ukrainians have proven that we can force Russia to retreat and that we are capable of restoring the rules. And with this, we leave absolutely nothing of the key Russian myth – the myth that Ukraine supposedly cannot win this war. We can get our land back. And Putin can lose. And this has already happened more than once on the battlefield. Our actions are limited only by the sufficiency and length of the range of our strength – by what does not depend on us. And Andiivka situation proves this exactly.
Dear friends!
Unfortunately, keeping Ukraine in artificial deficits of weapons, particularly in deficits of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war. This self-weakening of democracy over time undermines our joint results.
Russia has only one specific military advantage at this time, namely – the complete devaluation of human life. Constant Russian “meat assaults” prove this.
International tolerance of the lack of rule of law in Russia after 1991 and Putin’s policy of controlled poverty have led to the fact that human life is worthless for the Russian state.
In addition to this, Putin’s years of self-isolation and his impunity have led to his complete degradation. Absolutely. He now openly justifies Hitler, absolving him of responsibility for World War II. He has made the genocide of our people just an ordinary part of his policy. Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone else who seems as a target exactly to him. After the murder of Alexei Navalny, it’s absurd to perceive Putin as a supposedly legitimate head of the Russian state. He is a thug who maintains power through corruption and violence. Coming to his so-called “inauguration”, shaking his hand, considering him an equal means to disdain the very nature of political power.
One may have different attitudes towards international institutions, but the International Criminal Court’s warrant for Putin’s arrest for kidnapping and forced deportation of children from Ukraine clearly demonstrates where Putin’s so-called “career” should end. He has only two options ahead – to be in the dock in The Hague, or to be killed by one of his accomplices who are now killing for him.
Destroying the source of wars and destabilization is our key task. It is fair.
First. We all must do not something, but everything possible to defeat the aggressor. Please, everyone remember that dictators do not go on vacation. Hatred knows no pause. Enemy artillery does not fall silent due to procedural issues. Warriors standing against the aggressor need sufficient strength.
Second. We should not fear Putin’s defeat. Putin is a threat to all free nations. And yes, for those who still haven’t heard – Putin is the monster who invaded Ukraine and killed thousands and thousands of people and kidnapped and deported at least tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. But that’s not all.
Putin butchered Chechens and Syrians; invaded Georgia; ordered the execution of his opponents both outside the walls of the Kremlin and in the heart of London and Berlin; and yes, just yesterday he tried to send us all a clear message as the Munich Security Conference opened – Putin murdered another opposition leader.
So, please, let’s not fear Putin’s defeat and the destruction of his regime. Let’s instead – work together to destroy what he stands for. It is his fate to lose, not the fate of the rules-based world order to vanish.
If we don’t defeat Putin now, it won’t eventually matter who is the president of Russia. Because every new Russian dictator will remember how to maintain power by annexing the lands of other peoples, killing opponents, and destroying the world order. If this happens Europe and Central Asia and the whole world will be a very dark place.
Third. We must close all loopholes in the sanctions against Russia. And there should be no sectors of the Russian economy involved in its aggression that are still free from sanctions. This particularly relates to the nuclear sector. Also, Russian assets that are already frozen should be confiscated. And we need to go further – find, freeze, and securely pacify every dollar accumulated by Putin and his friends.
Fourth. Evil will never prevail if the forces of good are united and act together. History has proven it many times – when empires of evil and tyranny, which seemed eternal, crumbled right in front of our eyes. And this increased the space of freedom in the world. And the bolder and more active America was – along with the others on the right side of history – the more successful freedom was. The world would have long been divided among the dreams of a few dictatorships, if it was not for the American dream, which always left enough space for people’s dreams. Major decisions happening in unity of the whole world including the US.
And finally, fifth. Putin must be deprived of any ability to manipulate anyone in the world to constrain the activity of others.
The world has a document that defines the basic rules of co-existence of nations – the Charter of the UN. Russia disregards it. Ukraine has offered the world a Peace Formula, based on the principles and norms of the UN Charter. We have managed to unite representatives of all parts of the world to work on the Peace Formula and to develop details regarding the organization of the first Global Peace Summit. The summit is planned in Switzerland. And there the world must decide how to restore the full strength of the rule-based world order, almost destroyed by Russia.
Please, do not ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourself – why is Putin still able to continue it?
I thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you for your attention and for every expression of support for our state, our people, our children!
Please – be grateful to our warriors.
And may our world, based on rules, never become the world of yesterday.
Glory to Ukraine!
Here is the joint press conference President Zelenskyy held with Vice President Harris.
Czech President Petr Pavel made a statement about this discovery several weeks ago, which I included in the nightly update when it was first reported. Currently he’s trying to get the funding to acquire this ammunition and transfer it to Ukraine.
Czech Republic has found sources abroad for hundreds of thousands of artillery ammunition that could be delivered to Ukraine in a matter of weeks if it can secure funding. When there's a will, there's a way. pic.twitter.com/n4QQLMI5v1
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) February 17, 2024
The key, of course, is coming up with the funding.
Here’s the cost:
In recent hours, Russian troops intensified airstrikes and shelling across multiple directions – Kupiansk, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk. Five guided bombs hit houses in Kupiansk, school in Sloviansk was destroyed, people under rubble in Kramatorsk. This is the cost of delay pic.twitter.com/ksNE4fMRVt
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) February 17, 2024
Коли ви побачите у людини в пікселі патч з гербом, на якому козак на чорному коні тримає в руці білий спис, можете бути майже на сто відсотків впевнені, що ця людина бачила пекло на власні очі.
Це символ 110 окремої механізованої бригади, яка тримала Авдіївку майже два роки. І,… pic.twitter.com/2aDk0NUJd1
— Позивний Генріх ✙ 🇺🇦 (@Heinrich_AFofU) February 17, 2024
When you see a person in a picture with a patch with a coat of arms, on which a Cossack on a black horse holds a white spear in his hand, you can be almost one hundred percent sure that this person has seen hell with his own eyes.
This is the symbol of the 110th separate mechanized brigade, which held Avdiivka for almost two years. And, without detracting from the honor of other brigades and battalions, we can definitely say that these men and women have become not heroes – but legends.
Honor, 110 OMBr. Honor and endless gratitude.
@y_gudymenko
Russia makes its major first battlefield gain since last May — and Ukraine says holdup of US aid is in part to blame. https://t.co/SuIgKJcBdl
— Paul Sonne (@PaulSonne) February 17, 2024
From The New York Times: (emphasis mine)
Ukraine ordered the complete withdrawal from the decimated city of Avdiivka before dawn on Saturday, surrendering a position that had been a military stronghold for the better part of a decade, in the face of withering Russian assault.
