(Air raid alert map of Ukraine, 8:58 PM EDT, 10 APR 2024) As you can see above, almost all of Ukraine is once again under an air raid alert. The Ukrainian Air Force is reporting at least seven russian Tu-95 bombers taking off, indicating that early this morning Ukraine is likely to be under massive …
Serial production and new models of missiles: our “defence industry” has the necessary results – address of the President of Ukraine
10 April 2024 – 20:13
Dear Ukrainians!
Briefly about today.
Today, I held a meeting regarding our missile program with the Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defence, Minister of Strategic Industries, and heads of relevant enterprises. Serial production, and new models of missiles. The details aren’t public, but our “defence industry” has the necessary results. And the main thing is for the army to implement these results now. Today, I also discussed the current situation on the frontline with the Commander-in-Chief. There was also a report by the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.
The second thing. International work.
I met with the Minister of Defence of Lithuania – this is his first visit abroad in this position, and it is important that this visit is to Ukraine. We discussed the needs of our soldiers, our cooperation – Ukraine and Lithuania – in the production of weapons. I addressed the participants of the forum in Greece: the Delphi Forum – a representative gathering, political and expert circles of Europe and America. I spoke primarily about Kharkiv, and about our other cities, our communities, which are subject to constant Russian terror. Air defence, long-range weapons, and artillery are the key priorities now. We are working in all directions of our foreign policy to get more of this strength to our state.
I also met with the head of the International Organisation for Migration.
We discussed projects to support our people who lost their homes, a program to build shelters for schools, programs to help displaced people who establish businesses and create jobs, and I am thankful for the support of our communities, especially those affected by the Russians’ destruction of the Kakhovka HPP.
I spoke with the head of the government of Ireland, and congratulated him on the start of work in his position, and we also agreed to continue our cooperation between Ukraine and Ireland: both bilaterally and at the European level. Today I spoke with the President of Switzerland, and this is a continuation of our consolidation of the international community. Every leader, every state, who wants to see the end of Russian aggression in a truly just peace, has the opportunity to join our global efforts – the first Peace Summit to be held in Switzerland in June. We are preparing the summit, and we are preparing its specific results – a clear position of the world regarding the just end of this war. The world does not have an alternative. However, for this to happen, for Russian terror to cease, all formats of our force must be involved. Physical defence against terror includes air defence, and our capabilities at the frontline, as well as our ability to achieve the necessary results in the Black Sea, and our domestic production of weapons, the economic stability of Ukraine, the pressure of our partners on Russia, and the strongest possible consolidation of the world. We have no right to make a mistake in any of these aspects.
And one more thing.
Today, Russian terrorists have attacked our communities with guided aerial bombs. In particular, in the Kharkiv region. There are victims, and as of now, we know about three people who were killed as a result of an attack, among them a child. My deepest condolences to everyone who lost their beloved ones. This is Russian terror, happening everyday and every night in our border and frontline regions. Putin will do anything possible to intensify attacks against Ukraine this year and to attempt to break us. Of course, we are increasing our capabilities such as our long-range weapons and our ability to destroy the invader. However, we need at least equal internal strength, as well as an inner understanding that only the strong ones finish the war on their terms. The weak ones end the wars on someone else’s terms. Ukraine must be strong. We will do anything possible to achieve it. I would like to thank everyone who gives more strength to Ukraine! I am grateful to everyone who fights and works for the sake of our state and our people.
Glory to Ukraine!
Bill Arnold asked the following last night in comments:
I was wondering if something like this would gain traction, re Russian treatment of non-ROC Christians in occupied parts of Ukraine, including areas that Russia might control in the future without additional military aid to Ukraine. Maybe. (The current ROC is essentially a tool of Satan, IMO.)
If Mike Johnson Won’t Fund Ukraine For Normal Moral Reasons, Maybe He’ll Do It For Gay-Hatin’ Extremist Reasons! – The enemy of my enemy is the enemy of my enemy. (Wonkette, EVAN HURST, APR 10, 2024)
The quote from Wonkette is in the rest of the comment at the link.
