Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

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

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

When we show up, we win.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The lights are all blinking red.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 935: Russia Bombarded Kharkiv with Glide Bombs Again Today

War for Ukraine Day 935: Russia Bombarded Kharkiv with Glide Bombs Again Today

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Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a white background an in the center are Soldiers in green doing air defense by firing at incoming Russian missiles in the upper right. The missiles are red and yellow. In the upper left, written in green, is the text: "SAVE THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!" Below the Soldiers, also written in green, is "SUPPORT FOR KHARKIV"

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. Her next treatment is tomorrow. It is the second of the final four. She’s almost done. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, I’ve caught up on a bit of sleep, but am still fried. So, I’m going to hit the basics, hit publish, take care of a couple of things, and rack out.

Right now – 7:20 PM EDT/2:20 AM local time in Ukraine – all of northern central and central Ukraine is under air raid alert.

Russia opened up on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv again today.

Here’s the full text of the first tweet:

Today, on the last warm and sunny Sunday of the year, as Kharkiv citizens enjoyed their day off with their families, russia struck Kharkiv with at least four guided aerial bombs.

One of the bombs hit an apartment building, setting it ablaze.

At least 41 people were wounded, punished for simply being Ukrainians at their homes. Among them are three children. Unfortunately, this number is likely to rise.

It happened before, and it will happen again. We are locked in some devilish loop of being denied the range to defend ourselves, trying to live between the strikes and being hit again. Again and again and again.

And no decisions are made. Again.

More on this after the jump.

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

We Have Already Explained to All Our Partners Why Ukraine Truly Needs Sufficient Long-Range Capabilities – Address by the President

15 September 2024 – 19:09

Dear Ukrainians!

Rescue operations are still underway in Kharkiv. A Russian aerial bomb hit a house. An ordinary multi-storey residential building. There was a fire, ceilings collapsed. It is known that people are trapped under the rubble. As of now, 35 people are reported injured, including three children. All emergency services, rescue teams, medics, and utility workers quickly arrived at the scene, and aid is being provided to all those affected. In total, four aerial bombs were used in this strike on the Kharkiv region alone. One targeted Kharkiv, the house, and the other three targeted villages in the Kharkiv region. Today, Russian forces also hit our Sumy and Donetsk regions with such bombs. In total, there are no fewer than a hundred airstrikes of this kind every day. Just in the past 24 hours, 128 guided aerial bombs were used. The only way to counter this terror is with a systemic solution, and that solution is long-range capabilities – enabling us to destroy Russian military aircraft at their bases. This is an obvious, sensible decision. We have already explained to all our partners why Ukraine truly needs sufficient long-range capabilities. And every such Russian strike, every instance of Russian terror, like today’s attacks on Kharkiv, on our Sumy and Donetsk regions, proves that long-range capabilities are necessary and the range must be sufficient. We are expecting corresponding decisions, especially from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy – everyone whose resolve can help save lives.

Today, repair crews in the Donetsk region, who were actually working under the threat of shelling, restored electricity to people in Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and Kostiantynivka. Nearly one hundred and fifty thousand residents of the Kramatorsk district were without electricity due to the Russian attack. And, of course, this is truly the heroism of our people – everyone working for the sake of Ukraine and Ukrainians – that despite everything, basic services are being restored. There was also a report by Viktor Mykyta, Deputy Head of the Presidential Office for Regional Policy, on the situation in the Odesa region due to severe weather. Heavy rains these days, flooding in the Odesa region. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine, regional and local authorities are all involved. Unfortunately, there are also critical situations in our neighboring countries due to these extreme rains. On my instructions, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha offered assistance from the SES of Ukraine to the affected countries in our part of Europe.

And one more thing.

Today, there was a report from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. Every day, unwavering attention is paid to the frontline and our operation in the Kursk region. The Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Toretsk, and Kupyansk directions – I want to thank every unit that is truly defending their positions. The 46th separate airmobile brigade, the paratroopers of the 79th brigade, the 25th separate airborne brigade, the 54th separate mechanized brigade, and the 35th separate marine brigade. I am grateful to all of you, warriors! In the Kursk region, we continue our active operations, and it is crucial that the “exchange fund” for us, for our state is being replenished.

