By the time you read this, dawn will have broken over Ukraine. Her defenders are holding, but they are becoming increasingly hard pressed. The Russians appear to have significantly increased the tempo and number of their attacks over the past 12 to 24 hours. And as many have worried, they aren’t particularly discriminating in regard to their targeting. I think some of this is the lack of precision guided munitions in the Russian inventory combined with them not really caring what they hit combined with just poor targeting. I saw one video of an attack from earlier today where every artillery round missed the target. And the attempt to target the headquarters of the Ukrainian 95th Airborne Brigade at Zhytomyr was reported as hitting an apartment building near the base.
⚡️Russian forces fired a cruise missile at an apartment building nearby Zhytomyr’s Pavlusenko hospital. 2 people are confirmed to have been killed & 3 injured.
Adviser to the Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko says the missile was aimed at the base of Zhytomyr’s 95th Brigade.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 1, 2022
Kharkiv is taking a lot of incoming!
MLRS strikes on the outskirts of Kharkiv. https://t.co/Gj6Z65csCs pic.twitter.com/xYZ3cM1GZ7
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) March 2, 2022
Mariupol is besieged and under attack since early this morning Ukraine time. I’ve seen no updates on the status, but its defenders were in a bad way.
Message from a Ukrainian solider:
If anything happens don’t let us be forgotten. We are surrounded in Mariupol no way out.— Roland Oliphant (@RolandOliphant) March 1, 2022
This appears to have been a message form the British national who joined the Ukrainian Marines in 2018 and tweets as CossackGundi:
Sad news from @cossackgundi Instagram, he’s surrounded by the Russians in Mariupol, hoping for the best for him and the soldiers he’s fighting alongside pic.twitter.com/S8MshI489j
— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) March 1, 2022
I don’t have access to Instagram – as in I don’t have an account – so I haven’t been able to check on his and his unit’s status, but this is the most recent tweet from his account from six hours ago, one hour more recent than the retweeted Instagram post above.
This is cossack, This invasion has gone the complete opposite direction, It's United the Ukrainian people of all backgrounds and political views to fight the invader and aggressor, our president @ZelenskyyUa is doing an amazing job in face of this historic battle
— COSSACKGUNDI (@cossackgundi) March 1, 2022
The Azov Regiment is working hard to keep Mariupol in Ukrainian hands:
The Azov regiment released a UAV video showing artillery strikes on a Russian Rys vehicle and KamAZ truck in Stary Krym north of Mariupol. https://t.co/47BcJAwF2Ahttps://t.co/sGVceAL0HB pic.twitter.com/wusmz73Tod
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) March 2, 2022
Putin is looking to take control of SE Ukraine in order to establish a Russian controlled land bridge to Russian occupied Crimea.
⚡️The city of Trostyanets in Sumy Oblast, was occupied by Russian forces, journalists report.
Three columns of Russian troops entered the city on March 1, demolishing the gate to The Round Court, a historical landmark, and destroying an art gallery.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 2, 2022
⚡️Russian paratroopers landed in Kharkiv and attacked one of the city’s military medical centers, UNIAN news agency reports. Ukrainian forces are repelling the attack.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 2, 2022
#UPDATE Russian airborne troops have landed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the Ukrainian army says.
"Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv… and attacked a local hospital. There is an ongoing fight"
? Kharkiv on March 1 following shelling from Russian forces pic.twitter.com/3pdYswzZam
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 2, 2022
Earlier today, Russia attempted to take down the main television transmission tower in Kyiv.
This video clearly shows a projectile hitting the Kyiv TV tower. Other videos captured at least two more explosions in the immediate area next to the tower. The freestanding lattice tower itself is still standing. https://t.co/cePwED7VxG pic.twitter.com/tNnvUgmomM
— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) March 1, 2022
Fortunately, the Ukrainians were able to work around it:
After the Russian rocket hit and damaged the Ukrainian central TV tower Ukrainian TV central broadcaster was able to find alternative ways to broadcast. Ukrainian TV is up and running.
— mgongadze (@MGongadze) March 1, 2022
But the Russians are pounding away:
⚡️Russia bombs Kyiv neighborhoods, Vyshneve city outside of the capital, according to the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine.
The neighborhoods currently under attack are Rusanivka, Kurenivka, Boiarka and the area near the Kyiv International Airport, or Zhuliany.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 1, 2022
⚡️Russian troops have seized the river port and railway station in Kherson, Mayor of Kherson Igor Kolyhav said.
According to CNN, Russian military vehicles entered Kherson after heavy shelling and appear to have taken the southern city.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 2, 2022
Some updates on related topics. After the jump:
Since you all watched the State of the Union you already know that President Biden has announced he’s closed American air space to Russian aviation – public and private. This now brings us in line with Canada, which means a lot of oligarchs are going to have a lot of trouble getting to their mistresses in Miami, NY, LA, etc. President Biden also announced what had been previously reported, that the US would be forming a task force with our allies and partners to go after Putin’s, his retainer’s, and the oligarchs’ assets from real estate to businesses to private planes to yachts.
No word on whether Senator Manchin’s “house boat” is on the list. I kid…
We now, finally, have clarification on the sale of EU member state fighter jets to Ukraine. It’s not happening!
A proposed deal to allow Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets donated by European Union countries has fallen apart.
Over the course of a confusing 48 hours, the EU announced it had brokered an arrangement for member states to allow Ukrainian pilots to start flying their used Russian fighter planes, only to have those countries deny there was any such deal even as Kyiv trumpeted the impending arrival of the jets.
The dissolution of the deal comes as European countries lined up Monday to announce new weapons packages for Ukraine, from anti-armor and anti-air rockets to artillery and medical supplies
Soon after, a Ukrainian government official told POLITICO their country had sent pilots to Poland to pick up the jets and the Ukrainian parliament announced that the planes from Slovakia, Bulgaria and Poland would soon be on their way. But by Tuesday, Bulgaria and Slovakia said there was no deal to send fighters, and the Polish president, appearing at a Polish air base alongside NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, said no planes would be flying any time soon.
There’s also been a lot of chatter that the Ukrainians were able to break up an assassination team of Chechens sent by Kadyrov to target President Zelenskyy. Including that the Ukrainians were tipped off by the FSB, which is both the successor agency to the KGB and formerly headed by Putin. From Axios:
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council chief Oleksiy Danilov announced during a briefing Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had foiled an assassination plot against President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a Telegram post from Ukrainian authorities.
Why it matters: Zelensky has said since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that he would be a prime target for assassination. Last Thursday, he warned that Russian “sabotage groups” had entered Kyiv and were hunting for him and his family.
The big picture: According to the Telegram message, Danilov said that a unit of elite Chechen special forces, known as Kadyrovites, had been behind the plot and had subsequently been “eliminated.”
- “We are well aware of the special operation that was to take place directly by the Kadyrovites to eliminate our president,” Danilov said, per the post.
- Ukrainian authorities had been tipped off about the plot by members of Russia’s Federal Security Service who do not support the war, he added.
- Danilov elaborated that the Kadyrovite group had been divided into two, with one being destroyed in Gostomel and the other “under fire.”
I’m not sure what to make of this one. Especially in light of this reporting from yesterday that Wagner mercenaries were pulled out of African and repositioned in Ukraine as sleepers to assassinate Zelenskyy:
More than 400 Russian mercenaries are operating in Kyiv with orders from the Kremlin to assassinate President Zelensky and his government and prepare the ground for Moscow to take control, The Times has learnt.
