Three quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. She’s currently lying with her chin on my foot, which tickles because she’s floofy. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations to help with her chemo.

Second, current status:

I got my flu, updated COVID, and pneumonia vaccinations this afternoon.

Third, so between it being a long week and the fact that my arms are now sorer, they were already sore from lifting weights, I’m just going to run through the basics tonight.

Russia unloaded on Sumy again overnight:

Russian Shahed-type drones that attacked Sumy overnight were equipped with shrapnel munitions, Regional Governor Volodymyr Artiukh reported on Nov. 22.
Russia struck a residential area in the city killing two people and injuring 12, according to local officials.

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— The Kyiv Independent (@kyivindependent.com) November 22, 2024 at 5:42 AM

From The Kyiv Independent:

Russian Shahed-type drones that attacked Sumy overnight were equipped with shrapnel munitions, Regional Governor Volodymyr Artiukh reported on Nov. 22.

Russia struck a residential area in the city killing two people and injuring 12, according to local officials.

“These weapons are used to kill people. Not to destroy structures, just to kill more people,” Artiukh said in a video uploaded to the Sumy Regional Military Administration’s Telegram channel.

“Just as the previous missile strike [had] cluster munitions, today again drones [are] equipped with shrapnel,” he added.

“The same goes for other strikes, in other places where private homes were hit, people were injured and killed. This is pure genocide.”

The Sumy regional prosecutor’s office is conducting a pre-trial investigation into potential “war crimes resulting in the deaths of people.”

Sumy Oblast borders Russia’s Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod oblasts. Residents of the vulnerable border communities experience multiple attacks per day.

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

The World Must Sound Serious to Make Putin Really Afraid of Expanding the War and Feel the Real Consequences of His Actions – Address by the President

22 November 2024 – 18:58

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

Today we have published the first list of individuals who have been stripped of Ukraine’s state awards and honorary titles. All of them chose to support the criminal war against Ukraine and thus lost their dignity. I do not even want to mention their names. And they will never be here in Ukraine again, so we will eliminate all their ties to Ukraine.

The Security Service of Ukraine is preparing new proposals for such sanctions.

Second. Today, more details about the new missile that Russia used to hit the Dnipro have been established. And we will provide all the details to journalists – international media. The world must know the truth and realize that the only party that does not want peace is Russia.

That is why Russia needs escalations.

I am grateful to all partners who have already responded to this latest episode of Russian madness. But beyond words, action is needed.

And in particular, on my instructions, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine is already holding meetings with our partners on new air defense systems – the kind of systems that can protect lives from new risks.

When someone starts using other countries not just for terror but also to test their new missiles through terror, this is undoubtedly an international crime. And coming from Russia, this is a mockery of the position of states like China, the states of the Global South, some leaders who consistently call for restraint, but in response invariably get some new escalation from Moscow.

That is why the world must sound serious in response – to make Putin really afraid of expanding the war and feel the real consequences of his actions.

True peace is achieved through strength – not otherwise.

Third. As for our response here in Ukraine, to these Russian strikes, to various information about threats.

Today is already the 1003rd day of this war. All the security protocols are the same now as before. If you hear an air raid alert – you have to react, take care of yourself and go to the shelter.

Whatever the Russian missile threat is, it cannot be ignored.

But when there is no air raid alert – state, productions, embassies – all must work in the same way. And take information, including from the intelligence services, as information, not as permission to take a day off. This applies to everyone – from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and other structures and branches of government to regional and municipal authorities.

When the siren sounds – we go to the shelter. And when there is no siren – we work and serve.

In wartime, there is no other way. We must be aware that “comrade” Putin will continue to intimidate us.

He has built all his power on this.

It is important to know how to respond correctly and do everything possible to bring this war back home to Russia, and to make them feel there what war is.

And one more thing. And one more thing. I want to thank our combat brigades who performed effectively this week. The 38th separate marine brigade, the 39th separate anti-aircraft missile regiment, the 68th separate jaeger brigade, the 102nd, 108th, 124th, 126th separate territorial defense brigades, the 128th separate mountain assault brigade and the 425th separate assault battalion. Thank you, warriors!

And special thanks to all the units in the areas of the Kursk Operation, all those who are truly resilient.