The answer to this is no! I’ve covered this here several times before, but it doesn’t hurt to do a refresher. Russia, working through Patriarch Kyril, who was a colleague and friend of Putin’s in the KGB before becoming a priest, have infiltrated the white evangelical Christian organizations, as well as the traditional Catholics, in the US. Putin has worked very hard to infiltrate in order to influence the white Evangelical Christian movement in the US. White Evangelical Christians also make up the largest group of Americans who support Israel known as Christian Zionists. The primary vehicle is the World Congress of Families, which is the brainchild of two Russian sociologists working through the American evangelical Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. Jay Sekulow, who ran Trump’s impeachment defenses and is a former Jewish American who convert to the Messianic Jews for Jesus Movement under Pat Robertson’s guidance, also funds Putin linked religious lobbyists in Russia. Maria Butinaa, the Russian illegal who infiltrated and influenced both the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfasts bringing dozens of Russian oligarchs to Washington, DC for pancakes, eggs, and prayer in a semi-off the books Russian operation, was being funded by a Russian who has funded the campaigns of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
There are many more examples I could provide. Mike Johnson is not going to do anything to help Ukraine because of his own religious beliefs.
Tatarigami gets right to the heart of the problem:
The principles of democracy, liberty, and security assurances hold strong until they confront the unstoppable force of gas prices
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) April 10, 2024
Let's follow the logic and assume that marginal increase in oil prices will be detrimental for Biden's chances of winning. By this reasoning, Saudi Arabia and Russia control the outcome of the US presidential election, given their ability to influence oil prices.
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) April 10, 2024
I’d throw Bibi in their with Putin and bin Salman, but Tatarigami is spot on.
Germany:
We are grateful to our German friends for their unwavering support.
The new package of military aid for Ukraine includes:
◾️1 Warthog All Terrain Tracked Carrier
◾️2 Wisent-1mine clearing tanks
◾️6,000 rounds 155mm ammunition
◾️16 VECTOR reconnaissance drones
◾️30 RQ-35 HEIDRUN… pic.twitter.com/YAS00CD8vq— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) April 10, 2024
We are grateful to our German friends for their unwavering support.
The new package of military aid for Ukraine includes:
◾️1 Warthog All Terrain Tracked Carrier
◾️2 Wisent-1mine clearing tanks
◾️6,000 rounds 155mm ammunition
◾️16 VECTOR reconnaissance drones
◾️30 RQ-35 HEIDRUN reconnaissance drones
◾️30 frequency range extensions for anti-drone devices
◾️11 mobile, remote controlled and protected mine clearing systems
◾️3 mine ploughs
◾️70 IR cameras
◾️24 outboard motors
◾️1 million rounds of ammunition for fire arms
◾️680 MK 556 assault rifles
◾️50 HLR 338 precision rifles with 60,000 rounds ammunition
◾️120 CR 308 rifles
◾️5,000 detonatorsThank you, Germany!
🇺🇦🤝🇩🇪
#StandWithUkraine
@BMVg_Bundeswehr
France:
There is a new documentary out on France’s DGSE. It includes some interesting information that everyone could have predicted:
From the DGSE documentary: “Some surveillance techniques are shown. For example, one agent displays how he replaces an HDMI cable in an office with another including a small SD card that records all video coming through such as Zoom calls.” https://t.co/YXNqQIaNDC
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) April 9, 2024
“Defectors from the Soviet Union used to talk about the ‘French paradox’…if you surprised a Frenchman with a mistress by telling him…work for us or we’ll tell your wife, it didn’t work…he generally said: ‘Go ahead…she already knows about it’.” https://t.co/YXNqQIaNDC
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) April 10, 2024
From The Telegraph:
Honeytraps do not work on French spies because their wives are used to them having affairs, a television documentary about France’s equivalent of MI6 has revealed.
Intelligence agents in the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) said that their Russian enemies came to realise that blackmail over taking lovers was ineffective.
The stock phrase in response was “Go ahead, my wife already knows” one agent said in the Making of Secret Agents, a 90-minute documentary that gained unprecedented access to the spy agency over several weeks. It was set to air on French public TV channel France 2 on Tuesday night.
The agent known only as Nicolas, whose voice and face were blurred, says: “Defectors from the Soviet Union used to talk about the ‘French paradox’, namely if you surprised a Frenchman with a mistress by telling him, we’ve caught you red-handed with a 22-year-old called Tatyana, work for us or we’ll tell your wife, it didn’t work.
“That was because he generally said: ‘Go ahead, show her, she’ll understand,’ or ‘she already knows about it’.”