The Wagner Group, a private militia run by one of President Putin’s closest allies and operating as an arm-length branch of the state, flew in mercenaries from Africa five weeks ago on a mission to decapitate Zelensky’s government in return for a handsome financial bonus.
Information about their mission reached the Ukrainian government on Saturday morning and hours later Kyiv declared a 36-hour “hard” curfew to sweep the city for Russian saboteurs, warning civilians that they would be seen as Kremlin agents and risked being “liquidated” if they stepped outside.
We also have some clarification on the damage the Ukrainians are inflicting on the Russians. While the Ukrainians have released information that they’ve killed 5,800 Russian military personnel, the DOD’s estimate is around 2,000.
The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, acknowledged on Sunday for the first time that “there are dead and wounded” Russian troops but offered no numbers. He insisted Ukrainian losses were “many times” higher. Ukraine has said its forces have killed more than 5,300 Russian troops.
Neither side’s claims have been independently verified, and Biden administration officials have refused to discuss casualty figures publicly. But one American official put the Russian losses as of Monday at 2,000, an estimate with which two European officials concurred.
Senior Pentagon officials told lawmakers in closed briefings on Monday that Russian and Ukrainian military deaths appeared to be the same, at around 1,500 on each side in the first five days, congressional officials said. But they cautioned that the figures — based on satellite imagery, communication intercepts, social media and on-the-ground media reports — were estimates.
For a comparison, nearly 2,500 American troops were killed in Afghanistan over 20 years of war.
I saw reporting from reliable outlets – The Kyiv Independent among others, over the weekend about sweeps for sleeper teams of saboteurs. It may be that Putin decided to hedge his bets and send the Wagner Mercs and the Chechens, but, to be honest, I’m not sure the Chechens are suited to this mission. They’re brutal and feral and have no qualms committing atrocities, but they’re not subtle and they stand out in Ukraine like a sore thumb because of their beards and their accents. The Wagner mercenaries, many of whom are former Spetznaz or Russian intelligence, would blend in far better. It is possible that the Ukrainians are trying to make trouble for the FSB. The Ukrainian information warfare and PSYOP campaign has been excellent so far. I have no doubt they’ve killed some Chechens, but that they were supposed to be clandestine assassination teams and the FSB gave them up? Possible? yes. Probable? I have no idea.
If you’re interested, here’s a good primer on the FSB director from SpyTalk.
Also, if you were ever wondering who the GRU’s propaganda team leaders, well this thread is for you:
❗️Russian GRU field team propagandist Dmitry Steshin is now in the Russian-occupied Donbas to "watch the Olympics"
"Indeed, I watched one Olympiad in August 2008 in the Georgian city of Gori, and the second – on the Maidan in 2014." #RedFlag https://t.co/Pp6FNOfK9e
— Andy Scollick (@Andy_Scollick) February 6, 2022
Finally, here’s an excellent thread from the Center for Naval Analysis’s Director for Russian Studies on what he thinks is going on with the disjointedness and ineffectiveness of Russia’s campaign so far and where he thinks may go in the days to come:
Long thread about how I think the first 96 hours have gone, still very early/incomplete impressions. The initial Russian operation was premised on terrible assumptions about Ukraine’s ability & will to fight, and an unworkable concept of operations. Moscow badly miscalculated. 1/
— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) February 28, 2022
I’m going to stop here for now.
Open thread!
Fair Economist
Battle for the Dnieper River bridge in Kherson. According to the thread, Ukrainians currently control the bridge but commenters are wondering why they don’t blow it up.
MinuteMan
What about Merde-et-Lardo?
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: That footage is from the 24th.
Yarrow
Excellent post as usual, Adam. Thank you. It’s so much to follow and take in.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Kofman’s comment about the Russians ceding the information war to Ukraine. For something that was going full bore up until last week the whole Russian propaganda effect seems to have just collapsed across the board.
Winston
Why couldn’t our famous drone operators drop a couple dozen hellfire missiles on that 40 mile target? If Russia retaliates with a nuke, our Reagan anti missile defense would protect us, right? RIGHT?
Sideshow Bill
You can also watch the NATO refueling aircraft and occasionally global hawks at flightradar24 dot com. Was watching a flight of 4 Italian M-346’s doing training runs this morning. Lots of other similar trainers/light attack aircraft in the air this morning. There are also some great names for flights, Jedi002 was an F-35. Forte-XX is usually a global hawk.
guachi
A friend living in Ukraine who is a former Russian analyst said on the first day of the invasion that connecting Crimes to the rest of Russia by land was very important for Russia.
Looks like he was correct. He had that as one of the top priorities for Russia.
He also said Russian troops had terrible morale and would face difficulty because of that.
counterfactual
Kofman’s thread is another of the genre, “The Russians can’t be that stupid, they just have a plan that we don’t see.” I am starting to allow myself hope that yes the Russians, or actually one Russian, is that stupid. I have $5 that Putin has taken direct control of operations in Ukraine, and is bungling them badly.
CaseyL
I know we weren’t supposed to have our hopes up too much, but it’s just heartbreaking seeing RU forces overrunning Ukraine. Why did Poland change its mind about the fighter planes???
prostratedragon
@CaseyL: Since Soltenberg was at the announcment by the Polish president, I guess it had to do with NATO policy.
(Spelling correction)
Kelly
President Z receives news on Ukraine’s EU application
https://twitter.com/VeraMBergen/status/1498814410911006723
VOR
@guachi: Water. I watched a video on YouTube which claims Crimea is short of water and a major source was the North Crimean Canal which supplied fresh water from Ukraine. And they blocked the canal after 2014. Per Wikipedia the Russian Army captured it on Day One (February 24th) and blew up the blockage by February 26th.
HumboldtBlue
I’m watching MSNBC and I see two women who, if not for their collar flair, could be extras as Nonnas in a Scorsese film and here are they cos-playing RBG.
Am I crazy?
prostratedragon
For Chopin’s birthday:
John Cole
This is depressing as fuck and will not end until someone puts a bullet in Putin.
Sebastian
Oh man, amazing, Adam!
Looks like Ukrainians are using civilian drones as artillery spotters. Brutal.
I just chatted with a Ukrainian and we both suddenly came to the realization that Ukraine just received a reinforcement of ~80,000 highly motivated servicemen of not too terrible quality. Many have some training, some even combat experience. They are all getting armed to the teeth probably, I have a hard time believing the neighbors are sending Javelins/NLAWs/Stingers and not infantry arms, ammo, and body armor.
At some point, the numbers will start to matter and Russia just doesn’t have them, as crazy as this might sound considering the build-up!
I also have a hunch that every Western special forces team is either planning to get there, getting there, or already there.
SectionH
Srsly informative, thank you (and I read Kofman’s thread all the way through). Since I live kinda between Coronado NAS, the big place down the channel, and Miramar, I worry/don’t worry. It pisses me off though. My favorite place to hang out ever is on the fishing pier on Shelter Island. Tonight there was non-stop a/c noise from Coronado north. I didn’t feel too good about it.
James E Powell
@counterfactual:
I read it more like “Russians have been blundering a bit, but they can afford to because they have overwhelming force and they don’t care about wasting assets.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@John Cole: yes, all I can picture is the Russians eventually getting their act together and bungling their way threw Ukraine by sheer brute force, ignoring the cost, death and damage, then Putin seeing himself vindicated because of conformation bias, taken on NATO and WWIII starting.
