Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The lights are all blinking red.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

T R E 4 5 O N

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Republicans in disarray!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This fight is for everything.

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

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

We will not go back.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 766: Russia Continues to Threaten Ballistic Missile and Rocket Attacks

War for Ukraine Day 766: Russia Continues to Threaten Ballistic Missile and Rocket Attacks

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

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

As of right now – 7:05 PM EDT – most of Ukraine is not under air raid alert.  Donetsk, Lunhansk, and Crimea are, but they always are as a result of Russian occupation. Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts are the only parts of non-occupied Ukraine that are currently under air raid alert.

An hour ago, however, the air raid alert map looked like this:

Now we wait and we watch and see whether Russia bombards Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and targets as Holy Saturday gives way to Easter Sunday in Ukraine.

Before we get to his address, here is the extended interview that President Zelenskyy did with CBS News two days ago:

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

Our energy workers, repair teams, and builders worked tirelessly throughout the week on recovery efforts after Russian strikes, saving Ukraine’s normal life – address by the President

30 March 2024 – 21:11

Dear Ukrainians,

A few important points this week:

Firstly, we continue to reboot our state institutions. Several changes have been made this week, and there are still more decisions in preparation. Today, new decrees regarding advisors were issued. I am grateful to everyone for their work. We are making the Office more functional.

Secondly, last night, as almost always during this war, our mobile fire groups, other air defense units, and the Air Force had things to do – successful target interceptions. Thank you to all the soldiers and commanders who defend us, and who save Ukraine from Russian terror. During this day, the warriors of the mobile fire groups in Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Kherson, and our Odesa region distinguished themselves. Thank you!

Thirdly, our energy workers, repair teams, and construction workers have worked tirelessly throughout the week. These are the people working on recovery efforts after Russian strikes, as well as protecting energy facilities in various regions. They are many, and they literally save our country’s normal life. These are thermal power plant employees, engineers, grid masters, and electricians. These are the people who restore generation and power. I would like to thank everyone who works so hard to ensure that Ukraine can live normally, with power and the ability to work, in all cities and villages.

Russian terrorists are currently carrying out such heinous attacks in an attempt to drain Ukraine’s power. We sent necessary signals and concrete requests to all of our partners who have the necessary air defense systems and missiles. America, Europe, and other partners all know exactly what we need, and they all understand how critical it is to assist Ukraine in defending itself against these strikes right now. I thank all leaders who are demonstrating leadership right now, especially those who truly uphold our agreements and keep their word.

I also want to personally thank those people here in Ukraine, those workers in the energy sector, who have distinguished themselves with their work in these days and weeks. Vinnytsia region – Yevheniy Kosmyna. Dnipropetrovsk region – Roman Bakholdin, Anatoliy Bondarenko. Donetsk region – Vitaliy Soroka and Oleksandr Nechytailo. Zaporizhzhia region – Oleksandr Babenko, Yuriy Bokhan, Vitaliy Ivanchenko. Kirovohrad region – Oleksandr Zakrevskyi and Yevhen Chernyshov. Lviv region – Andriy Protsiuk. Poltava region – Bohdan Beresten and Serhiy Kuzmin. Odesa region – Anatoliy Murakhovskyi and Roman Poturnak. Kherson region – Ruslan Zhylin, Andriy Riabchenko, Fedir Dorohov. Our Kharkiv region – Yevheniy Diakov, Mykhailo Parfeniuk, Vitaliy Lubianytskyi. Khmelnytsky region – Roman Hnatiuk, Ivan Shvets, Serhiy Mykytiuk. Ivano-Frankivsk region – Vasyl Budnyi, Oleh Danyliv, Bohdan Voytsekhivskyi. Cherkasy region – Yuriy Vlasenko, Vladyslav Holovniov. Thank you, guys!

We must always remember that Ukraine’s strength lies in the strength of our people, in concrete persons who do their utmost so that Ukraine can do its utmost so that we all endure so that we all can achieve common results and protect our state and our lives. Everyone must now do their part – one hundred percent – so that Ukraine largely achieves what is needed. I thank all of you who live by this rule now.

Thank you to everyone who fights and works for Ukraine! Thank you to everyone who helps!

