(Image found here; artist unknown)
We’re going to start again this evening in Mariupol. This morning reports started coming out that elements of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, which has been fighting from within Mariupol, had run out of ammunition, other supplies, and, as a result, were surrendering. Reporting in The Daily Beast both clarifies and complicates what is going on.
Ukrainian marines defending the besieged city of Mariupol from Russian forces have issued a desperate video appeal, saying they have run out of supplies and feel “forgotten” as they prepare to fight to the end.
“We have not given up our positions. We have held every bit of this city as much as we could. But the reality is that the city is blockaded and surrounded—and no supply of ammunition or food has come. We have held out until the end,” one of the men in the 36th Marine Brigade says in the video shared on Facebook.
“We are grateful to every Ukrainian who believed and continues to believe in the marines. We’ve held on for so long with this faith. We have not abandoned our positions. We have remained loyal and will remain loyal always,” he said.
While vowing to continue the fight, he painted a dire picture of the situation on the ground, saying the marines are trapped at an industrial plant in the city.
“For over a month, the marines fought without replenishment of ammunition, without food, without water, drinking from a puddle and dying in batches,” he said.
“No one wants to talk to us anymore, we are forgotten,” he said.
The devastating video comes amid reports that a British volunteer fighting with the Ukrainian marines had surrendered to Russian forces. Aiden Aslin, 28, had been fighting alongside Ukrainian troops since 2018, but reportedly told his family back home they had “no weapons left” after fending off a full Russian takeover for weeks.
Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the city since Russian forces moved in.
Here’s the video with partial translation by The Kyiv Independent‘s Olga Tokariuk:
'Till the end… Ukraine, Europe, the world… We believe in victory, we believe until the end': Ukrainian marines, surrounded in Mariupol, recorded this emotional video. They are besieged, outnumbered, unable to get weapons, but they are still holding, almost two months in ? https://t.co/NY4mI31VHC
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) April 12, 2022
Based on The Daily Beast‘s reporting, what appears to have happened is that the members of the 36th Marine Brigade made their video as an appeal for relief and resupply and vowing to fight on. At the same time a British member of the brigade, Aiden “Johnny” Aslin, who tweets as CossakGundi, put out his own statement that he was surrendering and it all got conflated together. Here’s Christopher Miller’s response with a link to his reporting on Aslin:
Here’s my interview with Aiden, known to many as Johnny. And photo of him from January in Pavlopil, by @Kiehart. https://t.co/HkU0xBb3ed pic.twitter.com/ktKjdnveJx
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 12, 2022
As of right now I’ve seen no reporting indicating the Ukrainian Marines have surrendered. Hopefully the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense will find a way to get their Marines some resupply despite Mariupol being besieged and partially occupied by the Russian military.
The Azov Regiment is still in Mariupol and is still fighting, which brings me to the second part of tonight’s update regarding Mariupol. Here is a thread by Dan Kaszeta, who is a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) warfare subject matter expert with his take on what is going on with the alleged chemical weapons attack on the Azov Regiment:
THREAD #Ukraine #Mariupol
Was there a chemical attack? What was it?Well, let me say this about that (1/n)
— Dan Kaszeta ?? (@DanKaszeta) April 12, 2022
- First thing, I’m instituting what I call the Ghouta rule. I’m over-run by queries and questions. I can’t get to all of them. If answer you, it’s because you’re very lucky or very unlucky.
- We still have a paucity of information. It is legitimately difficult to assess these situations remotely, particularly when we largely have second-hand or third-hand reports rather than actual evidence from the scene
- Even if we did have video of, say, sick people, it is proper difficult to do telemedicine. Some of you are literally asking me to be a doctor and do a diagnosis remotely. This is perilous
- Rather a lot of you are jumping straight to nerve agents and even a specific diagnosis of Sarin. Cut that out. That’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because if someone gives nerve agent drugs to someone who isn’t a nerve agent casualty, it will make them worse or kill them
- Nerve agent antidotes are specifically that. They are not some kind of universal chemical agent antidote.
- Back to the alleged incident. Let’s look at what we have as our thin basis of evidence.
- We have a witness account citing a drone. (Q: Do we have a picture or video of the drone?) We don’t know if the drone was actually involved or coincidental.
- We have a handful of sick, but not dead, Ukrainian soldiers. They’ve had difficulty breathing and ataxis. This does not tell us much. People leaping onto nerve agent diagnosis from this presentation of signs and symptoms are way off
- The phrase “vestibulo-atactic syndrome” has been bandied about with much evident authority, but my opinion right now is that’s a quite advanced medical diagnosis. Q: Did someone put some signs and symptoms into Google and come up with that phrase?
- What we really have is people being dizzy. What we don’t have is signs and symptoms (and any kind of medical diagnostics) that narrow the investigative focus to chemicals, let alone a specific chemical warfare agent.
- For us to get to a conclusion that a chemical weapon was used, we need a few things that are missing at this point.
- First things first, we need to look at differential diagnosis. Rather a lot of you are running around saying that you hear zebras, whereas there could be horses, which are more common
- Let’s look at the place. It’s a steelworks. There’s lots of scope in an industrial setting for conventional or incendiary weapons to cause chemical problems because of fires and explosions.
- Also, look at the broader environment. Mariupol is one big toxic burn pit at the moment. Somehow we’re supposed to assume that one small drone payload of something is tragically unhealthier than the rest of this mess of an environment
- It is, in fact plausible. But it’s also plausible that we have a classic problem of smoke and flame and modern industrial materials (plastics etc) burning all over the damned place.
- Second, we do not have any actual description of the alleged chemical. Is it a powder, a liquid spray, a mist, a gas, a vapour? Does it smell? Does it have a colour?
- The answer I get was that it was invisible and odourless. This raises the question – how do you know it was there or tie it to the drone?
- Without environmental and/or biomedical samples, this will always remain an unknown.
- By the way, I’m not accusing anyone on the scene of lying. It’s just that chemical attacks are, in fact, a rare thing, and people might not know what to expect or look for or what smart questions to ask on the spot.
- The fog of war is real. And this is a swamped yet fragile information space. It’s a front in an information war
- By going all apeshit on Twitter about a vague and ill-defined incident, you’ve all just demonstrated how CW is more an information weapon than a battlefield weapon.
- Now, I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how making a few soldiers sick actually wins the battle for the Russians. I’m trying to work out a cost/benefit equation here and somethings missing.
- I’ve got to go. I will be mobile much of the day. I will add to this thread.
- I just got this in. Unconfirmed at this point. This very much points away from nerve agents by the way.
Much more after the jump.
Here’s the latest British Ministry of Defense update:
And here’s the latest British Ministry of Defense map of where everything is in the south and east of Ukraine:
Here’s the transcript of the DOD’s backgrounder briefing from earlier today:
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Okay, good morning, everybody. Sorry I’m a little bit late.
I don’t have a whole lot of updates today from yesterday, so I’ll just, rather than go through everything, I’ll just tell you what I can update you on.
We’re up to more than 1,540 missile launches. Air strikes continue to be focused on Mariupol and the Joint Force operation area there to the east, and Donbas.
