Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

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

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

In my day, never was longer.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The revolution will be supervised.

The lights are all blinking red.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 881: Russia Tries To Disrupt the Olympics

War for Ukraine Day 881: Russia Tries To Disrupt the Olympics

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A quick housekeeping note: Rosie is doing well on her second day after her chemo treatment yesterday. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

It’s nice to know that there are somethings that you can always depend on. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west. And the Russians prosecuting their world war against the US, the EU, and NATO across using all elements of national power and lines of operation that range from interstate war to low intensity war to cyber warfare to subversion.

AFP has the details:

The man, born in 1984, was held in custody and placed under judicial investigation on suspicion of “organising events likely to lead to destabilisation during the Olympic Games”, a source in the state prosecution service, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The source said an investigation was opened into “passing intelligence to a foreign power in order to arouse hostilities in France”, adding that the crime was punishable by up to 30 years in jail.

Prosecutors said a visit to the man’s home “at the request of the interior ministry” had uncovered evidence of the suspected plans.

They did not give any details of the alleged plot, except to say that it was not terrorist in nature, and that specialist anti-terrorist prosecutors were not following the case.

Authorities have investigated over a million people, including athletes, coaches, journalists, volunteers, security guards and even local residents near event locations ahead of the Olympics, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told weekly Paris Match on Tuesday.

Of those, 4,360 were denied access to the Games, with people close to Darmanin telling AFP on Sunday that 880 were barred over suspicions of foreign interference.

In recent months, several high-profile stunts have raised suspicion that foreign actors are trying to influence French public opinion or stoke divisions, notably about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or Israel’s campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attack by Hamas.

They include dummy coffins labelled “French soldiers in Ukraine” left by the Eiffel Tower in June and red hands tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial in May.

In October, soon after Hamas’s attack, stars of David were tagged on buildings in the Paris region, with two Moldovans suspected to be working for the Russian FSB security service later arrested.

After last night’s update posted, the Russians opened up on Ukraine with missiles and drones:

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

Over Time, Ukraine Should Achieve Maximum Defense Independence – Address by the President

23 July 2024 – 20:30

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

Today I held a meeting of the Staff. Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi and Chief of the General Staff Barhylevych delivered reports on the front – our actions, our steps, and the real situation with the occupier’s intentions and capabilities. Our task is to ensure by all means and with all our strength the constant effective destruction of Russian troops, their logistics and their important positions not only directly on the frontline, but also in all available depths. Available to our long-range capability. We are working with our partners to increase this level of defense. But while we are waiting for our partners’ decisions, we are looking for our own solutions, our own options. In this case, the key is our drones, our flexibility in the use of drones. Ukrainian warriors have already proven to be real innovators in many areas of drone use. And it is worth continuing, and we will continue this. I am grateful to everyone who helps with this – those who produce drones, those who supply them, those who train drone operators and those who generally promote this issue. Ukrainian leadership in this technological aspect, it is really tangible. Today, at the Staff meeting, we did a detailed analysis of our electronic warfare capabilities – the things that are already being done, the things that show real combat success. As well as the things we need to do on top of that. Plus, the missile program. Our missile program is showing good dynamics, and although it is a challenging task, we are gradually approaching the possibility of using our own missiles, and not just relying on missiles supplied by our partners. Over time, Ukraine should achieve maximum defense independence, as such states always find effective allies and realize their interests more easily.

The second thing for today. There have been several international meetings. Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, paid a visit to Ukraine. I am grateful for this signal. This is the signal of support for Ukraine, for Ukrainians, and for our desire to live in our own state, and to live truly peacefully. We also appreciate that Cardinal Parolin visited not only Kyiv, but also Odesa, Berdychiv, Lviv. He saw our people’s mood, the objective needs of this time. We discussed what exactly can be done this year to bring closer a just peace for Ukraine. It is very important for us and for the cause of peace as such that the Vatican takes an active role in defending life and helping us to implement the Peace Formula and its points, especially those related to the release of prisoners. It was a good meeting, and I hope that the results will follow. I also spoke with the new Prime Minister of Estonia. I thanked him for the support, for our multi-level cooperation. We agreed to meet, and of course, we will continue all our cooperation, both political and defense. And today, the Head of the Office, Andriy Yermak, spoke with Phil Gordon, the National Security Advisor to the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. It was at the Vice President’s level that America participated in the first Peace Summit, and it is important that the momentum of our joint work for a just peace does not diminish. All our partners at all levels know and will know in the future what the prospects are and that the just peace can indeed be restored as soon as possible.