“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines,” Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said in a statement issued overnight.
The fall of Avdiivka, a city that was once home to some 30,000 people but is now a smoking ruin, is the first major gain Russian forces have achieved since May of last year. After rebuffing a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer and fall, Russian forces in recent weeks have been pressing the attack across nearly the entire length of the 600-mile-long front.
The Ukrainian withdrawal on Saturday follows a bloody endgame that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the two-year-old war. Relying on its superiority in personnel and weaponry, Russia pounded the city with aerial bombardments and ground assaults, even as its fighters suffered a staggering amount of casualties.
Outgunned Ukrainian forces had begun withdrawing from positions in the southern part of the city on Wednesday, and since then have been engaged in a desperate battle to avoid encirclement inside the city as Russian forces advanced from multiple directions. As Russian bombers pummeled Avdiivka, Ukraine said its forces had targeted and shot down three Russian warplanes.
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Ukraine’s forces in the south, said there had been no choice but to withdraw, given the Russian advantage in firepower and the number of soldiers Russia was willing to throw into the battle.
“In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a 10-to-1 shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution,” he said in a statement.
The commander said that there were losses for the Ukrainians and “at the final stage of the operation, under pressure from the superior forces of the enemy, some Ukrainian servicemen fell into captivity.”
Even if Ukrainian lines stabilize in the rear of Avdiivka, the city’s fall into Russian control will allow Moscow’s military to move its troops and equipment more efficiently as it presses in other directions.
“Avdiivka is a very important strong point in the Ukrainian system of defense,” because it protects Pokrovsk, about 30 miles to the northwest, a logistical hub for the Ukrainian Army, Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, said in an interview.
“Taking control of Avdiivka might create an opening for Russia,” he said.
He added, however, that Russian forces lacked large reserves of troops and equipment and were unlikely to be able to push further west of Avdiivka quickly and turn this week’s success into a major victory.
Soldiers reached by phone on Friday, who asked not to be identified given the ongoing military action, described a harrowing bid to escape the city. They gave accounts of racing past blasted-out buildings as shells thundered from all around and Russians pressed in from several directions.
“In one of the sectors in the town, fighters from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade find themselves completely surrounded, but they are attempting to break through, and they succeed,” Maj. Rodion Kudryashov, deputy commander of the assault brigade, said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
As the battle for Avdiivka intensified, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area were forced to ration ammunition, soldiers said. White House officials have seized on similar accounts to assert that the failure to pass a $60 billion renewed military aid package in Congress was directly undermining the Ukrainians’ fight on the ground.
I have served as the senior civilian advisor to over half a dozen general officers. And I have been a faculty instructor at USAWC for at least half a dozen more, as well as half a dozen allied and partner general officers or senior colonels who would become general officers. I have heard several of my former bosses tell our allies and partners that they have no better friend that the US. I know my former bosses believed this. I know I believed this. I no longer believe this.
If the United States is unable to step up and provide the military aid that Ukraine, as well as our other allies and partners need now and the humanitarian aid the Gazan Palestinians need, then we can mark 2023-2024 as when the United States ceded hegemony to the PRC and Russia not with a bang, but with a pathetic whimper.
We now have greater clarity on Russia’s political warfare against Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU.
Internal Kremlin docs "obtained by a European intelligence service" & reviewed by WaPo show how Kremlin instructions led to 1000s of social media posts/100s of fake articles "trying to exploit what were then rumored tensions between the 2 Ukrainian leaders"https://t.co/qX5dkZKv5W
— Sean Lyngaas (@snlyngaas) February 16, 2024
From The Washington Post: (emphasis mine)
When news first emerged last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was preparing to fire his top military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, officials in Moscow seemed jubilant. They had been trying to orchestrate just such a split for many months, documents show.
“We need to strengthen the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, along the lines of ‘he intends to fire him,’” one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials and Moscow spin doctors, according to internal Kremlin documents.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration ordered a group of Russian political strategists to use social media and fake news articles to push the theme that Zelensky “is hysterical and weak. … He fears that he will be pushed aside, therefore he is getting rid of the dangerous ones.”
The Kremlin instruction resulted in thousands of social media posts and hundreds of fabricated articles, created by troll farms and circulated in Ukraine and across Europe, that tried to exploit what were then rumored tensions between the two Ukrainian leaders, according to a trove of Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The files, numbering more than 100 documents, were shared with The Post to expose for the first time the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Zelensky with the aim of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society — efforts that Moscow dubbed “information psychological operations.”
Ukrainian society, however, has so far remained remarkably united since Russia’s invasion, according to opinion polls, and officials in Moscow, the documents show, sometimes expressed frustration at their inability to undermine Zelensky and foment division. One of them complained in one exchange that the Ukrainian president was like Brad Pitt, a global star with an image that couldn’t be sullied.
But with Gen. Zaluzhny now out, the front lines frozen and further military and financial support from the United States uncertain, some in Kyiv are concerned that Russia’s covert propaganda efforts could begin to erode national cohesion and morale.
“The most difficult times are ahead,” said one senior European security official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “Russia survived and they are preparing a new campaign which consists of three main directions: first, pressure on the front line; second, attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure; and thirdly, this destabilization campaign.”
Moscow’s four key objectives
The documents show how in January 2023 the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, tasked a team of officials and political strategists with establishing a presence on Ukrainian social media to distribute disinformation.
The effort built on an earlier project that Kiriyenko, a longtime Putin aide, had been running to subvert Western support for Ukraine, including in France and Germany, previous reporting by The Post shows. The European propaganda group was overseen by one of Kiriyenko’s deputies, Tatyana Matveeva, head of the Kremlin’s department for developing information and communication technologies, the documents show.
By the end of 2022, after Ukraine pushed back Russian forces in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions and officials in Kyiv began to talk of a major spring counteroffensive in the east and south, Kiriyenko put together a second team focused on destabilizing Ukraine itself, the documents show. That effort was headed by one of his closest deputies, Alexander Kharichev, a bureaucrat known in some Moscow circles as the “fixer” or “election handler” because he ensures that domestic elections go the Kremlin’s way.
At a Jan. 16, 2023, meeting, Kiriyenko laid out four key objectives for the Ukraine propaganda team: discrediting Kyiv’s military and political leadership, splitting the Ukrainian elite, demoralizing Ukrainian troops and disorienting the Ukrainian population, the documents show.
