We’ll start with this image created and then tweeted out by Timothy Ferris:
#UkraineRussianWar #UkraineUnderAttaсk #StopPutinNOW #Ukraine #snoopy pic.twitter.com/KM8uj3dUgS
— Timothy Ferris (@irishson19161) March 5, 2022
Shortly after I put up last night’s post, which was shortly after dawn broke yesterday in Ukraine, the Russians ramped up their bombardment of Ukrainian cities and towns. I expect the same will happen again today. So as I write this post, I expect I’ll start seeing tweets about air raid alerts being sounded around Ukraine. Like this one!
⚡️Air raid alert in Poltava.
Residents should go to the nearest shelter.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 6, 2022
As I predicted last night, the agreed to ceasefires to establish temporary humanitarian corridors to evacuate several Ukrainian cities were a complete ruse. Shortly after Ukrainians in Mariupol and Volnovakha began to assemble at the evacuation stepping off points the Russians resumed shelling the two cities.
⚡️Russia announces resuming fighting in Mariupol and Volnovakha.
Earlier today temporary ceasefire was supposed to take place to create humanitarian corridors and allow civilians to leave Mariupol and Volnovakha, but Russian troops’ shelling halted the evacuation.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 5, 2022
Reports of Russian ceasefire violations in Mariupol and Volnovakha.
Civilian evacuation suspended in Mariupol.— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) March 5, 2022
Dire conditions in Mariupol, @RSF_EECA says. Still no power, water, heating and mobile connection. Pharmacies out of medicine. Collecting snow for drinking water. No clear evacuation routes. https://t.co/sMNREIk97e
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 5, 2022
⚡️Russian troops are headed towards the Kaniv Hydroelectric Power Plant, about 100 kilometers south of Kyiv, the General staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported on March 5.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 6, 2022
What we’ve been seeing for the past several days, first with the bombardments and now with the attacks on declared humanitarian corridors is the exact same tactics that Russia used in Syria. This has a lot of people concerned for what Putin’s intentions really are despite whatever it is he’s saying. As I’ve written several times, I’ve think Putin is operating from a concept that either he gets Ukraine or no one gets Ukraine and, as a result, if he can’t take it and hold it, he’ll just raze it to the ground. Apparently, I’m not the only one with this concern.
I can't believe I'm writing this about Kyiv, but looks very likely that Putin is about to do the Aleppo strategy: indiscriminate bombing, huge humanitarian toll, pure brutality. Those who thought that Kyiv, the heart of ancient Rus, was sacred, it's not. Nothing is sacred.
— Dr Alina Polyakova (@apolyakova) March 4, 2022
And I read the following threat from Putin differently than Alperovitch. Not as a threat of annexation, but of complete extermination of Ukraine. As in nothing left:
A particular moment in the history of the state system: a leading member of the United Nations (P5) is threatening another member of the United Nations with extinction. https://t.co/qTgKSFGlar
— Ulrich Speck (@ulrichspeck) March 5, 2022
The citizens of Kherson are resisting despite the negotiated occupation of their city.
Thousands Of People In Kherson, Ukraine, Are Protesting Russia’s Occupation Of Their City
Videos shared on social media show protestors shouting, “Go home while you’re still alive!” as others sang the Ukrainian national anthem.
https://t.co/23BaSjtpa8@stefficao_ @BuzzFeedNews— Mark Schoofs (@SchoofsFeed) March 5, 2022
The good citizens of Melitopol are also not just going along to get along.
Extraordinary resistance in #Melitopol, right in Putin’s crosshairs in southern #Ukraine. Wall to wall people marching in the street today. https://t.co/3anaKngzOG
— ??Paula Chertok??? (@PaulaChertok) March 6, 2022
And Zaporizhzhia too:
This is the huge line of people who want to join the territorial defense in Zaporizhia. Look, Putin, no one is waiting for you here.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/WNQf1iymcX
— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) March 5, 2022
In Kyiv, begun the gherkin war, has!
— Liubov Tsybulska (@TsybulskaLiubov) March 5, 2022
TaMara’s reply when I texted this to her (copy and paste):
Don’t mess with a woman armed with gherkins
You can’t really argue with that!
Time to check on those fighter jets! They’re still in their NATO member states. The bottom line on this is that Poland, at least, is willing to provide their MiGs to Ukraine and receive new US fighters as the replacements. However, the reporting makes it clear that the problems include that not all of the Polish MiGs are flight ready. The Poles are also used to flying them and will need time to get fully up to speed on the new American fighters, which are most likely F-16s. The Poles are also concerned about how to get the MiGs into Ukraine without crossing one of Putin’s red lines and thereby allowing Putin to assert that NATO has entered the war on Ukraine’s side and causing an escalation. Finally, the US Congress will have to formally approve the sale of the new fighters to Poland. The other two potential NATO MiG donors – Estonia and Bulgaria – have the same issues and concerns. So even if you can get Poland and one or more of these allies on board and everything else lined up logistically, we still have to get Congress to sign off. And we all know what that means…
Since I know you’re tracking it, we only have 5 more shopping days till the next government shutdown! And, of course, the usual suspects are threatening to take the omnibus appropriations bill and a supplemental spending package to support Ukraine hostage:
Senate Republicans have issued a series of early threats against a still-forming deal to fund the federal government, signaling that they could delay the package — which may include emergency aid to Ukraine — over concerns about excessive spending and vaccine mandates.
The early warnings, delivered in two letters to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), could slow lawmakers’ time-sensitive work as Russia’s incursion into Ukraine is intensifying — all while Washington faces a March 11 deadline to fund federal agencies and avoid a government shutdown.
In the first letter, sent Thursday, eight GOP lawmakers complained that “families are feeling the pressure of skyrocketing prices,” which they blamed on “reckless government spending.” In response, they said they “cannot allow another massive spending package to be rushed through Congress without proper consideration and scrutiny.”
Signing the missive were Republican Sens. Rick Scott (Fla.), Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Mike Braun (Ind.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Mike Lee (Utah). Some of the members have publicly called for aid to Ukraine, with Scott in particular arguing that it should be divorced from a government funding measure.
In the second note, sent Friday, 10 Republicans revived their campaign against federal vaccine and testing requirements. Even as public health officials broadly maintain that the policies help curtail the spread of the coronavirus, the GOP lawmakers pledged they would “stand against these mandates until they are discontinued in ambition, design and practice.”
The second missive was signed by some of the same Republicans, plus Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Steve Daines (Mont.).
Those senators could fuck up an orgy in a whore house! As my late father would have said.
Let’s finish up tonight with a bit of analysis on Putin closing off Russia’s information system. I know AL did a post on this last night, but I have a bit of a different take on it than some. Putin has spent the better part of twenty years destroying and distorting factual reality in Russia (also the US, the UK, and Europe). His informational objective was to ensure that nothing could be true, so anything and everything could be possible. This has sometimes worked a little too well. Putin tried to run his normal informational warfare plan to denigrate the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but what he seems to have managed to accomplish was to just make Russian’s completely skeptical of COVID vaccines, especially the Russian made Sputnik vaccine. Ooopsie!
In this case regarding his war for Ukraine, shutting off Russia’s information ecosystem from the outside world allows Putin to control the narrative. Specifically, to have a far greater likelihood of ensuring that his preferred narrative of what is happening in Ukraine – the Ukrainians are enslaved by NAZIs, the Ukrainians have been committing genocidal attacks on Russians speakers in eastern Ukraine that Russia has been trying to protect, and that the Ukrainian leadership is being used as a pawn of the US, the EU, and NATO to wage war on Russia, so Putin was left with no choice but to conduct a security operation in Ukraine to de-NAZIfy it, protect Russian speakers/ethnic Russians, and thwart the US’s, the EU’s, and NATO’s plans to destroy Russia – becomes the unchallenged narrative in Russia.