Glory to Ukraine!

The price:

Belgium:

Belgium approved the 25th military aid package for Ukraine, valued at €100 million. The funds will be allocated to the maintenance and support of the #F16s within the framework of the international coalition.

We are grateful to our Belgian partners for their constant support. Together, we are stronger.
🇺🇦🤝🇧🇪
@BelgiumDefence

@DedonderLudivin

Here’s the full video:

Kharkiv:

Novomykhailivka:

Avdiivka:

Destruction of the Russian combat robotic platforms by the FPV drones of the 47th Brigade. Also it’s Avdiivka front, not Bakhmut.

On the video, drones are already immobilized and show no signs of activity. It would be interesting to know the reason, whether this was due to damage received during the battle, loss of signal, work of the electronic warfare systems, or due to other reasons.
https://t.me/brygada47/613

Oleshky forest, Russian occupied Kherson Oblast:

 

The sanctions regime is still leaking like a sieve:

Yep – this is what happens when exercises in ‘escalation management’ give a warmongering dictator TWO YEARS to recover from the shock of his initial failure, relaunch his war production and economy, find new markets, adapt to international sanctions, and partner with other rogue totalitarian regimes to buy arms and equipment for a total war.

Not that we’ve been saying this out loud all these two years.

Here is the reporting from The Wall Street Journal:

Defense companies around the world have been grappling with ways to source nitrocellulose amid a shortage that has seen prices rise and created chokepoints for production. Only a few countries around the world produce nitrocellulose, since its primary use is in munitions and it is subject to international trade restrictions.

Russia produces little nitrocellulose, the main ingredient in smokeless gunpowder used in artillery, so Moscow’s ability to source it abroad has played a pivotal role in its war against Ukraine, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

“The nitrocellulose that goes into the propellant becomes an artillery shell,” said Bradley Martin, a 30-year U.S. Navy veteran who now heads Rand’s National Security Supply Chain Institute. “The majority of battlefield deaths and a lot of the civilian collateral damage is from artillery,” he said.

Nitrocellulose is also used for civilian purposes in inks, paints, varnishes and related products, but analysts believe that the surging imports are meant for arms, given that the Russian economy has been reoriented for wartime production.

Oleksandr Danylyuk, with the Center of Defense Reforms, a Kyiv-based security think tank that has studied Russian nitrocellulose imports, said Russia’s military is driving the imports.

“All of this demand is either for direct production of projectiles or substitution of nitrocellulose which was originally produced by Russian factories,” said Danylyuk, a former defense and intelligence adviser to the Ukrainian government.

China increased supplies of the compound to Russia in the wake of U.S. and European Union sanctions prohibiting exports of any kind for Moscow’s military. But companies from the U.S., Germany and Taiwan are also among those producing the nitrocellulose shipped to Russia in the past two years, according to trade data.

“China does not sell weapons to parties involved in the Ukraine crisis and prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations,” Liu Pengyu, spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said in a statement. “China-Russia economic and trade cooperation does not target any third party and shall be free from disruption or coercion by any third party.”

One small company in Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is responsible for nearly half of Russia’s imports of nitrocellulose since President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to the trade data.

One Russian importer, Analytical Marketing Chemical Group, received nearly $700,000 worth of nitrocellulose from Taiwan in the past two years, according to shipping data. According to the company’s website, the importer is a regular partner of Russia’s Kazan State Gunpowder Plant, which produces an array of weapons, according to company social-media accounts.

A director for Analytical Marketing Chemical Group said in a message to the Journal that the company hadn’t supplied cotton pulp to defense enterprises since 2019 and that it imports nitrocellulose for civilian purposes.

Before the expansion of the Ukraine war in 2022, Turkey provided less than 1% of Russia’s nitrocellulose imports. By the middle of last year, however, a single Turkish company, Noy İç Ve Diş Ti̇caret, provided nearly half of Russia’s imports of the product, according to Russian customs records provided by trade database ImportGenius and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Most sales by Noy, which is based in Istanbul, were to Russian companies that are registered contractors for the government in Moscow, according to corporate records.