The team’s success was to be measured according to key indicators: They were to “lower the ratings of key personnel in Zelensky’s office, the Ukrainian government, and the command of Ukraine’s armed forces,” and increase the belief among the Ukrainian population that the country’s elite was working only for itself. “A growth in the number of government dismissals and public conflicts” would also be a sign of achievement. To increase fear and anxiety, Ukrainian war losses were to be exaggerated, the documents state.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Kharichev and Matveeva did not respond to detailed requests for comment on the contents of the documents.
The documents show that progress was monitored at near-weekly Kremlin meetings, where the strategists gave dashboard presentations showcasing the most widely read posts they’d planted in Ukrainian social media and tallying the overall distribution of their output. They also ran weekly opinion polls on the level of trust in Zelensky and the country’s military leadership.
Among the material they highlighted was a fabricated Facebook post claiming that the family of a fallen soldier had not received any help from the state, which garnered more than 2 million views, according to one of the dashboard presentations. According to another, a top post for the goal of disorienting the population was a fake video on Telegram claiming that the main war aim of authorities in Kyiv was “to fight to the last Ukrainian.”
By early March, dozens of hired trolls were pumping out more than 1,300 texts and 37,000 comments on Ukrainian social media each week, according to one of the dashboard presentations. Records show that employees at troll farms earned 60,000 rubles a month, or $660, for writing 100 comments a day.
Most of the strategists’ reports to their political masters focused on the volume of content produced and total views, but for the first five months, they offered little in the way of evidence that the effort was having any impact on Ukrainians. The Kremlin-conducted polls showed that trust in Zelensky remained consistently high, with 68 to 73.3 percent of Ukrainians trusting the president from February to June.
By August, however, the Kremlin polls showed this measure falling to 65.4 percent. It is impossible to gauge the accuracy of these polls, and it’s unclear how the Russians are conducting them in Ukraine.
A poll by the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center in July showed trust in Zelensky at 81 percent. The most recent poll published by the center, on Feb. 8, showed trust in Zelensky had dropped to 69 percent.
The strategists were aware of the difficulty of their task. “At the current moment, we are having to enter Ukraine’s media landscape practically from zero,” one report in April said. “The pro-Russian segment has been completely purged from the mass media and social networks.”
The strategists advised developing “a network of Telegram channels in combination with Twitter and Facebook/Instagram” as the most effective way of penetrating Ukraine’s media space, noting that the Telegram audience in Ukraine had grown 600 percent over the previous year. After the invasion, Zelensky’s government had created a single source of television news, but Ukrainians had drifted away from the programming, saying Ukraine’s military struggles were not sufficiently reported or discussed.
“Telegram became the most important source of news, even more important than mainstream media,” the senior European security official said. “It’s impossible to block it.”
The Moscow strategists emphasized the need to avoid blatant pro-Russian propaganda to build trust with the audience. “It’s clear that we can’t fly with our old resources,” one of the strategists wrote on April 5 after a Kremlin meeting.
One of the strategists’ aims, European security officials said, was to ensure that the themes placed in European social media filtered back into Ukraine, through reposts and amplification,or by being picked up by Ukrainian politicians keen to boost their profiles with provocative posts.
“They look for weak spots. … They use what they create themselves and whatever is lying under their feet,” a secondEuropean security officials said. “Everything is aimed at demoralizing people.”
The strategists also had price lists for planting pro-Russian commentary in prominent Western media and for paying social media “influencers” in the United States and Europe “willing to work with Russian clients.” The documents say the Russians were willing to pay up to $39,000 for the planting of pro-Russian commentary in major media outlets in the West.
“Practically everywhere this will be columnists, leaders of public opinion, former diplomats, officials, professors and so on,” a note attached to the price list states. It is unclear from the documents whether the Kremlin was able to get material into Western publications or whether anyone was paid.
But the Kremlin political strategists were not above lining their own pockets in the process: “I added 20 percent,” one of them wrote to a colleague.
As winter descended on Kyiv, a number of deepfake videos portraying Zaluzhny calling Zelensky an enemy of the people and calling for a coup began to appear. The videos were quickly denounced as fake and did not have any real impact in Ukraine. But the senior European security official said he worried the Kremlin was only testing the ground for future deepfakes.
“It’s very expensive, but it can work,” he said. “In the proper time, it can be used.”
There is much, much more after the link!
Guess what you all get tonight? A second rant with no extra charge. US Psychological Operations doctrine DOES NOT care about success. It DOES NOT define success. It DOES NOT measure success. Rather, it measures performance and effectiveness. I have spent a lot of time arguing with members of that community that this is not just wrong, but dangerously stupid as they are now and have been focused on attempting to assess the wrong outcomes. Which also means you wind up designing your operations around bullshit where your outcomes variables are selected on your explanatory variables and neither your outcome nor your explanatory variables have internal consistency!
So if you’re wondering why Russia has been winning its political warfare campaign and doing incredible damage with its information and psychological warfare lines of effort, it is because we are incredibly bad at this in addition to being in denial that we are at war with Russia.
Moving on…
My take for @theipaper on why Navalny’s death signals yet more crackdowns on what tiny space remains for political life in Russia and why the West needs to understand in funding Ukraine its fighting for Kyiv’s future as well as Moscow’s https://t.co/5kqanWcAEZ
— Maximilian Hess (@zakavkaza) February 16, 2024
From the iPaper: (emphasis mine)
The death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny signals the end of President Vladimir Putin’s tolerance of any domestic opposition – and Putin’s confidence that Western support for the fight against him is waning.
Putin’s political opponents have long been jailed, hounded into exile, or met far darker fates – as Navalny has – but the timing could not be clearer.
Much will remain unknown about Navalny’s death – the Kremlin will never tolerate an independent investigation – but its claim that he died of a stroke at 47 is not credible. Navalny was photographed attending one of the many trials engineered against him just a day ago, with the Kremlin’s pursuit of him continuing three years after he decided to return to Russia in January 2021.
Navalny’s choice to return to Russia was incredibly foolhardy. It came shortly after he survived a poisoning attempt in August 2020, and was forced to seek treatment abroad in Germany.
He even spoke with the agent of Russia’s FSB suspected of carrying out the attack shortly before returning, having tricked him into thinking he was talking to his superior rather than his target.
Navalny knew he was a marked man, he knew he would swiftly be imprisoned as he had been many times before – but returned knowing the exiled opposition was divided, hoping he could inspire Russians to seek alternatives.
That was not to be. Nearly one million more Russians are estimated to have fled into exile following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the Kremlin has been setting the stage for removing what little criticism of Putin still remains.