I’ve now seen dozens of social media posts like this one:
“I woke up from a call from a friend. He told me Russia was bombing Kyiv,” says Artem Basistiy, a 29-year-old from Crimea, who had lived in Kyiv for 4 years.
He called his mom in occupied Crimea to tell her what happened, but she didn’t believe him.https://t.co/xEf6cbV38D
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 5, 2022
And this:
“On TV they say, we are liberating Kiev!” – mom of captured RU soldier doesn’t believe him, when he says Russians are attacking cities & bomb civilians. “Do smth, mom!Ask to stop the war!” – “What can I do? Militaries are deciding”. Putin made moms doubt their children
— Maria Zolkina (@Mariia_Zolkina) March 5, 2022
When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared,” she says.
The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.
I didn’t want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying,” she says.
“But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it’s Ukrainians who’re killing their own people.”
It’s common for Ukrainians to have family across the border in Russia. But for some, like Oleksandra, their Russian relatives have a contrasting understanding of the conflict. She believes it’s down to the stories they are told by the tightly-controlled Russian media.
Oleksandra says her mother just repeats the narratives of what she hears on Russian state TV channels.
It really scared me when my mum exactly quoted Russian TV. They are just brainwashing people. And people trust them,” says Oleksandra.
“My parents understand that some military action is happening here. But they say: ‘Russians came to liberate you. They won’t ruin anything, they won’t touch you. They’re only targeting military bases’.”
Much more at the link including an absolutely adorable picture of one of Olexasandra’s dogs wearing a helmet!
Where I think this is going is that by closing off Russia’s information ecosystem, Putin is trying to create the opening to be able to blame the cratering Russian economy solely on the US, the EU, NATO, and other allied and partner countries. If he can propagandize the majority of the Russian citizenry into believing that he’s only authorized a limited special operation in Ukraine to de-NAZIfy it and to protect ethnic Russian speakers and that the US, the EU, NATO, and other allied and partnered countries are waging economic warfare on Russia, he stands a chance of surviving the fallout. Especially as long as the US and the EU and other states do not extend the economic measures to include the Russian energy sector. As long as that is up and running, he’s got $750 million a day coming in. Between $200 million and $600 million of it just in natural gas for Europe per day:
Below, Russia's 2021 income from its EU export of gas not listing its income from our import of Russian oil. If we would not buy this Russian pipeline gas & oil, Moscow couldn't easily divert the enormous volumes to other markets. It lacks an alternative transport infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/6zwGhJTYnT
— Andreas Umland (@UmlandAndreas) March 5, 2022
The energy sector revenue will provide Putin economic space to continue fighting to take or destroy Ukraine. He’s closed the Russian informational ecosystems to try to create space to divert what will surely be the anger of the Russian citizenry at economic hardship in order to allow him to stay in office and alive and continue to prosecute his war. What remains to be seen is whether or not it will work.
I’ll leave it there.
Open thread.
Martin
This video is making the rounds of an press interview with 3 Russian captives. Not verified, take it with a grain of salt, but to my eye it looks legit.
Ksmiami
Cut off his oil. Use cyberwar to shut down Russia. Send Migs.
Calouste
Apparently Russia is introducing a limited form of food rationing in response to hoarding and panic buying. I don’t think that was what Russians were looking for when Putin said he was going to restore the Soviet Union.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Israeli PM was meeting with Putin today so it might be Putin’s starting look for a way weasel his out of the mess he created and closing Russia off will allow him to gaslight the Russians it’s all a glorious victory. That and they were showing Putin with a bunch of young flight attendants today, and while thankfully Putin wasn’t shirtless, the bullshit is going to go into overdrive because that’s apparently all the Russian government is good for now (besides blowing up apartment buildings)
MomSense
I follow an artist in Kyiv who has been posting photos and videos that she takes and that people send her. She’s been posting around the clock since this started. Nothing for 7 hours.
MomSense
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It looked like he was speaking in front of a green screen. One of the flight attendants, second from him, looked just like Villannelle from Killing Eve. Have to admit I was hoping that she would do what she does so well.
Morzer
@MomSense:
Could be she’s exhausted and sleeping.
oldgold
Our worries are over. Tonight at a donor’s event in New Orleans, Trump unveiled this brilliant plan for ending the war.
“Trump mused to donors that we should take our F-22 planes, “put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out” out of Russia. “And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”
trollhattan
No lingering doubt that Putin is all in on sieze-or-destroy and even with an unlikely no-fly-zone it can still be done with artillery. The destroy option. Ukraine may also soon become a landlocked country as Russia takes their remaining ports.
Do they not have anti-ship weapons? Those seem super popular in the Persian Gulf.
trollhattan
@oldgold: That Big Brain never stops working, does it. Hey Donny, those planes are invisible, so how do you paint stars on invisible planes?
MomSense
@Morzer:
I hope so.
Martin
So, I don’t think this is winnable by Russia. This is not based on tactics or any military knowledge, but on my background in human process design and implementation.
In short, Russia is now compounding interest on a failed initial effort. They not only have to increase their investment in troops and equipment and resources, not to mention developing a winnable plan, but they have to increase more than that to make up for the losses they’ve already sustained. That’s lost men and equipment, but it’s also stranded assets and a supply chain that needs to be backfilled.
If you think of Russia having negative costs that compound (the resources that you pour in, etc.) and positive gains that compound (taking territory and turning taken infrastructure to your own benefit, etc.), and Ukraine having the same, Ukraine isn’t seeing much in terms of compounding gains – their hand doesn’t get stronger, but they aren’t seeing much in terms of compounding costs either. Russia isn’t seeing anything in compounding gains because best as I can tell, they haven’t actually taken any territory they can safely use, but they are seeing massive compounding costs. They need a supply rescue of their forward troops, and at least around Kyiv they need a support rescue of the support rescue.
Ukraine might be fielding a larger army now, albeit an untrained and un or under-equipped one. And Ukraine isn’t so much smaller than Russia that Russia can pay those compounding costs for very long. That’s especially true as civilians join in, and as the west sends them equipment.
Razing cities is supposed to demoralize Ukraine but that doesn’t seem to be working. It doesn’t seem to be limiting Ukrainian military effectiveness. But it is costing Russia ammunition and exposing their equipment.
Normally, you go in with what you think is a workable plan. You’ve had lots of time to do the math, and work out the costs. When that proves to be inadequate, you not only have to correct, but you have to overcome what you got wrong in the first place. And when the plan is wildly inadequate, that’s even bigger. And it’s not like they can pause and do this – which is why you pilot these things and undertake scaling exercises and so on. And Adam can probably speak more directly to this, but if you need to double your output, that doesn’t necessarily mean doubling your effort, it could be less, but it could be more. And for large complex interactive things, it usually scales nonlinearly, getting harder faster than the result scales. And this assumes your process isn’t adversarial. In my case the process was almost always cooperative – the people the process was for had a vested interest in having it work. Ukraines ability to see Russias problems and exploit them makes this even harder.
I just don’t see it. They appear to be so far from a successful implementation and have what, 75% of their assets there? I don’t see how pulling the reserves in is going to make a difference.
And Russia lost I think 11 aircraft in the last day alone, suggesting their efforts to compensate really aren’t working.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: he was on quite a roll, wasn’t he?