I thank everyone who fights and works for Ukraine, for the sake of all of us, for the sake of all Ukrainians!

Glory to Ukraine!

The cost:

Svitlana is 34 years old. One day, she was getting her kids ready for school when a strong explosion split her life into “before” and “after”. Glass fragments injured her entire body.

The injured children were bleeding. Svitlana felt dizzy and panicked. She rushed to save the children. In a few minutes, an ambulance arrived and provided assistance. The 9-year-old girl, 11-year-old son and mother were taken to the hospital.

Svitlana was taken to the intensive care unit. She suffered a concussion, eye injuries, multiple cut wounds to her face, chest, upper and lower extremities. Trauma surgeon Kyrylo Suprunenko wasted no time in performing the surgery.

Svitlana is waiting for her husband, who has been defending Ukraine since 2019, and keeps asking about their daughter, who is in a children’s hospital.

The reason:

I wanted to tell you about a Ukrainian historian Leonid Marushchak who rescued about 2 million works of art from frontline museums.

This is the kind of work that often goes unnoticed. But this is true heroism of its own kind. This story deserves to be known.

During the war, Russia had already destroyed an incalculable number of valuable works of art. Hundreds of thousands were stolen and taken to Russia.

Since the first days of the full-scale war, 38-year-old historian Leonid Maruschak has been rescuing museum expositions in front-line cities and villages. Often risking his life, being under constant shelling or not far from the line of combat, for 2.5 years, he managed to save about 2 million exhibits.

Leonid and his team do all the evacuation on their own: they get permission from the Ministry of Culture for the removal, order special boxes for transportation, pack the exhibits in them and take them out in parts by minibus. In some museums, such as Bakhmut museum, it took dozens of trips to get everything out.

🔸 in the first days of the war, when Russian occupiers were advancing on Kyiv, Maruschak saved Alla Horska’s works, collecting them from various Kyiv museums, galleries and even an abandoned military factory;
🔹 from Sloviansk, he took out the works of ceramist Natalia Maksymchenko;
🔸 he moved works by Ivan Aivazovsky, Tetiana Yablonska and Arkhip Kuindzhi from a museum in southern Ukraine to the Ministry of Culture’s archives;
🔹he evacuated exhibits from the Bakhmut Local History Museum, including a massive (weighing several tons) stone statue of a 13th- to 14th-century lion;
🔸 despite the loss of a minibus, the team transported the collection of the museum of the city of Beryslav, Kherson region;
🔹 after the de-occupation of Kherson, Leonid took away everything that remained from the looted local history and art museums;
🔸 from Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, he rescued a park sculpture Deer by modern sculptor Zhanna Kadyrova.

Leonid will return to Pokrovsk in September to evacuate more statues.

He says he is motivated by anger to fight for cultural heritage and return to the frontline territories.

“Because you go and realize that only your arrival can change everything. Otherwise, all the works will stay where they are. So they will simply be stolen or destroyed,” the historian says.

Lithuania:

Denmark:

The Armed Forces of Ukraine received 18 new 2S22 “Bohdana” self-propelled howitzers of the Ukrainian production, which were financed by Denmark.

Only 2 months passed from the moment of signing the agreement to the moment of handing over the ordered equipment.

According to @TarasChmut, in total, Ukraine is now capable of producing 16 “Bohdana” self-propelled howitzers per month.

https://mil.in.ua/uk/news/zsu-otrymaly-18-sau-bogdana-profinansovanyh-daniyeyu/

Germany:

The US:

The Sunday Times: US won’t authorize long-range strikes on Russia until Zelenskyy presents ‘victory plan’

The publication quoted sources as saying that during a recent visit to Washington by the British PM to discuss the issue, Biden and his team made it clear that they wanted to go into “standby mode” until Zelenskyy presented a plan before giving the go-ahead for strikes deep into Russia.

Kharkiv:

Pokrovsk:

Here’s the machine translation:

Last week, I spoke with mobilized soldiers who, after training, arrived in the Pokrovsky direction:
– these are mostly middle-aged people;
– mainly those who could not “decide”;
– in the absolute majority, during 45 days of basic training, they learned almost nothing;
– in the absolute majority of training centers, there are instructors without combat experience, those who have “broken up”.