Jay
Slava, one of my Ukrainian contractors flies back home on Friday.
In the last years of Ukraine being part of the Soviet Union, he was “trained” as a T-72 driver. I asked him to come back in 10 minutes, and when he did, I handed him PDF’s of Yuri Pashouk’s manuals on all the driver’s differences between all the T-72 models and upgrades.
Got the Pro Desk involved. He’s coming back tomorrow to pick up printed manuals on all the tech, including gunsights, in 4 languages, plus flash drives.
His wife is going to run his small company while he is gone. Told him to come back, and if his wife needs any assistance, have her talk to me, Flavio, Robert, Won, Ann or Gary.
Aussie sheila
I don’t expect the U govt to Instagram it, but do you (Adam) have any thoughts on the deployment of the actual U army tactics?
I know next to nothing about military matters, but I bet like everything else, training and knowing what you are doing makes a difference.
I get a bit sick at all the rah rah about plucky Ukrainian citizens, not from lack of sympathy or support for their cause, but because no matter how slow or tactically mistaken Putin’s forces may be, amateurs stand no chance against an army.
The whole thing is sickening, not least the BS merchants egging on people who are in the middle of a lethal and terrifying situation, to go and do ‘wolverines’ from their mums basement.
I very much appreciate your calm and knowledgeable approach to all this, but I have a very queasy feeling about the next few days.
HumboldtBlue
@James E Powell:
But do they really have that? How many majors and captains are going to lead motivated troops to search and kill their neighbors and cousins?
Those “assets” are human lives. How many are now willing to die for Putin?
There is something completely fucked up about this whole scenario. Competent military leaders don’t conduct a campaign in this fashion, and that lack of competence is playing out in real time on social media.
Jay
@Sebastian:
they are sending small arms, body armour, helmets, comm gear, boots, trucks, MRAP’s, food, ammo, medical equipment, fuel,……
Pretty much everything.
Anti-armour weapons and anti-air weapons get the Media because many of them were “restricted for use” previously by their donor nations/suppliers.
James E Powell
@John Cole:
Complete agreement.
rikyrah
@John Cole:
Looking for the lie.
?? none
Sebastian
Kofman’s thread was great, not sure I agree with the conclusion at the end (everything else is spot on) as I have seen this game play out before.
marcopolo
@HumboldtBlue: well, that’s fine for ground forces who get close up enough for all the cultural and other similarities to hit home for the Russian grunts (and we’ve seen it in vids), but if you are a Russian bomber pilot or artillery person firing from miles away there’s no personal element to it at all. I’d think that might be one aspect the Russian commanders are thinking about.
and sadly that’s where shit seems to be going—blow the shot out of a place then move your troops in.
Seanly
Trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts:
To my mind, Russian has already lost the long play on this war. I don’t know if Putin was high on his own supply or what, but the Ukrainians weren’t going to accept even a blitzkrieg victory that installed some puppet & brought UKR into some bizarre idea of a reconstituted Soviet Union.
The Ukrainians don’t want what Putin is pushing and are fighting back. Then the Russians bring more forces and more death & destruction to bear to get their way. But the Ukrainians will never accept it. You can try to control a country from tanks and attack helicopters but I don’t think that’s gonna work. You’d need around 100 to 120k soldiers to control UKR – few Ukrainians are gonna want to do that.
So I think we’re in a deadly loop where Putin overestimated RUS being a savior to UKR. He can’t pull out of this invasion because then he looks weak, but he can also never win. All he can do is raze the entire country and kill millions. The sanctions might not impoverish Putin personally, but if the Russian economy crashes, things will get ugly domestically.
If Russia takes over UKR, how would Putin hold it? How would they prop up a government? Are they going to just execute every Ukrainian from the current military and police? All the irregulars
John’s comment is spot on in that it almost can’t end any other way.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Might be they are trying to trigger Putin paranoia and get him to lash out at the FSB.
Adam L Silverman
@Aussie sheila: I don’t have any information on Ukraine’s order of battle and if I did, I wouldn’t post it. I think it is important to remember that the Ukrainian military has been rotating personnel through Donbas to fight the separatists and Russian little green men since 2014. They’ve got at least 60,000 veterans with experience over the past 8 years that are either back in uniform or part of the Territorial Defense Force that they’ve built. And Ukraine has been preparing for this reinvasion for 8 years. They’re motivated, they’re fighting on their own ground. That may not be enough, but the quality of the regular and irregular forces they can field is not really a question.
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, that’s why I wrote the paragraph suggesting that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s something else the little goblin’s half ass plan is missing; a designated puppet Putin can claim is the “legitimate” government.
It’s like all this talk of the Russians sending the special forces teams into Kyiv two days after the Russian plan projected end of operations. Shouldn’t these things have been in Kyiv ready go the moment this started? Also what kind of merc is going go on what is basically a suicide run?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: I see that now.
Alison Rose
@John Cole: God forgive me, but I agree with you.
I’m so terrified for Zelenskyy’s safety. And I don’t even want to think like this, but…what happens if they succeed? If they assassinate the president of a sovereign nation? Does the world just keep watching and clucking their tongues? I don’t know what should happen, but it would seem like something would have to.
Carlo Graziani
I no longer believe that the “miraculous” Kumbaya moment of the Westcoming together to confront Russia so effectively in the space of just a weekis a miracle, or an accident, or luck. It’s too complete to be anaccident. For the kind of coordinated military aid, draconian financialsanctions bordering on capital punishment, and foreign policy responsethat we have seen to come together in such a short time requirescolossal advance staff preparation, and broad and deep Internationalinter-agency communication between staffs at foreign offices,treasuries, central banks, ministries of defense, intelligence agencies,and executives. When the pages of journalism begin to curl at the edgesand acquire the first faint tinges of history, a few months from now, Ibelieve the accounts will show that the Biden administration was gettingthis thing ready early, possibly as early as last November. Which meansthat they’ve known it was coming for a while.On reflection, that isn’t so surprising in retrospect. We know that theywere 100% correct about Russian intentions in the run-up to theinvasion, and had spot-on intelligence. And intentions are the mostdifficult intelligence target to acquire, much harder than technicalstuff. A very likely explanation is that Westernintelligence agencies have the FSB and the Russian MOD thoroughly wired,with senior sources on speed-dial.Unlike the Soviet Union, which was a very hard intelligence target,Russia is probably a very soft one, because everything and everyone isfor sale. In a culture of endemic corruption, with few ideologicalmotivations, much worship of wealth, and multiple examples of “success”derived from monetization of one’s official government position, whyshould many Russian securocrats not be for sale? On the other hand,pecuniary corruption is an ancient and honorable tradition in theintelligence trade, and if there is one asset that Western intelligenceagencies have in abundance, it’s untraceable cash, to say nothing ofdiscrete banking arrangements and other attractive bribe-bait. So widepenetration of the Russian defense and intelligence establishmentappears a rather reasonable surmise to me. And that means that if a warplan to invade Ukraine began as a MOD General Staff planning exerciseand FSB intelligence tasking orders last fall, word would have gottenback to Western intelligence agencies very quickly. According to thisscenario, Western governments moved decisively to prepare trulydevastating countermoves, while carefully bounding the risks of all-out war.So bottom line number 1: if this is correct, then the results of thepast week represent a tour-de-force of preparation, staff work,planning, strategic thought, secrecy, and leadership by the BidenAdministration. They could have done more to arm Ukraine in advance,perhaps, but I no longer feel that I have any grounds to second-guessthese guys. Even when/if they’re wrong, they have good reasons for whatthey do.