And one more thing. I thank the warriors of our 110th separate mechanized brigade for their precision. They shot down another Russian Su-25 in the Donetsk region. This is exactly what we need. Well done, guys!

Glory to Ukraine!

Latvia:

Pokrovsk:

Yuriy Butusov says the situation on the Pokrovsk front is “critical” after Russia advanced 6km over the past seven days. He says Russia deliberately focuses its assaults on the most vulnerable brigades with poor command and control. He also notes a lack of coordination of UAVs and EW, which leads to UAV losses from EW fratricide.
https://facebook.com/butusov.yuriy/posts/pfbid02bReTHGpWHbw8VWzJSeQfhYdHRLnk1AT1QkgzR2LYzXJQ9CDBnKktiAquFL2KaLcxl

Here’s the image run through the machine translator:

War for Ukraine Day 881: Russia Tries To Disrupt the Olympics

Donetsk Oblast:

I think that’s somewhere around 10 Su-25s that the Ukrainians have brought down in the last three months.

Lviv:

Wired has the details:

As Russia has tested every form of attack on Ukraine’s civilians over the past decade, both digital and physical, it’s often used winter as one of its weapons—launching cyberattacks on electric utilities to trigger December blackouts and ruthlessly bombing heating infrastructure. Now it appears Russia-based hackers last January tried yet another approach to leave Ukrainians in the cold: a specimen of malicious software that, for the first time, allowed hackers to reach directly into a Ukrainian heating utility, switching off heat and hot water to hundreds of buildings in the midst of a winter freeze.

Industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos on Tuesday revealed a newly discovered sample of Russia-linked malware that it believes was used in a cyberattack in late January to target a heating utility in Lviv, Ukraine, disabling service to 600 buildings for around 48 hours. The attack, in which the malware altered temperature readings to trick control systems into cooling the hot water running through buildings’ pipes, marks the first confirmed case in which hackers have directly sabotaged a heating utility.

Dragos’ report on the malware notes that the attack occurred at a moment when Lviv was experiencing its typical January freeze, close to the coldest time of the year in the region, and that “the civilian population had to endure sub-zero [Celsius] temperatures.” As Dragos analyst Kyle O’Meara puts it more bluntly: “It’s a shitty thing for someone to turn off your heat in the middle of winter.”

The malware, which Dragos is calling FrostyGoop, represents one of less than 10 specimens of code ever discovered in the wild that’s designed to interact directly with industrial control-system software with the aim of having physical effects. It’s also the first malware ever discovered that attempts to carry out those effects by sending commands via Modbus, a commonly used and relatively insecure protocol designed for communicating with industrial technology.

Dragos first discovered the FrostyGoop malware in April after it was uploaded in several forms to an online malware scanning service—most likely the Google-owned scanning service and malware repository VirusTotal, though Dragos declined to confirm which service—perhaps by the malware’s creators, in an attempt to test whether it was detected by antivirus systems. Working with Ukraine’s Cyber Security Situation Center, a part of the country’s SBU cybersecurity and intelligence agency, Dragos says it then learned that the malware had been used in the cyberattack that targeted a heating utility starting on January 22 in Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine.

Dragos declined to name the victim utility, and in fact says it hasn’t independently confirmed the the utility’s name, since it only became aware of the targeting from the Ukrainian government. Dragos’ description of the attack, however, closely matches reports of a heating outage at the Lvivteploenergo utility around the same time, which according to local media led to a loss of heating and hot water for close to 100,000 people.

Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi at the time called the event a “malfunction” in a post to the messaging service Telegram, but added, “there is a suspicion of external interference in the company’s work system, this information is currently being checked.” A Lvivteploenergo statement on January 23 described the outage more conclusively as the “result of a hacker attack.”

More at the link.

Vuhledar-Novomykhailivka axis:

Somewhere in the Donbas:

The Kreminna front:

 

Kavkaz, Russia:

The ferry “Slavyanin” used by the Russians in the port of “Kavkaz” has been significantly damaged by Ukrainian Defense Forces. This ferry was used for transporting railway wagons, vehicles, and containers for military purposes. It is the third and last railway ferry Russia had in the region.

⛴️Official statement General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces regarding the strike on the Russian ferry crossing in the Kerch strait:

“Another result of the coordinated actions of the Defense Forces: in the port “Kavkaz” Russian ferry was seriously damaged.

Today, the grouping of forces and means of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, together with other units of the Defense Forces, caused significant damage to the enemy ferry “Slavyanin” in the port “Kavkaz”. Russians used this ferry to transport railway wagons, motor vehicles and containers for military purposes. “Slavyanin” is the third and last railway ferry that the Russian Federation had in the specified region.

