Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Republicans do not trust women.

The revolution will be supervised.

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

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

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

T R E 4 5 O N

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Fight them, without becoming them!

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

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

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 838: Russia Has Publicly Declared that the US Is an Enemy State

War for Ukraine Day 838: Russia Has Publicly Declared that the US Is an Enemy State

by | 17 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

Quick housekeeping update: Rosie’s chemotherapy today went smoothly. The oncology vet was happy to hear that she had no side effects last week. We’ll see if this week goes as smoothly as last week. But, for now, she’s good. She’s lying here on the bed, watching TV while I type this. Thank you all, again, for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

As of 8:15 PM EDT, air raid alerts are up for all of eastern Ukraine.

Russia publicly changed the way it refers to the US

Russia also unleashed more glide bombs on Kharkiv today:

There is no new daily address or other event video of President Zelenskyy posted to the official website or YouTube channel of the President of Ukraine. I think it is because he is traveling to Berlin for a conference.

The cost:

Arsen Fedosenko, a talented military photographer, died at the frontlines.

Arsen joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the spring of 2022.

In his last Facebook post on International Journalists day, he wrote:

“Being open. Accepting and putting pain of others through yourself. Staying objective. Earning the trust of the person you’re talking to. Remembering everyone you’ve spoken to for the last time, and their dreams. Doing everything so we know heroes and don’t forget enemies.”

Eternal memory and eternal glory to Ukrainian Hero. Sincere condolences to the family.

Kyiv:

In @mefimus‘s resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by @FT , Nayyem said he was stepping down “due to systemic obstacles that do not allow me to effectively exercise my powers.”

Beginning last November, he said his agency faced “constant opposition, resistance and the creation of artificial obstacles” which he argued has had “a negative impact on the country’s defense capability, cargo logistics, protection of critical infrastructure and export of our goods.”

Here are the details from The Financial Times:

The top Ukrainian official overseeing wartime reconstruction and defence fortifications has resigned, claiming his agency was being systematically undermined by the government.

Mustafa Nayyem’s departure is the latest in a series of personnel changes in Kyiv that have shaken the confidence of western partners in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and irked some of Ukraine’s own officials.

Nayyem, head of the State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, told the Financial Times that Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal had barred him from participating in the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference on June 11 and 12 in Berlin, where donors will meet to support projects for rebuilding cities and infrastructure destroyed by Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The void left by Nayyem and the absence of an infrastructure minister are likely to prompt questions about Kyiv’s ability and commitment to protect its critical infrastructure as Russian forces continue to conduct air strikes on Ukraine’s power plants and mount offensives in the country’s east. Two agency officials responsible for anti-corruption policy and procurement resigned with Nayyem on Monday.

Six Ukrainian and western officials told the FT that a series of firings, resignations and government reshuffles directed by Zelenskyy in recent months had caused tension between Kyiv and the western partners financing Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.

All of them told the FT that they had warned Zelenskyy and his government over what they saw as disruptive and inexplicable moves.

“The US and other western partners want a normal, predictable relationship with their Ukrainian counterparts,” one concerned Ukrainian government official told the FT on condition of anonymity. “Right now they are losing trust in Ukraine’s government because of personnel decisions that they do not understand.”

The FT obtained a letter from the prime minister to Nayyem that read: “I agree to your business trip to Berlin . . . The report on the results of the business trip must be submitted within 10 days of its completion.” However, in blue ink, the handwritten words “I do not agree” were added at the top of the page, and the underlined, handwritten words “I do not” were added beside the start of the printed “I agree.” It was signed by Shmyhal and dated June 7, and its authenticity was confirmed by a government official.

Ukrainian officials said political rivalries were at the heart of the government shake-up, but the government said Nayyem’s travel request to Berlin was denied because a meeting to review his agency’s work was scheduled for June 12 in Kyiv. Nayyem’s statements “appear to be an attempt to avoid reporting on today’s critical issues”, a cabinet spokesperson said.