The convoy that we’ve been talking about is still north of Izyum about 60 kilometers or so, and we do assess that it’s moving, but not at breakneck speed. No updates for — I don’t have the number of vehicles. I don’t know how fast they’re traveling. I don’t know what’s in every truck, but I still would characterize it the way I characterized it yesterday. It includes some command-and-control elements, some enablers and we think it’s also intended for resupply, perhaps an effort to amend their poor performance and logistics and sustainment in the north. But again, we don’t really have a whole lot more information about what’s in that thing.
There is still heavy fighting around Izyum right now, and Russian forces do remain south of Izyum, again, about 20 kilometers or so, which is not a huge change from where it was before. I don’t have an update on number of BTGs that are in the east and the south. Nothing to update you from yesterday. It’s about the same, and let’s see —
I think that’s it, so we’ll get the questions because I’ve got a hard stop at 11 o’clock, so Bob, on to you.
Q: Thank you, Let’s see — on the issue of a possible — of white phosphorus or some sort of chemical agent that has been reported the last couple of days, do you have any update on what your assessment of that is?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah, no updates. You saw my brief statement last night. I think that statement holds today, that we’re still trying to monitor that — these reports, but we cannot confirm the use of chemical agents at this time. We’re still evaluating.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yup.
Tom Bowman?
Q: Yeah, on this convoy, presumably, we believe they’re heading to Izyum, is that right? And also, are the Ukrainians attacking this convoy at all, or is this kind of open ground that makes that difficult? And also, what’s the Russian combat power, what percentage? I think one of the last times we talked, it was like 85 percent.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah. So we would assess that Russian assessed available combat power — and again, I want to remind you guys that that’s of the combat power that they preassembled before their invasion. We estimate that they’re just above 80 percent in terms of what’s left of them.
Yes, the convoy’s north of Izyum. I don’t know its final destination, but I would remind that, you know, with the spring weather they have to stay on the paved roads. They’re staying on highways and avenues. They’re not going off-roading here. So we do assess them about 60 kilometers north of Izyum, and they are moving south. Now, whether Izyum is it, I just don’t know.
Q: And as far as —
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: No, and I have not seen — we haven’t seen indications that the Ukrainians have attempted attacks on the convoy yet.
Q: Okay, thanks.
Dan Lamothe?
Q: Hi, good morning. Thank you.
Wanted to see if we could maybe get some explanation on the challenges that go with confirming this kind of report in Mariupol with the chemical agents in light of the security, the challenges to get soil samples, anything else, you know, outsiders might use to try and confirm something like this.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah. I mean, well, the biggest challenge is we’re not there, you know. And we don’t know if anything was used.
But let’s say for hypothetical purposes, and I hate doing this, but let’s say it was riot control agents. So the effects are going to be felt pretty immediately, and probably not widespread, probably not going to get into the soil. And the symptoms,depending on an individual’s susceptibility, could be short-felt or it could be more long-term, we just don’t know. And we don’t have access to the hospitals that might have treated these individuals to talk to the doctors who could give a diagnosis.
I mean, there’s a host of difficulties. If it was something larger than that then, of course, you would expect to see more widespread people being hurt and being treated for it. And again, that would require you to have some dexterity in talking to medical professionals.
Or if there was, again, something even bigger you, you know, a plume for instance of a cloud or something that you could track. But those are very difficult to track when you’re not there. They’re certainly not something you can just track easily from, you know, from the air. So these are difficult things to prove even when you are more proximate, and we are not.
And so I think you can understand we want to be very careful here before making a proclamation.
That said, look, we know that the Russians have a history of using chemical agents. And they have shown a propensity in the past, and so we’re taking it seriously.
The rest of the Q&A is at the link!
Russian Bastion Anti-Ship missile unit on the move west of Vyborg.
That road leads to Finland along the Saimaa Canal. It's about 26km from the Finnish border and 7km from the lowest lock of the canal that is rented to Finland.#turpo https://t.co/EY6pwhVH6r— Petri Mäkelä (@pmakela1) April 11, 2022
Putin has a limited, but up until February, very effective strategic playbook. He uses it over and over and over again and every time, so far, it has worked. When I mentioned last night that I was concerned with the long lead time between the announcement that Finland and Sweden would joint NATO and it actually happening, I wasn’t just spitballing. Putin has pulled this off successfully twice before. And the reason he keeps going back to the same playbook over and over and over again is because he is convinced that western states and societies – the US, the EU, NATO, and non EU and non NATO allies, will do what they always do: eventually lose focus, lose their interest, and he’ll be allowed, once again, to get away with it. Here’s a good explainer on this by Slava Malamud:
The most likely scenario of how all of this develops: Putin switches fully into the "Syria mode." This means total warfare, on the entire territory of Ukraine, via air strikes designed to level entire cities and utterly destroy Ukraine's infrastructure.
He may succeed…— Slava Malamud ?? (@SlavaMalamud) April 12, 2022
Putin, at this point, must know he can’t conquer Ukraine in the traditional military sense. There won’t be a parade in Kyiv, Russian tanks won’t roll into Lviv, Russian-speakers in Odesa won’t be greeting him with bread and salt. So, his goal will be not to conquer, but to crush
The idea is to level as much of Ukraine as is possible, to create chaos, despair, discontent, willingness to end this at any cost. At which point Putin can negotiate for the “brokered peace” that many in the West secretly or openly desire. It’s a win for everyone. Except Ukraine.
And democracy. And freedom. And humanity. For everyone else – sure, a big win. Putin gets to annex the east. He gets to make the rest of Ukraine an effective colony/protectorate. He gets to declare victory and proclaim himself the savior of Russia. He gets monuments everywhere…
The West gets to lift the sanctions and keep making money. Hoping that they have satisfied Putin’s ambitions. Which they won’t. Because the rest of Ukraine, once properly “demilitarized”, will be ripe for annexation. And then – why not? Poland, Finland, the sky is the limit.
All he’ll need is for Trump, Le Pen, other friendly politicians to finally dismember NATO. This can be achieved within a few years, given favorable election results. This is the long game. The short game: Ukrainian cities buried in rubble. Ukrainian people dead, mutilated, raped.
The price that, he hopes, the West will pay to put Russia out of its mind & go back to making money. His bet is on Western corruption and decadence. He knows he can make Russians endure all hardships for The Glory of the Motherland. They will eat tree bark and praise Dear Leader.
They have done this before, many times. But the West, in his estimation, is beholden to fickle voters who value their comfort and don’t much care for what’s beyond their borders. Western politicians are weak, cowardly and only want to avoid conflict and crises…
They will negotiate. They will let him take his lap. They will hope he is satisfied. This is the plan. And you don’t need a genius to see it. The only question that remains: is Putin right?
There are two differences this time though. The first is President Zelenskyy who has been masterful with his public diplomacy of naming and shaming to try to keep the coalition providing Ukraine support in line.