We continue to destroy the enemy, his equipment and military infrastructure.
To be continued…

Glory to Ukraine!”
https://t.me/GeneralStaffZSU/16318

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

12Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    I am grateful to those readers who took the time to post appreciative comments last night about my series of posts concerning my June travels. Oftentimes you toss your words into the void and don’t hear anything back, so you can’t really judge their impact, if any. So, thanks for speaking up.

    However….

    There was a late comment in that thread which perhaps was intended as complimentary but was deeply, deeply offensive, in that the commenter suggested they might wish to re-package and re-purpose what I’ve written elsewhere. “Hey, I liked your work so much I’m going to steal it and re-publish it” is not a note of appreciation. Yes, I know, I’m posting my words on the public internet and can’t control what happens. But here on this blog, I thought we were a community, perhaps especially so in this series of threads, and I made clear at the outset that I was being vague in many respects (and occasionally intentionally obfuscatory) for good personal reasons. You all know I have extensive familial, fraternal and emotional ties to the country, and I constantly fret that even now I have left too many breadcrumbs that could somehow tie back to people or places that are important to me. Proposing to take that and re-publish it for your own jollies is insulting, offensive, and could be dangerous. I’m frankly still incredulous, and I read that comment like 12 hours ago.

  3. 3.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Interesting developments in Beijing:

    Ukraine’s foreign minister arrives in China to discuss ‘fair peace’
    By Reuters
    July 23, 202410:26 PM GMT+8 Updated 11 hours ago

    And

    Hamas and Fatah sign agreement in Beijing ‘ending’ their division, China says
    By Simone McCarthy, Isaac Yee and Abeer Salman, CNN
    7 minute read
    Updated 5:34 PM EDT, Tue July 23, 2024

    The declaration in Beijing was signed by 14 Palestinian organizations of various stripes.

    We will see what, if anything, come out of these developments.

  4. 4.

    Andrya

    I’m not going to republish anything, but I’d like to say “thank you” for everything that I’ve learned from your posts.

  5. 5.

    rekoob

    @Gin & Tonic: Two things, if I may:

    1. Thank you for your comments throughout the War for Ukraine. Your insights and observations have been very helpful. These recent entries from “on-the-ground” have been illuminating, to say the least.
    2.  I treat these blog posts from Adam and the attendant comments as a briefing from a National Defense University/Army War College Subject Matter Expert. I am a better informed civilian, but I do not share that information beyond this community. It informs my commentary elsewhere, but I try to keep a Chatham House Rule to it all.
  6. 6.

    KatKapCC

    @Gin & Tonic: I just went back to that post and…honestly, that person’s comment is kind of strange. Creepy, almost. And slightly ChatGPT-ish? But what an odd thing for someone to even think, let alone take the time to type out and click post on.

  9. 9.

    Traveller

    If you were deeply offended, then I suppose I need to deeply apologize.

    I have lightly helped edit two different books a while back and I somehow, to me naturally, to you less so,  put on my editorial cap when I looked over your writing and I saw this series of yours in those terms. But I also tried to see it more broadly and also as a thought experiment, Where would this be publishable, how would it be constructed?,  which is probably where I  went off the rails.  It was early in the morning and I was running. I again apologize.

    Things happen, I am sorry I expressed myself very poorly. It is difficult to walk back what I saw as flippant opening remark, and it will just have to stand as it is. But my apology is sincere. Good luck with everything.

  11. 11.

    Wombat Probability Cloud

    @Gin & Tonic: Maybe a dead thread; I’m at a meeting in Spain so just seeing this now over coffee. I’m always deeply grateful for your comments and insights but rarely respond with a “thank you,” to avoid cluttering the thread. I feel the same way about Adam’s nightly efforts. A non-public “tip jar,” structured to send private feedback to the authors of posts would be idea but that might not be an easy thing to implement. In any case, mil gracias!

  12. 12.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I am so sorry that someone would even consider this. Horrendous!
    I will take this opportunity to thank you for these stories of your journey and the difficulties and the danger involved. I also appreciate your being here to help us understand, even just a little bit.
    you have my deepest sympathies for your and your family’s losses and my attempt (that I fail at terribly) to understand your feelings during this horrible time. As little as it means, you and Ukraine are on my mind every day. May the day come, sooner than later. That Ukraine is free.

    I Apologise if this inappropriate.

    regards

    Debbie

Comments are closed.