Zelenskyy is expected to attend the conference while in Berlin to deliver a speech to the German parliament. But experts said the absence of the top bureaucrat in charge of Ukraine’s reconstruction was unlikely to sit well with foreign partners at an event focused on rebuilding the country.

“It sends our partners a message that recovery is not a priority any more,” said Hlib Vyshlinsky, the executive director at the Kyiv-based Centre for Economic Strategy.

In his resignation letter, seen by the FT on Monday, Nayyem said he was stepping down “due to systemic obstacles that do not allow me to effectively exercise my powers”.

Beginning last November, he said his agency faced “constant opposition, resistance and the creation of artificial obstacles” which he argued had “a negative impact on the country’s defence capability, cargo logistics, protection of critical infrastructure and export of our goods”.

Two weeks before his resignation in late May, Nayyem gathered two dozen representatives from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other western agencies to tell them he expected to be fired and to have probes launched into the work of the infrastructure ministry under his ally Oleksandr Kubrakov, the former infrastructure minister, according to audio recording obtained by the FT and two people in attendance.

Nayyem is heard in the recording assuring the agency representatives that the numerous projects in which they were involved, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, would stay on track, and he encouraged them to work with whoever replaced him. But several western representatives aired their concerns about his looming departure.

“It’s probably our most important partnership as we prepare for the reconstruction of the country and as we work towards this common goal of getting Ukraine back to business, getting exports flowing,” said a woman representing USAID.

Nayyem’s departure follows the dismissal of Kubrakov in May. The two men were in charge of Ukraine’s wartime reconstruction as well as the construction of the country’s “third lines” of defence fortifications to keep the Russians from penetrating deep inside the country. But two Ukrainian officials said that Kubrakov was viewed by Zelenskyy and his office as being too cozy with Washington. Zelenskyy’s office has not commented on Kubrakov’s dismissal, which was approved by parliament.

“This situation is really bad for perception of the Ukrainian government and Ukraine generally. Ukraine is and has to be perceived as unbroken,” Vyshlinsky said. The sacking of Kubrakov and Nayyem’s departure “build an image of weak and unpredictable governance that is unjust to efforts of Ukrainians during these years”.

Kubrakov’s removal sparked a backlash from Ukraine’s biggest western backers in private and in public, according to the six Ukrainian and western officials.

Diplomats from G7 nations as well as current members of the Ukrainian government described frustration over what they said was internal discord and dysfunction plaguing Zelenskyy’s administration and government at a critical moment in the war.

Once a rising star in Zelenskyy’s government and seen as a reformer, Kubrakov was among the Ukrainian officials who signed the UN grain export deal initially agreed with Russia, he had a direct line to the president, and was even asked by Zelenskyy last August to take over as defence minister, according to three officials close to the men.

More at the link.

It’s unclear exactly what is going on here. From the outside, as well as how the various anonymous officials are framing this, Zelenskyy is cleaning house of anyone to cozy with DC. This is happening, however, as very public rifts have developed between Zelenskyy and his team and the Biden administration over a variety of issues. This is something to keep an eye on going forward to see if things get clearer over time.

A counterpoint from Washington Monthly:

Here’s the details:

The damage is evident everywhere in Mykolaiv, once a bustling port and shipbuilding hub near the Black Sea, 85 miles east of Odesa. Russian and Ukrainian forces fought hand to hand in and around the city in March 2022, followed by eight months of relentless shelling by the frustrated invading army. In November, Ukrainian troops pushed the Russians out of range, and the invaders never made it to Odesa.

More than two years later, many of the windows in the working-class city are still covered with plywood. Parking lots are pocked with shell craters. There’s a gaping eight-story hole at the center of the empty regional administration building—a reminder of the missiles meant to assassinate popular Governor Vitalii Kim that killed 37 civil servants in late March 2022.