Against this background, Syrskyi’s statement about increasing the period of basic training of the mobilized, when they cannot and do not want to fill 45 days with real content, sounds especially cynical. And then our people die untrained or run away because of fear, uncertainty and lack of basic skills, unless they themselves and the combat team undertake training in a limited time frame with a minimum of opportunities. It has come to the point that combat brigades are asking to consider conscription bypassing the centers, directly to the reserve units, in order to be able to prepare new recruits not for a tick, as in the centers. However, in some centers, they line up 6 times a day (!) . By the way, Syrsky still deliberately protects and covers the corrupt general Tkachuk, the head of the land academy. Because “own”.

Kyiv:

From The Guardian:

Zhanna Yaroslavska showed off a barrel-shaped stove in the middle of a tropical greenhouse. Nearby was a large pile of logs. “It’s a pretty neanderthal arrangement,” she explained. “When the power shuts off we feed the stove with wood. In winter we do this round the clock. Our plants require constant temperatures. They don’t like cold and hot.”

Inside the glass nursery were dozens of rare specimens. All were bromeliads native to the Americas. Silvery wisps of beard-like Tillandsia descended from a pipe. A pineapple poked out of a stem. A screen next to the stove protected a group of starfish-like earth stars, native to Brazil. The collection needed a minimum temperature of 10C, Yaroslavska – a senior researcher – said. Below that everything would die off.

The greenhouse is one of eight in the Mykola Hryshko national botanical garden in Kyiv. Founded in 1935, it is Ukraine’s biggest garden and one of the largest in Europe. It is home to about 13,000 species of trees, flowers and other plants from around the world. The 52-hectare (130 acres) site has scientific departments and two laboratories. With its roses and camellias, it is a popular venue with wedding photographers.

But the park is now staring at disaster. In recent months, Russia has systematically destroyed most of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Power cuts in the capital and across the country are common, with the situation getting worse. The city authorities have said they will not be able to guarantee supply in the freezing months ahead. Prices for electricity have doubled, as the garden’s funding has shrunk.

“Worst-case scenario is we lose a big part of our collection,” Roman Ivannikov, the head of the tropical and subtropical plant department, said. Money is so tight he and his colleagues recently took a pay cut. Last winter, £55,000 in donations kept the garden going, allowing the purchase of 242 tonnes of fuel pellets. Volunteers chopped firewood. The garden is appealing for help, under the hashtag #greenhousewarming.

Before the first chilly night of October arrives, Ivannikov said his team urgently needed additional generators. The orchid house had a unique collection of exotic specimens and was especially vulnerable. Last year, three Samsung heat pumps were fitted to maintain temperatures at 20-22C. But there was no back-up in the case of a prolonged shutdown.

Ivannikov pointed out some of the collection’s highlights. They included an egg-in-the-nest orchid from China – it has a strange white-and-purple-spotted flower – and a delicate green jewel orchid. Another example – Doritis pulcherrima – was descended from a plant sent into space in 1986. The orchid was part of a Soviet mission to the Mir space station, where the crew performed experiments in biology.

The garden collaborates with international partners. In 2014, it sent plants to Vietnam, after their original habitat was destroyed to make way for banana and coffee crops. “I travelled with 45 orchids,” Ivannikov recalled. “I watched on TV, as Russia took Crimea.” Scientific conferences with Moscow stopped. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion Ivannikov took his family out of Kyiv and returned a week later.

The Kremlin continues to fire missiles at the capital. From time to time, falling debris breaks glass in the hothouses. Blast waves from explosions have dislodged a chunk of wall and knocked over red-listed plants. “We haven’t had a direct hit. But we suffered a lot of damage,” Ivannikov said. In January, a rocket flew above the main orangery, a giant glass dome containing banks of shaggy vines and a towering king palm.

More at the link.

The Kursk cross border offensive:

Russia:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

First, this good boy was saved in Kharkiv today.

A new video from Patron’s official TikTok!