“Senior officials whom I have met before are drawn and on edge; when they smile, they rarely do so with their eyes. And on the train, as I leave… hard-faced officers check & recheck passports to make sure no draft-eligible men are leaving the country” https://t.co/FiXrZjYndO
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) April 10, 2024
Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic:
Kyiv is, as ever, a lovely city, made more so by a brisk, sunny April. The church domes gleam, the cafés are open if not bustling, the streets are swept clean, the parks are trimmed, and the Dnipro flows majestically past the city to which it gave birth. But in the various memorials in public places, thousands of blue-and-yellow flags with the names of the fallen flutter. At Taras Shevchenko University, half of the students in the auditorium to hear a panel discussion I appear in about the war are cadets in uniform. Their young faces are grave in a way the parents of American teenagers would not recognize. Senior officials whom I have met before are drawn and on edge; when they smile, they rarely do so with their eyes. And on the train, as I leave the city for the long trip to Poland, hard-faced officers check and recheck passports to make sure that no draft-eligible men are leaving the country.
At the beginning of its third year, the war is not going well for Ukraine. The war is, in fact, at one of what Winston Churchill called the “climacterics,” or inflection points, that characterize all great conflicts. At hideous cost to themselves—measured in tens of thousands of killed, wounded, or missing men a month—Russian armies are advancing slowly. Every night Russian drones distract, expose, and deplete Ukrainian air defenses, and then the cruise and ballistic missiles rain down. Their targets are primarily the electric grid and civilian buildings. Kyiv, for the time being, is well defended, but Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border, is taking a pummeling. On the front lines, the shell shortage is acute; the Ukrainians are ceding ground not because they are unwilling to fight, but because they lack the high explosives necessary to do so.
Worse is to come. Russia has managed, by putting its economy on a war footing, to restore its forces and then some. It has secured supplies of weapons and ammunition from North Korea and Iran, and, surreptitiously, much nonlethal gear from China. This coalition of the malevolent is cooperating ever more closely. After a groggy 18 months following the defeat of its initial invasion and the spectacular Ukrainian attacks that drove the Russians back from Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, the Russian military machine is adapting. It has introduced large numbers of first-person-view drones, manufactured long-range glide bombs of ever-increasing weight, and recovered much of its previously squandered talent at electronic warfare. Having squashed dissent at home, it is mobilizing some 300,000 troops. A new offensive looms this summer.
There are limits to Russian achievement. Its Black Sea fleet has been defeated and largely driven from its Crimean bases. It has proved incapable of fielding a new generation of tanks and other systems. The shattering losses in officers and senior enlisted ranks mean that its ground forces continue to depend heavily on brutal, and often tactically primitive, means. But it feels the tide of battle turning in its favor.
As it does so, Russia has upped the psychological ante. Per Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, this is no longer a “special military operation” but a real war—not because of the Ukrainians, but because of the West. Not just any war either. The Russian Orthodox Church, a sinister tool of the Russian state, recently declared that “from a spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation is a Holy War.” The Kremlin has made clear that it disdains negotiations with Kyiv. In this respect it is brutally honest: It intends to extirpate the Ukrainian state, returning it to a subjugated province of a restored Russian empire. Failing that, it will depopulate Ukraine’s cities, poison its fields with land mines, and deprive its remaining citizens of power, light, and heat.
For Ukraine, the immediate concern is procuring enough ammunition to feed the hungry artillery pieces that can annihilate Russia’s human-wave assaults and supply the anti-aircraft systems that fend off the severe nightly attacks on its cities and infrastructure.
The crucial question is what the U.S. House of Representatives will do, and whether a purblind minority of Republicans can be outwitted by their hesitant leadership, so that the House can deliver aid to Ukraine. Astonishingly, the GOP chairmen of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees have asserted that some of their colleagues have succumbed to Russian propaganda. The shame and disgrace that this implies cannot be expunged. It will stain the holdouts against aid permanently, and justly so.