The Russian presidential election on 17 March will be little more than a coronation. Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has stated Putin will not campaign, or debate his opponents.
Although oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and socialite Ksenia Sobchak were little more than Kremlin-managed faux opposition candidates in the 2012 and 2018 presidential elections, there will be no such symbolic opposition this time. All the candidates running support Putin, serve in his system, and are in favour of the wanton war against Ukraine.
The Kremlin did allow a trial balloon candidacy of Boris Nadezhdin, best known for serving as a punching bag on state television for opposing the war. His appeals to the Supreme Court to be allowed to stand were rejected a day before Navalny’s death, and the Kremlin may have had an ulterior motive in allowing him to gather signatures for his candidacy.
Nadezhdin has been a close friend of Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s latest “curator” of domestic politics, for more than 25 years. His candidacy was little more than an effort by the Kremlin to sniff out those willing to support such a candidate – the Kremlin simultaneously set about passing legislation allowing the seizure of assets from those who criticise the military or Ukraine war.
It made clear that opposition from even the pro-war nationalist right will not be allowed – firebrand ex-militia leader Igor Girkin, who a Dutch court found guilty for downing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine during Putin’s 2014 invasion, was jailed last month.
Putin’s Kremlin clearly feels emboldened to take such action.
On Twitter/X shortly after Navalny’s death was announced, a “journalist” with Russia’s state propaganda service Sputnik threatened a critic of the Kremlin’s abroad with asset seizures or other action. While many Russians at home have protested Putin’s war, and been detained for it, Kremlin crackdowns and the sentences imposed have grown wider and longer. That trend will accelerate.
Navalny was not the West’s ideal version of a Russian liberal, given his nationalist and populist bent – but that is also why he represented an alternative that might have been able to take root in Russia. That hope has been extinguished.
It is clear Putin bears responsibility for Navalny’s death. But the West should look at how it has enabled Putin not only to continue his war in Ukraine, but to rob Russian people of the freedom they deserve too.
Navalny’s death came hours after Republicans in the US House of Representatives went on holiday rather than vote on aid passed by the Senate to fund Ukraine’s defence. But it is not too late to sustain and even expand Western aid for Ukraine. Defeating Putin’s army is the best hope for Ukrainian freedom and, in light of Navalny’s passing and Putin’s crackdowns, for a Russian alternative to emerge. It is the eulogy Navalny deserves, and which both Moscow and Kyiv need.
+3 russian planes destroyed.
This morning, the Ukrainian Air Force destroyed three enemy aircraft at once: two Su-34 fighter-bombers and one Su-35 fighter in the eastern direction.
Great job, warriors! pic.twitter.com/yr2cyxPy96
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) February 17, 2024
/2. Russian sources claim that one Russian Su-35S was shot down on the eastern front. As they claim, “friendly air defense fire.” According to the Russians, the Su-34s were not lost pic.twitter.com/RX0RRERbZG
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) February 17, 2024
/4. Diakove, Luhansk region. Where one of Russian aircrafts was shot down today. +100km from the front line pic.twitter.com/I45SRNvvJn
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) February 17, 2024
Imagine what the Ukrainians are going to do when they finally get the F-16? Imagine what they would have been able to do if we hadn’t dragged things out, started their training on them in late spring/early summer 2022, and they were flying them no later than spring 2023? An entire year and countless lives wasted because the Biden administration is afraid to upset Putin.
Another day, another bit of evidence of Russian war crimes emerges:
You can watch the investigation with English subtitles here: https://t.co/dbZb6KZRNd
— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) February 17, 2024
From the about below the video:
“I found a camera that was stolen by the Russians, maybe you can help find the owners.” This story began with what a Ukrainian prospector wrote to us on social networks. He found a camera in an abandoned IFV belonging to Russians fleeing Ukrainian forces in Chernihiv Oblast. On it were photos of a family from a Ukrainian village that had been held by the Russians for a month, and there were also photos of the Russian military themselves. Yes, yes, you did not mix anything up, the occupiers were taking pictures with the cameras they had stolen from the locals. Next, see the fascinating story of how we returned the loot to its owners, and what we learned from the loot. Spoiler: it’s a story about war criminals again
Here’s what Putin had to spend for the Russian to take Avdiivka:
A list of russian brigades and formations that were thrown at Avdiivka. It took tens of thousands of top fighters and four months to create numerical superiority and break through the Ukrainian defence which lacked ammunition. Many of these russian brigades lost 60%+ of… pic.twitter.com/iPAS6jwgS3
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) February 17, 2024
A list of russian brigades and formations that were thrown at Avdiivka. It took tens of thousands of top fighters and four months to create numerical superiority and break through the Ukrainian defence which lacked ammunition. Many of these russian brigades lost 60%+ of personnel.
I would also add Speaker Mike Johnson to this list.
Here’s the screen grab of Dmitri’s translation:
Images from Avdiivka of new Russian war crimes against Ukrainian POWs has begun to circulate. Again: you DO NOT need to go look at them!
Kursk, Russia:
Kursk, russia, last night – an oil depot was set on fire by unidentified UAVs. pic.twitter.com/42sV4ytgdt
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) February 17, 2024
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
You gotta fight for your right tо p⃦a⃦r⃦t⃦y⃦ survive
Song for the Planet. 2024 edition. pic.twitter.com/fvYPGGfHpn
— Patron (@PatronDsns) February 17, 2024
I think party is supposed to be scratched out and the tweet should read like this:
You gotta fight for your right tо p⃦a⃦r⃦t⃦y⃦ survive
Song for the Planet. 2024 edition.
And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:
@patron__dsns Погані дні бувають у всіх. Завтра обов’язково буде краще❤️ #песпатрон
Here is the machine translation of the caption:
Everyone has bad days. Tomorrow will definitely be better ❤️ #песпатрон
Open thread!
Alison Rose
I don’t even know what to say. I can barely read the whole post. I just want to fucking scream.
Ukrainian blood may be on putin’s hands, but it’s on our flag as well. Fuck every Republican all to hell.
Thank you as always, Adam.
japa21
I would so like to get Johnson alone in a closed room for an hour. Even at 76, I think I could take him.
Urza
@japa21: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1758549069943783429.html
Johnson appears to prefer doing things to children. Old people are only there for him to cut benefits.
wjca
It is true in every field of endeavour. The only things you can manage are the ones you measure. And the variables you choose to (or have the ability to) measure determine what your whole organization will focus on doing. If you measure and track the wrong things, you create what can only be called perverse incentives.