Not least among Zelensky's accomplishments thus far has been his spotlighting and shaming of all the European enablers of the Kremlin through his unvarnished form of diplomacy. https://t.co/zphqOq0dlD
— Michael Weiss ????? (@michaeldweiss) April 12, 2022
From CBS News:
Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs more sanctions imposed on Russia, and more military aid from allies, who should be less fearful of Putin.
“Weapons, number one. They need to be very serious about it. They definitely understand what I’m talking about right now. They have to supply weapons to Ukraine as if they were defending themselves and their own people. They need to understand this: If they don’t speed up, it will be very hard for us to hold on against this pressure. The second factor is sanctions. Because we’ve found some things in sanctions that are easy for financial experts to circumvent. Russia has been circumventing them, and this is absolutely true. The Western world knows it. This shouldn’t be allowed. This is not a movie, this is real life. Stop fearing the Russian Federation. We’ve shown we are not afraid.”
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, told Pelley that he asked the Biden administration for heavier weapons – tanks and jets – and for them to be delivered fast.
“If we receive this support in time, we will win,” Yermak said.
A White House official told 60 Minutes that Yermak received a “yes” to his requests, but filling those orders takes time. The Ukrainians also need Russian-made weapons that they already know how to use.
The second is President Biden.
Biden: I called it genocide because it has become clear that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian pic.twitter.com/h4SBfDQuFW
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 12, 2022
Here’s Zelenskyy’s reply:
True words of a true leader @POTUS. Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 12, 2022
Ukraine is in massive need of basic military resupply. All the high tech stuff is getting a lot of attention, but the reality is that the basics are in short supply and the campaign in the Donbas is imminent!
I can confirm that volunteers and charity organizations in Ukraine are still raising money for things such as night vision equipment and tactical medicine kits for Ukrainian military. The Western assistance is clearly not sufficient https://t.co/WVd5H4nWlu
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) April 12, 2022
Here’s the rest of Mohov’s thread:
- We are requesting heavy equipment because it would make a larger, strategic difference, but our Western allies have not provided enough of *anything*. Radios. Night vision and thermal optics. Rangefinders. Drones. Combat boots. Tourniquets. Grenades. Binoculars. Battle sights.
- I am saying this as someone who receives dozens of requests for things like uniforms, socks, knives, tents, backpacks, canteens, scalpels, flags for bomb squads, tactical headphones, medkits WEEKLY without even officially being a part of any fund that helps the army.
- So, when I hear from German politicians that they have reached some sort of limit in help for Ukraine, knowing that all these things and more have been requested and re-requested on absolutely every level, it sounds like a cynical joke. Sounds like they sided with Putin.
- And this is the type of reply we get whenever we bring this up. Also on all levels. Just for your information.
- The sense of entitlement is going to destroy Ukraine. Keep in mind: Absolutely no one owes Ukraine anything. Ukraine is the only one responsible for defending Ukraine and they have neglected that and failed themselves. The less grateful Ukraine is the less it gets and deserves.
- Often, it’s been the opposite of charity: it’s been sabotage. I think the electorate of these politicians deserves to know this. It’s frequently the case of countries BLOCKING purchases of necessary equipment by Ukraine. For cash money. They don’t let us buy stuff.
The result is attempts to crowdsource basic military supplies:
You deserve to know where your donations went.
And if you haven't contributed yet, there's still time. This is far from over and there are still lives to be saved.
— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) April 12, 2022
One of the problems here, from small arms and ammunition to large ones is that Ukraine is still using Soviet bloc style weaponry. NATO’s stockpiles of side arms, carbines, rifles, and the ammunition for it is all standardized. Essentially 9mm parabellum ammunition and handguns chambered for it and 5.56 NATO rifle rounds and the carbines and rifles chambered for it. Ukraine uses the AK pattern rifles, which use 7.62X39mm rounds. Same problem for the big stuff. From The Times of London:
Western countries are ramping up weapons deliveries to Ukraine as the country prepares for an expected Russian push to take Donbas in the east. However, they are struggling to provide weaponry compatible with the country’s antiquated artillery units, which date back to the Soviet era, according to reports last night.
Ukraine requires more long-range artillery to target the Russian forces that have been relentlessly shelling its cities over the past six weeks. Nato countries tend to use 155mm calibre while Ukraine’s weapons use 152mm.
“The Ukrainians are running out of 152mm ammunition. Where are they going to get it?” Chris Donnelly, an adviser to four former Nato secretaries-general on the Soviet and Russian military told the Financial Times. “No one in the West uses it or makes it apart from the Serbs — and they’re on Russia’s side.”
After being successfully repelled from taking Kyiv, Russian forces are regrouping and moving eastwards for an offensive to take the Donbas region in the east, which sources in the West think will take about a week.
Ukraine is calling for tanks, fighter jets and long-range anti-aircraft missile systems.
“We recognise . . . more advanced weapons will be required,” an official from a Nato country told the Financial Times. “We’re prepared to go further.”
However, the issue is whether to try to source weaponry compatible with Ukraine’s ageing systems, or provide newer weapons used by Nato countries that Ukrainian forces may be unfamiliar with and that may require weeks of training.
Some military experts question whether the level of weaponry supplied will be seen as a provocation by Russia.
“Donbas is going to be a big reveal of western intentions,” Mathieu Boulègue, senior research fellow at Chatham House in London, said. “As the West expands the types of weapons it supplies, it will stress-test Russian thresholds of tolerance.”
Much more at the link!
Another major problem is that Germany keeps blocking weapons purchases. The Ukrainians keep making orders with German weapons manufacturers and suppliers and the Scholz government just keeps telling the companies they’re not allowed to fill them.
Which is why this is welcome news!
Ukrainians pilots familiar w/ drone ops would not be “starting from scratch” in learning how to fly them, said @GeneralAtomics spox C. Mark Brinkley.@OMarkarova's people confirm the meet but declined to say what they requested. They want to “surprise Russia on the battlefield.”
— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) April 12, 2022
While I’d already seen this thread, Gin&Tonic sent it across and I think it is important we give it a read:
I will describe here who Ukrainians are and why they are resisting. This resistance has very deep historical roots, and are based upon a specific Ukrainian political culture. A thread 0/8
— Volodymyr Yermolenko (@yermolenko_v) April 12, 2022
- Ukrainian political culture is bottom-up and very decentralized. It starts from a community, which Ukrainians call “hromada”. Hromada – a key word for Ukrainian political philosophy since at least 19th century, f.e. philosophy of Mykhaylo Drahomanov 1/8
- Drahomanov, trained as historian of Ancient Greece and Rome, made his philosophy of hromada based upon Greek (Aristotelian) philosophy of a city/polis. For him, politics starts from a local community, state emerges as integration of these communities, “hromada of hromadas”. 2/8
- This is a sharp difference to Russian political culture which is centralized, and top-down. Unity of Russian politics is possible only around a tsar, a tyrant. In Ukraine, people are always opposed to a tsar. Zelensky is an anti-tsar: too close to the people, “one of us” 3/8
- Why Ukrainian army is successful now? Because this decentralized spirit coincides with the Western techniques of military organization that Ukraine has adopted in its cooperation with NATO. Ukrainian mid-level commanders have much more freedom to act than Russian commanders. 4/8
- Self-governance reform implemented since 2014 gave more powers to mayors. Mayors showed themselves positively now, organizing defense of cities. Interestingly this brings Ukraine closer to a medieval “princely” times of Kyivan Rus’, decentralized community of city-states 5/8
- A leitmotiv of Ukrainian literature, historiography, philosophy is opposition to the centralized idea of state and universe. Skovoroda, Shevchenko, Kostomarov, Drahomanov, Ukrainian socialists of early 20th century. The key idea was a) anti-autocracy, b) self-organization 6/8
- Also look at the spirit of freedom and emancipation of Ukrainian female writers, from Marko Vovchok to Lesia Ukrainka – female emancipation and anti-patriarchal trend was very early, in 19th century 7/8
- to conclude: this freedom-loving, decentralized, anti-tyrannical spirit was in Ukraine for centuries. This is very different from Russia. Naturally, Ukrainians understand that defending this modus vivendi is an existential fight 8/8
I think that’s enough for one night. And yes, I’m aware that the Ukrainians scarfed up Medvechuk today and that the Russians scarfed up Vladimir Kara-Murza, but since both of those have gotten a lot of news coverage, I figured I didn’t need to cover them in today’s update beyond this note.
So we’ll finish with your semi-daily Chef Jose Andres:
In the newly liberated city of Chernihiv north of Kyiv, hundreds of people were waiting for the @WCKitchen team today. Need for food is big & almost no aid reaches here…so we brought 1,300 hot meals & 500 bags with 15 kilos of food each for families to cook! #ChefsForUkraine ?? pic.twitter.com/tjmr6EK5Li
— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) April 12, 2022
Kramatorsk is the end of the railway before occupied territory. And despite a missile strike that murdered 59 civilians, @WCKitchen lead Katya is not leaving. Her mission: to make sure nobody goes hungry as the city prepares for invasion. #ChefsForUkraine pic.twitter.com/cb1JsyaNck
— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) April 12, 2022
Open thread!
marcopolo
I will look for it, but I am pretty sure I saw a report that the 36th had actually fought out of the pocket they were in and hooked up with the Azov folks at the industrial plant. And yes, this was reported as a serious surprise, and yes, this was reported with the caveat that they still might have barely any supplies left. Going to look for this info now
Here it is:
Don’t know anything about the reliability of the folks providing the information, but this was from a post at DKos where they have been pretty good about vetting stuff they put into their articles
Last but not least, this is the link to the overarching DKos article from this afternoon:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/12/2091565/-Ukraine-update-Russia-has-issues-with-logistics-and-command-but-there-s-one-more-factor
Kelly
Thank you Adam. I always value the knowledge you share.
CaseyL
“Making money” is the only value that way too many people hold as the highest, or even the only, and for it they will countenance atrocities.
I am deeply grateful our President isn’t one of them.
Freemark
I always look for these updates. Thank you Adam.
It’s pretty damning of our big media that your updates, and Kos/Hunter updates at the GOS. have been so much more accurate and comprehensive than anything the MSM has put out.
Medicine Man
So why exactly are the Germans refusing to sell arms? Fear of retaliation?
Kelly
Ukraine appears to have damaged a railway bridge in Russia. More of this would be good. It’s damaged but not laying in the bottom of the river. Wondering if this is an effort by amateurs without access to military explosives and demolition skills. Maybe it’s wrecked enough.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1513790391082008580
dc
I don’t get Germany getting refusing to approve arms going to Ukraine.
Jay
@Kelly:
the RA has the largest “Railway Troops” in the world. Their job is to provide security and repairs to railroad infrastructure. The damage is not significant, while the morale effect is.
Another Scott
@Medicine Man: There was a DW opinion piece recently that said that Germany’s export economy is based on cheap fuel from Russia. They’re afraid of what will happen if they can’t find other sources quickly enough.
Given Germany’s history of bad things happening after bad recessions / depressions, it’s a legitimate concern. But it means that they need to work harder and faster to do the transition.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Medicine Man: IIUC, there’s a …. policy that the FRG and now Germany has practiced with the Russkies: “Wandel Durch Handel” (“Change thru Trade”). They really do think that if they trade enough with Putin, he’ll change and become a meek lamb.
Idiots.
Kelly
@Jay: A nighttime drone attack on the repair equipment would further damage morale and keep the line closed.
Calouste
The problem I see for Putin with the plan to just wait and assume the sanctions get lifted, is that the war accelerated the move to renewable energy in Europe that was already going on. And the problem for a petrol state is that once those investments in solar panels and wind power etc have been made, that a share of the energy market that’s not going back to fossil fuels. He’s destroying the market for his country’s major export product.
Calouste
@Another Scott: Germany is already planning for losing access to Russian gas. They’ve basically asked all business to make their case for their need of gas, and some won’t get any if the crunch comes. And it will most likely cause a recession, if not worse.
Adam L Silverman
@marcopolo: It’s good news, but I’ll wait for further confirmation. This is MilitaryLand’s about page:
https://militaryland.net/about/
Carlo Graziani
Given that what’s reported on Western assistance has been pretty consistently several weeks behind what’s actually been in progress, it seems likely that UKR forces somewhere are already training on NATO equipment, and some kind of transition is being planned. The logisticians presumably saw the bottom of the Warsaw Pact equipment barrel coming into view at the projected burn rate, and had to do something about it. So, where’s the smart money? What shows up first? Small arms? Artillery? And are they training in the US?
gene108
I don’t understand the issue with the resulting rifles to Ukrainian troops.
Why can’t NATO just give their standard spec rifles to Ukraine now and the ammo?
There shouldn’t be much of a learning curve to use NATO spec rifles from using AK style rifles.
marcopolo
@Another Scott: I saw a comment from a supposed German energy sector expert who said that if Germany restarted their recently closed nuke plants and postponed the shut down dates for several others (that were due to shutter this year or next) that they would mostly be able to do without Russian fossil fuels. No idea if this is actually true, and, alas, there was not a lot of additional commentary (at least at the time I read this comment) supporting or knocking this idea. And, of course, I know next to nothing about the German energy sector myself so anything I’d say is just pissing in the wind.
I’d try to find this comment too (like the Mariupol one above) but it is official time for me to go to bed.
Oh, and supposedly other issues in regards to Germany blocking weapons sales are 1) left over feelings of responsibility from WWII and not wanting to be into more active support of warfare; and, 2) softness of some of the German political class due to the influence of Russian money in their politics (former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would be exhibit #1 for this).
Everyone have a nice evening.
Ishiyama
Putin thinks the USA is populated by people of weak moral fiber who are lacking in strength of character and personal courage. (It’s an easy assumption to make, looking at some of our own oligarchs and politicians.) But there is a special providence that watches over fools, drunkards, and the United States of America, as Bismarck is is reported to have said. Don’t count us out; it’s early innings yet.