The company didn’t respond to requests for comment. Turkey’s embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Noy’s first nitrocellulose exports to Russia shipped within three months of Putin’s invasion, and it is through Noy that a significant portion of nitrocellulose manufactured by Western allies has made its way to Russia.

German subsidiaries of New York-based

sold at least 80 tons of nitrocellulose to Noy, which then shipped the material to Russia last year.

A spokesman for International Flavors & Fragrances said the company was surprised to learn that shipments to Russia of its nitrocellulose products, which it had suspended in April 2022, had continued through a third party.

“We were unaware of this and are reviewing the conditions of this sale and the relationship with this customer,” the spokesman said in a statement to the Journal.

The company said that its product doesn’t have sufficient nitrogen to make it military grade.

 

Russia:

According to Izvestia, Russia will stand up counter-UAV mobile anti-aircraft groups equipped with pick up trucks with HMGs, trucks with ZU-23-2, EW systems, and smoke producing vehicles. It sounds similar to Ukraine’s successful development of mobile anti-aircraft units.
https://iz.ru/1673410/aleksei-mikhailov-iuliia-leonova-roman-kretcul/zenitnaia-rasstanovka-v-armii-sozdaiut-mobilnye-gruppy-dlia-borby-s-bpla

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

I’m saving the new Patron tweet for tomorrow, so here’s some adjacent material from the Ukrainian MOD:

To those of you who observe, have a happy and healthy Easter!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

25Comments

  3. 3.

    Nukular Biskits

    Interesting read about the nitrocellulose.

    Also, the bit about “dummy” soldiers.  Reminds me of WWII documentaries about aircraft decoys made of plywood, inflatable tanks, etc.

  6. 6.

    Jay

    @Nukular Biskits:

    First notice I can find, on dummies, is from March 6th.

    They were parked on top of an APC, that was bombed by a drone.

    At the time, Ukraine suggested that the dummies were being used to fool ruZZian commanders into believing that positions and duties were being filled and carried out.

  9. 9.

    jackmac

    I listened to a rather terrifying live radio interview this morning with journalist Philip Ittner from Kiev (who appears weekly on Hal Spark’s show on WCPT-AM Chicago). Ittner, who said he was located near the city center, was chatting about recent developments as loud air raid sirens abruptly started going off. Ittner, a veteran war correspondent, shrugged it off and said he’d wrap up the conversation if he heard explosions. None were heard while I was listening, but that shrill backdrop still drove home the point that no one and nowhere in Ukraine is safe from Russian attacks.

    As always, thanks Adam!

  10. 10.

    MagdaInBlack

    @jackmac: I listened to that too

    Eta: He also said while he can shrug it off, it is the children who cannot, and will not be able to., growing up in that situation.

  12. 12.

    Andrya

    As always, Adam, thanks for doing this.  I am incredibly grateful, and I share your stuff with everyone in my social network.

    I have an incredibly small, unimportant point of accuracy- subject to correction from G&T, or other Ukrainian jackals of course.  Today is Holy Saturday and tomorrow is Easter for western Christians, both Protestant and Catholic- but Ukraine is majority Eastern Orthodox, and I believe Eastern Orthodox Easter is May 5 (one week from tomorrow).

  13. 13.

    Geminid

    @Nukular Biskits: In the runup to the Normandy invasion, a US Signal Corps unit made a virtual army out of phony radio communications. It was notionally based in eastern England and commanded by General George Patton. The intent was to keep the Germans from shifting divisions to Normandy by threatening a landing on the Channel Coast.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Andrya: My understanding is they’ve moved to the western calendar over the past couple of years. But G&T will correct me if I’m wrong.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @Andrya: @Adam L Silverman:

    Not G&T, but I found this at VisitUkraine.Today:

    When will Easter, Trinity, and other twelve feasts be celebrated in 2024?

    Easter is the main Orthodox holiday in Ukraine, but the date of its celebration does not depend on the New Julian calendar, as it is transitional and calculated according to the lunar calendar. Thus, in 2024, Easter will be celebrated in Ukraine on May 5.

    It is important to note that three of the twelve twelve holidays also have a transitional date that depends on the date of Easter:

    – Palm Sunday, or the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem, will be celebrated in 2024 on April 28;

    – Ascension of the Lord — on June 13;

    – The Holy Trinity — on June 23.