So the GOP is rolling into the mid-terms as the pro-war, anti-NATO party?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
has anyone seen any analysis as to who helped Putin talk himself into this? I’m curious as to who his brain-trust is, his Cheneys and Wolfowitzes, so to speak. I’ve read that Shoygu was very hawkish, which would make sense, and I think someone said Lavrov has been out of favor recently
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Bennett was summoned by Putin. He wasn’t there to negotiate anything despite his office’s spin. He was summoned and he went. Putin’s (nominally) Jewish oligarchs have a lot of money invested in Israel’s tech sector. And Israel is the southernmost stepping off point for Russian organized crime.
Carlo Graziani
Historically, the Soviet state had an equal or greater stranglehold on the sources of information available to Soviet Citizens than Putin has today. And certainly, correct public information on the true state of the Afghan war was very thin. But cynicism about the government’s motives, objectives and actions was not. That’s probably not a bad model today, and will probably be an excellent model as the sanction really begin to bite.
Adam L Silverman
@oldgold: He had a few too many diet cokes tonight!
Martin
Some interesting observations from the investment community:
So, divestment of carbon emitting passive investments turns out not to be ‘practically impossible’ as has previously been stated, merely a lack of motivation. And converting to renewable or at least non-emitting energy (depending on how you want to classify nuclear, hydro and a few others) can not only be done MUCH faster than previously stated, but within tolerable financial costs. Mean, when your opportunity cost for solar and wind is ‘a nuclear exchange with Russia’, yeah, looks pretty fucking cheap, no?
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did Pompeo ever show Donny a blank map and have him point out where NATO is?
Yarrow
I thought I saw video of people protesting in St. Petersburg. It seems like not everyone is falling for the government propaganda.
surfk9
I am thinking of the Battle of the Bulge. Western doctrine was that when attacked the shoulders of the salient were the important thing and that you wore the enemy down by the friction on their sides. In 1944 that is was happened and I think that is happening in Ukraine. The resistance to Russian advances is not stopping them as much as creating friction that will result in a logistical quagmire for the Russians. Time is more on the side of the UK forces than the Russians.
Egorelick
One problem I’m seeing is that there is no endgame for either side. Ukraine has suffered massively both in terms of human cost and property cost. Russia has an economic death sentence hanging over it for anything but the energy sector. If Russia “wins”, the West can neither tolerate that outcome or change it. If Ukraine “wins”, then Putin has the same problem. So the hot war is unstable and the end of the war is unstable.
SiubhanDuinne
@oldgold:
I’ve read that three times and I truly can’t think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong.
MomSense
@Martin:
My son sent me this the other day. https://lplresearch.com/2022/03/03/economically-and-financially-russia-doesnt-matter-as-much-as-you-might-think/
From LPL
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: this one? There’s some debate in the comments as to whether it’s current, but it can’t be more than a week old.
guachi
@Egorelick: Yeah. I don’t see how the conflict is possibly resolvable as long as Putin is in power.
Egorelick
@guachi: i didn’t want to go there because it’s what everyone wants, but noone can really say too loudly or figure out how to accomplish. If it was not near impossible, then it would be happening already.
oldgold
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, he is a self proclaimed genius. And, apparently earlier, Trump had his acclaimed foreign policy advisor, John Daly, vet the plan.
mrmoshpotato
@oldgold: Are you serious? That’s stupid enough to be stupid.
Jim Appleton
@surfk9: I’m thinking of Eisenstein’s Stalinist 1938 film about the 1240-1242 attempted invasion of Novgorod, but as a mirror in which the Teutons are the Putins.
Ryan
@oldgold: What a fucking maroon.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Let’s not leave out the other war criminal sacks of shit, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice. And I’m sure there are more who I’m not willing to look up.
Calouste
@Egorelick: The death sentence for the Russian energy sector is coming down the line. It won’t happen immediately, but even within a year Europe will be using significantly less Russian natural gas.
Sebastian
Does anyone know if the Ukrainian power grid is connected to the EU grid?
Ryan
@Ryan:
CaseyL
It’s not incompetence. It’s deliberate sabotage.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Dump and Jr probably had a bit too much coke tonight too.
Martin
@MomSense: Yeah, they are important to European energy, and some eastern markets like China. And their grain exports are important if not critical to some counties like Lebanon (who are really desperate because their grain storage got obliterated).
But their products are more convenient than irreplaceable. Germany is balls-to-the-wall building some LNG ports so we can export gas to them, or Middle East, etc. And Lebanon can get grain from all kinds of places. Sure prices will go up, but eventually that production will get replaced and everything will stabilize. Removing Russia from the economic board really doesn’t do much globally. Locally, sure, but in terms of currency and markets, meh. Again, Russia’s economy was less than half the size of Californias, and that was before the war. It’s probably smaller than Floridas now.
Martin
@Sebastian: They were switching it over in the first few days of the war. I don’t know the current state of things, but my guess is that it at least partially is.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Would Pompeo even know himself?
“There! All the loser countries! My daddy Vladdy said so!”
Adam L Silverman
@Sebastian: They ran the test last week. The transition was scheduled for end of March if I’m remembering correctly.
topclimber
Anybody hear tell of Dmitri Medvedev of late? He is the only living person who has been president of Russia besides Putin.
If he isn’t already part of some parking lot infrastructure in Siberia, might he be the bridge from Putin to whatever comes next for Russia? Somebody who could be in power long enough to at least end the war?
mrmoshpotato
@Martin:
Accept it.
Adam L Silverman
@topclimber: He made at least one public statement in support of Putin last week.
BeautifulPlumage
Haven’t read all the comments yet but how has the pandemic affected all this? Lower vax rates from mistrust I get. Do we have any reporting about the excess death rate over the past 2years? Has it affected their labor numbers at all like here in the US? Also, we heard about COVID in the military staging camps; is it still a factor for them?
Calouste
@topclimber: Medvedev was following the party line a few days ago I think. He’s deputy chairman of the security council of Russia, a position Putin created for him. I don’t know enough about that council if that puts him in a position to succeed Putin. But considering who are members of that council (Minister of Defence etc), you’d think they could flip Putin. Although IIRC these were also the people who sat whimpering 50 feet away from Putin a day or two before the invasion started.
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: I read Window on Eurasia, which periodically reports on covid in the FSU. Here’s two I found:
https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/10/russia-sets-new-anti-records-for-covid.html
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/russia-has-lost-battle-with-covid.html
There’s lots more there.
Villago Delenda Est
I didn’t predict it here as you did, but over on Wonkette when someone posted about the “humanitarian corridors” I predicted Putin would violate them in about ten minutes. I wasn’t far off on the time prediction, Putin is definitely a monster.
BeautifulPlumage
@Chetan Murthy: Thank you. Interesting articles but there isn’t any info about the author in his “bio’. Do you know anything more about them?
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: The guy Paul Goble ? He republishes English translations of news & commentary from the FSU, has done so for a number of years. I’ve been reading him since … 2017? 2018? I forget. I don’t know his bio.
Villago Delenda Est
@oldgold: Normally, I’d ask for a Poe check, but this is TFG talking, the guy who thinks stealth planes are invisible.
Lacuna Synecdoche
It’s like arguing with parents who watch Fox News.
But with bullets, Covid, bombs, and Russian violence instead of, well, instead of bullets, Covid, and right-wing violence, minus the bombs … so far.
Villago Delenda Est
@mrmoshpotato: Pompeo: the shame of Hudson High.
West of the Rockies
Surely, Russia lost more today than a drone by way of a jar of pickles? Amid all this grim news there must have been some victories for the Ukrainians (some more destroyed Russian tanks and such). If Putin is drawing $600 million a day from energy sales, that disappears quickly when another jet or a couple tanks are destroyed.
