I have had a long, tedious, uncomfortable day. So just a brief update tonight.
We start with noting and remembering that this weekend marks the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor when Stalin created a famine in Ukraine.
Now a word of clarification.
My grousing about the risk tolerance in a number of NATO capitols was not a call to nuke Moscow. Nor for anyone else too. Nor for anyone else to call for them to do so. Rather it was to point out that one of the key concerns for senior leaders/decision makers and their policy and strategy advisors is how much risk to assume. As well as to state that in my professional opinion as a national security professional we have far too many who are willing to assume far too little risk. That was it. Im as frustrated, if not more so, as many of you, but let’s just chill out in the comments.
I also want to answer a question and respond to a comment.
First, lowtechcyclists question:
Adam, what I’ve been wondering is, is there more the U.S. and European allies could and should do to help Ukraine deal with the damage to water and electrical infrastructure? Hell, I’d be all for sending the US Army Corps of Engineers over there (unarmed of course) with the materiel they needed to help repair water lines and power plants.
Let’s take the last part first. We’re not sending anyone but the small number of military personnel assigned to the country team at Embassy Kyiv. The US Marine guards, the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attache, the Air Attache, and the Naval Attache. We’re certainly not going to send a company of combat engineers into an active war zone unarmed. That’s just the way it is.
Now, as for the first part, we and our allies and partners are getting humanitarian aid to Ukraine pretty quickly. Could we up the volume? Possibly. One of the major issues is despite the Ukrainians obvious need, only so much can be delivered and utilized at any one time. Moreover, everything we send just gets added to Russia’s targeting list. That’s not the Ukrainians fault, but the reality is that the humanitarian aid part of the support to Ukraine is far, far more perishable than it would be in other humanitarian aid and disaster response missions. Normally, a bunch of assholes with missiles, rockets, bombs, and artillery aren’t trying to blow up the generators and mobile water treatment equipment and mobile kitchens that are being delivered to0 and put to use helping the afflicted population.
I also want to briefly address this comment from Geminid:
So far, I’ve seen no reports that Russia has used Iranian surface-to-surface missiles. They were said to be part of a weeks-old arms deal between the two countries. I wonder if the hold up is a matter of deployment and training, or some other factor.
Meanwhile, Russia shows signs of scraping the bottom of its missile barrel. I read a report last night that Ukrainians identified the remnants of an old cold war-era cruise missile of a type tasked with carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile had no warhead of any type, though, and it’s thought to have been used as a decoy.
Or maybe some command was padding its number of “missiles fired.” There may be a spirit animating Russian military commands akin to passive aggression.
Here too in reverse order. They’re not padding the number of missiles fired, based on every assessment I’ve seen, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
As to the old cruise missile they used, technically under treaty obligations because it could be fitted with a nuclear warhead the Russians were supposed to notify us that 1) they were going to use it and 2) provide documentation that it is not nuclear tipped. I doubt they did either.
And now that we’ve reached the first thing; all the recent reporting indicates that the Russians are desperate to get missiles from Iran in addition to the drones they’ve purchased. However, the Iranians have not yet agreed to provide the missiles. If everyone is lucky, the Iranians won’t.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
War for Ukraine Day 276: Just a Quick Update TonightPost + Comments (74)