The city’s economic engine—the port—is idle. Russians still control the mouth of the channel that connects Mykolaiv to the Black Sea, and no cargo has come or gone since February 2022. The nearly 300-year-old town teems with displaced persons from southern Ukraine, but a quarter of the city’s prewar population of 480,000 has yet to return.

The war’s impact on the economy wasn’t clear to me until I drove through the battered city with the owner of NicoTex, a small synthetic materials manufacturer. Our destination: his family’s factory on the edge of town. Tired-looking, in jeans and an old windbreaker, Maksim Khomenko described the 2022 siege as we headed north, retracing the route the invaders took as they fought their way into the city, once closed to foreigners for fear that they would steal Soviet military secrets.

The Russians knew their targets: it’s no accident that schools, universities, and medical facilities sustained some of Mykolaiv’s worst hits. Passing the charred shell of what was once a supermarket, Khomenko reminds me how Russian artillery killed and maimed dozens of civilians queued outside stores and at bus stops.

The NicoTex factory is an empty shell. The first thing you notice is the constant clanging. Big sheets of corrugated metal—once components of the walls or roof—still hang from the rafters. The wind bangs them noisily against what’s left of metal walls. Huge piles of burnt felt and other synthetic materials litter the pitted concrete floors. A pack of stray cats and dogs lives in the rubble, squabbling among themselves. The company has no savings, and Khomenko has been searching for help—grants, loans, or investors—since the shelling. But without collateral and with virtually nothing to build on, he has few prospects in sight.

The question that hangs over the firm and the city: When and how will Ukraine be rebuilt? What are its prospects? What will the economy look like when it emerges from the smoke and rubble? Perhaps the most important question, to be discussed this week as international donors, investors, and government officials convene in Berlin for the third annual Ukraine Recovery Conference: will reconstruction help Ukraine shake off the legacy of the Soviet past and emerge as a fully Western economy?

The shells were still falling and Russian troops were still visible across the river when Denmark decided to help Mykolaiv rebuild. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to address the Danish parliament by video link on the afternoon of March 29, 2022, just a month into the war but well into the Russian destruction of Mykolaiv. That was the morning missiles gutted the governor’s office. Sickening photos of what the invaders had wrought spread worldwide, and Danes were sympathetic when Zelensky proposed a recovery partnership with the port city.

“It was an unusual idea, to say the least,” recalls Ole Egberg Mikkelsen, the Danish ambassador to Ukraine. Few international donors focus their aid locally. Most spend months planning and preparing before they commit to help. But popular opinion in Denmark was, and remains, overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine. A nation of just 6 million people, it has sent more military aid than any country save the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. By midsummer 2022, Danish assistance was on its way to Mykolaiv.

Like the residents of other ravaged Ukrainian cities, Mykolaiv’s population couldn’t wait to start rebuilding roads, bridges, residential buildings, water pipes, and other essentials. An array of donors, including the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), stepped in with support. But from the get-go, Denmark was determined to provide more than humanitarian help, which is unusual. Eager to create a model for other international investors, Copenhagen added a critical second leg: a parallel project cosponsored by the European Union and the Danish foreign ministry to promote anticorruption reform in Mykolaiv.

Also unique—perhaps the most novel feature of the Danish initiative—Copenhagen committed to restarting the port city’s economic engine by helping private businesses. “Military and humanitarian aid and budget support are essential,” says Kaare Stamer Andreasen, the Kyiv-based finance director of the Danish export credit agency, EIFO. “But you can’t revive a city without reviving its economy.”

To date, Copenhagen has disbursed some $230 million for Mykolaiv rebuilding and humanitarian purposes, and, in addition, Denmark’s EIFO has invested $190 million in local projects, including private businesses.

Both Mykolaiv’s mayor and governor were businessmen before being elected, and both are long-time proponents of anticorruption reform. Mayor Oleksandr Sinkevych asked the Danes not to send cash assistance. “It was the first thing I said in our first meeting,” he recalls, “No money. That’s the best hedge against corruption.”