Sebastian
As always, excellent. Thank you for doing the yeoman’s work, Adam.
@Martin: The video was sobering. We all knew Putin would send in the Death Squads. Yet nobody wanted to bring it up (me included). It’s as if we all collectively slipped into a state of denial. Not blaming anyone, just observing.
The Russians are completely brainwashed. Putin has a whole country under a propaganda spell where mothers do not believe their children.
Fuck.
Sebastian
There is an alleged leaked report by an FSB whistleblower. It got me thinking …
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: Yeah, these three guys are trying to minimize what they were tasked to do, but it comes out, and …. all their remorse and shit, it really doesn’t cut it. They were members of a death squad.
Sebastian
@Villago Delenda Est:
We have seen that playbook in the Balkans. There were 15 “ceasefires” in Croatia alone, too many to count in Bosnia. It’s all bullshit.
They only call for or agree on ceasefires when they run out of artillery shells and Grad missiles.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
Right? I mean now that they are captive they have this amazing clarity of convictions. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than nothing and maybe it helps in the propaganda war but as you said, they rolled into Ukraine knowing exactly what their task would be only a few hours ahead if they had been successful.
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: I remember when these cease-fires were announced, somebody said “it’ll work out just like at Ilovaisk”. So I went and looked that up, and yeah, the Russkies said “we’ll do a cease-fire” and then shelled the fuck out of people trying to flee.
Redshift
The stories from people with relatives in Russia also remind me of the reporting about the Bosnian ethnic cleansing. One in particular has stuck with me – a reporter asked a woman why she believed the radio broadcasts saying things like that their Muslim neighbors wanted to put their daughters in harems, people she knew and had lived with for years.
“Why would the radio lie?” she answered.
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: Y’know what it reminds me of? A female gestation-slaver who’s on the protest line outside a reproductive health clinic on Monday, at the back door on Tuesday evening late for an abortion, and back on that line by Friday morning.
These beliefs, these things, they’re all just “positions”, to be discarded if they become inconvenient. Like the Nazis who stripped off their uniforms to blend in when the Allies came in.
patrick II
I am beginning to think covid isn’t the only thing Putin is afraid of when he sits at the opposite end of a 40 foot table during meetings with subordinates.
BeautifulPlumage
@Chetan Murthy: the FSU? Sorry, I don’t know that acronym.
The parts about the complacency of regular Russians is not good.
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: Former Soviet Union
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: I’ve been reading Goble’s work for years, and he covers all levels and regions. So not just national news. Really low-level stuff. For example, one of the things I’ve concluded from reading his site, is that Russia is really an empire even still: They used to call the Austro-Hungarian Empire the “prison of nations”, and that’s what Russia is today. When it cracks, there’s going to be an exodus of smaller nations, and it’s going to be *messy*. B/c the Russians really didn’t meld their peoples into a single Russian identity.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
Now I went and read it and yeah … fuck.
BeautifulPlumage
It was jarring to see pootie-poot around the table packed with “stewardesses” just after seeing the long table meetings. No COVID fears there? Reportedly he has people quarantine for two weeks before they can be around him. Have these women been in qt since Feb 20th?
BeautifulPlumage
@Chetan Murthy: I appreciate your follow-up. I’m trying to remain skeptical about info sources. His name was familiar but I wasn’t sure why.
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: Laughing-boy Putin’s palace on the Black Sea has a room with a pole-dancing stage. Maybe he’s as much of a germaphobe as Li’l Donnie.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Free Brittney
Chetan Murthy
@BeautifulPlumage: I’ve linked pieces from his site here before, is probably why.
I’m not suggesting that you take him seriously right away. I put him into my Feedly feed, and he publishes stuff pretty much daily. So maybe I read an article once a day, or every other day, over months. That’s how I concluded that he was reliable: slowly reading his work, and being able to compare with other news.
For instance, his work is where I learned that Russia’s power elite really wants to reunite the Russias, as a solution to their catastrophic demographic decline problem (which has only been exacerbated by covid). They really do think they have a Great Replacement problem (Central Asians, whom they don’t view as Russian at ALL), and gathering in the Belarusians (White Russia) and Ukrainians (Little Russia) is their solution. You may remember it was reported that that’s what Putin really wanted to do, but it was reported only in the last few days. Goble’s been reporting on both the desires of power elites to do this, and academics and others saying “brah, it won’t work” for months and months.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, the Rus are a nasty bunch. Holding together an empire at gunpoint.
Reading that FSB whistleblower leak and thinking back to the unrests in Belarus, Khazakstan, Siberia, and, wait for it, Syria, this whole fucking house of cards might come crashing down any moment.
Turkey closed the Bosporus. Russia is cut off from its presence in Syria and Al-Assad is all alone. He doesn’t even have the Wagner thugs anymore as they are all in Crimea now.
Lukashenko is toast.
Kadyrev is one wrong move away from losing his “invincible” myth if he hasn’t already, and then Chechnya blows up.
Khazakstan is still a powder keg and judging by the size of demonstrations in Georgia, they are itching, too.
There is blood in the water.
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: And Biden goes and starts courting Maduro in Venezuela. And reopening the US Embassy in Cuba. Indeed, blood in the water.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
What? When did that happen?
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: search “biden venezuela”. I found this one in my RSS feed: https://politicalwire.com/2022/03/05/u-s-officials-travel-to-venezuela/
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: Ah, my mistake about the embassy in Cuba: he just increased the personnel there.
Kent
@Sebastian: That’s the thing. Russia has a massively larger military than Ukraine, but they can’t possibly deploy all of it to Ukraine when they have so many fires and potential issues to deal with across 10 time zones.
How many troops can they move out to Ukraine before issues start popping up elsewhere? Even Stalin when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow was keeping whole armies in the far east just to be on guard against potential Japanese attack.
And even if they could, do they have the logistics to support more infantry troops?
Ruckus
I’m wondering here just a bit.
A few days ago it seemed the Russian population in general was not exactly on vlad’s side in pretty much anything. vlad has closed off Russia from the rest of the world so that the only thing people can hear are his lies and all of a sudden all of Russia is going to believe a word he says? Something stinks here and it’s not only vlad. He’s done crap for Covid in Russia. His death rate is pretty damn high or at least it was. He’s obviously thrown most everything at Ukraine and he’s seemingly not winning or even close. Sure he’s done massive damage but the world is on to him and will we really, really do not want to start WWIII, so what is possible? Support Ukraine? I think we are doing as much as we can realistically do, is it time to start unrealistic? Because vlad is obviously insane and dangerous to millions of people, including his own citizens.
Kent
I doubt they are fucking “courting” Maduro. More likely letting him know that times are changing and he is next if he doesn’t shape up. We don’t need Venezuela for shit. Not even their oil. This crisis will be long over before Venezuela can manage to resurrect their moribund oil industry, even with western help. They are probably telling them that there is room for a modern democratic Venezuela on the world stage with the Russians on the run and they need to think hard about where their future lies.
Calouste
@Sebastian: Big demo going on in Kazakhstan at the moment:
https://mobile.twitter.com/alexkokcharov/status/1500367346543861763/photo/1
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
Idunno, what I’d read was that there were big demos in the biggest cities, but elsewhere, not so much. And we’ve seen reporting that Russians in UA call their family back home, and their family thinks everything fine, Putin’s troops are gonna play nicey-nicey with the local population, etc. It isn’t so clear to me that he can’t pull the wool over Russians’ eyes — those who aren’t already heavily plugged-into international news.
dc
@Kent:
https://www.gregpalast.com/venezuela-can-bring-putin-to-his-knees/
Kent
@Chetan Murthy: I expect Russia is much like the US. Putin has his MAGA faithful, mostly in the rural and working class areas. But large portions of the population are not so stupid or brainwashed. Especially the younger, more educated, and urban folk.