But the Biden administration has its own responsibility for this situation, a responsibility that is nearly as heavy. It, too, has no theory of victory and has not attempted to work with Ukraine to devise one. The administration’s promises to be with Ukraine as long as it takes are vapid. It repeatedly hesitated to supply Ukraine with advanced weapons in the numbers and with the speed needed, thereby frittering away the great opportunity of Ukraine’s first counteroffensive in the summer and fall of 2022. It has not sent a military mission to Kyiv to work closely with Ukrainian planners and trainers. Its representatives have, in ways that are at best strategically illiterate, declared their tepid opposition to Ukrainian deep attacks inside Russia. At the top, the president has not, after two years, summoned the rhetorical force to explain to the American people, in a way that Franklin Roosevelt did, and that John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan would have, why this faraway war means so much for the American future.
Ukraine has reported intensifying Russian uses of chemical weapons, beginning with irritants, but with the potential for the more lethal kinds of attacks that characterized the Syrian war. Anxious allied governments, including Sweden and the United Kingdom, have publicly discussed the possibility of war between a conquest-intoxicated Russia and NATO within years. They may be right.
This does not have to be, and it will not be if the United States acts. The prompt passage of aid for Ukraine is but one step. Others include sending a military mission to Ukraine, helping that country build the training and rotation infrastructure that it needs to sustain itself, and accelerating the growth of Ukraine’s already remarkable arms industry, which now produces drones that can strike more than 1,000 kilometers into Russian territory, as well as advanced cruise missiles and artillery pieces.
Above all, the Biden administration has to tell the American people that this war threatens us because it threatens European peace, has to explain the values as well as interests in play, and has to conceive its goal not as a mixture of supporting Ukraine just enough and nagging it with fantastic fears of escalation, but as ensuring victory.
That can be achieved. Russia’s own strains—revealed in the abortive Prigozhin putsch, its shocking vulnerability to terrorist attack, and the outpouring of grief for the murdered Alexei Navalny—are numerous. Its supposed growth in GDP is an artifact of military spending that is not sustainable. Sanctions are taking a toll but can be intensified. Its army, though operationally adaptable, remains tactically crude and susceptible to being bled out. The Putin regime’s ferocious clampdown on dissent reveals weakness, not strength. The job of the Biden administration is to judge those weaknesses correctly, exploit them ruthlessly, and, with its allies, help Ukraine defeat an enemy as cruel and malignant as any in history. Unless the administration rises to the occasion, a dark spring could bring much bleaker seasons to follow.
There is more at the link!
Chasiv Yar:
Сhasiv Yar outskirts.
A destroyed Russian column attacking (what's left of) the town. pic.twitter.com/hmOW6IAsc2
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 10, 2024
Russian occupied Crimea:
A Ka-27 helicopter was destroyed in Crimea, said the spokesman of the Ukrainian Navy. pic.twitter.com/AfyJt6V1aK
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) April 10, 2024
Russian occupied Donetsk Oblast:
/2. Geolocation of the strike. 22km from the frontline.
48.470993, 38.284881 https://t.co/pt80H92o7f pic.twitter.com/53KnqZdGZd— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 10, 2024
If you were curious as to how the information war is being waged:
It's also notable that articles on this site generally give very high scores for being AI generated on various AI detection sites, something it has in common with other fake news sites, like the London Crier.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) April 10, 2024
It’s not just being waged in fake newspapers, it is also being waged from one of the US’s Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC):
The most unbelievable thing behind the phenomenon of such 'political strategists' is that they've been consistently and chronically wrong for years – again and again, again and again – with almost every little thing they say, particularly about Ukraine.
Moreover, with such… https://t.co/x7MsLNxrwU
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) April 10, 2024
Here’s all of it from the Thread Reader App:
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American political strategist, Samuel Charap (@scharap). He’s best-known for strongly arguing against the Western military support to Ukraine, and advising Ukraine to give up to imperialist Russia’s demands.
Samuel Charap is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, an American think tank largely funded by the US government. He also studied in Kyiv and at MGIMO, an elite Moscow university with close ties to Russian intelligence.
He’s also member of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Moscow-based think tank that has been described as a “Russian equivalent to Davos”, and Dutch sociologist Van Herpen wrote that the club is a soft power effort by the Kremlin in service of Russian foreign policy goals.
3/18
Throughout the years, Charap has called for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but time has shown that a) Putin is not negotiating in good faith, and b) any treaty between Russia and Ukraine (or anyone) doesn’t hold.
Sam’s naive attitude towards the Kremlin and their trustworthiness can be seen for example in his 2019 op-ed, in which he called for Ukraine to implement its obligations under the Minsk 2, an agreement that was largely ignored and broken by both Russia and Ukraine.