Glory to Ukraine!

Sergey Radchenko, of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), has a very good assessment of Putin’s remarks today about the use of the new Russian IRBMs:

Ok let’s talk a little about the infamous “statement”. kremlin.ru/events/presi…. The most interesting bit is how Putin used the word “testing” to create a certain ambiguity around Russia’s actions.

Заявление Президента Российской Федерацииkremlin.ru

Note that he vaguely threatened to also “test” IRBMs against NATO targets (“we consider ourself to have the right…”) while literally in the next paragraph he appeared to suggest that targets would actually be in Ukraine.

The point of the exercise was to rebuild credibility after threatening repeatedly and publicly to retaliate against missile strikes deep inside Russia. Doing nothing would have damaged Putin’s credibility.

With this statement, he both did nothing and did something. Russia retaliated against a Ukrainian target (so, in this sense, did nothing, but Putin made it sound like it’s all a part of an elaborate strategy aimed at retaliating against the West.

Hence, the unexpected detour in the speech about the possible deployment of IRBMs in retaliation against such deployments by the United States, discussion of the INF treaty and so forth.

Meanwhile, Putin essentially obscured the question of further use of these weapons. “We consider ourselves to have right…” and “Objects of attack… will be determined on the basis of threats to security of the Russian Federation.”

Since he argued that ATACMS and Storm Shadows were supposedly unsuccessful in penetrating Russia’s air defenses, and he has already responded by striking targets in Ukraine, it is difficult to see how further use of these weapons would require a radically different response.

Thus Putin successfully retreated from his latest red line with his credibility (maybe) partially salvaged through a combination of further rhetorical escalation and the actual use of an experimental missile against a target in Ukraine.

Since presumably these new missiles (the type of the IRBM is still to be confirmed) aren’t exactly cheap, we can expect that he won’t make a habit out of using them.

This is a very interesting ODNI file from 2016, i.e. two years prior to Skripal. It points to the risk of Russian assassination using chemical or biological agents “with lower risk of attribution” www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet…

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— Shashank Joshi (@shashj.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 11:45 AM

Bloomberg‘s Jason Leopold finally got a positive FOIA response from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) regarding Russia’s wetwork program.

Happy FOIA Friday! I’m excited about the documents that anchor this week’s FOIA Files. After nearly eight years of painstaking public records work, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified a closely guarded memorandum related to the targeted assassinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political foes. It’s a huge score. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.

Prominent critics of the Kremlin, and Putin in particular, seem to have a terrible habit of dropping dead under very suspicious circumstances. Some fall out of windows, bludgeon themselves to death, are poisoned or are said to have committed suicide in ways that defy logic. Anonymous US intelligence officials have long said they suspected that some of the mysterious deaths over the years were part of a campaign by Putin to assassinate his enemies. But internal US government documents that contained such explicit assertions have never really surfaced. Until now.

There have been a series of notable deaths over the years, beginning with the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. In 2015, there were two more: First came the shooting of Russian politician and vocal Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow. Then Putin’s former media czar, Mikhail Lesin, died in Washington, DC. Police said later that he succumbed to blunt force trauma after he fell down numerous times in a hotel room. A month after Lesin’s death, the House and Senate intelligence committees demanded answers.

Lawmakers tucked language inside a 2016 intelligence spending bill that tasked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, with preparing a classified intelligence assessment for the committees. Specifically, it was to be about “the use of political assassinations as a form of statecraft by the Russian Federation since January 1, 2000.”

The directive from Congress, which the public was largely unaware of at the time, also called for ODNI to produce a list of prominent Russians, including politicians, businessmen and journalists, “that the intelligence community assesses were assassinated by Russian Security Services” and describe how and where they were killed.

Lawmakers gave ODNI until mid-July 2016 – about six months – to produce the assessment. That was a crazy time. That month, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called on Russia to find Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s missing emails and US officials accused Russia of interfering in the election. Meanwhile, the bodies of Russian officials and Putin’s critics continued to pile up, while questions about the circumstances of their deaths lingered.

Fast forward to 2017. I was part of a reporting team at BuzzFeed News working on an investigation into 14 suspicious deaths on British soil that my colleagues and I linked back to the Kremlin. I obtained details from sources about this assessment, but I wanted a hard copy of the document.