Here in the US the MAGA faithful are what…30% of the population? 70 million voted for Trump out of a population of 330 million. The percentage in Russia is probably higher as Putin has had a lot more time and money to build his brainwashing infrastructure. But it is still only a percentage of Russians.
What is the real percentage of brainwashed Putin dead-enders in Russia? Anyone have the slightest guess?
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
OK, that wasn’t the impression I’ve been getting. However if the big cities are not on his side that is a lot of people, not on his side. Given things though that’s likely enough for him to at least do a hell of a lot more damage to the world before he strokes out or someone “on his side” does him in because they do know how insane he is. Through out history dictators do a lot of damage right before someone eliminates them – because they are doing a lot of damage, and not just in far away places.
Sebastian
@Kent:
The FSB paper alluded to that. Mobilization is out of the question.
Russia has already deployed something like 90% of their available troops, so they are now scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I keep thinking of that huge column North of Kyiv. Those guys have no food and it is cold AF. Highs of 35 and lows of 16 Fahrenheit.
Then it hit me: they have to keep the engines idling regularly or the diesel will gel and you are fucked. Diesel starts getting cloudy at 32F I believe and at 15F it’s game over.
So these guys have no food, almost no fuel, and the little they have they need to stay alive and keep their vehicles from locking up.
This can’t go on much longer. Something’s gotta give here.
BeautifulPlumage
@Kent: It would help to know if the relatives in Russia that don’t believe the war is targeting civilians are rural or urban.
Jack Canuck
@BeautifulPlumage: Found this on reddit, seems (and I emphasise, seems!) to show that the scene is of questionable reality. I don’t pretend to know one way or another, but it does answer the ‘how come he’s not afraid of being near them’ question if in fact he wasn’t near them at all!
MikefromArlington
NATO needs to vocally announce and invade Ukraine by land, air and sea. Overrun (wink wink) the Ukrainian forces and free the civilian populations. Just make something up like the Ruskies, like say, we are joining Russia in liberating Ukraine.
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: Seen this? https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67331.html
I don’t know how much to believe, but they say that the UA army opened up irrigation locks to flood the marshes on both sides of the road that massive caravan is on, so the fields will stay muddy thru July/August. Just to ensure that they can’t use the fields no matter what.
Chetan Murthy
@Jack Canuck: I don’t know what’s the reality. But Mother Jones claims it’s not a green screen: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/no-that-putin-video-didnt-use-a-green-screen-misinformation/
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The trick is preventing the GOP & other right wing reactionary forces around the world from riding popular discontent (in response to rising food & fuel prices, as the result of cutting off all Russian exports) into power.
Jack Canuck
@Chetan Murthy: Thanks for that – figured there’d be stuff out there that had a go at debunking that. It is an interesting question though – if he’s so bloody scared (of covid? assassination?) that he won’t even let his own advisors within ten meters of him, how come he’s so comfortable with scenes like this? I’ve got no idea, but it does seem odd.
BeautifulPlumage
@Jack Canuck: I saw that and then found this: https://mobile.twitter.com/mikaelthalen/status/1500217859263266816
The rest of his feed seems pro Ukraine. I don’t know enough about digital video to make a call.
ETA or what Chetan Murthy linked
BeautifulPlumage
@Jack Canuck: that’s why I postulated the 2 week prep. All part of the pre-planned invasion propaganda?
Sebastian
@Kent:
I think we can safely answer: Russia does not have the logistical capabilities.
Also, Russia’s population is not that much bigger than Ukraine’s. 145m vs 44m. Given how big Russia is they need a lot of troops just to protect their borders from Japan and China in the East, to Central Asia, to the border with Finnland and the Baltics.
Russia’s demographics are terrible.
The male population in that graph looks like a shark took a bite out of the 16-32-year-old cohort. Anyone over 40 is alcoholic and has no teeth (I am exaggerating, but not much).
And now, trying to come up with words for my thoughts, it hit me. Fucking Putin made the same mistake Hitler did in 1941. He completely misjudged the magnitude of the task he was embarking on. Like Hitler, he extrapolated the successes he had earlier and thought Ukraine would be the same, just a bit bigger.
Hitler had Sudetenland, VVP had Donbas.
Hitler had Poland, VVP had Georgia.
Hitler had France, VVP had Syria.
Hitler had Russia, Vova had Ukraine.
High on his own fucking supply he thought he would just roll in and take over the joint. But then logistics and supply issues fucked him over and he lost an empire.
We are not there yet but that last act is playing out right now.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
I seem to recall that the F-22 doesn’t do ground attack anyway.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
Take it to the bank, it’s a fact. We had an epic thread last night here at BJ.
Russians are fucked. The roads are shitty in the best of times, now with the ground soaked underneath and columns of tanks rolling over? The roads are literally disintegrating.
You have to put this in some perspective:
The Rasputitsa is the mud season that just began. Because Vova is really Xi’s bitch he had to wait for the Olympics to end before he could start his Glorious Adventure of Resurrection of Soviet Glory! Right into Rasputitsa.
The word Rasputitsa comes from the Slavic word raspad, which means disintegration. (Murphy, the Trickster God …) In other words, this is the season where everything falls apart and goes to shit.
Wiki:
This is like a gigantic game of The Floor Is Lava. You must stay on the roads or else you are stuck. The roads are shit and not built for heavy mechanized infantry and tanks. The ground under the roads gives in. The roads get damaged from tanks and APCs exploding and burning.
This is a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, Adam. I am really impressed by the Ukrainians. They clearly anticipated the Russians being Russians.
Sebastian
@dc:
Thank you. This might just be the play here.
Balloon-Juice has more strategic analysis in its small finger than ABC, NBC, CNN, and CBS together.
Sebastian
NSFW but funny
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/t7ogzm/russian_and_ukrainian_soldiers_exchange_words_via/
The Pale Scot
@Chetan Murthy:
RE: Chicagoboyz
That is very interesting, Haven’t figured out the google magic word to find more
Sloane Ranger
In terms of getting NATO aircraft into Ukraine, during WWII didn’t Roosevelt and Churchill work out a deal where US planes were left in a field near the Canadian border and Canadians came over and towed them onto Canadian soil? Or was that made up for the The Darkest Hour? Of course that might piss off Putin, but, at this stage, blowing your nose might do the same.
As for controlling the narrative inside Russia, I suspect that the middle aged and older, who rely on state controlled media for their information are one thing, but he won’t be able to cut the younger, tech savvy population from all outside sources of information.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
Dude, you are throwing me down a rabbit hole.
I spun my mouse-wheel and this popped into my view
The Battle on the Ice, 1242 – Teutonic Knights vs. Alexander Nevsky
LOL Yegawds. Teutonic Knights. I’ll read it in the morning.
Leaving you fellas with these two treats below. (Btw, thank you to whoever posted a link to Good Times Bad Times the other day. I chipped in a few bucks, the guy is solid.)
