In extremely good news:

Magomed Tushayev, one of Ramzan Kadyrov’s top warlords, has been killed in action in Hostomel.
??Ukraine’s elite Alpha Group is reportedly fighting Chechens in the airfield. pic.twitter.com/bPHgBPK8sL

— Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) February 26, 2022

There are reports that the Ukrainians took out the entire convoy of Chechen fighters known as Kadyrovites named for the brutal warlord who runs Chechnya on behalf of Putin.

Also, Germany finally removed the sticks from their tuchases and reinserted their spines authorizing the transfer of German manufactured weaponry to Ukraine.

Germany has authorized the Netherlands to send Ukraine 400 rocket-propelled grenade launchers to aid in the fight against Russian invaders, according to two EU officials — marking an abrupt shift in Berlin’s military policy amid pressure from EU and NATO allies.

The reversal could mean a rapid increase in European military assistance for Ukraine, as large portions of the Continent’s weapons and ammunition are at least in part German-manufactured, giving Berlin legal control over their transfer. Yet Berlin’s changing stance does not necessarily mean all requests for arms shipments will be approved, as each case is decided individually.

Poland started sending ammunition by land, while Estonia and Latvia on Friday said they were beginning to truck fuel, Javelin anti-armor weapons and medical supplies to the Ukraine border for hand-off to Ukrainian forces. Elsewhere, the Czech Republic said it would send guns and ammunition, and Slovakia said it would send ammunition, diesel and kerosene.

On Saturday, more countries started chipping in.

The Netherlands said it will send 200 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine — often the top-requested type of military aid among Ukrainian soldiers and officials (apart from Western powers sending their own planes and forces to fight with Ukraine). And Belgium announced it would supply Ukraine with 2,000 machine guns and 3,800 tonnes of fuel.

Across the Atlantic, the United States on Saturday also upped its ongoing military assistance to Ukraine, authorizing up to $350 million to help bolster Ukraine’s defenses, funding that will include “further lethal defensive assistance.”

Here’s where things are going to get dicey. As the economic responses move from sanctioning specific business and individuals to removing most of Russia’s banking system from SWIFT and going after the wealth – in dollars, pounds, euros, etc; real estate and land; yachts; jets; professional sports franchises; etc –  of Putin, his key aides and agents, and the rest of the oligarchs enabling him, as well as going after the mistresses, girlfriends, and children of Putin and his cronies, pressure is going to build. Specifically the pressure by the oligarchs and other sycophants and cronies to protect themselves. Additionally, the increase in the flow of weapons to rearm Ukraine to allow it to withstand the Russian reinvasion is also going to increase pressure on and around Putin.

The war is not going well for the Russians. This was not the speed run to Kyiv to capture and kill as much of the Ukrainian national government and as much of the government of the oblasts as possible and replace them with easily controlled trusted agents. Every day that Ukraine holds out increases the pressure. And that pressure is going to get relieved in two ways. The first is that Putin will up his operational tempo. What he threw at the Ukrainians overnight was much more than he’d ordered be done over the previous two nights. And as day 4 turns into night 5 of the war what he orders will be more than what he threw at the Ukrainians today. CNN reported earlier that its reporting team had eyes on a thermobaric missile launcher just south of Belgorod, Russia near Ukraine. If things continue to go badly, I expect we’ll unfortunately see this type of weapon system deployed. The second way the pressure is going to get relieved is that Putin will begin to go after the US and our EU and NATO allies in ways that he has not yet done so. He will lash out, most likely through increased cyber attacks first, in an attempt to inflict pain to stop, or at least slow down, the resupply of the Ukrainian military.

Putin has seriously miscalculated with this reinvasion. He misunderstood the resistance his forces would face. For whatever reason he seriously misunderstood the competency of the military he’s spent over a decade rebuilding and modernizing. And he misunderstood how the US and its EU and NATO allies, as well as the vast majority of the world, would respond. The other night, while texting with TaMara, she asked what I thought was up with Putin. I replied that:

I think Putin has nursed this grievance, that the fall of the Soviet Union and everything bad that has happened to Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, is the US’s fault. That the US, working through its lackeys in the EU and NATO, has gone out of its way to damage and harm and keep Russia down. And that he’s nursed this grievance day in and day out every day since the ate 1980s and it has consumed him. COVID has made this worse as he’s isolated himself in fear of catching the virus. As a result in his loneliness and isolation, his grievance has eaten away at him like, to use Tolkien as a metaphor, the one ring ate away Smeagol and left nothing but Gollum. That now all he has left is that grievance and the belief that he could set it all right, just as at the end all Gollum had was the desire for the ring and the belief that he could once again possess his precious.

This morning I read an excellent and thought provoking essay by Max Seddon in The Financial Times that makes a similar point:

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https://www.ft.com/content/c039db89-7201-4875-b31f-b41a511496f1

Already a distant figure before the pandemic, the lengths the former KGB officer takes to avoid coronavirus have limited his human contact. Western visitors are forced to sit around a comically huge table. Allies toast champagne from opposite ends of a massive carpet. Even Putin’s closest advisers are rarely allowed to come within 10 feet without weeks of quarantine and testing. People who have known him for decades say this has deepened a pent-up resentment of the west and a fixation on Russia’s shared history with Ukraine — making him more aggressive and unpredictable than ever. “He’s even more isolated than Stalin,” says Gleb Pavlovsky, a former adviser. “In the last years of his life, Stalin didn’t come to the Kremlin and lived in his dacha, but the politburo came to see him and they talked and drank. Putin doesn’t have that. He’s as isolated as he can be. And in that situation rational issues become irrational.”

Things are going to get worse now before they get better. I don’t think it will belong before President Biden and his allies are faced with a decision that I don’t think they want to make: at what point do they enter the war on behalf of Ukraine. You all know my views on this so I won’t repeat them again, but that decision point is approaching. Whether it is in days or weeks I don’t know. At some point, however, the calculus has to change to one that recognizes our ability to end the suffering being visiting upon the Ukrainian people because we have the capabilities to end this war in under a day.

I’ll leave you all with two items, one serious and one more whimsical, about Ukrainian President Zelenskyy:

Once upon a time, four sons were born to Jewish Ukrainian parents. Three sons were murdered by the Nazis. One son survived.
The survivor’s grandson is now an international hero fearlessly confronting his country’s invaders. He is Volodymyr #Zelensky, President of #Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/Evb3ePMso3

— Steven Goldstein (@StvenGoldstein) February 26, 2022

so apparently Zelenskyy won the Ukrainian version of Dancing with the Stars in 2006 and the tape is even better than whatever you're imagining pic.twitter.com/L1gnKD2ISr

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) February 27, 2022

here's the full three minute video. (I used a vpn to find it — not sure if it's accessible without one)https://t.co/vkXwJ63HSA

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) February 27, 2022

Open thread!