Chetan Murthy
@Calouste: Everyone can draw their own conclusions about DE/HU/AT’s conduct, but for myself I find that they’re being short-sighted and selfish: hoping that they won’t have to pay any price at all for this war. Especially the way that Chancellor Scholz has repeatedly vetoed arms sales to UA: I mean, WTF dude.
And as others have pointed-out, in 2008 when other European countries were suffering, DE insisted that they needed a short, sharp shock, and for sure not patience and compassion. But now that the shoe’s on the other foot ….
I’ve read Scholz arguing that the LNG terminals he needs to accept shipments from the UAE and US, aren’t operational, and he cites “legal reasons”. Again, WTF, dude?
Adam L Silverman
@marcopolo: This appears to be the ultimate source:
https://news.pn/ru/RussiaInvadedUkraine/270533
Another Scott
(via Oryx…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
@gene108: I’m not a military logistician, or any kind of military expert.
But I would think they way to do things is equip entire units in a certain part of the country with western weaponry rather than spreading it all about. So if you send them 50 Abrams tanks, or a battalion of western artillery, you send it all to the same place, so you only have one supply line to deal with for support. You don’t send one or two here and there as replacements.
Or maybe you send the NATO military stuff to Kyiv where the Ukrainians must still have massive defenses. And then the older Soviet stuff that is currently in Kyiv goes forward. That sort of thing.
They are smart. They can figure this shit out. I don’t buy that the Ukrainians are too inexperienced or incompetent to deal with modern NATO weaponry. For fuck’s sake. We put a lot of it in the hands of 18 year olds.
marcopolo
@Adam L Silverman: Gotta admit their maps of the conflict areas in Ukraine are really nice, with the highlighter/magnifier thing. But, yeah, one thing I’ve learned over the past 7 weeks is to take everything I see coming out of there with a grain of salt until it is verified by a number of different folks.
Anyway, one last video to leave for folks: this is supposedly in Mariupol with soldiers from Azov using a mortar to take out an enemy infantry vehicle, as the munitions in the vehicle cook off one of them explodes out to hit the rear of a tank parked nearby. Talk about getting lucky!
Jay
@Kelly:
Ukraine has kept their drones active in Ukraine. It’s up to the Belorussian Resistance to shut down the Belorussian railways.
Adam L Silverman
@Freemark: The secret is I’m not getting paid six to seven figures a year by the giant companies that own the news. So I can post what I like because Cole doesn’t pay me a dime.
And thanks for the kind words.
Adam L Silverman
@Kelly: You’re quite welcome.
Kelly
Sending Ukraine all the 5.56 rifles in US civilian hands would be a double win. Rearm Ukraine with NATO compatible rifles and get the damn things out of here. Unlikely but a guy can dream.
featheredsprite
Perhaps there are ways of making Germany irrelevant, other suppliers and such. The basic issues in play are too important for us to waste time comforting recalcitrant jerks.
Kelly
@Jay: This is in Russia near Belgorod.
Adam L Silverman
@Medicine Man: The Germans have pursued maximizing their economic power and economic growth and stability over everything else for decades. They won’t do much to jeopardize them.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: It looks like new German LNG terminals wouldn’t be ready until 2026.
Does Germany really need LNG terminals?
https://p.dw.com/p/47yFA
There are apparently ways to get the gas to Germany via terminals in other countries, but maybe not in the volume that would replace Russia’s gas. Plus, Germany wants to transition away from fossil fuels…
Good, Fast, Cheap strikes again.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@gene108:
there isn’t.
the issue is ammo. Right now, the UA has to deal with 2 different rifle stocks of ammo, but they can glean ammo seized from the Russians.
TDG’s and Volunteers have a mix of weapons, including NATO, which makes supply difficult.
Throwing a new ammo into the game is a problem.
A key issue is getting supplies to the “front”, eg. Mariupol.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman: I thought you had something related to China planned for today’s update. Interested in your take.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: It’s always supply and maintenance.
gene108
@Kent:
I’m referring specifically to this:
Instead of trying to source the AK-ammo, why doesn’t NATO just start equipping Ukrainian forces with NATO spec rifles, so small arms ammo won’t be an issue?
The learning curve on using a NATO spec rifle cannot be steep.
This seems like a very doable solution to potential small arms ammo shortages in Ukraine.
EDIT:
The issue isn’t their ability to learn to use weapons, it’s the time required to train to use tanks, airplanes, etc. to their fullest potential while simultaneously being invaded by Russia.
Does the Ukrainian military have the ability to spare personnel to train on western weapons systems right now?
I don’t know.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: If they bring their now shuttered nuclear power plants back online, they could transition immediately. But they won’t.
YY_Sima Qian
@gene108: Don’t all the ex-Warsaw Pact armies still have a lot of ammunitions for Soviet-block small arms? Some are still using AK pattern assault rifles, no? (I’m thinking Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Romanian arms do have terrible reputation, though.)
Jackie
Adam, is there anything newsworthy about Viktor Medvedchuk, father to Putin’s godchild, being recaptured by Ukraine today? Supposedly he was to be Putin’s appointed de facto president of Ukraine?
Ruckus
@Kelly:
That looks like a reasonable amount of damage. Not as much as one might like but still, a reasonable amount.
Should be more than a day or two job. And every little bit helps.
Ruckus
@Calouste:
No one said he’s the sharpest stick in the wood pile.
Another Scott
@gene108: I haven’t seen specifics about the caliber ammo that the US is sending / has sent, but it’s at least 60 million rounds, if I’m doing the math right.
WH.gov fact sheet
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Calouste: He’s going to continue selling it to the PRC and states in the global south. Most of the world is not involved with our sanctions and economic measures.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman: But pipeline infrastructure is still a constraint though in the short term. There currently does not exist the pipeline infrastructure to send gas from the Arctic fields to China. Russia may have to construct LNG terminals on the Arctic Ocean to enable shipping by sea to China & the rest go Global South, but that will be a years long & many billions of dollars effort.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo Graziani: The only Ukrainian military training in the US are here on regularly scheduled professional military education that was arranged before the reinvasion.
The Ukrainians are crowdsourcing military supplies, but you somehow think it’s all for show and the good stuff has really been delivered? And more is on the way in a timely manner?
Ukrainians are using social media to tell everyone that they need body armor, helmets, med kits, boots, vehicles for transport, all sorts of basic material and equipment, in addition to weapons, weapon systems, and ammunition. There are multiple legitimate efforts to crowdsource this stuff because they’re not getting it from the US, the EU, NATO, etc through the official channels.
Today they established an actual crowdsourced fundraising site to raise money to buy fighter jets because we’re preventing them from getting them through the state to state pledged support and military sales channels.
You can’t wish cast a successful war.
gene108
@Jay:
I was thinking more along the lines of units going to Donbas, Kherson, Kharkiv, etc. getting NATO spec rifles, if Ukraine has trouble getting AK ammo.
I understand logistics would be an issue, especially at first.
I have no idea how Ukraine forces in Mariupol would be resupplied.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: You can’t use scavenged Russian ammo. As we learned in Syria, the Russians sabotage their ammo before they abandon it and you can’t tell until it is too late. As in your rifle has blow up in your hands.