The Failed Logistics of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
(amazing explainer)
Ukraine can win – US Secretary of State A. Blinken. Day 9
Sloane Ranger
@Sloane Ranger: Replying to myself to add that I watched some “ordinary Russians in the streets” interviews by Sky or the BBC a few days back and all the interviewees were spouting the official line but, judging from their body language, I’m not convinced they actually believed it. Russia has been a police state for centuries, with harsh punishment for dissent, and an understanding of this has seeped into the Russian character. You keep your thoughts to yourself, say the things the government want you to say and you will be allowed to live your life as best you can. Often not ideal but better than the gulag.
rikyrah
Silverman,
Thanks for these posts
CROAKER
@Sebastian: Two battles. Swedes go first than nazi knights in 1242 at Lake Peipous
The ice story is nice but not exactly factual. Reality is you can’t really charge against a wall of heavy spearman with support. The nazi knights at that time were impetuous and not the heavy barded drilled types of later period.
factors don’t work out to well
1 unit cohesion is in favor of feudal Russians
2 heavy spear will cancel the impact of the knights
3 knights must rely on furious charge assuming they get lucky
4 after they get stuck in combat and cease to be
point for point I will take support heavy spear vs medium knights
many a toy soldier has died under my command
Kalakal
@Sebastian: You’re so right, that Russian convoy is a disaster of epic proportions. The plan seems to have been to bounce airfields around Kyiv with paradrops, use the airfields to rapidly reinforce the paras and rush the heavy stuff unopposed along the few roads against minimal resistance ( the UA supposedly being tied up trying to retake the airfields) link up and take the city . When the paras got crushed, resistance turned out to be far greater and effective than expected and their logistics vapour, the rush along the roads turned into a 40 mile traffic jam and should have been rethought. Instead they pushed on and now they’re totally stalled, can’t go back, can’t go forward, just waiting for the end.
In the past the Russians used the ‘there’s plenty more where they came from’ approach and could absorb and recover from losses that would have crippled any western country. No more, the well is nearly dry, lose the men and equipment in that convoy and it’s not just their ability to take and hold Ukraine that’s problematic for them, it’s their ability to hang on to the central Asian republics.
sab
Let Mila Kunis throw millions into Ukraine. Money very well spent, and she has it.. But if we in US dont spend well on elections it is all wasted. Our government will vote pro oligarchy.
Until they prove otherwise, all Republicans are Russian friendly, because that is how they have been voting.
Kalakal
@Sebastian: Alexander Nevsky (1938)is an amazing film, the Teutonic Knights are a brilliant potrayal of the Nazis in all their evil, Prokofievs score is truly wonderful, and the Battle of the Ice on Lake Chudskoe is incredible. It may have been Stalinist propaganda but Eisenstein knocked it out the park
CROAKER
Surprised no one picked up Poltava – that’s kinda a big deal for Russia in Europe. It’s the end Swedish dominance with defeat by Pete #1 of Charlie #12 ends up – Swedish forces – under strength and out of supply losing badly during the winter and what was it a siege
Sloane Ranger
@CROAKER: Yes. During the Napoleonic War, the standard defense against cavalry attacks was to form a square. The infantry were able to keep constant fire on the attacking cavalry, while their bayonets kept them at a distance. There are only two recorded instances of cavalry breaking squares and both of them were lucky accidents, or unlucky, depending on which side you were on.
prostratedragon
@Kalakal: Prokofiev’s cantata was the first recording of the new Chicago Symphony Chorus back in the late fifties.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F6YKVfhlgBM
David Anderson
At what point do Ukrainians start blowing the natural gas pipelines that start in Russia and criss-cross their country to lay economic siege to Russia? As we learned in Iraq, pipelines exist at the convenience and permission of the local population who has the option to see or not see plenty of things when they have plentiful plastic explosives.
Kalakal
@prostratedragon: Magnificent. Thank you
Gvg
@Chetan Murthy: I think both things are going on at the same time, because a population is not made of identical clones. Many people go along to get along. Many people are kind of authoritarian dicks who think like Putin but aren’t powerful. Other people are cynics or smarter or kinder. It ought to be suspicious to people that he cut off outside contact. That means he has something to hide. But he is a killer, they know that and he has police so many people aren’t going to say anything. People are messy and multiple things are happening.
we are not in a good position to figure out how many Russians don’t agree with Putin or how determined they are or what they can do.
Chris Johnson
@Chetan Murthy: What with Caleb Maupin et al, Jimmy Dore etc. being ‘leftists’ actively working for Russia, I really don’t automatically trust Mother Jones here. Does their hi-res footage actually match what was on YouTube? The original ‘look, greenscreen’ seemed like what you’d get out of greenscreen, but also this is literally the exact situation that would be most easily fixed in post to show ‘hi-res’ footage with the hand properly behind the mic. It’s absolutely trivial to release new footage with the mic in front. I mean, I could do it, and I don’t do that stuff all day: it’s really easy to come up with that specific ‘fix’.
WaterGirl
Chris Johnson
I guess my big problem is assuming anything out of Russia or defending Russia is honest. I think the crazification factor over there is, like here, over 27% due to great effort to make it be so, and so it’s about 70/30 as far as Russians who are so bonkers they will believe anything Putin tells them, to the death (of themselves, and of the whole world). 30% is no majority but it’s a hell of an obstacle, just as it is here.
Gin & Tonic
@Chris Johnson: 90/10. At least.
Chris Johnson
@Gin & Tonic: 90% crazy legit, or 90% of people in Russia will parrot the party line to not get hauled off to the gulag (and have no reason to believe they’re safe from that no matter what seems to be happening)?
My gut reaction’s still telling me that 30% legitimately believe any sort of lie and are batshit crazy, slightly in excess of the natural crazification factor. That’s not counting people who will play along because they’re under threat. 30% true believers who are like our QAnons (from the same propaganda sources and techniques) and will become terrorists in the event of a Russia collapse.
The rest, maybe not so much. Maybe more flexibility there. Which might be enough to go forward on the geopolitical stage. I mean, if WE can go forwards regardless with 30% of our people crazy terrorists…
zhena gogolia
@Martin: That’s incredible.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: No. That is not correct.
japa21
Just some comments unfiltered from my brain.
Sometimes I read thread like this and I wonder what is more important to some people; seeing Putin fail or the suffering of the people of Ukraine. And I know it isn’t an either/or situation and that people can do both but still…
Do people who call for a NFZ realize that it would have to be absolute, meaning both Russian and Ukrainian assets would be targeted?
Some people here want to believe the Russian people aren’t fooled by Putin’s tactics. I trust G&T’s instincts on this.
I am more pessimistic than many people here.
zhena gogolia
Could I just remind everyone that Russia has suffered under a crushing dictatorship for the last couple of decades, and the entire world just went along with the dictator, doing business with him, looking into his eyes and seeing his soul, etc., etc., and all of a sudden they’ve woken up and seen who he is, when many of us have been trying to tell you for years. Russian civil society has been destroyed over two decades — it can’t be rebuilt in a day. The Russophobia I’m seeing all around me is not a good thing.
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson: There is now a 15-year prison sentence for saying anything against the war. You all sit here in the US and comfortably criticize Russians for not risking that. I’m not about to.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: Short answer is no.
debbie
There has got to be a way to get video to Putin to let him know about Trump’s betrayal.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That would be Putin.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: Not to mention Russian civil society never got a fighting chance to get built, because Harvard economists went in and “shock treated” their economy into the ground.
debbie
The mother not believing her own child is heart-breaking.
Kalakal
@Chris Johnson: A really powerful motivator for the crazies* is a lot of them genuinely believe they are the majority. For them its not 27% wingnut its 70% mighty fine people and 30% evil libruls. A lot of the 1/6 rioters genuinely believed they were going to be seen as heroic saviours not treasonous scum and were shocked at the backlash. I have a hope that a lot of the astro turf movements and their (social) media mysteriously having funding shortfalls may bring a dash of reality, not so much to the hard core crazies, but to those on the margins, who thanks to the media, see small groups of astroturfed grifters and crazies as hugely popular movements. The convoy getting all the attention? Ooh look a 1000 vehicles! Huge convoy!All over your TV, radio and newspapers!