Aussie sheila
A smashed Ukraine, its cities and infrastructure in ruins, a million or more refugees, and ru army in control of key border points, maybe key U government figures dead/missing.
That will be Putin’s leverage.
Then he will seek to negotiate. No matter how it is spun, victory or glorious defeat, the demoralisation of both the U people and democratic populist forces in both Europe and R will be both justification and satisfaction for his revanchist regime. Just as bad, I believe it will lead to further democratic backsliding across the world.
I hope I am wrong, but never look to war for happy endings or justice.
Once again, it is ordinary people who will be left to clean up and carry on while the most incompetent political class in my lifetime fumbles on. I don’t mean to include the Biden administration in that last point. They have been remarkably adroit. A pity about the US admins of the last thirty years.
What a cluster…k.
HumboldtBlue
@marcopolo:
You can blow up a lot of stuff, you still need someone to hold ground. That’s gonna play a role, how much is to be seen.
eclare
@Alison Rose: I agree everything is awful, but US airspace closes today. Damn I missed my chance to torch a jet!
There is still good news, and when there is, we need to blow it out their fucking ear.
PS ask any of my friends, I am a very cynical person. But the world has united. Never thought I’d see that
Eta> they will not succeed
Carlo Graziani
West of the Rockies
@Jay:
I like the cut of your jib.
The Dangerman
Getting late and I don’t recall size of all these cities, but won’t be there be a humanitarian crisis of the highest order when the food runs out? Millions starving is a problem. I’ve heard Berlin Airlift but that just starts WWIII…
…which is the end result anyway. Putin isn’t stopping until he eats a bullet.
ETA: poorly worded. Crisis here of course but it’s about to turn inconceivably ugly.
Aussie sheila
@eclare
The world is ‘United’ in the way team supporters are united during a sporting event.
People will soon get back to the quotidian demands of their lives. As they must.
Meanwhile, thousands of peoples lives ( Ukrainian and Russian) will be lost or ruined because of this.
Putin is to blame, no question about it. But it is the aftermath that will shape the future. I am not the least bit optimistic. Democracy is fundamental to any reform or future oriented project. But contemporary political economy does not allow democracy to be tied to material improvements in people’s lives. Without that, ‘democracy’ is just another ‘ism’ to people who are fearful and precarious.
I can’t believe I am living through the experiences of my parents and grandparents as they watched, waited and fought fascism at home and abroad. Just disgusting. They are all dead now, and their memories are just ‘history’.
Looks like the lesson has to be relearned every couple of generations or so.
The Pale Scot
I think most of Americans can’t grasp the level of… hate isn’t the right word. Just no, we won’t let this happen again. My father’s side is Irish, My mother’s is Polish, the surnames are Ukrainian. Heard a lot of vindictive from the olds. That’s after 30+ yrs of being in the states. This isn’t a unique event for them. And the choice is very clear, align with the west or be dragged back into the dark. A year from now we might be seeing bombings in Moscow bars
eclare
@Aussie sheila: Wow nice to meet you.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I keep hoping to hear in the news that Vlad has died of involuntary lead poisoning because I think that is what is it’s going to take to stop this. If he backs down then he looks weak so that’s not happening. He’s in this to win it and ride the results out by blaming the west. The key variable to watch is protests in Russia and their size, number and locations. IMO that will be a good indicator as to how Vlad is holding up because his enforcers can’t lock up the whole population if they rise up in protest.
Aussie sheila
@eclare
To be clear, I was not knocking you. But I have a visceral reaction to any optimism based on the outcome of violence. I know you are not supporting violence, but I distrust Usians cheerful optimism about the outcomes of war. And
@ The Pale Scot
Memories can be a great accelerant for action, good or bad. Look at the history of Ireland. But digesting the poisons can take generations. Just saying.
bjacques
Russia may be losing the propaganda war, but I’ve got a friend, who may soon become a former friend, back in Houston who’s bravely carrying on their fight. Yesterday morning she led with a plea not to boycott local Russian businesses like the Russian General Store, an admirable sentiment, but by afternoon she loosed a fusillade of posts about Ukrainian Nazis and capped it off saying that Zelenskiy could best save his country by surrendering. All this on the Facebook page of a mutual friend, who writes for the Militant Worker, believes all wars are for capitalists, and has hot takes on Democrats that frequently align with the Republican line, and even he supports Ukraine. I think that’s what set her off. Come to think of it, she was big on the Rapey Joe story in 2020.
It’s a shame, because we used to be really good friends before I moved away.
Mike in DC
While it is depressing, I do find it encouraging that Kyiv, Kharkiv and most other major cities remain in Ukrainian hands after a week, that they are still broadcasting and tweeting, command and control remains, there’s still some air assets and air defense capabilities, and that morale remains high. My hope is that they withstand the worst of it and then shift to some kind of modest counteroffensive.
eclare
@Aussie sheila: When, exactly, was the last time you commented?
The Pale Scot
@eclare:
You should see them over at LGM or Richard North’s place.
Sebastian
@HumboldtBlue:
Has no one actually read the fantastic threads Adam posted? Everyone is still clinging to the mythos of the Russian Army and how now some 101st Army is going to come and … you know what? It’s just Trumpian empty bullshitting. There is nothing. It’s only decrepit, empty, corroded, and rotten from the inside.
Every time we see the abysmal junkyard quality of the gear we make excuses “but they have so many of them” when they scrape together red-cheeked recruits and portly dad bod reservists we make excuses “they will get their elite soldiers from XY” even though they beg Kazakhstan and now Belarus to send them bodies because they have none.
It’s almost as if we are afraid to admit that we have been fooled all this time as well and so we have to pretend that the truth staring at us, somehow is not the truth. We go right back to The Myth. Same shit we did with Trump. Oh noes, he must have a super-secret master plan and in reality, it was all just shit and shit and more stupid shit.
Russia has no soldiers left for this campaign. They didn’t have it when it began, they don’t have it now, they are not going to have it in the foreseeable future. It’s Day 6 and Putin is scraping the bottom of the barrel and everyone is ignoring that Ukraine is putting 80,000 rabid honey badgers into uniforms. That’s the number Russia ended up rolling in eventually. Before everyone bailed or burned alive.
At the same time, these Russian kids are being offered $50k and EU asylum status. An 18-year-old from Omsk or Murmansk, if he can find a job, can make $800 a month. Can you even imagine what $50k mean to an 18 year old? He is not going to put aside $50k all his life. No wonder we see all this gear abandoned, including a fully functioning fucking thermobaric rocket launcher!
The questions everyone should be asking themselves:
Who is going to fight for Putin? How many soldiers does he actually have left?
This is going to be an Operation Oluja/Hurricane redux. All that abandoned hardware is going to end up in UKR hands, with Western help a proper plan will be drawn up and when the counterattack starts rolling, the Russian Army will rout.
Slava Ukraini!