It is amazing how difficult it can be to get this simple, and to me obvious, concept across to managers at every level. Especially higher level executives. And not just in the military.
Gary K
That’s wherever Mike Johnson is at any moment.
wjca
I’m confident that, at 76, I could not only take Johnson, but slowly and painfully. Which is no more than he deserves — after all, there might not be a hell in which he could suffer for eternity.
hrprogressive
Hey Adam, sorry I didn’t circle back to last night’s thread, but here is a re-post of the inquiry I had for you last week.
With today’s update, and with things like the passing of Navalny and what that means for Russia, etc., certainly think there’s a ton to consider there.
Thank you again for taking a look into it, I really do appreciate it:
”
I want to stress that this is intended to be a good faith question, not a gotcha, or anything, I am legitimately curious.
I also apologize, if you’ve already answered me previously, I have pretty awful memory sometimes so I may legitimately not remember.
So, here goes.
Is there a reason why so many people – whether your updates here, or others around the world – seem to not want to acknowledge that there’s very likely a truth that the GOP legitimately just wants to see Russia win, and legitimately is waiting for the broader decline of western liberal democracy because they believe, hope, want to accelerate, however you wish to frame it – they basically think they deserve to be the autocratic rulers of this country, and will do whatever they can do to get it, short of assassinating their colleagues in D.C. (and I honestly don’t think we’re too far off from that if nothing changes)?
I ask because the use of framing like “dysfunction” and “intransigence” and “bad faith”, from my perception, places the root of the problem in an arena that seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
Sure, in some regards, there is “dysfunction” because there are probably – or were, anyway, till Fuhrer Trump decreed otherwise – some in the GOP (McConnell comes to mind) who legitimately wanted to help defend Ukraine.
But after years of watching the more fascist tendencies come out of the woodwork, both within their voting base, their media sphere, and their elected officials…
I’m legitimately surprised that more people are still framing it in a way that seems more akin to “Oh look it’s gridlock in Washington again” – which, again, I know that’s not how you think of it at all, but.
I’d like to think if more parties with platforms started saying “Hey, just so you know, the GOP actually wants Russia to win and they can’t wait to try and seize power here too, so maybe ask them about that”…it might sink in.
I am concerned that the apparent reticence to broach the topic in these terms is…well, it doesn’t paint nearly as dire a picture as it should, IMO.
Anyway.
Sorry for being long-winded, and I know you have a ton going on, so, I like the other Juicers do appreciate what you do. Just legitimately wondering if there’s a reason why others don’t seem to be framing the problem this way.
Thanks.”
wjca
Well, it would be if he had ever shown any sign of being capable of leadership.
Adam L Silverman
@hrprogressive: No worries. I appreciate you reposting it so I don’t have to go looking for it. I’ll answer it in tomorrow’s update.
YY_Sima Qian
Wow…
YY_Sima Qian
Update from the VOA on the Russian space based, nuclear armed, anti-satellite system under development:
Sounds like Mike Turner was vastly premature w/ his alarmism, which is par for the course for the GOP.
Another Scott
The State of the Union is coming up on March 7. It would be a very big platform, and big audience, for Biden to give his side of things without the press being a gate keeper. That’s motivation for something like more can-kicking down the road to happen before then.
I expect another round of CRs, and I expect appropriations bills to happen before April 29.
A CRS report (6 page .pdf) said that if any agency was operating under a CR on January 1, 2024 (or January 1, 2025), then the FRA means that automatic cuts would happen. The OMB pushed that requirement off until “after full year appropriations are enacted, or April 30, whichever comes first.”
Yes, the automatic cuts under the FRA unless there’s a resolution are a bad thing.
But the FRA cuts don’t happen if there’s an agreement by April 29.
The 2013 Sequestration was not an election year…
We’ll see what happens.
Cheers,
Scott.
hrprogressive
@Adam L Silverman:
Many thanks! Have a great evening.
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: Yep, because those third countries not Ukraine will pay a mark up that Ukraine can’t in order to get to the front of the line.
wjca
Because, if they don’t at least have new CRs in place (I doubt actual appropriations bills are even an outside pissibility), a government shutdown will be in progress. Which would be bad for the Republicans anyway (as it has been every previous time they have arranged one). But with the SotU speech to emphasize and detail the damage, Biden can destroy them. And while some of them (MTG leaps to mind) are doubtless clueless on this, at least a few of the GOP know it.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: You didn’t lose your job because of the sequester. I did. You didn’t lose the fallback positions you’d lined up just in case the sequester did eat your job. I did. It was stupid and both macro and micro economically damaging then. It is stupid and both macro and micro economically damaging now.
I’ll remind you that in a comment in OCT 2022 you thought the Democrats would keep the House and the Clintons coming to VA to campaign for McCauliffe meant he was going to win. When I told you neither would happened and why they wouldn’t happen in reply to your comment, you did your usual hopium disparagement. I will remind you that you were convinced the Ukraine supplemental would pass in NOV 2023 and that the Senate Democrats would get their bipartisan compromise done, passed in the Senate, and that it would pass in the House before the Christmas recess.
I’m not the make our readers stupid by posting bullshit, hopium, everything is and will continue to be fine, and we live in the best of all possible worlds front pager. I’m the front pager that actually lives in reality as ugly and unpleasant as it is. You might consider joining me.
randy khan
Thanks to Adam for the note about videos. I’ve been doing my best to avoid watching videos from the war – even the ones where the Ukrainian armed forces destroy Russian equipment, because there were people in those vehicles or on those ships – as I don’t want to get hardened to the awful tragedy of this war of aggression.
And, as someone who’s worked in D.C. since the mid-1980s, and seen all the twists and turns of budgets and appropriations through that time, I’m as deeply in the dark as Adam about what the House Republicans are doing on that front, but absolutely agree that it’s going to further delay the Ukraine supplemental because Johnson is beholden to the worst elements of his caucus and apparently still hasn’t fully recognized that the chalice is poisoned.
Alison Rose
@Another Scott: There is a difference between being hopeful and being willfully oblivious.
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: The NYT has more reporting:
David Burbach at the USNWC has more on the implications:
I am leaning toward the FU to the OST & the world. Why else would Russia be developing a nuclear powered cruise missile that irradiates its path over territories friend & foe? It’s a nihilist weapon that serves no additional deterrence value over ICBMs or SLBMs.
On this matter, India & especially the PRC just might be able to dissuade Putin from stationing nukes in orbit long term.