A 1,000 vehicles in the US is nothing and that’s how it should be reported.
I don’t know how you deal with 30% of the population being crazy (and I’m pretty sure most that 30% are keyboard warriers) but one thing that would help would be if they and everybody else knows that they are NOT the majority, they are not popular and thats not the message the media both mainstream and social puts out. As I said I’m hoping lack of Russian funding is going to cripple a lot of that media
*I’m talking about US and European crazies, cannot say about Russians
Subsole
@Redshift: That person didn’t need a lie. They needed an excuse. The radio gave them one.
Just like here in the USA. Conservatives aren’t actually stupid enough to think that vax causes cancer, or that the gay trans lesbian communists are trying to “replace” white folks, or that liberals are running pedophile adrenochrone harvesting facilities in pizza parlor basements. All of which is every bit as absurd as “Ukrainian Nazis are false-flagging Kiev.”
They just tell themselves that because they are trying to convince themselves that they are not, in fact, the gaping, necrotic, prolapsed assholes that they most certainly are.
That’s one reason I despise them so. It’s not enough they ruin life for everyone else. They then sit there and make you listen to some utterly ridiculous horseshit conspiracy theory they cooked up because they don’t have enough artillery between their legs to so much as glance into a mirror.
They keep fucking up everyone elses’ lives, because they’re too weak to stop fucking up their own. Then turn around and make their victims play psychiatrist!
Selfish, spoiled little chickenshits, all of them.
Gin & Tonic
The young people, I’m sure, with their better Internet skills, know the truth.
Peale
I really can’t see many problems arising for the US trying to pretend to be Chinese to start a war between the two countries, except that it appears to be cribbed from a Bond movie. Trump is a bad villain though. He needs to wait until he captures Bond to lay out his entire plan.
Subsole
@Chetan Murthy: So, basically, it’d be like if the next Republican president invaded Alberta and B.C. to offset rising Latino birthrates?
Where do these people go to get this twisted?
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: People who are against Putin can’t go on social media and broadcast it.
zhena gogolia
Some here have loved ones in Ukraine. Some here have loved ones in Russia. I think I’ll have to stop reading these threads.
Many Russians have loved ones in Ukraine too.
Subsole
@Ruckus:
That’s a fair point.
In fact, the more I think on it, it occurs to me that Russians old enough to have service-age kids in Ukraine might be old enough to remember a time when very, very unpleasant people were listening in on their phone calls.
If I live in a country that routinely jails people who disagree with it and straight up disappears anyone it deems a threat, I might not respond entirely honestly to public polling…and I would damn sure watch what I said on public communications.
Gin & Tonic
On the somewhat brighter side, a friend of a friend got married yesterday outside Kyiv.
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: Polling in Russia is meaningless.
japa21
@zhena gogolia: I understand where you are coming from. It is important to try to separate the people from the leadership.
zhena gogolia
@japa21: Well, people in this country are doing a piss poor job of that. Talk about needing to check your privilege.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Right after I read your post, this ran on NPR.
I can’t imagine the difficult place you’ve found yourself in, but I’m not sure everyone can compartmentalize any very emotional situation the exact same way. After all, how clearly do we separate TFG from his followers?
japa21
@zhena gogolia:
Hell, if we can’t get accurate polling in the US, how is it supposed to mean anything there?
debbie
Apparently, the second ceasefire lasted less than an hour.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: I personally am sitting in the United States of America, so I’m not in any kind of difficult place on the scale of things.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I wasn’t referring to physical location.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Well okay, yes, I’m in a HORRIBLE spiritual place, thank you.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: TFG’s followers haven’t got the legacy of two civil wars, a revolution, two world wars, 74 years of Communism, being stripped of their resources largely by Western companies and a kleptocratic leadership, and 22 years of rule by an increasingly unhinged dictator. TFG’s followers live in a country with a free press and freedom of speech. I give them no quarter. With Russians, it’s a different story.
Subsole
@Gin & Tonic: Life truly does go on…
Congratulations to them.
Raven Onthill
debbie
@Martin:
I’m only at about 5 minutes in, but one of the first things out of the middle guy’s mouth is that they’re speaking from a prepared script. ??♀️
Subsole
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah.
I mean, look at America. We don’t have anything like the Organs over here, and people still lie their asses off on polls.
And, like, if you’ve ever been Blue in a very Red county, you kind of get how it works. You deploy your candor like a precious and irreplaceable thing. Because most people are perfectly good and decent, regardless of politics.
But the people who ain’t?
Man, they really, really ain’t.
I imagine the folks in Russia who would audition to be Oprichniki are on a whole other level.
BruceFromOhio
Just like TFG and the fascisti at Fox News did here.
Subsole
@zhena gogolia:
That always boggles my kind as an American. The sheer length of time Putin has been in charge.
I cannot imagine having the same leader for 22 years. I genuinely don’t have the experiential framework. Hell, my grandma doesn’t, and she lived under the longest-serving president in our history…
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: It’s soul-crushing.
artem1s
I hear a lot of Putin comparisons to Hilter and overextending his armies and propaganda machine. Understandable given the geography is the same. But as I read reports of the trucks without gas and soldiers without food, I can’t help but to think about Lee and the Army of Virginia.The way that the Old South boasted the Glorious War would be over in a week and how they would get to keep their slaves. Their propaganda worked too right up until Sherman marched into Atlanta.
I’d love to hear Robert L. Bateman’s take on Putin’s last desperate stand to keep the idea of Mother Russia alive. I have no doubt it is a last stand. The question is how long will it take before European neighbors demand NATO gets involved the way they finally did in Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars. Up until he was sitting in The Hague, Milosevic looked unstoppable too. The final collapse of the old Soviet empire won’t be stopped no matter how much Putin threatens to use his nukes.
Clinton suffered the fall out when it came to making the call and getting NATO involved, bombing Kosovo, and the Dayton Accord letting the people of Eastern Europe choose a 3 state option instead of forcing old borders on them. I don’t know what Biden will do, except that he’s never been afraid to make the tough choices in the past. I doubt his first instinct will be to protect the party so buckle up for another 10-20 years of “why this is bad news for the Dems” from the FYNYT, even if the outcome is Ukraine retains their autonomy and Putin and Russia is even more marginalized than they are now.
Subsole
@zhena gogolia:
As I said, I cannot imagine. I mean, that guy has been in charge for about half of my life. If you were born in 2000, you literally have never known ANYthing else.
It’s like Franco. Or Mao. Or Stalin. If you have lived your entire life under someone, you start to wonder what could possibly replace them. Even if they are a monster.
I think that’s the grand Russian tragedy, the thing I will never understand: the most unfathmably atavistic people, ruling a society that often manages to be shockingly humanistic. At least, if their literature is anything to go by.
Kalakal
@zhena gogolia: I know several people who grew up and lived in the former Eastern bloc. Without exception they talk of having to have 2 identities, the public and the private. It was very dangerous to step out of line publically so almost nobody did. I private, you could, but very carefully and within narrow limits, express your real self. For decades, for your whole life. Truly soul crushing. I imagine for Russians it’s even worse, they’re still in a dictatorship.
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: Having an empire is self-destructive.
Miss Bianca
@Sebastian: I can state from experience that diesel engines get very grumpy indeed – non-cooperative, even – if the temperature dips below 25 degrees F.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: You know that many of us here thinks Israel is behaving badly and have animosity toward Israel, without animosity toward Jewish people?