    The other nine twelve feasts have a non-transitional date, and the date of their celebration is shifted by 13 days.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    wombat probability cloud

    Thank you, Adam, as ever, every night.

    Interesting summary of last three months of ground war (literally) by 22 Trucks, at dKos, here.

  23. 23.

    wjca

    @wombat probability cloud: Interesting summary of last three months of ground war (literally) by 22 Trucks, at dKos, here.

    That was fascinating.  Especially the eye chart.  Thank you.

    Reading stuff daily, it can be hard to track just how much (little) the front lines are actually moving.

  24. 24.

    Carlo Graziani

    @wombat probability cloud: Also, what those guys said: good link, good perspective.

    Avdiivka is a minor suburb of Donetsk, and bears the same kind of relationship to the city that Joliet does to Chicago. It’s always looked like a pointless place to commit a major offensive, with zero opportunities for operational progress (let alone breakthroughs) accessible after its capture. The fact that the Russians have succeeded in capturing territory there equivalent to that of a minor US National Park in months of maximum effort, including fearsome manpower and resource expenditure, speaks volumes about the realism of Putin’s conviction that Russia has a winning long game.

    It is kind of astonishing that the Russians did not make their maximum effort at Kupyansk, where they are a few kilometers from a major, active rail node that they lost in the 2022 counter-offensive, and which would actually constitute a real, valid strategic goal. But this is also telling of how Russia makes its National Strategy, in that the political goals of advancing towards the capture of Donetsk Oblast outweigh goals relating to actually making progress towards winning the war. Putin’s decision-making is still  one of Ukraine’s best assets in this conflict.

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, a good DW.com story on difficulties in ramping up arms production:

    […]

    After decades of disarmament, this is nothing less than a 180-degree turn. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990, peace seemed to be Germany’s new status quo. The Bundeswehr was downsized and spending on military equipment was cut. According to a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), Germany’s defense industry shrunk by up to 60%. Of some 290,000 jobs, just under 100,000 remained.

    In line with the German zeitgeist, politicians also kept their distance from the arms industry. In 2014, then-Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) said that he was not interested in “doing business with death,” nor was the then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, of the Christian Democrats (CDU), particularly interested in the arms business either. Large corporations such as Rheinmetall were increasingly relocating their business abroad, partly to circumvent German export restrictions on weapons.

    At the end of 2021, when the SPD, Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) formed the current government, there were still plans to further restrict German arms deals. But then Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

    But it will be difficult to reverse course. Although a large part of the €100-billion “special fund” — the extra money the Bundestag made available to the armed forces when the war in Ukraine began — was contracted in record time, the delivery will take years and most of the equipment will not be manufactured in Germany. For example, the over 120 wheeled tanks ordered by the German government are to be produced at Rheinmetall’s plant in Australia.

    […]

    The defense companies want long-term contracts with fixed purchase commitments, which will require sufficient funds in the federal budget. But this is where the problem lies. The Bundeswehr’s “special fund” will run out in 2027, leaving a huge gap that budget experts estimate at around €50 billion ($54 billion) per year.

    Where is the money supposed to come from? The Social Democrat chancellor is well aware that his party would not support cuts in social welfare, and neither would many Germans — an issue that is likely to play a role in the 2025 federal election campaign.

    The chancellor’s call for a new era in defense policy has not yet really registered in the minds of many Germans. This has become apparent in the search for new locations for arms production. “No ammunition factory in Troisdorf, we will not bow to pressure from Berlin!” is the slogan against Diehl Defence’s construction plans currently being used by citizens and local politicians in this small town in North Rhine-Westphalia. One reason cited for the protest is the clearance zones required for security reasons — land that is needed for housing.

    Troisdorf is not an isolated case. There were also protests in Saxony when it was announced in the spring of 2023 that Rheinmetall was considering building a factory there. Ultimately, however, the plans are said to have failed because the federal government was unwilling to provide initial funding. At least that is what a CDU member of parliament accused the government of in a speech in the Bundestag.

    This stuff isn’t easy.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.