@patron__dsns

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♬ оригінальний звук – Patron_official

Here’s the machine translation:

I came up with a challenge! Show us your summer to this track, and we’ll share our good memories this way 🥰 #песпатрон

Open thread!

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  • AlaskaReader
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    17Comments

    2. 2.

      HumboldtBlue

      Ukraine’s western-trained ‘navy seals’ unleash wave of destruction. Special forces emerge from the waves to wreak havoc against the coastal defences of the Russian occupiers.
      A compass, watch, depth gauge and mental arithmetic are their only guides. Tugging on a rope strung out between them is their only form of communication under water.
      “Our divers conduct covert infiltration into enemy areas by boat, dive, approach the coast, conduct reconnaissance, clear mines, land and perform special operations,” the young commander of one of the diving teams, “Alex”, said as he drilled his unit for its next mission. While the Ukrainian military’s land grab in Kursk has focused attention hundreds of miles to the north, the more strategic battle is being fought in the Black Sea — and it is one that Ukraine is winning, against all odds, with British help.

      When special forces drove the Russians from Snake Island on June 30, 2022, four months after the invasion, they secured a corridor for the country to export grain from the port of Odesa. Last September Ukraine established control over a number of oil rigs, which today serve as a launchpad for attacks on Russian targets in Crimea.

      Now, clearing the Russians from the Kinburn Spit and Tendra Spit is vital for unblocking Ukraine’s second-largest port, Mykolaiv. These two streaks of land jut across the estuary of the Southern Buh river, allowing the Russians to sever the port from the sea.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      KatKapCC

      US won’t authorize long-range strikes on Russia until Zelenskyy presents ‘victory plan’

      Wow. That is…stunningly condescending. How in the hell can he present a “victory plan” if we refuse to give them what they need to achieve it? I truly wonder, when it comes to Ukraine, how Biden and his team can even look at themselves in the mirror.

      Reply
    4. 4.

      hrprogressive

      Zelenskyy should simply say:

      “Our Victory Plan is to use the weapons we’ve been given to stop Russia from annihilating us at the source, drive them out of Ukraine, reclaim our sovereign territory and rebuild a prosperous Ukraine that benefits Ukranians and our worldwide partners and allies for generations to come.

      That’s the entire plan. Please accept it at your most expeditious pace”

      I mean seriously for fuck’s sake that’s a stupid fucking goalpost move.

      Reply
    5. 5.

      Gin & Tonic

      @KatKapCC: ​
      Frankly, at this point it’s too late for any authorization of ATACMS or StormShadows or whatever. Authorization should have been given months or a year+ ago, when there was something to hit. Publicly jerking off for a year just means that russia has moved everything valuable out of range. The only thing that can possibly be effective now is either Ukrainian-developed long-range drones or covert ops deep behind enemy lines. This whole exercise has been pathetic.

      The only way anything with US/UK weapons could have worked is if, before this started being in the news every goddamn day and being talked about on Fareed Fucking Zakaria’s show is if there were a coordinated strike on russian airfields like last February, and then have Jake Sullivan on TV saying “oh yeah, we gave authorization last month.”

      It’s plainly obvious why Ukraine didn’t say anything, especially to the US, about the Kursk operation. Do, don’t talk.

      Reply
    11. 11.

      way2blue

      @hrprogressive:

      Does this indicate that the Biden administration is feeling the heat as public pressure from Western allies mounts?  Thus need to manufacture a new dodge.  Would be laughable if it weren’t so obviously depraved.

      Reply
    12. 12.

      Steve Crickmore

       According to the London Times ,September 14.https://archive.ph/4mZzP ‘But it can be revealed that Biden and his team signalled that they want to go into a “holding pattern” until Zelensky has presented his “victory plan” — before giving their approval for attacks inside Russia.dviser, who held “Sherpa” talks before the White House meeting with Tim Barrow, his opposite number. “The problem is Sullivan, not Blinken,” a British defence source said. “All the way through it has been Sullivan.” The source compared this to America’s willingness to leave Britain alone to face Nazi Germany in 1940. “America didn’t think we could really win — that’s why we were on our own in the Battle of Britain. That’s why we got loans, not gifts. So there’s a lot of similarities here.”