Humanitarian aid flows primarily through Danish nonprofits. The UN Office for Project Services handles big purchases like equipment and building materials, and the EU Anticorruption Initiative (EUACI), co-funded by Brussels and Copenhagen, hired an auditor to oversee the city’s routine purchases, which Denmark doesn’t fund. Among his priorities are helping the city improve its databases and ensuring that officials comply with Western standards for municipal tenders and procurement. “There’s a new spirit in the air thanks to the Danes,” shipyard owner Mykola Kapatsyna explains. “Zero tolerance for corruption.”

Danes and Ukrainians raced through the summer and fall of 2022 to prepare the city for winter. Ambassador Mikkelsen remembers buying truckloads of plywood to replace broken windows. A Danish nonprofit provided water pumps, and a Danish company built 89 emergency pumping stations. (The city had no water for a month after the Russians cut the pipeline, and what flows through city pipes is still unsuitable for drinking.) The municipal heating system needed emergency repairs. Several fleets of new vehicles arrived from abroad: city and school buses, trolley buses, and garbage trucks, among others. Then, as winter approached, the Danes purchased generators for law enforcement offices and medical facilities.

Once the basics had been taken care of, the Danes turned in earnest to jumpstarting the local economy. “It’s our top goal,” Ambassador Mikkelson explains. “The Ukrainians don’t want to be a charity case. They want to earn their own money.” Governor Kim, interviewed in his new office, a windowless bunker barricaded by sandbags across the street from the ruins of his old headquarters, agrees. “Just get government out of the way,” he says, “and the market will do the rest”—not a typical attitude among Ukrainian officials.

Rebuilding the Ukrainian economy faces a host of obstacles. At the top of the list in Mykolaiv are the consequences of the fighting that continues to rage just 40 miles south. The occupying forces shell any companies that begin to rebuild and discuss it in the press or elsewhere. The port can’t and won’t resume operation until a counteroffensive reopens the channel to the Black Sea—which could take years. No one expects Mykolaiv to pick up where it left off before independence, building world-class ships for the Russian and Soviet navies. The city’s giant, once-storied shipyards can no longer compete with those in China, South Korea, or Japan.

More than a quarter of Ukrainian farmland has been rendered unusable by Russian mines, leaving few, if any, available jobs in the villages surrounding Mykolaiv. Perhaps most challenging, labor shortages, already a problem before the war and exacerbated by the exodus, have reached a critical point. Many of the new buses and trolleys purchased by Denmark sit idle in a garage. Fighting-age men don’t want to take jobs in the formal economy for fear that they will be targeted for conscription.

But the challenges don’t end there. International bankers and Ukrainian trade associations have their own list of longer-term concerns.

Much more at the link.

Russian occupied Crimea:

Overnight, Ukrainian defense forces carried out a successful missile strike against russian air defense systems in temporarily occupied Crimea, @GeneralStaffUA reports.

One S-400 division in the Dzhankoi area and two S-300 divisions near Chornomorske and Yevpatoria were struck.

After the strikes, the immediate shutdown of the S-400/S-300 complex’s radars was recorded.
In addition, further detonation of ammunition was observed in all three areas.

We continue to destroy the enemy!
Crimea is Ukraine!

Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast:

Kharkiv Oblast:

From The Moscow Times:

U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor said on Sunday that Russia’s advance on northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region “has stalled.”

“The momentum of that operation in Kharkiv has stalled out,” Jake Sullivan told CBS. “Kharkiv is still under threat but Russians have not been able to make material progress on the ground in recent days in that area.”

Washington recently gave Kyiv the green light to use U.S.-supplied weapons in defending the Kharkiv region, despite concerns that authorizing those kinds of strikes might drag NATO into a direct conflict with Russia.