Stuart Frasier
@The Pale Scot: The trolls at LGM are insultingly bad. Like they’ve run out of vodka and have gotten into the industrial alcohol bad.
eclare
@The Pale Scot: Gotcha. Thanks. I was having a bleak moment.
eclare
@Sebastian: I don’t know what Oluja means…
Jay
Sergi came in today,
he’s feeling “pushback”, because he’s Russian-Canadian, kinda like anybody Islamic after 9-11.
I pointed out that “we don’t care”, as long as you arn’t living in a multi million dollar penthouse overlooking your yacht in False Creek.
Spit every time that you say Putin, just don’t actually spit, it’s unhealthy in a time of covid, and you know, masks,
just make the sound,
laughed his ass off.
Aussie sheila
@bjacques:
F wit fake leftists. That’s what you get when there is no real left movement. No real working class organisation, just f wits on Twitter subject to Russian propaganda. When will the US left get a grip?Putin heads a fascist revanchist regime akin to the old tsarist regime. Alexander Dugin (look him up) is a close ideological mate of Putin, and Bannon and the rest of the revanchist RW, together with UK brexiteers and the like.
This shit has just begun, it is nowhere near the end.
Fukyama was wrong about the end of history, but we are certainly experiencing the end of historical memory.
eclare
@Stuart Frasier: Is that who got to me, Aussie Sheila? Once I asked her the last time she commented, poof
God she is still here. Time for pie!
Stuart Frasier
@eclare: Who knows? There was a time when trolls took pride in their craft, but it seems that we just get the d-team when the checks bounce and the ATMs run out of rubles.
eclare
@Stuart Frasier: Hahaha…so true. Used to be higher caliber.
Steeplejack
Huh. Valued tweeter @Rschooley has protected his account. Only “approved followers” can see tweets. I wonder what brought that on. And I hope it’s temporary.
Jay
@West of the Rockies:
I am excellent at customer service, unless they are a maskhole or asshole.
We got 7 positive VOC’s last month, ( Corporate is freaking out), normally, our group get’s (Voice of the Customer), Canada wise, 2 or less, at least one negative.
wanna know how to,…… I know, or will provide links,….
Aussie sheila
@eclare:
Do you seriously think I am a Putin supporter?
Try some reading-idiot.
Stuart Frasier
@Aussie sheila: in fairness to eclare, you’re so incoherent that its hard to parse what your point is.
Ruckus
@Aussie sheila:
It has through out history. But history is not the future. We have changed more in the last 75 yrs than it seems in many centuries prior. We have far better communications and we can better see that severe concentrations of money recycle this behavior as much as anything else. We still have to figure out how to change as humans and make things better but the concept that we have to continue to repeat history may finally be at least being seen as bullshit, if for no other reason, that the evidence is not just overwhelming but is also far more visible as it happens, not in history books a generation later.
May more of us see this and recognize that change is imperative in a world with this many billions of humans.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@counterfactual:
I haven’t seen a game plan this bad since Al Davis stopped bungling the Raiders
Sebastian
@counterfactual:
I have $100 riding on a similar bet since last Friday.
Aussie sheila
@Stuart Frasier:
Concentrate.
@Ruckus:
People sure can learn from their own experiences, but from history, not so much. I fervently hope for the best for the Ukrainian people, but my point is that the hopes and optimism for some kind of karmic justice against Putin and his cronies arising from this clusters…k is at best misplaced, at worst, cynical. I hope to be proven wrong.
eclare
@Aussie sheila: I have no idea what you are trying to say. Seriously. Wow. Been a long time since I have been attacked, and I am beyond grateful to everyone here who defended me.
eclare
@Stuart Frasier: Thank you.
Sebastian
@eclare:
This here
In a nutshell, Croatia had the same situation as Ukraine: young nation oriented to the West/EU/NATO but with an abusive ex who controls a Warsaw-Pact-style army and has ethnic breakaway provinces as leverage.
Replace Russians with Serbs, Donbas & Crimea with Krajina & Knin, and Putin with Milosevic and you will be hard-pressed to figure out which news article is from 1991 and which one from 2015.
Like the GOP ALEC and gerrymandering, it was a playbook that was implemented across the region from the Balkans all the way to the Caspian Sea.
Everyone was shitting their pants because there was so much artillery and tanks and forceful armies, the shit had been going on for 5 years and Croatia had lost almost 20% of its territory.
You know what happened? In those five years, especially the last two, Croatia created a professional army (like Ukraine), had US and Western defense contractors teach operational excellence in modern warfare (like Ukraine), and give Croatian forces some kickass intelligence before the action and then in real-time. Mind you, that was in 1995, so technology wasn’t as nuts as it is today.
In less than 72 hours, the Croatian forces not only liberated their entire country, they also broke the back of the occupying forces in neighboring Bosnia, routed the Serbian forces, ended the siege of Bihac, and threatened to overrun the entire Republika Srpska in Bosnia. Banja Luka was on the platter but US and NATO made it very clear that Croatia was not allowed to expand territory if they wanted to join EU & NATO, which they eventually did.
The equivalent would be Ukraine legitimately being in the position to capture St. Petersburg and being yanked back by EU & NATO.
What I am trying to say with this is, there is a precedent of effective armies devastatingly defeating decrepit and disorganized foes. Everything I see screams at me this is exactly the same scenario, just bigger.
This is going to end in a rout.
Sebastian
Oh, a big ass comment is in moderation prison. Too many links in the Wikipedia article excerpt.
Gvg
@eclare: she didn’t attack you. It wasn’t even that negative. It was just an opinion that we were being too optimistic for easy justice. That the universe was not going to quickly punish Putin. Mainly that people forget harsh history and repeat mistakes every few generations.
raven
“By the time you read this, dawn will have broken over Ukrain”. No, by the time you read this dawn will have broken over Athens, Georgia! Great posts way too late!
sab
@Gvg: Everyone human is distraught now. And thus lashing out.
I hope they (sheila aussie and eclare) settle down, because they seem to be on the same side and equally concerned. Blog explosians happen.
The disagreements are helpful. Who cares who did what or said what before.There is a war on now. We need to be together moving forward, and that seems possible now.
Geminid
@eclare: I remember “Aussie Sheila” commenting during the 2020 primaries. I did not share her political viewpoint, but I thought she was sincere, although maybe a little vehement. Like me sometimes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
https://twitter.com/olya_rudenko/status/1498973319282008070?s=20&t=EFhh-q3ATzLOM1XCyCN5MQ
In my heart of hearts, I knew that Putin was so unimaginative that installing Yanukovych as the corrupt puppet dictator of a shattered Ukraine would be the play.
The first time he’d show his face in public, they’d blow his fucking brains out and it would be well-earned.
the pollyanna from hell
@Sebastian: I wish you were not so certain, because that by itself makes me doubt you. But for rousing the troops you are good.
The Thin Black Duke
@sab: Aussie Sheila shouldn’t have called eclaire an “idiot”.
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: Agreed.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The plan is to remove the national hero president and install the person Ukranians rejected twice?
debbie
@bjacques:
Once I hear someone say “Ukrainian Nazis,” it’s time to remove their presence from your life.
zhena gogolia
@Aussie sheila: Good thing you’re not a Ukrainian.
debbie
@raven:
Agreed. But that sentence is a sad variation of the Rawandan missionaries’ first sentence in their letter to the world: “By the time you read this, we will be dead.”
What assholes we are as a species (or genus, or whatever it’s called). War. Hatred. To what end?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@raven: In Russia dawn breaks on you
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
It’ll go swimmingly. Think of the aid rakeoffs.