5/18
In addition, Russia has violated the UN Charter, Nuclear NPT, Helsinki Accords, Belovezha Accords, Budapest Memorandum, Black Sea Fleet Treaty, Friendship Treaty, Treaty on Azov Sea and Kerch Strait, Border Treaty of 2003, Minsk agreements, and the Kharkiv Pact.
Charap’s “peace at any price” stance is always easy to defend, since most people would love to have peace. But if we don’t also talk about the costs of peace, the whole discussion is pointless.
7/18
At the 2023 Lennart Meri Conference, Ukrainian activist Olena Halushka asked Charap about the cost of Russia’s occupation, referring to mass graves, filtration camps, and mass deportations of children. Charap stated that it’s ultimately up to the Ukrainian leadership…
8/18
…to decide whether these consequences are worth the sacrifices in the battlefield. Interestingly, his op-eds and talks are always suggesting for Ukraine to “negotiate” with Russia, which would without a doubt lead to concessions and more of such horrible war crimes.
I have previously written about the consequences of Russian victory in Ukraine, and most of us can probably agree that this would be a horrible fate for any Ukrainian who is left in these occupied regions:
10/18
Also, we should also remind ourselves that the Kremlin hasn’t been willing to negotiate for a long time now. In Mar 2024, Putin himself stated that holding negotiations while Ukraine is suffering from ammunition shortage would be “absurd”.
11/18
Charap has also been a strong opponent of military aid to Ukraine. In Jan 2022, he published an article on Foreign Policy titled “The West’s Weapons Won’t Make Any Difference to Ukraine”. Take a look at the maps below and tell me if you agree with Mr. Charap.
In Jun 2023, Charap published another op-ed, criticizing the West for focusing more on providing military aid, intelligence and economic assistance to Ukraine rather than calling for the two parties to negotiate on peace.
In his Aug 2023 New Yorker article titled “The Case for Negotiating with Russia”, he suggested that Ukraine will have to make concessions to Russia, even though Ukraine has successfully liberated over half of the territories Russia occupied at some point.
All this wouldn’t worry me too much if Mr. Charap and his silly talks about negotiations and criticism of military aid were ignored. But they’re not. Charap’s a regular visitor to the White House’s National Security Council (NSC), headed by Jake Sullivan.
According to Michael @McFaul, Sullivan and Biden recently “bought into” the idea that sending too much military aid to Ukraine would cause Russia to use tactical nukes against the US. This is just speculation, but maybe Sullivan is actually listening to Mr. Charap?
But there’s nothing new with Russia’s threatening with nuclear weapons & Putin’s people have been doing it since at least 2007. Many people, including Musk & Sacks, use these empty threats as an excuse to let Russia do whatever they want in Ukraine:
To conclude, of course there should always be room for diplomacy and back-channel conversations, but one should always remember the unreliability of the Kremlin.
And just a few days ago, Peskov said that Russia and NATO are already in “direct confrontation”.
18/18
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CORRECTION 16/18:
Wrong Michael – not @McFaul, but @RepMcCaul.
I’ve covered Charap here before. That’s not the total of his visits to meet with people at the White House/on the National Security Staff. The first one was in the fall of 2021.
Russia:
Russian sources associated with Russian military aviation report that a Russian helicopter was shot down in a friendlyfire incident. Judging by a photo posted by Russian sources the helicopter is Mi-24 or Mi-35M. Such statements from Russian sources usually appear only if the… pic.twitter.com/N76TV099sz
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 10, 2024
Russian sources associated with Russian military aviation report that a Russian helicopter was shot down in a friendlyfire incident. Judging by a photo posted by Russian sources the helicopter is Mi-24 or Mi-35M. Such statements from Russian sources usually appear only if the crew is dead.
“If the information on friendlyfire is correct, then after all such cases, was anyone punished? I understand that war forgives a lot, but for how long?”
Russian gasoline production the week of 1st-7th of April declined again to 754 400 tons and diesel production dropped further than before to 1 585 100 tons. In 2023 during the week of 3rd-9th of April gasoline production was 833 200 tons and diesel production was 1 769 000 tons. pic.twitter.com/xuZbmtuiZu
— Stanimir Dobrev (@delfoo) April 10, 2024
That’s enough for today.
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