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: It was a long day and I simply forgot, I’ll put it in tomorrow.
Redshift
I know I have an optimistic nature, but I have to wonder if the big flaw in Putin’s belief that the West will give in to him to go back to making money is… Russia just isn’t an important market. They don’t have much of anything anyone wants but oil and gas, and they aren’t a big market to sell to. So the pressure to go back to doing business with Russia just isn’t there, especially since the public sentiment that made companies flee Russia isn’t going away quickly.
It all just seems like more of Putin’s grandiose delusions of Russia’s importance.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman: No problem! Greatly appreciate what you are doing!
Adam L Silverman
@Jackie: He’s not running around causing mischief and they can trade him for a large number of Ukrainian POWs and other Ukrainians being held by the Russians.
kalakal
The Washington Post article about Ukranian discussions with General Atomics could be significant. Given the success of Bayraktars a supply of Reapers to the UA would be a nightmare for the Russians
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: What happened to the facility the Russians built on the Pacific coast to service China and other states petroleum needs that was finished prior to the 2014 invasion?
Adam L Silverman
I’m to bed, everyone have a good night.
Calouste
@YY_Sima Qian: If Russia can even get the expertise to build pipelines and LNG terminals while the sanctions are still in effect.
Of course this has been Russia’s problem since Ivan the Terrible: no good access to a deep sea harbor. Now if they just behaved themselves and were not that paranoid, they could just have piped their oil and gas to Bremen and Hamburg and Rotterdam for export all around the world, even as the EU went to renewable energy.
Another effect of increased investments in renewables is of course that economy of scale and increased R&D is going to make the tech cheaper, so by the time those LNG terminals are up, the Global South might be less interested in fossil fuels as well.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
They do make a fair amount of steel.
Mallard Filmore
@Adam L Silverman:
Here is a map of Russia’s pipelines:
https://www.theodora.com/pipelines/russia_ukraine_belarus_baltic_republics_pipelines_map.jpg
https://theodora.com/pipelines/russia_former_soviet_union_pipelines.html
I’m not seeing any big pipes from oil fields down to China, and the Pacific coast pipes … look like they would need tankers to go from the top of Siberia, east through the Arctic around the bend and unload.
The big pipes in western Siberia go west toward Europe.
Splitting Image
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m preaching to the choir here, obviously, but isn’t allowing Russia to move closer to Germany’s eastern border going to jeopardize their economic growth and stability?
I mean, the last time Russia made a big push westward Germany was split in half for 45 years.
terry chay
@Redshift: It also sounds a lot like Japan in the run up to Pearl Harbor and afterwards (thinking they could conditionally surrender through the “neutral” Soviet Union.
As was pointed out yesterday, when an epochal conflict happens the fundamental rules and resolution gets changed. Operating with the rules of the previous epoch is a recipe for failure.
He assumed the sanctions would not be significant. He assumed the West has learned nothing from 2007, 2014, 2015 (Brexit) and 2016 (US Election). But, most importantly, he assumes that the conflict being fought in 2022 is the same as the ones he fought in Grozny, Georgia, Crimea, and Aleppo. In reality it looks like an epochal realignment is occurring. Not sure the West is going to sit this one out, especially when there is blood in the water. While his economy has recovered from 2014 sanctions, it looks like his military was severely diminished despite the steady increase in funds.
Ruckus
@Calouste:
Now if they just behaved themselves and were not that paranoid, they could just have piped their oil and gas to Bremen and Hamburg and Rotterdam for export all around the world, even as the EU went to renewable energy.
They have to be rather paranoid because those Russian rich bastards and the richest bastard didn’t get that way by playing fair or paying their workers well or paying a lot of taxes. They got that way by stealing from the country and the people supporting them. (I know this sounds familiar – why do you think many of our rich bastards support or at least aren’t against Russia?)
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman:
I never understood the ideological opposition to nuclear power. There are practical objections, such as high cost & long lead time of construction, difficulty of disposing waste, etc. Safety I think is actually pretty low risk for the more modern plants.
Taiwan has made the same (to me) nonsensical energy decision. The DDP government went out of its way to mothball the 4th nuclear power plant (which is the newest, most modern & never used), & insists upon retiring the 3 older plants on schedule (but constantly delays their retirement due to inevitable power shortage). In the mean time, Taiwan is relying up on imported coal (bad for AGW & air pollution) & imported gas (for which Taiwan has very limited storage capacity, & new storage farms had been delayed by political bickering & environmental concerns). The ambitious plan w/ renewables appear to be highly unrealistic, both in timeframe & feasibility (Taiwan’s topography & climate are not that conducive to wind & solar at massive scale). So now Taiwan is left w/ a precarious power situation in peacetime, reliant upon fossil fuels whose shipments are vulnerable to interdiction, & facilities that are vulnerable to destruction during war time (China can fire long range rockets at these facilities along the west coat of the island, no need for more expensive for ballistic/cruise missiles or air strikes). Like Germany, it appears that the powers that be in Taiwan never contemplated that war across the Taiwan Strait is a possibility.
Wetzel
I have become convinced that the overarching goal of the war in Ukraine is to create the conditions (genocide) for Putin to reestablish terror and conduct a purge in Russia. This is how that would start.
https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/global-affairs/stalinist-purge-putin-arrests-dozens-of-security-agents-as-war-in-ukraine-stalls/video/fe0e2b096a4dba73fb7fd5596fedae00
The media is painting this as if it were to punish failure in Ukraine. After last week’s exhibition of atrocities, it’s just that the time is ripe. The FSB, everyone in Russia, they are now docile.
I don’t understand the lack of attention to what’s about to happen in Russia. Putin’s big problem wasn’t Ukraine. His problem was internal, I think. It’s the only way what’s happening makes any sense.
Thanks Adam.
Kent
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the fever pitched battle against nuclear power in Germany happened in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. And Merkel basically caved.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kent: Same happened in Taiwan.
YY_Sima Qian
@Adam L Silverman:
@Mallard Filmore:
Here is a more updated map from Gazprom:
https://sustainability.gazpromreport.ru/fileadmin/f/2019/2-our-activity/2.5-sales-of-hydrocarbons/91-lng-en.svg
The “Power of Siberia” pipeline is up & running , delivering eastern Siberian gas to China via Manchuria. (Long running negotiations between China & Russia finally concluded after the West sanctioned Russia for Crimea, on terms relatively favorable to China.) The Sakhalin pipeline is also up, delivering Sakhalin gas to the LNG terminal at Vladivostok, for further shipment to Asian & global customers. The problem is that neither of these pipelines offer oulets for the gas that Russia has been exploiting from the huge Yamal fields in the Arctic. Current pipelines from Yamal all go to the European market. Russia is constructing “Power of Siberia 2” pipeline to deliver Yamal gas to China (through Mongolia), but that is years from completion, & prospects now uncertain. China could help Russia finish the pipeline, though.
trollhattan
Speaking of war criming, Russia seems to have used a cluster munition warhead on the missile that landed on the Kramatorsk train station.