“From the president’s perspective, this was common sense,” Sullivan said. “It simply didn’t make sense not to allow the Ukrainians to fire across that border, to hit Russian guns and emplacements that were firing at the Ukrainians.”

Kreminna, Donetsk Oblast:

Kherson Oblast:

Today at 10:40 Russians shelled the Dniprovs’kyi district of Kherson. A 102-year-old woman was injured and required hospitalization. Patrol police arrived, but Russians shelled the same location for second time when police officers were trying to provide medical assistance to a woman.

«Patrolmen Ivan Sinyov and Oleksandr Moskalenko immediately went to the place of shelling.

A 102-year-old woman was injured and needed immediate medical treatment. But during an attempt to provide first aid to the injured, Russians opened fire again.

Together with the townspeople, they quickly transported the injured woman to a patrol police vehicle and took her to the hospital. She is currently receiving the necessary medical care.»

https://t.me/OBiloshytskiy/586

The Avdiivka front:

Krasnohorivka, Donetsk Oblast:

We now know the Russian side of butcher’s bill for Bakhmut:

So, according to new findings from Russia’s Wagner Group documents, the mercenary army lost at least 19,547 men killed in action in the Battle of Bakhmut.

17,175 of them were convicts recruited from prisons all across Russia.

That’s 35.5% of the total number of convicts (at least 48,366) recruited by the Wagner and used as cheap cannon fodder for insane human wave assaults on Ukrainian guns.

And that is Bakhmut alone.

How many tens of thousands have turned into rotting pieces of flesh at Avdiivka, Sievierodonetsk, Popasna, or Soledar so that Kremlin TV news could take a nice shot of the Russian flag over the lifeless ruins of what used to be a pretty decent medium-sized town in Ukraine’s Donbas?

Seriously, we’ve been living with this war for a decade, but sometimes it’s still hard to fully fathom the idiocy and the barbarity of the Putinist Russia.

This is simply absurdly insane.

From BBC Russian in English:

As many as 20,000 Wagner fighters were killed during the Russian assault on Bakhmut. More than 17,000 were convicts sent to the front from prison camps and pre-trial detention centres.

Working with the Mediazona news outlet, BBC Russian has gained access to the personal data of these men and can reveal that the late Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s statements about losses in the capture of the city, which were met at the time with disapproval even by pro-war bloggers, were heavily whitewashed.

The Wagner archive

In a well-known video from May 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin is seen filmed against a backdrop of corpses, yelling into the camera at the defence minister and chief of staff:  “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the f****** ammunition?!”

At the time, his claim was that heavy losses among his mercenaries during the attacks on Bakhmut could be blamed on the unresponsiveness of the defence ministry and a shortage of shells.

But the data we have seen shows that the highest daily casualties – more than 200 men a day – were being sustained by Wagner far earlier, in January that year. Prigozhin subsequently admitted that he had lost 20,000 mercenaries in the battles for the city, but said that only half of them were prisoners.

“I selected 50,000 prisoners during the operation and about 20% of them died,” he told pro-Kremlin political strategist Konstantin Dolgov just after Bakhmut’s capture. “The same number of men who joined under contract, rather than from jails, also perished.”

The BBC and Mediazona obtained a complete list including the personal data of 19,547 dead Wagner fighters, of whom not half, as Prigozhin claimed, but fully 88% – or 17,175 men – had been prisoners.

The documents in question concern compensation payments of five million roubles for the death of a Wagner fighter on a standard contract. Our source has received the lists of ‘coffin’ payments in August 2023, soon after the death of Prigozhin. We do not have data for salaries and injury payouts.

In addition, relatives have frequently told the BBC of the difficulty in confirming the status of a Wagner prisoner-fighter. For that reason, counting up losses and paying out compensation amid the bloodshed can be a very drawn out affair.

This is the most significant source of data on Wagner losses we have encountered during our project to keep track of Russian casualties in the full-scale war on Ukraine.