Were I advising the Ukraine MOD, I’d tell them to blow up his former gaudy, over-the-top manse as a message (it is currently used as a display piece, I understand.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Kay: I suspect a certain amount of projection on Putin’s part – and some poor assessment of Zelenskyy’s character and his relationship to the population of Ukraine. Not too different from the way modern GOP apparatchiks accuse Dems of the sort of perfidy that it turns out the GOP apparatchiks are guilty of. They assume the questions “What would that person do?” and “What would I do in that person’s position?” have the same answer.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
“Putin only wants security and neutrality for Ukraine!”
How can anyone watch this and still believe that? There’s no middle ground. He has to conquer that country and install a dictator – they’re never, ever going to accept this complete takeover and how does he control them without it? He can’t.
debbie
Is there any chance of resurrecting the deal to supply planes to Ukraine?
lee
As a cold war Marine (84-90) it really sort of pisses me off we have to sit this one out. I’ve been suggesting to my wife we go to Poland to help out with the humanitarian crisis there. So far I’m not getting any traction.
I see you mentioned Azov Battalion. I’m getting somewhat conflicting stories on if it is a fascist organization or not. It seems like it is (or at least has some elements within it) but then again that could just be Russian propaganda. Wikipedia is fairly circumspect about it as well. Thoughts?
This twitter thread has a long list of folks that warned about the expanding of NATO and Russia’s response. Especially warning about EU/NATO expansion into Ukraine. It seems fairly obvious that Russia would have issue with the expansion so I’m not sure why everyone thinks this is so insightful. The only other option to this would be to not let these former satellite countries determine their own destiny. Either they are still a satellite country or they are free to choose.
topclimber
@zhena gogolia: Good thing for all of us. And for the Ukrainians, since we would mostly be worthless in a fight, unless it was the pie kind.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: I agree. But I have the good grace not to second-guess them.
Kay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
He must know all he’s done is drive them closer together. He couldn’t have done a better job unifying them against him if he had set out to do that. They’ll never, ever forgive this- nor should they.
lee
Just ran across this:
Army activates prepositioned stocks for first time in wake of Ukraine invasion
topclimber
@Kay: Or, after he bloodies up western Ukraine, there is a negotiated settlement that gives him the eastern part and Western Ukraine joins NATO or is neutral with promise of Western military response if attacked again.
Putin has his off ramp, fewer Ukrainians die, and if the West aids Ukrainian reconstruction, the end result is another country on Russia’s border with an EU-oriented democracy that in the long run threatens Putin and his ilk (like Lukashenko in Belarus) more than any military adversary.
Or…maybe a better deal. But I believe there will be one.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: This is Putin’s Forever War. He owns it now.
Gin & Tonic
@lee: The Azov battalion has elements of very right-wing nationalists. As does, need I mention, the US Marine Corps that you served in. They make a convenient target for propaganda.
Gin & Tonic
@topclimber:
Will. Never. Happen.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: This. Putin is the incarnation of centuries of oppression. At least in USSR days, there was an ostensible world-historical goal that some people could agree on. This is naked aggression just as you’ve heard about from your ancestors. Right out of central casting.
topclimber
@Gin & Tonic: So what deal do you see?
Gin & Tonic
@topclimber: A bullet to the head.
Catatonia
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
A US dog, a Polish dog, and a Soviet dog meet. The US dog says, “In America, when I bark, I get a piece of meat.” The Polish dog then asks, “What is ‘meat’?” Then the Soviet dog asks, “What is ‘bark’?”
topclimber
@Gin & Tonic: Well, it is a plan. Don’t bet the farm on it.
By eastern Ukraine I mean specifically the Donbas region and a land bridge to Crimea. I think the latter is an objective for more Russians than just Putin.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@topclimber: I think Putin will have to suffer more humiliation before it will get so something like that as the end game.
If Putin is gone fascists, it’s more like Italian fascists Italy, This reminds me a lot of the attempted Italian invasion of Greece.
LeComte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
The only luck we currently have going for us is that Putin isn’t younger than he is. His behavior, to me is that of a rapacious litigant who is so blind to his own shit that he is incapable of seeing an off-ramp, which makes a negotiated resolution impossible.
This is the kind of person who escalates in response to the mere perception of the possibility of escalation – which means that the NATO air sorties and ground attacks may as well start, because he’s not gonna stop without being cleared off the game board permanently.
Give him this one in the name of realpolitik, and he’ll turn his gaze elsewhere for a new target of opportunity.
lee
@Gin & Tonic: That was the idea I was getting.
Actually in my time I didn’t see much of it. I don’t remember a single Rebel flag the entire time I was in. There were a couple of folks that did try to talk racist shit, but they were dealt with fairly quickly by the rest of us.
Friends that remained in do tell a different story that started post GW1.
I always found it weird that the Air Force had/has an evangelical problem.
topclimber
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Turkey, a NATO member but still on speaking terms with Russia, told Putin the other day that his negotiating demands are maximalist (the whole country), which suggests the Turks at least would entertain something less. China has no doubt told him to same.
Mrs. TC tells me that Zelenskyy wants Russia to retreat to where it was before the invasion, which arguably means back to the Donbas area.
Thin reeds, I grant you. But both sides are still going through the motions of negotiation. So I prefer to hope. Since that hope is grounded in huge Western pressure on Russia and a still-potent Ukrainian Army, I don’t think it is entirely implausible.
O. Felix Culpa
@Gin & Tonic: From your keyboard to the deity of your choice’s ears.
Tim C.
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, the Soviet Union was, in it’s shitty way, at least trying for a Utopian vision. And once Stalin died, it was, mostly, a bit less murdery. Putin isn’t in “great purge” territory yet, but it’s clearly going in a very very dark direction.
MisterDancer
@lee: Remember when Trump ordered all US troops get pulled from Germany?
I missed the follow-up; almost a year ago, Biden not only reversed that, he removed a cap on max troops that had been imposed.
Hunh.
WaterGirl
@Sebastian:
I am not sure what you are referring to. What did I miss?
Matt McIrvin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I think a lot of people worldwide underestimated Zelenskyy just because it seemed like he took this Trumpian celebrity/joke-candidate path to office. He was literally a comedian who played the president of Ukraine in a TV show–a “wouldn’t it be funny” vote, right? Obviously a lightweight? Well, he had an occasion to rise to.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Having read a translated version of that liberated document about the “Ukrainian question,” that bullet is the only possible solution.
topclimber
Meanwhile, a little victory for “diplomacy”?
Peale
@WaterGirl: Apparently 80,000 men of military age have returned from abroad to join the fight. Now, I’m not sanguine about how they are going to be equipped. Just handing them rifles is helpful, but Its starting to look like Ukraine is out of missiles.
Geminid
@MisterDancer: Trump announced plans to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany in June of 2020. With so much going on at the time, this did not attract a lot of notice. Members of Congress took the matter seriously and added language to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring a 120 day period and a report before any troop withdrawals. The NDAA was passed over Trump’s veto that December and then Joe Biden rescinded the withdrawal order last February.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@topclimber: From what I have read so far Putin is dreaming of seeing the Russian Federation Flag waving over the Reichstag in Berlin. My personal bet is what is fueling this nonsense is Putin got Russia in the same situation as Germany was in under Hitler before WW2; Putin has bankrupted Russia, the only way to keep it going now is to invade other countries and plunder them.