Doubt there are many illegal actions left on their bingo card.
Mallard Filmore
@YY_Sima Qian: Now that the big USA-EU oil industry service companies, like Halliburton and Schlumberger, have bugged out, do Russia and China have the skills to keep the fields active?
Kent
@Mallard Filmore: They’ve been drilling for oil in Russia for over 100 years. China builds bullet trains and Russia puts men in space. I expect they can figure it out. It’s not Venezuela or Nigeria. They do have universities and scientists in both countries.
terry chay
Interview with Daniel Yergin about Russia’s Oil power.
Some might find this interesting.
Dan B
@YY_Sima Qian: There’s a group that wants to invest in floating wind turbines in deep water 42 miles off the coast of Washington state. The wind is relentless over the ocean. It would power 800,000 homes. The Olympic peninsula on the west coast of the state has mountainous terrain similar to Taiwan. It’s a matter of working out how to satisfy the interests of fishing, shipping, and the military. Apparently the technologies have advanced at great speed and are inexpensive enough to guarantee a return on investment in the private sector.
Jinchi
There are much easier ways to conduct a purge in an autocratic state than deliberately losing a war in a humiliating and costly fashion. Putin has been arresting and imprisoning political rivals for decades. He regularly poisoned and defenestrated critics, journalists and discontents. He may have wanted a clean sweep of the federal agencies, but he definitely didn’t need a massive screwup in Ukraine to find an excuse to do so.
This isn’t 11-dimensional chess. Putin intended to conquer Ukraine.
Martin
There’s a third reason. Ukraine is full of white people, and Syria wasn’t. It’s easier to lose focus on people that aren’t like you.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: The main opposition to nuclear power is distrust in the institutions that operate it. France has done well because there was never a profit motive there. Government run nuclear needs to have good oversight mechanisms to prevent leadership from ignoring or paper over problems. Private industry will always fuck it up due to profit motives. Coming up with a reliable operational system is surprisingly hard.
Calouste
@YY_Sima Qian: Also, you can’t just increase the capacity of pipelines, those things have a limit. Russia would need to build another 5 pipelines going to China or Vladivostok to make up for the 5 going to Europe they would lose.
YY_Sima Qian
@Dan B: Taiwan is investing in offshore wind power in a big way. Politics dictate that they cannot partner w/ Mainland Chinese firms to build the offshore wind farms, but instead are working w/ European firms that bid higher construction costs, longer lead times, & charge high rates during the “Operate” phase of BOT. The other problem w/ Taiwan is that the wind is not evenly distributed through the seasons, & wind turbines cannot generate power in Typhoon level winds in the fall (& is in fact vulnerable to damage). Aside from the miserable rain, PNW has less extreme weather than Taiwan.
In any case, wind & solar are too intermittent to serve as base load. By turning away from nuclear, Taiwan has in fact made the decision to rely upon imported coal & gas to provide base load.
YY_Sima Qian
@Calouste: Quite right. Gas, especially piped gas, is not as fungible as oil or coal. Even “Power of Siberia 2” will not be able to make up for all of the lost gas sales to Europe from Yamal. OTOH, China (& others) will be more than happy to drive a hard bargain w/ Russia to buy even cheaper gas, & then sell their strategic reserves at high prices to Europe/Japan/South Korea.
YY_Sima Qian
@Mallard Filmore: China has already built several long pipelines to transfer gas from Central Asia to Eastern China a decade ago, & Russia has even more experience here. Where the pull out of Halliburton & Schlumberger could hurt is in exploration of new prospects.
grammypat
@marcopolo: I wonder why Merkel is never mentioned in any way, be it good/bad/indifferent. She was such a force to be reckoned with for so long in German politics, it puzzles me why she is not referred to when the current German position(s) are discussed.
Not necessarily by you, just in general.
sab
@Martin: Syria’s government was all in on the slaughter. They controlled the airspace. Syrian rebels couldn’t get their message out.
This isn’t even comparable. Ukraine has its whole government behind it, so the international community follows with various levels of enthusiasm.
Syria had a government cheering on the slaughter. Also too, no internet capability. They couldn’t spread there message, Also too their government was on the invaders side, because fellow crime lords.
sab
@Martin: I don’t know what world you live in, but in my neck of the woods Syrians and Lebanese are considered to be white. Not always Christian, but very white.
ETA The difference is that Ukraine kept its cellphone towers up, because their government was fightling russians instead of cooperating with them as Syria’s did.
Poptartacus
I’m about tired of hearing about what Russia might think is a provocation. Fuck those people, and the Russians too.
debbie
That video from Finland ought to be enough to wake up all of Europe and get on the stick already. President Biden, stop worrying about theoreticals and get moving on cutting off Putin and his plans. Do what a leader is supposed to do. Lead and end this.
wetzel
@Jinchi:
That’s right. There is the way of seeing it which is our way, the Western way. Of course Putin intended to conquer Ukraine, or at least establish a stalemate with much more favorable circumstances. But would everyone throw their weapons down? Ukraine isn’t even centrally governed like the decapitation strategy supposes. What do you picture when you imagine ‘Putin conquers Ukraine’?
I think the original plan was for Trump and Putin to have a fake war there, and we would become fascist too, so Nov 2020 was the first thing Putin did not foresee. In invading Ukraine, I suppose there were a broad range of acceptable outcomes. The unpredictably terrible performance of their army has stressed their models to the breaking point. I don’t think Russia and China foresaw BA2 in China. I don’t know if China requesting Putin to postpone after the Olympics put them in mud season on purpose, because now Russia is China’s cat’s paw, they are so pathetically brought down.
Certainly there have been many instances of autocratic lawlessness in Putin’s Russia, but it has not been a totalitarian society. Autocratic societies are different than totalitarian societies. In autocratic societies, there are folk death mechanisms, for example, such as the noose, or falling out of windows or organofluorophosphate nerve agents on the spoon. In scientific totalitarianism execution isn’t spectacular, though. The death mechanism is disappearance.
I think Putin began, basically, as an FSB Wunderkind. All Russian geniuses go to FSB because they don’t want them outside. His Leningrad group felt the chaos of the Gorbachev era was due to missing a purge in the 60’s or 70’s. All of their models must have been going hay-wire, and they could see how purges had worked in the past like chemotheraphy.
Putin has internalized and promulgated the White Russian Christo-fascist phenomenology of Ivan Ilyin. This has given the Russian state a new form of Hegelian ideology, which it requires, to replace the old one it used to have, Marxism. Both Marxism and Christo-fascism make the fasces the premise of subjective experience where the guard may or may not be behind the mirror or your phone.
If people only understood Hegel anymore. Putin thinks of the interventional radiology on his thyroid, he is planning to purge the secular intelligentsia from Russia in its entirety.
FSB has institutional continuity back to the 1930’s. They have engineered genocide in Ukraine before to facilitate formation of the terror state. They have studied the application of genocide to achieve social order. This is not autocracy. Autocrats are powerful mobsters.