We know the call signs, dog tags and dates of death of each of these men, and the majority of their surnames. The documents lack around 1,000 names – 6% – but that does not prevent the categorisation of their deaths since the dog tag makes it plain if the soldier was recruited from jail or civilian life.

But even Prigozhin’s own massaged casualty figures presented a problem for the Ministry of Defence and its plan to push a story about the ‘victory’ in Bakhmut. The conversation, even among ‘Z-bloggers’, turned into a discussion of the catastrophic losses, and whether commanders ought to be receiving medals for the city’s capture in the first place if more men had died there than in nine years’ fighting in Afghanistan.

Prigozhin’s statement had enabled him to kill two birds with one stone: highlight the value of his mercenary outfit while belittling the defence ministry. At the same time, he was promoting the image of his project – and lies about the ratio of losses served this purpose, too.

The recruitment of new forces to Wagner depended on this image, which Prigozhin’s team spent a lot of time curating. They promised former convicts that they would be treated as equals, not as second-class citizens:

“60% of my guys are assault troops, and you will be one of them. You will be no different from the rest of us. You will be treated the same, sometimes more leniently than men who have been fighting alongside me for many years and have gone through dozens of wars,” Prigozhin claimed, speaking at the parade ground of Penal Colony 6 in Mari El.

So a lie about the conditions on the battlefield at Bakhmut, and the numbers of dead prisoners, was essential to keep up Wagner’s reputation in the eyes of a new wave of prisoners hoping to avoid serving more jail time.

Much, much more at the link.

Here’s some interesting analysis of what Macron is doing with the snap elections via the Thread Reader App:

Why did Macron decide to dissolve the Assemblée Nationale (🇫🇷 lower house of parliament) & call early legislative elections. Only Macron’s immediate entourage know but here are some personal thoughts 🧵: 
1. Mix of reasons: end parliamentary deadlock; snap election focuses minds; show what the far-right truly cares about & what it is actually capable of doing; confidence & hubris that Macron can win the French over; rebuild republican camp. Thing is: is this possible in 3 weeks? 
1. End parliamentary deadlock: 🇫🇷 government has a relative majority in parliament making it v tricky to pass legislation. Macron was always likely to dissolve parliament ahead of budget discussions this yr. But why so soon, and why give only 3 weeks? 
2. Higher turnout: since early 2000s, legislative elections have taken place shortly after presidential election. Turnout tends to be high for presidential election & low for legislative. Ppl think “whatever, we know who the PR will be”. 
3. Higher turnout (2): hope is that more will turn up in 3 weeks to cast their vote & perhaps that French will thank Macron for “listening” and calling election following y’day’s result (where far-right got close to 40%). “The President is right: a lot is at stake, let’s vote”. 
3. Rebuild the Republican front: here is where I think it gets interesting. Macron isn’t stupid — he knows his party wd struggle to get majority. His strategy, as per @steph_sejourne comment y’day, might be to try and rebuild Republican front. This means… 
4. … that Macron won’t put up candidates in seats held by centre-left (PS) & centre-right (LR). This does several things: give LR and PS the chance to hold/increase number of seats (good ahead of 2027) & focus their energy on combatting extremes (LFI & RN). 
(4bis. Choice of where/where not to put candidates up is all down to the way legislative elections work: there are 2 rounds of voting; candidates need at least 12,5% of registered votes to go onto 2nd round. Fewer candidates = higher chance to getting through to 2nd round) 
5. Rebuild the Republican front (3): Problem is.. why wd LR and PS ever agree to form an alliance with Macron? Might make tactical sense but politically, it’s v risky. Plus, declarations by head of LR (Ciotti) and PS (Faure) this morning suggest they think this is a v bad idea. 
6. No grand Republican front:
– PS is likely to try and create a “grand coalition of the Left” (making sure there is only 1 left-wing candidate per seat):
– LR against any sort of coalition with centre:

7. Overconfident Macron: I can see why this strategy is intellectually persuasive, but it also shows how disconnected Macron can be. Even Gabriel Attal, the PM, is said to have tried to dissuade him from dissolving parliament saying he wd resign instead:

8. Letting RN form a government & do a bad job of it: another theory is that if the RN (far right) wins a relative or absolute majority, it will form a gov and will do “so terribly” that the French will realise how “incompetent they are”. If true, this is a terrible strategy too. 
9. The case of Trump shows that no amount of incompetence can ever be enough to dissuade voters. And to think French voters will somehow come to a different conclusion than American voters is silly. 
10. RN forming a government: there is also no reason to assume that RN would be “so incompetent” that the French wd suddenly vote differently in 2027. The French administration is good, solid, they’d be surrounded by good advice. Stay radical? Yes. Be incompetent? Not necessarily 
11. Sometimes a sense that Macron thinks he can charm and win over the French through his words. But many are fed up with him & Macronisme.. and without a strong republican front, coupled with high levels of abstention, it is the extreme parties that stand to win. END 

Astrakhan Oblast, Russia:

Belgorod Oblast, Russia:

Claimed strike on the Russian command post of the 6th Combined Arms Army. (military unit 31807, Leningrad region). Yesterday, 06/09/2024. Shebekino, Belgorod region:

“The command post was deployed at the Nezhegol recreation center (belongs to Belgorod State University), near the settlement.

The Command Post controlled the units that are taking part in the offensive operation in Volchansk, Kharkiv region.

At the moment, eight army officers are considered missing.

Also, it is worth noting that the Nezhegol recreation center appeared on the “target lists” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which intelligence warned the 6th Army about at least a week before the strike. However, no countermeasures were taken.”

https://t.me/dosye_shpiona/543

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos today. Here is some adjacent material from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m going to get cleaned up and rack out. Everyone is preemptively welcome.

  4. 4.

    Jay

    Thank you, Adam,

    I am glad that Rosie’s treatment is going well and that she is doing well.

  5. 5.

    SpaceUnit

    So the Kremlin says we’re enemies now.  Guess we should go cry ourselves to sleep.

     

    Was it all those US-made bombs raining down on their heads or did we forget to send them a Christmas card?

  6. 6.

    patrick II

    Does the U.S. have a legal category similar to “enemy state” for foreign relationships as we have with Russia right now?  If not, we should have and make legal consequences for those aiding the foreign “enemy” state more substantial for those than they are now?

  7. 7.

    Carlo Graziani

    The Shebekino strike is interesting. It is only about 15 km (10 miles) from the Ukraine border, and could in principle have been targeted at any time since June 2022, when HIMARS showed up for work. Clearly, more signs of the fact that Ukraine is now “weapons free” with targets inside Russia. Good.

  8. 8.

    Carlo Graziani

    @SpaceUnit: Peskov’s phrasing is interesting:

    Specifically, during a press briefing on Tuesday, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We are now an enemy country for them, just as they are for us.”

    That is, he’s gloating that we now regard them as an enemy state, just as they see us, and have for a while. In a way, he’s bragging that Russia has dragged the US into its own conceptual framework of international rivalry.

    If he had any realistic sense of history, this belief should alarm him, rather than comfort him.

  9. 9.

    patrick II

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Russia, especially Putin,  wants to be regarded as. a great nation.  If they can’t match us in constructive acts, they will more than match us in destructive ones and consider it a win.

  11. 11.

    Carlo Graziani

    Good haul this evening, Adam.

    It’s unclear exactly what is going on here. From the outside, as well as how the various anonymous officials are framing this, Zelenskyy is cleaning house of anyone to cozy with DC. This is happening, however, as very public rifts have developed between Zelenskyy and his team and the Biden administration over a variety of issues.

    This makes no political sense to me at all. Ukraine’s government and war policy are in no way undermined by having a supply of officials who are “cozy with DC.” Quite the contrary is true, certainly to the extent that Ukraine would like to influence the drift of US policy and politics: such officials should be regarded as assets.