I filed a FOIA request with ODNI, but my request was denied because the document and the details in it were deemed highly classified. Never one to fold so easily, I continued to pursue the document long after our investigative series was published. I hit brick wall after brick wall.

I was extremely frustrated. Finally, in April 2021, I decided to break glass. Obtaining this document was an emergency in my mind because I was continuing to report the story. So I turned to an alternative method. I filed a Mandatory Declassification Review, or MDR, which is like a cousin to the FOIA request. Under a section of an executive order signed by former President Barack Obama, the public can request a declassification review of a specific classified document they know exists and request its release.

This week, an email from ODNI landed in my inbox. I was stunned when I saw the attachment. It was the intelligence assessment.

The July 11, 2016 two-page document is titled, “Kremlin-Ordered Assassinations Abroad Will Probably Persist.” A footnote on page one says it only addresses assassinations abroad that have taken place “since Putin took power in 2000.” A letter ODNI sent me that was attached to the two-page memo notes that portions of it were withheld in order to protect classified foreign government information and classified intelligence activities.

As far as I can tell, nothing like this has ever been publicly released. It was prepared by ODNI’s National Intelligence Council, whose mission also includes preparing a “Global Trends” report for an incoming presidential administration that “assesses the key trends and uncertainties that will shape the strategic environment for the United States during the next two decades.”

The document, which says “Putin probably authorizes assassinations of high-profile figures abroad,” is blunt in its assessment:

The “first clear case” of Putin ordering an assassination abroad took place in 2004 in Qatar, according to the assessment. There, a couple of Russian military intelligence officers were convicted of killing Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was designated as a terrorist by the United States and the United Nations.

It goes on to mention Litvinenko and concludes that “Moscow almost certainly ordered the 2006 murder,” But importantly, the intelligence assessment makes clear that Putin’s government “probably has been involved in targeting other high-profile figures for politically based assassinations, but we have only low-to-moderate confidence in this judgment because there is less direct and credible evidence of Kremlin direction than in the case of Litvinenko.”

And here’s another noteworthy excerpt: It says Putin’s targets include intelligence defectors or dissidents, such as Russian businessman Alexander Perepilichnyy, who was “reportedly assassinated with a biological toxin in the UK in 2012 shortly before he was scheduled to testify about a Kremlin tax fraud network.”

There is much, much more at the link including the screen shots of FOIA released assessment.

Vuhledar:

The Kyiv Independent reports that the Russians have executed more Ukrainian POWs:

Russian troops shot dead five captured Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers near Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast in early October, the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office said on Nov. 22.

The killing of prisoners of war (POWs) is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and is classified as a serious international crime.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has launched an investigation into the killing of Ukrainian soldiers near Vuhledar, from which Ukrainian forces withdrew on Oct. 2.

Investigators believe the soldiers were shot dead on the day the Ukrainian army retreated as Russian troops stormed their positions, according to the statement.

During one of the attacks, the Russian military captured five unarmed Ukrainian servicemen.

“They (the Russian military) killed one of them in a forest belt and took four of them to the road at gunpoint, where they also shot them dead,” the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.

The regional prosecutor’s office earlier reported that in a separate incident the Russian military had shot dead two Ukrainian POWs in Donetsk Oblast‘s Pokrovsk district in mid-November.

They were stripped naked and shot dead, according to the prosecutors. In a picture published by the prosecutors, two blurred naked bodies are seen lying on the ground.

Law enforcement officers are currently investigating 53 criminal proceedings over the executions of 177 Ukrainian soldiers, while 37 proceedings of 109 executions were registered in 2024 alone, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

I had to do my annual Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) refresher training today. Russia, in conducting its genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine, has violated each and every one of the Laws of Armed Conflict. From the 2020 DOD Memorandum for the Heads of the DOD Components: Reissuance and Implementation of DOD Directive 2311.o1, DOD Law of War Program:

2.3. The law of war establishes rules for international armed conflicts, which are conflicts between opposing States, such as World War II (DoD LoWM § 3.3). The law of war also provides rules applicable to non-international armed conflicts, which are other conflicts, such as civil wars or military operations against terrorist groups (DoD LoWM, Ch. XVII).