Dan B
Adam;
Thanks for your reply. It seems I was feeling like the end of the world with Navalny’s murder and the losses in Ukraine. The GOP and Johnson love ideology more than humanity. Most of the GOP loves money and winning. Johnson seems to love retrograde Christian nationalism. Both could care less about the brutality that results, much like Carlson’s take that it’s necessary to kill some people. But, except for Ukraine and our standing in the world, it doesn’t seem that our collapse is imminent
If I were in any country in Eastern Europe near Russia I’d be sweating bullets and cursing Americans.
Parfigliano
@randy khan: No people in those vehicles just Russians.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … TheHill.com (from Friday):
We’ll see what happens.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: You’re welcome.
topclimber
Are we rating predictions now? I seem to remember one here not long ago that the Senate would NEVER advance the supplemental aid package. Yet here we are down to one chamber that needs to come around, and tools like the discharge petition to get it done.
Yes it sucks that each day’s delay costs more Ukrainian lives, but how does it help to put down those who don’t insist all is lost when it fact it is not?
Jay
As always, thank you Adam,
and thank you for the reminder that we don’t have to traumatize ourselves.
RaflW
re: The two week House vacation, I was thinking last night that I’d kind of like to see the Biden Admin do some sort of recess appointment for some minor role the GQP has been blocking. When the Repubs scream that the House is meeting pro-forma each day, use the various public announcements by Johnson that they’ve all left town for two weeks to beat them around the head for their duplicitousness.
I don’t think the recess appointment would stick, and there are likely good reasons I’m not noticing to not try it. But I have been enjoying the Biden WH’s new feistiness and I think pushing on Johnson for leaving town but pretending that they haven’t left town, when there is painfully obviously work to do on Ukraine aid would be good.
Adam L Silverman
@topclimber: No, I said they would not advance the bipartisan border security for Ukraine aid supplemental. Which they didn’t.
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: It isn’t actually a recess. As they started doing when Obama was president, when the GOP has the majority a member from MD or VA who lives close to DC goes in every day, gavels the chamber into session, and then immediately gavels them out. As a result Congress no longer goes into recess in a way delineated in the Constitution and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court when a Democrat is president and the GOP has a majority in at least one chamber. All to prevent recess appointments.
topclimber
@Adam L Silverman: You were more optimistic about it as a standalone, then? Point is the aid bill is out of the Senate.
Adam L Silverman
I’m racking out. Catch everyone tomorrow.
Timill
@Adam L Silverman: So what happens if someone else goes in earlier and adjourns to a specific time? Anyone any ideas?
RaflW
@Adam L Silverman: I understand that, though I incorrectly called a pro-forma session.
I’m talking about a political move (a stunt, if you will), that points out in a very public way how the GOP House is abusing the rules. We can’t seem to get any traction with the supine press on the R’s intransigence to pass any sort of Ukraine aid. So I was imagining one option to bring that into focus.
randy khan
@Parfigliano:
That is precisely the kind of thing I do not want to think. It’s what the Russian government is trying to do with Ukrainians and I am not going to do it with Russian soldiers.
Forced to choose (as I am by the nature of this war), I want Ukraine to have success on the battlefield, and I know that means that Russian soldiers will die. But they’re all people, and most of them are conscripts who didn’t have a choice about fighting. I am not going to celebrate their deaths and I’m certainly not going to watch them die.
Nukular Biskits
Agreed.
My better angels say that we should always assume the best in others. Experience dictates otherwise.
POTUS is not stupid. He should know better.
wjca
I would phrase that as: We should always assume the best in others, unless/until experience dictates otherwise in specific cases.
gene108
Every foreign policy decision Republicans have made this century has reduced our international standing. Republican foreign policy is incapable of achieving win-win situations for us and other countries. Bush, Jr. demonstrated this by immediately pulling out of the Agreed Framework with North Korea, because they wanted to use their big dick energy to bully North Korea to concede to U.S. demands without offering anything in return. Republicans promised to do something similar in 2016 by pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement as their first act in office. Bush, Jr. set international action on global warming back a generation. Kyoto Protocol mid-1990’s, Paris Climate Agreement was in 2015.
This doesn’t even include the damage Bush, Jr.‘s* decision to invade Iraq has done, Trump’s rejection of our allies, starting trade wars for no reason, and embracing dictators. Plus his coup attempt broadcast live for the world to see in real time.
What House Republicans are doing with aide to Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan is just another nail in the coffin of the USA’s global standing as a good faith partner.
*It was his decision to send troops in. He alone knows what the fuck he was thinking when he decided to do this, and so far he’s not given any clear reason why it had to be done. It wasn’t preventing Saddam from developing WMD’s. IAEA inspectors were looking where the U.S. thought were likely places for WMD production and turning up nothing.
Belafon
Why do so many people who do this heavy thinking forget that Manchin did not want to fix the debt ceiling debacle? It’s that simple.
YY_Sima Qian
A rare unvarnished & unfiltered ground level look at the Battle of Avdiivka, courtesy of Ryan O’Leary, who claims to be an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran & a member of the Chosen Company (appears to be a group of foreign volunteers) that has served in the sector for a year. The guy has no posting history on Twitter, so I have no way to judge the credibility, but he is followed by Tatarigami_UA & Illia Pnomomarenko, so…
It is worthwhile to keep in mind that this is one man’s view, & he is guesstimating/extrapolating from his own experience (& that of his & adjacent units). Key points:
Again, take the specific numbers w/ a big grain of salt, but that is far more insight than we would typically get from the governments, analysts & media, Ukrainian or Western. I don’t think Ukraine can afford that kind of casualties ratio, though the KIA ratio must be more lopsided. If one suffers a light wound, then a quick & full recovery is likely. However, a severely injured has the same impact on Ukrainian combat power as a KIA, & a greater burden on Ukrainian resources. [Multiple] not fully healed moderate wounds will also diminish one’s effectiveness.
YY_Sima Qian
@gene108: The PRC will not become a global hegemon, or even a regional hegemon. It does not (will likely never) have the degree of dominance that the US, the USSR or the British/Japanese Empire once enjoyed. Furthermore, far too many of the PRC’s neighbors are & will continue to balance (not to be confused w/ active opposition across all spheres) against the PRC to constrain the latter & preserve their own freedom of action. Nor is the PRC (the CPC regime or the population) interested in doing the order/”empire” maintenance required of a proper hegemon, certainly not shouldering the bulk of that burden. Russia can only be a spoiler.
US hegemony & PRC hegemony are not the only alternatives available to the world.
wjca
What it appears to come down to is this: China simply doesn’t have allies. Places like North Korea might rise to the level of clients, but nobody has connections to China like the US has with Europe. Or even like the US has with places like India.