      Why is  Jake Sullivan so high up the pecking order? He has the same advisory  position that  the dangerous Mike Flynn and John Bolton held. ‘Ideally, the national security advisor serves as an honest broker of policy options for the president in the field of national security, rather than as an advocate for his or her own policy agenda.’ Why aren’t Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, or the Lloyd J. Austin III the Secretary of Defense, but certainly Joe Biden making these important decisions, instead allowing Sullivan to overrule or  sway them, it appears? They have the authority and responsibility not Jake Sullivan who seems to be wearing the trousers. I’m sure Allan could shed some light on the politics at play here. What is the Western version of a Kremlinologist?

      Reply
    13. 13.

      daveNYC

      What the hell does ‘standby mode’ mean?

      Is there any way to look at this crap and not think that the situation is that The Blob faction that thinks this whole ‘Ukraine’ thing is just some weird historical hiccup and a distraction from the most important (in their minds) concern of opposing China has nullified any opposition in the Biden administration, and is now pushing hard to get this all wrapped up ASAP so that… something something get Russia to play ball on constraining the PRC?

      I swear the USA’s NatSec community is about as dysfunctional and myopic as the Imperium of Man’s most holy Inquisition.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      Traveller

      Thanks, Adam, of Course…bu thanks also to the commentators, smart people all. I don’t necessarily always agree with everything said, but it is always an invigorating read in the morning. So thanks to the communitariate. (I hope that’s the correct phrasing…I think it good for people  to know they are being read).

      Reply
    15. 15.

      Chris

      @daveNYC:

      I think what annoyed me the most about Adam’s post the other day about how all the senior natsec folks are unsuited to this task because they were chosen for other specialties (not annoyed at Adam, to be clear), is that…

      … for fuck’s sake. The whole job of people like this is to respond to crises that are by definition unanticipated, and “well, this isn’t what I came in expecting the job to be” is basically an admission that you’re bad at your job.

      None of George W’s crew came into office expecting 9/11. The fact that their response to it was an extended crisis of nostalgia and senility in which they spent seven years trying to relive their glory days in the eighties, instead of responding to the actual problem before them, is a big part of why they turned out to be such a disaster.

      When FDR and his team came into office to a country (and world) flat on its back from the worst economic crisis in history, I’m not sure what they expected their legacy to be, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “global superpower in charge of national security for the entire developed world.”

      And so forth.

      Reply
    16. 16.

      daveNYC

      @Chris: None of George W’s crew came into office expecting 9/11. The fact that their response to it was an extended crisis of nostalgia and senility in which they spent seven years trying to relive their glory days in the eighties, instead of responding to the actual problem before them, is a big part of why they turned out to be such a disaster.

      It’s depressing similar to the 9/11 response in that the initial response wasn’t bad (relatively speaking), but as time went on, those in power got… bored, or succumbed to their pre-existing biases and we ended up with Iraq.  Or in this instance, hamstringing the Ukrainian war effort due to concerns (I’d guess) that Russia losing would lead to a massive decrease in Russia’s ability to control its territory, possibly even causing another post-USSR style breakup, and that can’t be allowed since it’d give China increased sway in the east.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      Chris

      @daveNYC:

      … and that can’t be allowed since it’d give China increased sway in the east.

      If that’s the thinking, it’s even dumber than I thought.  Partly because another USSR style breakup is very unlikely, but if it somehow did happen…

      … for God’s sake, let China try and expand into the now-formerly-Russian far east!  It’d be a headache and a half for both of them.  China gets to spend years trying to pacify the ungovernable tribal region full of pissed off white people.  They’d do it (they’ve got plenty of experience as settler-colonizers in Tibet and Xinjiang), but it’ll be a pain in the ass for them for years until they do, and it massively builds resentment towards them in whatever the new Russian remnant is.  Which in turns sticks the Russian state between a rock and a hard place, balancing between the practical need to not piss off China and find themselves completely isolated from the major powers of the world, and the political need to not piss off their own racist and revanchist population.

      Heck, if the whole white whale of the Blob is to somehow have Russia and China at each other’s throats instead of cooperating and not liking us?  This’ll do it!

      Reply

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