2.4. The main purposes of the law of war are:

• Protecting combatants, noncombatants, and civilians from unnecessary suffering;
• Providing certain fundamental protections for persons who fall into the hands of the enemy, particularly prisoners of war, civilians, and military wounded, sick, and shipwrecked;
• Facilitating the restoration of peace;
• Assisting the commander in ensuring the disciplined and efficient use of military force; and
• Preserving the professionalism and humanity of combatants (DoD LoWM § 1.3.4).

2.5. Three interdependent principles—military necessity, humanity, and honor—provide the foundation for other law of war principles—such as, distinction and proportionality—and most of the treaty and customary rules of the law of war.

2.6. Law of war principles work as interdependent and reinforcing parts of a coherent system (DoD LoWM § 2.1.2.3).

• Military necessity justifies certain actions necessary to defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• Conversely, humanity forbids certain actions unnecessary to achieve that object.
• Proportionality requires that even when actions may be justified by military necessity, such actions cannot be unreasonable or excessive.
• Distinction underpins the parties’ responsibility to comport their behavior with military necessity, humanity, and proportionality by requiring parties to a conflict to recognize and respect certain legal categories, principally, the distinction between the armed forces and the civilian population.
• Lastly, honor supports the entire system and gives parties confidence in it.

2.7. When no specific rule applies, the principles of the law of war form the general guide for conduct during war (DoD LoWM § 2.1.2.2.). Law of war principles are consistent with the ethical standards of the military profession and the military doctrines that are the basis for effective combat operations. Commanders can use law of war principles to guide them in making difficult decisions and judgments in military operations, including in applying the law of war to novel or complex situations. For example, a commander might consider:

• Is there a legitimate military purpose for a proposed course of action?
• Is the proposed course of action unreasonable or excessive?
• Are there steps that can be taken to avoid or reduce the risk of unnecessary suffering?
• Is the proposed action honorable and consistent with military ethics?

Much more at the link.

The Krusk cross border offensive:

GBU-39 (Small Diameter Bomb) air strike on Russian river crossing in the Kursk region of Russia.
t.me/soniah_hub/7…

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— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 10:35 AM

Said to be Shtorm Shadow missiles flying over the Kursk region of Russia

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— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 8:23 AM

A Ukrainian General Staff source reports that Ukraine controls 800 square kilometers in the Kursk operational zone, down from 1,300 at its peak. For four months, Russia has failed to reclaim the area, suffering heavy losses and deploying North Korean troops in a desperate attempt to clear it.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 11:11 AM

Dnipro:

The Rashists struck Dnipro again. Witnesses report three explosions, possibly caused by Iskander ballistic missile systems.

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 5:46 AM

Kharkiv:

Kharkiv region is under the russian glide bomb attack right now ‼️ the city itself is quite so far.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 1:25 PM

Kyiv:

Scheduled energy-saving blackouts are back in Ukraine (below is the schedule for Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast for tomorrow. There have been regular blackouts in Kyiv since the large Russian air attack last Sunday. So far, however, the blackouts are not as frequent or long as in the summer.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 12:15 PM

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos today. Here is some adjacent material from Nate Mook.

While Russian soldiers try to wipe Ukraine off the map, my Ukrainian friend “Spec” defending at the front still finds time to feed the cats as the air raid sirens go off.

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— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 6:29 AM

Good 🇺🇦 news thread: the Hachiko Vet Van 🚑 is now operational thanks to your donations! The team is already helping treat, spay and neuter cats and dogs from the front lines of Ukraine. We are just getting going and could use some help covering medical costs. 👇

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— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 12:57 PM

Our goal for the Hachiko Vet Van is to sterilize 1,000 displaced pets over the next year—so anything you can contribute will be much appreciated! 🐕🐈 hachikofoundation.org/donate 👇

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— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 12:57 PM

Hachiko’s feeding efforts continue going strong with your support! 🙏 We’ve delivered nearly 70,000 pounds of food, lots of medication, and even helped with pet evacuations from eastern Ukraine. Check out this map of what’s been accomplished this year. 👇

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— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 12:57 PM

This is Rudy, who is recovering after treatment in the Hachiko Vet Van. 💛💙

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— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 12:57 PM

Open thread!