    I have a guess, which I’d like G&T’s take on: when the war began, a lot of Ukraine’s normal party-political divisions got submerged by the war emergency. 2.5 years later, those divisions are beginning to re-emerge, in a context where normal parliamentary politics is still not possible. The purges and recriminations, which from the outside look fratricidal, are in fact a symptom of the reality that the Ukrainian government was never in fact, a band of brothers, but rather an alliance of convenience among factions that would normally be at each other’s electoral throats. The exhaustion of war is bringing those divisions to the surface.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    Newsweek.com (from June 5):

    The Kremlin has issued a stark statement about the U.S. as relations with Washington hit a new low over Ukraine’s use of American-supplied weapons on Russian territory.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, called the United States “an enemy” reportedly for the first time during a press briefing on Tuesday.

    Agentstvo, an independent Russian investigative site, said that neither Peskov nor the Russian president has ever called the U.S. or other countries the Kremlin considers to be “unfriendly” an enemy of Russia.

    “We are now an enemy country for them, just as they are for us,” Peskov told reporters when commenting on claims made by former American intelligence officer Scott Ritter that he was barred from traveling to Russia and had his passport confiscated by border officials.

    […]

    Preventing Ritter from traveling to Russia marked “the latest manifestation of the rabid campaign to prevent U.S. citizens from interacting with the Russian Federation,” which would only be “understandable” if it was linked to his former intelligence status, Peskov said, Russian state media outlet RT reported.

    […]

    Given the context – comments on Ritter begin stopped from visiting – it sounds like more BS bluster (stuff that, e.g., Medvedev is famous for) and not some grand change of policy to me. But, as always, time will tell.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Traveller

    There has been serious friction between here at BJ and Washington…sometimes I have felt they have been too sharp, especially when President Biden has been given no credit for being able to shepherd the supplemental through the Ukrainian aid legislation….especially when in many parts of the American polity the desire to help Ukraine was and often remains, less than paper thin.

    A push to enable to use US munitions inside of Russia proper may have sunk the legislation without retrieval. Now that the Supplemental is in the books, the restraints on Ukraine are loosening….(I might also note that Europe probably gave the US cover, (by openly permitting the use of their weapons first), sufficient to allow the United States to  grant this also, though on a more limited basis.

    So there are frictions, did the agents of Ukraine push their US counterparts hard enough? It is an honest question for Ukraine to be asking of  its diplomats.

    The moment of most critical danger has, at least temporarily, passed. It is time for people to reassess, to look around, to maybe even silently blame the United States for pushing too hard on the Ukraine summer offensive in 2023…was that an American operation, poorly conceived, or a Ukrainian one?

    Honorably people can honorably disagree…I see no problem in this, except in the false way these disagreements are presented in the press. War is hard, difficult work…everyone has got to cut everyone some slack. Best Wishes, Traveller

  16. 16.

    Jay

    @Carlo Graziani:

    This makes no political sense to me at all. Ukraine’s government and war policy are in no way undermined by having a supply of officials who are “cozy with DC.” Quite the contrary is true,

    So, from first hand reports, around Kharkiv,

    The first line was dug by TD, by hand at night under shell fire and drones, and could not be held, because the trench lines were weak, and the TD had no combat experience.

    The second line was also hand dug by the TD, but was in “the green”, and was much better, and held when Ukraine rushed in experienced combat reserves.

    The Third Line, did not exist. It was supposed to be built by Civilian contractors under the Ministry, minefields, dragons teeth, concrete bunkers. Still does not exist.

    That’s the Minister’s fault.

    It’s not “politics”, it’s corruption or negligence.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani: I think Peskov is referring to the fact that U.S. Congress has passed laws designating Russia, the PRC, Iran & North Korea as “enemy states”, that designation then facilitated things such as the TikTok divestment/ban.

Comments are closed.