Russia has been waging a series of forever wars like Chechena for decades now, supporting dictators in Central Asia or basket case regions like the Crimea or those cities north of the arctic circle and generally spending money like Putin is running the US and not some country who exports are oil, cartoons about using a circus bear for a babysitter and ransomware. Putin was talking about this war being an economic necessity when the Russian industrialists meet with him last week
O. Felix Culpa
What hath Putin wrought? My formerly pacifist, anti-military German cousins are now all-in for Germany’s new military build-up. I don’t think the outcome of this invasion will be quite what that butcher had in mind.
The Pale Scot
The root for DOOMSDAY crazies targeted it to make sure everyone’s on board if the order came down
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And since I am on a roll this morning; What the frak incentive is for the Ukrainians to surrender like the nasty little goblin wants? Putin made it clear any occupation is just going to be Putin giving gangsters in uniform like those Chechens and Prince’s band of thugs free run of Ukraine to murder and rape at will. Even for someone who favored reunification with Russia living in Ukraine that alone would be a deal breaker. If you going to be murdered anyway, better to go down fighting were there is a chance.
MisterDancer
@Geminid: To be clear: I knew about the initial announcement + NDAA business (I recall it was one of Sen. Graham’s wee little Trump pushback moments). It was the Biden rescinding said pullout I missed, but in my defense that month was a bit busy for me personally :)
Gin & Tonic
Here are some of your “Ukrainian Nazis.”
Geminid
@MisterDancer: I figured you were knowledgeable on this subject, but I thought it worth laying it out again. Not everybody knows about the NDAA veto override and it’s consequences. One of them was the enactment of the attached Corporate Transparency Act, which may have been another reason Trump tried to stop the NDAA.
lee
@Peale:
I’m also curious to know how many foreign fighters are flocking to fight for Ukraine.
There is an entire subreddit to help volunteers get to Ukraine. There are also folks that vet those volunteers and then pair them up with folks that will fund them.
J R in WV
Dear Adam:
Thanks so much for these daily updates on the actual fighting in Ukraine — this is be far the most valuable and complete reporting on the actual war we have found. The MSM is more interested in the politics and statements from politicians than the actual combat, which is sad.
So proud of the Ukrainian people and their patriotism, their combining to defend their nation and the people of Ukraine. So ashamed of the Russians willing to attack a peaceful neighbor for no reason at all. It is as if I took a fancy to attack the country minister/farmer next door, who has done nothing since moving in next door but be helpful and friendly. That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? But here we are, Paratroopers landing in a Ukraine city to attack a hospital, the perfect example of a war crime in my book…
I know you have real work to do, and dogs to feed and scritch, and I thank you for squeezing in enough time to compose these updates for we the Jackals of Balloon Juice.
Best wishes, take care, skritch a dog for me!
J R
Sebastian
@Peale:
What makes you believe they are out of missiles? I am sure there are logistical issues but they are receiving shipments in the thousands.
MisterDancer
Since that’s a risk, I doubt anyone’s going to give out anything but very rough/general numbers. There was a (alleged) pic of an African embedded w/Ukrainian fighters on Twitter, and people who even hinted about wanting more info on him were dragged hard. As much as wanting more makes sense (is this pic real?), if it is real, finding out too much might put that fella at risk.
Military OpSec is not something I personally know, yet it feels like some information we’d like to have — even are used to having, as civilians — can be dangerous in these situations. It’s not wrong to want it! Just saying if someone says “nah” there might be really good reasons.
scribbler
@J R in WV: Just wanted to add my total agreement with your thank you to Adam for these updates. I am learning so much every day from them. Thank you Adam!
Sebastian
@WaterGirl:
Ukrainian men are literally dropping everything and traveling home to fight. It was 80,000 a day ago, it will be 100k by tomorrow and it’s not ending.
Miss Bianca
@Aussie sheila: Oh, Christ, it’s you again. You never show up except to doom-bay at us over the manifold sins and wickednesses in the world that are somehow always the fault of the US.
Bye, Sheila. Feel free to go back to whatever the hell you do in meatspace in Australia that’s presumably more productive.
Geminid
@Sebastian: Ukraine might be getting short on the missiles carried by their TB-2 drones, and perhaps the drones themselves. I think they started out with 20 or less of these deadly drones.
Early in the war the Russians bombed the factory Turkey and Ukraine were setting up to produce these “Bakraytors,” so Ukraine must look to Turkey for resupply.
Sebastian
@MisterDancer:
@lee:
Everyone who has a score to settle with the Russians is pondering. That’s the Polish, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Croatians, and Finns just for starters.
Resentments, visceral hate even, runs deep for generations. The numbers are not the issue, with help from the governments this could be easily be tens if not hundreds of thousand, the issue is logistics and command.
Sebastian
@Geminid:
Shipment of TB2s arrived yesterday.
lee
@Sebastian: Cruising thru the reddit comments, it appears quite a few staff level US officers with logistical and tactical training are headed to Ukraine.
Everyone on reddit seems to be keeping fairly good OpSec. Lots of pictures of gear without any identifying insignia.
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca: On point:
RaflW
@SectionH: I’ve been spending a decent chunk of winter in Summit County, CO since at least 2014. Twice this past week, C-130s practiced flying in the Blue River valley just east of the Tenmile Range (think Breckenridge ski resort).
I’d seen similar aircraft do this sort of low-level mountain pass flying in Wales years ago, but this was a first (and second) for me in CO. Sure we occasionally hear the jet guys from Colorado Springs, but they’re up high and movin’ fast.
Other than the Carpathians way in the west of Ukraine, I’m not sure that there’s a ton of high mountains in the present fighting zones, but practicing flying in significant terrain seems useful if one is at least considering future security needs in Europe. :/
Sebastian
@lee:
Can you share a few places on Reddit? I am relying mostly on Twitter which is frustrating at times.
What you are saying tracks what I am hearing from back home:
This. Is. It.
The time for nuanced debates has passed and the time to put up or shut up has arrived. The courage and determination is shaming all of us into action. Look how the trucker protests have disappeared or become a farce overnight.
Nobody has an excuse left, which is what makes it so easy to spot the Putin apologists and operatives.
In that spirit, I would like to make a call to arms to the Balloon-Juice community. We can join the fight in cyberspace, especially information warfare.
lee
@Sebastian:
This is the main subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/volunteersForUkraine/
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I am not even remotely observant, but that photograph is really very moving.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Have I told you how much I enjoy your presence here?
Ruckus
@Tim C.:
Remember, vova was the head of the KGB. I’d bet he never learned to play nice with others. Of course that seems like a pretty good bet, given all we’ve seen from him.
RaflW
@Sebastian: Yes. I try to ‘coat-tail’ on various mainstream news tweets about the ways that Mike Pompeo and other Trump folks (and TFG himself) have tried to sell us out.
Part of supporting Ukraine, to me, is doing all we can to ensure that the GOP is wrong-footed going into the mid-terms. They will launch all sorts of internal, destabilizing attacks on the US system if they regain committee investigative powers in Congress. They’ve made that utterly clear.
A Biden admin mired in extreme bad faith bullshit from the GOP in D.C. will put is in a very bad place vis. global security and the rapidly shifting situation in Europe. We really are in a massive paradigm shift, right now, and the GOP just wants their petty partisan gains. They couldn’t care less about the US as a whole.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks… a moving picture of observant Jews in uniform, prepared to defend their nation and way of life. Love the long beard on the older guy, as a bearded guy all my life.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well, the Ukrainian government has declared Ukrainian citizens need not declare equipment they captured from the Russian army as an asset their taxes. So War Never Changes.