I think this is similar, zhena. The ire, wrath, disdain, anger is at Putin and the government of Russian, not the Russian people themselves.
WaterGirl
@debbie: I thought he held up a prepared script and then distinctly said that they were not using the script.
They also did not have the awful dead stare of captured people who are being forced to say a particular thing they do not believe.
Chris Johnson
@zhena gogolia: Exactly. You CANNOT assume the Russian people as a whole are legitimately Putin MAGA-equivalents. There’s guns to their heads. As I said, even if you got RID of Putin they have no special reason to assume it’s not a trick, or purity test, to see who fell for it… and eliminate them.
Zhena is correct, it’s a very big problem and it is NOT an ‘all Russians are insane and back Putin 100% just like he says they do’ problem. They don’t, neither are they in any position to throw off their chains and rejoice. It’s a hell of a mess: one Putin tried very very hard to export to us, too.
Chris Johnson
@debbie: Not a betrayal. Putin desperately needs the West, NATO, USA to strike first and be at total war.
Without that, he’s the asshole.
If we do the stuff idiots like Trump or quislings like Graham are suggesting, we directly aid Putin’s attempts to set the narrative and make the argument that all his stuff is justified because this is who we are. You might as well say we should nuke them: and so I figure the troll armies right now (or those of them that aren’t at home telling RUSSIANS that we are launching an unprovoked war and we’re all Nazis) are telling us that we need to launch a war to the Nth degree. We have to be made to wear the mask of an aggressor to distract from Putin being an aggressor.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia:
QFT
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: I’m not sure that’s true for everyone here.
topclimber
@Adam L Silverman:
@Calouste:
@zhena gogolia:
Sorry that I went to bed before seeing your responses.
If a coup topples Putin, Medvedev might be a good front man to assure the nation. He is a former president, a known face, and being a Putin loyalist until the very last minute might help rather than hurt him. He is also a known commodity to the West.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: If a coup topples Putin, we’re going to see a bloodbath in Russia as well as Ukraine, I’m afraid.
There are no good outcomes ahead.
Kalakal
Just to prove that being utterly vile is international here’s a Brazilian politician bragging about Ukranian refugee women being ‘easy’ because they’re desperate for money. I haven’t the words to truly express my disgust of this creature
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/brazilian-politician-arthur-do-val-sexist-remarks-ukraine-refugees-outrage?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Jinchi
I used to think the same thing, but I’ve learned from personal experience that there are a lot of rightwingers who exactly that stupid.
Calouste
@zhena gogolia: If Putin’s inner circle topples him, and sells it as that he’s had a stroke or a heart attack, a bloodbath in Russia might be avoided. They would of course have to follow whatever the succession procedure is, it would need to be stage managed, and it would take a while for the fighting to stop.
Jinchi
Wouldn’t that make diesel useless in Russia?
Jinchi
That’s what Nordstrom 2 was all about, and an attack on Russian natural gas pipelines would be an attack on Europe’s economy as well as Russia’s.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: It just has to be true for most of us, though, in order for you to feel like you belong, and that you are understood and supported. Right?
Sebastian
@Jinchi:
Russians use electric engine and fuel tank warmers to prevent their engines from freezing.
When I once went to Surgut in Siberia (it’s company town of Surgutneftegaz) I saw hundreds of extension cords from peoples apartments (think those 30 story concrete high rises) coming down to the cars parked along the sidewalk.
zhena gogolia
@Calouste: There is no succession procedure.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: I guess so. I’m reacting to things around me as well as BJ.
Gvg
@Jinchi: Being intelligent takes practice. It’s something you get better at if you do it a lot. We don’t usually think of it that way, but I see it. I also think being stupid I’d something that you get “better” at if you keep doing it. The more errors you allow into you, the worse garbage comes out.
Meanness also seems to get worse with practice.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be?
But unless you plan to tune everything out and stick your head in the sand, which is definitely an option, then without BJ it seems like you would be losing a ton of support in your life.
But only you know what’s best for you.
Sebastian
@artem1s:
As a Croatian let me tell you that there was absolutely zero chance for a 3 state solution as Croatia was an internationally recognized country.
The mere suggestion or idea we would be in the same country as the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing is highly offensive.
I’ll stop before I say something I’ll regret later.
Sebastian
@David Anderson:
Those pipelines also supply the Ukraine.
Bill Arnold
@Calouste:
“heart attacks” and “strokes” are a Russian government specialty. There are methods for causing (a subset of) the real thing, as well, if an independent autopsy is a possibility.
Bill Arnold
(just used to get an edit window for the last comment.)
lee
@Sebastian:
Daaaaaaaaammn. I thought Russia had a handle on their replacement rate but apparently it was a short lived solution.
They are on the path of being completely screwed.
Sebastian
@The Pale Scot:
You know, I could be wrong but looking at these pictures I am having serious doubts about Russian electronic capabilities.
https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/11/do-you-notice-anything-weird-in-this-cool-shot-of-a-mig-29-flying-rolling-above-russian-aircraft-carrier/
https://defence-blog.com/russian-pilots-use-us-made-gps-receives-during-combat-missions-in-syria/
Sebastian
And there goes my theory the Ukrainians could quickly repair and refit the captured tanks.
Tank factory in Kharkiv destroyed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/t7grc3/destroyed_tank_factory/
It was used to modify and upgrade tanks and perhaps the Ukrainians were smart enough to move some of the more exotic machines out, but still. Damn.
CraigM
Advancing into a mud-filled trap with no chance of retreat or resupply? Putin isn’t even an authentic Russian – falling for a two-thousand-year-old strategy which is the defining aspect of west Asian defense – used by the Scythians, the Parthians, and the Russians against Napoleon and again against Hitler. Even I remember enough from my high school Russian history class to know not to chase after retreating Slavs -it’s always a trap. Lesson one, day one – Scythian tactics.
Is it COVID brain-fog or ignorance of his own history that drives Putin, or are the Ukrainians the real heirs to that history?
No One of Consequence
Gelled diesel fuel starts to happen around water’s freezing point, but that’s straight number 2. Most colder climates have realized that if you cut the diesel fuel with kerosene, you can keep it from gelling for many degrees lower than that. More kerosene, lower gelling temp. Tank warmers and engine heaters are neat, but the problem typically doesn’t happen there, as it tends to happen in the fuel lines, in my experience, where the gelling that prevents fuel flow occurs. Half a liter of kerosene and some time can typically ungel situations like that, depending upon how much fuel you have in your tank, and how big your tank is… ymmv
Another Scott
@Sebastian: I remember a story from (a now infamous) columnist for AutoWeek who lived in Alaska. He said (as I recall) the big problem with extreme cold wasn’t the fuel, or the battery, but the tires. They freeze too, and can lose their seal with the wheels/rims, and even if they maintain the seal they can shake the car like mad from the flat spot until the tires warms up, etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Lyrebird
Yep. I agree with various other commenters talking about how the sanctions should have ultra clear exit ramps, not because oligarchs deserve nice treatment, but because we want to incentivize getting out of this mess asap, starting with calling off the war asap, and then avoiding just what you describe.
Lyrebird
I think you’re comparing apples to caviar. In general I’ll defer to
@zhena gogolia: but I just want to echo that it might be more realistic to think of R citizens having about much say in what their country does as a usual ICE detainee here. I am not saying any one country is perfect or perfectly wrong. But look at the Pussy Riot singers, look at Navalny. Want to protest? Okay, how many years in prison you want? Want to start an opposition party? Maybe we try to kill you…
We take a lot for granted here.