I do wonder how much of an impact it has that a tonal language is just much harder to learn than English for anyone who didn’t grow up with it. Which, in turn, vastly reduces the number of university students from elsewhere, with the lack of connection that grows from that. It also slashes the number of immigrants (assuming that they would be accepted), who might provide connections to other countries.
Its language’s difficulty is nothing that China can do anything about. But it sure seems like an additional handicap if they did have glibal ambitions.
gene108
@YY_Sima Qian:
I don’t think other countries really want to step into the roll of hegemon or superpower the way European nations did during colonialism and the U.S. and USSR did after WW2.
I think the bad decisions Republican presidents have made, plus the inability of Congressional Republicans to govern at all has hurt the reputation of the U.S. as a country with unshakable core values in its own democracy that could not be subverted to a more authoritarian form of government.
Eolirin
@Nukular Biskits: Biden doesn’t get to unilaterally set legislative strategy on any issue.
The senate Democrats needed to work around their majority requiring both Sinema and Manchin. I honestly don’t think there was another outcome on this issue especially not one that also gets us the IRA and the lame duck bills that we got. And those were big and consequential domestic policy wins.
We were only 3-7k votes away from holding the house. That was the only way to avoid this.
On the other hand, the administration, and most of the rest of NATO have royally fucked up with what kinds of aid they’ve been providing and when. Planes and tanks sooner and the Russians wouldn’t have had the extensive minefields and defensive lines they were able to establish that blunted Ukraine’s attempt at a counter offensive, and maybe things would look very different. And that’s far more directly at Biden’s feet, though he’s got plenty of company there.
YY_Sima Qian
@wjca: The PRC has not been interested in alliances, & does not want to be encumbered by alliance commitments. It does accept de facto clients to a degree, but also w/o formal commitments. The PRC wants deference to its interests.
sab
@wjca: My oldest sister is completely musicaly tone deaf yet she is fluent in Mandarin. Chinese hearing her think she is Chinese.
ColoradoGuy
@hrprogressive: Here’s my unsolicited take on your very serious question: I feel a significant percentage of the GOP have been colonized by End-Times Dominionists, like Mike Johnson, and the KGB/FSB has been providing covert financing, technical assistance, and skillful Kompromat to them for more than two decades. (Admittedly a guess, but interests of the Dominionists and the KGB/FSB converge too neatly to be a coincidence.)
The openly stated goal of the Dominionists is a complete takeover of all US institutions, not just the government, but all business and media, for an inescapable wall-to-wall theocracy. If it takes a civil war against the Blue States, they’re fine with that.
And the KGB/FSB will have accomplished its greatest success, bringing down the world’s superpower without using nuclear weapons. The collapse of the world order would be a calamity for the PRC as well, but Xi is apparently content to let Putin set the world afire. Maybe he thinks the PRC would be able to pick up the pieces after the USA breaks down into civil war, and Europe into a massive war with Russia, but that’s quite a gamble. But Xi’s powers of persuasion might be quite limited, since Putin is staking everything on his WWIII hybrid warfare. I am sure Xi has no illusions what Putin is trying to accomplish.
When you look at the true goals of the Dominionists, their power over the GOP, and the convergence of interests with the KGB/FSB, I think the answer is clear: they intend to destroy the USA as we know it, using social media and captive TV networks as the vehicle.
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy: From here hrprogressive’s question is both important and unanswerable, because severely gerrymandered districts make competitive elections null and void. Because State legislatures have been given the power to draw legislative boundaries. And because the USSC is not minded to disturb that noble tradition. And because the US Republican Party has stacked the USSC.
And because gerrymandered districts give undue weight to conservative rural districts, and because the Electoral Presidential system gives small states with less than a million voters the same Senate representation as California, that has nearly double Australia’s population and absolutely double or more Australia’s economic heft, and because such a system makes democratic Constitutional change well nigh impossible, I don’t see any way out of the clusterfuck.
How ironic. Post WW2, the US boast was that it led the world away from fascism and towards democracy, (after a fashion, so long as it conformed to US interests). Now, the US, because of the Republican base, poses a bigger danger to global democracy than either Russia or China could dream of.
I never thought I’d see the day. But here we are.
YY_Sima Qian
@ColoradoGuy: I think Xi does not believe that Putin will be all that successful in setting the world afire. To the extent that Putin’s efforts causes greater domestic division/paralysis in the US & the West, that is to the PRC’s benefit. Just like most of the DC “Blob” is still more preoccupied by the Great Power Competition w/ the PRC than the clear & present threat of Putin’s hybrid & conventional warfare activities, I think the PRC is far more preoccupied by the Great Power Competition w/ the US than arson by Putin.
The PRC wants a Russia that remains alienated from the West & strong enough for mutual support, to divert the West’s attention/pressure, & to serve as a secure strategic rear/source of raw materials, but not so strong that it could threaten PRC interests. As such, the PRC does not want Russia to lose in Ukraine (which might cause the latter to collapse & a pro-Western regime to emerge), but also does not want it to win (since a Russia that has reabsorbed Ukraine & Belarus is on the path to a great power again, & might become a threat to the PRC again).
Russia wants a PRC that is alienated from the West, the more adversarial the better. That way the PRC will remain committed to throw Russia a life line, & more reliant upon Russian natural resources. If the PRC & the US are implacably opposed in a ruinous Cold War, great! If the two get into a devastating hot war, so much the better!
I think the Xi prefers ineffectiveness, incoherence & paralysis in the West, but not all out warfare/anarchy that destroy markets for the PRC’s industries & destroy the value of the PRC’s foreign current reserves. Xi is not willing to take nearly as much risk as Putin to actually effect these outcomes, although in the last few years there have been disturbing signals that the PRC is drawing inspiration from Russian hybrid warfare tactics, at least dipping their toes to test the waters: allegations of interference in parliamentary races in Canada, possibly running Miles Guo to get a hook into the GOP, controlling the odd far right politician in Belgium, signs of influence at the top of the German AfD, & burrowing deep into the IT networks of critical US infrastructure to plant attacks that could be activated in war time.
AlaskaReader
Thanks Adam
daveNYC
@Another Scott: You’ve predicted ten of the last zero times the House has passed legislation. Posting one rep saying the Speaker will totally be productive this time is just more overly optimistic BS.
Traveller
This is not all Sack Cloth and Ashes…
…wars have peaks and valleys, matters are going poorly at the moment, but Spring may bring another story…worse or vastly better.