Seanly
@Sebastian:
I dig your optimism & hope you’re right.
We should keep in mind how the CIA way over-estimated the military and nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union from the late 50’s until it broke up.
However, the cluster munitions, thermobaric missiles/bombs and artillery can still kill a lot of Ukrainians before this is over.
RaflW
Samantha Power just noted that in 2014, 100 countries voted in the UN to condemn Russia for the invasion of Crimea. The vote this time was 141 against Russia.
Putin really is unifying much of the world, and forcing a new Iron Curtain around himself and his countryfolk.
Sebastian
@Seanly:
True. I would consider that the Russians are not the only ones with thermobaric artillery. Ukrainians have captured several fully functional and loaded launchers. They have at least 30 thermobaric warheads now, probably more than 100.
The Russian troops are, no offense, absolute garbage. They are cold and hungry. Check out this thread
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1498999540967432198
VOR
@O. Felix Culpa: Germany increasing their military spending was definitely not something Putin wanted. Sweden and Finland joining NATO would also be some significant blowback.
Germany’s GDP is around US$4.5 trillion. An increase of German defense spending by 1% of GDP would be $45B, which is within the range of estimates of Russia’s entire defense budget.
Sebastian
One thing that strikes me is the sheer number of destroyed support vehicles.
The numerous takes about how Russia has so much gear and they can easily replace tanks and APCs don’t take into account that there aren’t that many fuel transporters. Sure, you have 5,000 MTBs and can easily replace 1,000 if destroyed or abandoned. But do you have 300 fuel transporters?
Also, by now the roads are completely fucked. Burned out wrecks and craters everywhere plus barricades and obstacles are making the roads very difficult to use. Ukraine has very wet soil, always borderline swamp. As spring approaches it will become impassable for tanks until summer.
I don’t see anything that would improve the Russian situation, only developments against them.
And right on cue, it appears there are now signs of counteroffensive moves.
Gin & Tonic
@Sebastian: One of the tweets in that thread, showing two farm tractors towing away a piece of equipment, is kind of amusing.
The tractors are characteristic John Deere green and yellow. A few years back a story was making the rounds in tech circles about how John Deere corp was restricting machinery owners’ access to software on the tractors, requiring “factory techs” to make certain repairs. When you’ve got soybeans to harvest, and they say “the factory tech will be out there next Tuesday” that’s no good. The issue is called “right to repair” but since so much of modern machinery is software, the manufacturer maintains control even when the farmer owns the equipment. This is doubly a problem in a place like Ukraine – but it has a very strong tech sector, so…. Turns out that Ukrainian hacked software for John Deere tractors has become *very* popular in places like Iowa and Nebraska.
Lyrebird
Hearing from you and @Gin & Tonic: is so informative.
I see other folks like John Stolz saying okay there’s no way R can win this and talking about some of the same factors. I just have such a hard time getting my head around this at the same time as we see the greater and greater number of civilians killed, Mariapol cut off…
Ah well. I should toss what coins I can spare to some of the helping agencies I guess and keep moving. I did make sure to select a Ukrainian photo when I needed a slice of life image for a poster, symbolic gesture…
Sebastian
@Lyrebird:
You are welcome. Perhaps to clarify, just because the Russian army is moribund doesn’t mean that all of them are idiots. The current estimates are that 10% are actually fairly competent and in the past, those were the ones selected when units needed to be sent somewhere. Now the units are being deployed completely and you have 80%+ untrained rookies or idiots, who gum up everything.
10% with this level and quantity of deadly hardware can do a lot of damage, especially since artillery does not require as many bodies.
(Donbas and Eastern Ukraine) is a slightly different situation because you have the separatists, who are still terrible, are ideologically motivated, more experienced, and logistics are easier. There, UKR will have to start a campaign soon.
Lyrebird
@Sebastian: Much appreciated, once again!
FWIW between grad students who taught me and students I’ve taught, I’ve worked with some really awesome folks from Croatia, Serbia (someone whose parents were against the regime there from the start), and Kosovo. Wish I could give ’em all a hug now!
Sebastian
This is the glorious Russian Army that will conquer Ukraine.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/t4zjsy/russian_soldier_has_surrendered_and_got_cried
Kids, cold and hungry, thrown into enemy territory without a plan. Against opponents armed to their teeth and willing to fight to their last breath. That is the true tragedy here and huge props to the Ukrainians for recognizing this and choosing humanity over vengeance.
This humane treatment will evoke righteous fury in the parents and families of these boys and make them raze the Kremlin to the ground. I know I would for my child.
Gin & Tonic
@Sebastian:
Those dudes are as ideologically motivated as Ray Liotta saying “fuck you, pay me.”
Sebastian
Russian “Special Forces”. Kids with 3 months of training.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/t509u8/captured_russian_gru_special_forces/
Sebastian
@Gin & Tonic:
Some for sure, after all the recruitment pool consists mostly of local low-level mobsters and criminals. Which does not exclude nationalism as motivation or driver. Those in the diaspora are usually 120% nationalistic because they are a minority belonging to a dominant ethnicity, just dominant elsewhere.
Stalin, the sick fuck, used this on purpose, see Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Lyrebird
@Sebastian: Wow. I couldn’t understand the mom’s words over the phone, but I could see that fella was in a state of desperation… that tea or whatever is clearly like ambrosia. And that the aid worker or whatever takes a moment to tell moms it’s gonna be okay, with kindness…
Hey if you or G&T reads this, there’s a call out for people who can translate from Russian, supposedly Anonymous got a load of documents it’s in the comments, search for Anonymous or “whole bunch of intel” …maybe you might know interested people with the skills needed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Perusing Facebook I see it’s just driving a lot of people nuts that they can’t shame the US for Putin’s mess with Ukraine.
I noticed the same with COVID that even though it started in China, got spread around the world because Italians are so addicted to going to clubs they fled Italy when the Italian government imposed a lock down, that somehow that was the US’s fault. My father was arguing that in one sense Trump did some good that he stirred NATO off it’s smug ass and there might not be this unity of action to help Ukraine otherwise. I think there might be something to that.
But I am sure in a month and the shock wears off there will be all kinds of bullshit conspiracies about how the US is secretly behind it all rather than these people dealing with the fact that there are other actors in the world. Bit like the press and it’s always the Democrats fault.
Sebastian
Russians drink a lot of tea and he is clearly distressed but also frozen because it’s very cold, below freezing, and we don’t know how long these guys were without fuel and heat in a box of steel on wheels.
The woman is not a social worker, the folks are local civilians who brought food and tea because they know these soldiers have been hungry and cold for days. There are other videos in that Reddit group where Russian soldiers, guys in their 40ies, are eating bread. It could be a very humble sandwich of two slices with butter but it could very well be just bread. All of them are eating, clearly hungry.
This is a humanitarian catastrophe above everything else and Ukrainians are teaching us an incredible lesson. They just announced that they will release every POW if their mother comes to pick him up. The POWs are instructed to tell their mothers to protest, to gather as many friends and family members and protest.
They know this can only be won if the Russian people rise up. This is a masterclass in nation building, driven by the yearning for freedom and self determination.