The establishment of a totalitarian terror state through genocide has happened three times (Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and maybe Mao’s China (I don’t understand Chinese political history and philosophy enough to make claims about that)). Genocide is the eschatological constitution of the totalitarian state. This is what we are seeing, totalitarian state formation in Russia, likely China, and probably in the original plan, the West as well. Why is it 11th century chess to see genocide being employed in the same way we saw in the 20th century. That’s inferential logic.
Genocide and atrocity create the totalitarian subject.
In Piaget’s psychology of cognitive development, when you encounter stimuli for which you have schemas you can assimilate it. You understand it. How does that work for a Russian in Moscow who sees that their army is writing ‘for Ukrainian children’ on missiles, and that their soldiers are raping toddlers. They cannot assimilate, so their schemas have to change. In Piaget, cognitive restructuring occurs, development, which Piaget calls accommodation. How do you accommodate to inhumanity? You can only do that by destroying symbolic consciousness in yourself and learning to love Big Brother. Otherwise it will crucify you with emotional pain. Russia is now living under terror.
Geminid
I already posted this on a thread yesterday afternoon:
The Guardian put up an article Monday about Iranian shipments of munitions to Russia. They are calling back anti-tank rockets, ground-to-ground rocket systems, and RPGs they supplied to Shiite militias in Iraq and shipping them to Russia via the Caspian Sea. Iran has also donated an anti-air missle system comparable to the Russian S-300 and returned an S-300 battery. The numbers are not great but may be another indication of Russia’s need for any weaponry they can get their hands on.
This could affect the Vienna JCPOA negotiations intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program. Talks have stalled over a few remaining issues between Iran and the U.S. One of them is the removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S.’s list of terrorist organization.
The issue is mainly symbolic, not practical. The IRGC has taken the 2018 listing in stride, and has not been curbed by it any more than Iran’s nuclear program was by Trump walking away from the first JCPOA. Iran has gotten pretty much what it wanted in the new JCPOA so far, and the Biden administration is balking at giving them this.
The arms shipments are surely being done through the IRGC so this will be another sticking point. There may be a compromise whereby a component of the IRGC, the “Quds Force” remains on the terrorist list. In recent testimony to Congress, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley singled out the Quds Force as a terrorist organization.
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman: I see you went off to bed, and I hope you had a good rest.
For what it’s worth, I don’t agree that suggesting that government-to-government and military-to-military might be accomplishing things that are not registering on your radar screen tuned to media sources, and might not show up for weeks, is “wish casting”. I think there is some will and imagination and resource at work.
Betty
@Martin: That is an accurate description of what happened at Three Mile Island. Lots of sloppiness and inadequate oversight.
O. Felix Culpa
@Splitting Image:
Unfortunately, some residents of the eastern section are nostalgic for the “good old days.” (Similar to some Russians regarding the fall of the Soviet Union.) Reunification was not an unmitigated good for everyone in the former DDR (GDR). I don’t think this directly explains Scholz’s lame measures vis-à-vis Ukraine, other than trying to contain the neo-fascist elements that arose predominantly in Eastern Germany in recent years. Economics and fossil fuels are the driving factors, as others have pointed out. No one I know in Germany–including fellow SPD members–was thrilled with Scholz during the election, calling him a little gray man, and many are displeased now.
Geminid
@Betty: I read in stories about the Fukushima disaster that Japan’s nuclear regulatory agencies were “captured” by the industry. Hence, protections against tidal waves were insufficient.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: That is incredible. Never thought Russia would be in a position of running out of munitions & equipment.
evodevo
@YY_Sima Qian: LOL they probably sold them to Iran on the black market in the first place, and are now asking for them back…
charon
@YY_Sima Qian:
That is not their area of expertise. It’s Exxon and BP etc. where that technology is. Reservoir evaluation technology is pretty complex, and it’s not exactly open source either.
Another Scott
@Martin: I think there are lots of things going on in the opposition to nuclear power. My bias against it is: 1) Cost, 2) Complexity in real-world systems that invite cost-cutting at the expense of safety and reliability, 3) Companies dumping the cleanup and decommissioning costs on rate payers and the public. There are better ways.
And about France, …
OilPrice.com (a repost of a ZeroHedge post, from April 4):
Other articles from December talk about problems with pipes in safety systems at at least some of the reactors.
TANSTAAFL.
Cheers,
Scott.
Lesnev
If we (USA) are not going to put boots on the ground, we should send everything we would have used as if we were. Everything except humans.
Do I think that will be enough? No. How is the end game NOT to allow Russia to level the entire country, kill 30 million Ukrainians while the world watches and when they’re done say “Awesome, we avoided WW3”.
And speaking of leveling the country, when is Kyiv to be flattened? Since R gave up on taking it, should be soon.
And and, if (when) Trump is elected he will cut off everything from Ukraine to facilitate the carnage, assuming there is a Ukraine left at that point.
And, and, and Thanks Adam for your work.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: It may be that Iran is simply demonstrating solidarity with their ally. The Guardian article was interesting for it’s detail, also for the candour of participants who describe their efforts.
Geminid
@evodevo: No need for Russia to sell weapons to Iran through the black market. They’ve been selling the weapons directly for decades. Iran has pushed some on to Iraqi militias. Iran itself has a thriving arms industry and supplies weapons to military allies or surrogates in Syria and beyond. There are thought to be over 100,000 rockets in Lebanon under Hezbollah’s control, most of them supplied by Iran.
YY_Sima Qian
@charon: So Halliburton & Schlumberger’s expertise are in extraction?
I’m glad that I did not go into the oil industry, after graduating w/ a Chemical Engineering degree.
randal m sexton
@Dan B: Is this the project you refer to ? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/seattle-developer-pushes-for-was-first-floating-offshore-wind-farm-off-olympic-peninsula/. It has been such a windy spring here on Lopez Island, I am imagining sticking a turbine atop one of my fir trees :)
charon
@YY_Sima Qian:
I’m not sure what exactly Halliburton does, apart from owning Brown and Root which is a big design and construction contractor. Schlumberger maintains wells (workovers) and gathers information from existing wells.
I have a B.Ch. E. degree myself, and I spent six years in Malaysia working for Exxon developing oil fields offshore in the South China Sea
As you no doubt know, Exxon and BP have been in the news pulling out of Russia.
YY_Sima Qian
@charon: Yeah, Russia’s exploration efforts will no doubt be impacted. Chinese oil majors may seek to fill the vacuum at some point, but they are less experienced than Exxon, BP or Royal Dutch Shell.
The Pale Scot
The issue is munitions and equipment that has been properly maintained and not stripped of salable parts.
The Russians apparently steal anything that isn’t nailed, bolted and epoxyd down
J R in WV
@Kelly:
A shame they didn’t discover that midnight maintenance work with a full train load of munitions hitting it at a high speed — crash, crash, BOOM~!!~
Another Scott
New military aid package will include artillery systems and rounds, armoured personnel carriers and helicopters.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/13/biden-announces-additional-800m-us-military-aid-to-ukraine
Photo in the story shows crates of ammo labeled “7.62” in a cargo plane.
Cheers,
Scott.