As maybe noted here, or somewhere, the Viet Cong lost for decades until they won, likewise the Taliban, the French were masters of Algeria, until they weren’t, all as modern examples.
It could never be predicted that Ukraine would be the dominant naval force in the Black Sea, that the vaulted Russian Black Sea fleet would be hiding on the farthermost shore they can find.
Wars are strange creatures, we will see…but wars are fought and live on hope…we must shore up Ukrainian morale. If not, Ukraine must depend on the production capacity of 350million people strong that is the EU.
I say again, without US help, the Ukrainians are freed up a bit…I’ve seen 6 refinery explosions over the past two weeks…the Ukrainians need to keep blowing these up. (like Scott, I am certain, or at least very hopeful, that the US House of Representatives will come through with the aide package…seriously).
And bravely stay the course…they have nowhere else to go.
Traveller
PSI note in this morning’s news: Denmark will transfer all its artillery systems to Ukraine, – Prime Minister of Denmark, Frederiksen and The Czech Republic found almost a million shells for Ukraine (but some being N Korean or Iranian, not all are good)
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Slava Ukraini!!
[eta:] Traveller got there first.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Traveller: That is some good historical analysis, but I would point out, with regard to the relative dominance of Black Sea powers, that Turkiye maintains a sizeable navy equipped and trained to Nato standards, as well as Nato’s 3rd largest air force.
Traveller
@Geminid: I would never discount Turkiye as the real controlling sea power over the Black Sea….but the Ukraine now has secured, along with taking back Snake Island, a viable sea lane for their exports of grain…this also is a remarkable acheivement. Best Wishes, Traveller
Geminid
@Traveller: Turkiye and Nato allies Romania and Bulgaria have engaged in joint minesweeping operations along their coasts that facilitate Ukrainian shipping. Turkiye maintains a good-sized force of “mine hunters.”
I have also seen reports of Turkish air tanker planes refueling Nato fighters over the western Black Sea which I think were protecting the coastal sea route.
YY_Sima Qian
I don’t think Adam has posted the below OSINT analysis of the Avdiivka battle from Tatarigami_UA on 2/16, of the situation there on 2/14. It is, of course, no longer current, but I think serves as a good recap of the course of the battle.
Avdiivka Dilemma: Analyzing Tactical Realities and Operational Necessities
Traveller
@YY_Sima Qian: What a valuable link! Thank you, but others should note that it takes a few moments to load…be patient, the wait for the information is worth it.
The withdrawal from Avdiivka seems entirely warranted… a strategic retreat to fight another day…is…just plain Good.
It is unfortunate that the fallback like is not completely constructed…but a fallback is still far better than a surrender of battered Battalions.
Not all battles can be won. It is unrealistic to think otherwise. Sometimes you have to let go….and going over to sabotaging Russian gas lines and refining facilities is a profitable avenue of attack.
Thank you again for the link. Best Wishes, Traveller
wjca
Xi has the advantage, in making that assessment, that he has an up close picture of Russia’s military and economic weaknesses, based on what kinds of things Putin has had to come begging for. If Putin ever looks like he might succeed in setting the world on fire, the PRC can just shut off the tap on support.
I suspect that Xi’s bigger concern is that Putin’s war will somehow cause the US to get less introverted. As we saw in the middle of the last century, if someone outside gives the US a hard enough smack upside the head to get our attention, to get us focused seriously on a military competition, nobody else can compete. Certainly not a country which is facing the economic challenges of an aging (and perhaps even shrinking) population. Xi definitely doesn’t want that.
Ryan
“The House will have exactly one working day – 29 February – to either do the appropriations bills for those four agencies and all the others or a new stepped CR before those two shut down on 1 March.”
Thank goodness it’s an <strike>election</strike> leap year.
way2blue
Adam. I don’t always read past your post titles these days—even though your overviews & insights are vital. Not to mention, the commenters who join with tutorials on all aspects of the ‘War for Ukraine’ within its broader geopolitical context. I despair as an American at the glibness that accompanies broken vows & oaths from our elected leaders.
Speaking of oaths, I attended a reception for Peter Dixon who’s running for California House District 16. After 9/11, he finished college, joined the Marines, and served in Afghanistan, then joined the State Department… At 41, the Democratic machine told him to wait his turn. And so it goes… < Peter Dixon pitch >
YY_Sima Qian
@wjca: Short of a massive cyber attack that paralyzes the US & causes numerous civilian casualties, I don’t see how Russia will be capable of delivering such a wake up “slap”. OTOH, Putin has proven quite capable of leveraging existing internal fissures in the US & the EU, pour oil on the fire, & encourage existing tendencies for inward focus at times of domestic challenges.
The only potential geopolitical scenario that I can think of is if the Chinese PLA launches preemptive attacks on US forces & bases in the Asia Pacific at the outset of an invasion of Taiwan. Sudden & unprovoked attack that result in the loss of the lives of thousands of American servicemen will have the galvanizing effect that you speak of. Which is why analysts on both sides of the Pacific disagree on the merits & likelihood of the CPC leadership ordering such preemptive attacks. From a purely military perspective, a surprise assault that catches as much of the US’ immense combat power in the region on the ground & in ports as possible, & destroys as much of the prepositioned supplies & munitions stockpile as possible, is clearly preferable. On the flip side, at the political & geopolitical levels such a “Day of Infamy” will make it virtually impossible for the US to accept any kind of fait accompli on Taiwan & realize an early negotiated end to the war. While the CPC leadership will surely price in direct US intervention in any decision to blockade or invade Taiwan, it is not obvious whether to hold off engaging the US forces In hope that the US still stay out or that its intervention is discombobulated (& also be able to claim to be responding to US “aggression” to the Global South countries), versus launching a strike 1st to secure an immediate military advantage. OTOH, the US no longer has the industrial capacity to quickly replenish the losses from a surprise strike, like it did in 1941.
Of course, all of this hypothetical, since even w/o direct US intervention a war over Taiwan will be military costly & economically ruinous, will cause a complete rupture in relations w/ the West for years, & dramatically intensify regional balancing against PRC power for decades. At a time of significant domestic challenges, during a very tricky economic transition, for Xi “Taiwan remains a crisis to be avoided rather than an opportunity to be seized” (in the words of Evan Feigenbaum at the Carnegie Endowment). Mao was a revolutionary who was unafraid of setting fire to the country & the world to being about what he believed to be renewal. Xi appears to be a conservative man in every sense of the word, & in the Chinese context.
wjca
And even Mao refrained from trying to invade Taiwan. Which was far less capable of defending itself then (specifically after the US changed which China it recognized) than it is now.