And there it goes! Is the algorithm really just "four posts stay on the front page"? I thought it varied.
"These people are in the occupied Berdyansk. They chant in the face of the occupiers: go home!
In Russian. "
https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1498313528205365250
Here's a link to the old thread comments: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_17918.html
At some point, I'll feel a need to hear smart takes on the climate change reports which, as far as I can tell, says we are more fucked than we ever thought.
Thanks. I didn't have enough anxiety to start with.
And there it goes! Is the algorithm really just "four posts stay on the front page"? I thought it varied.
I think it takes into account the age of the posts somehow, but I don't fully understand it either.
I rely 99.71% on the Recent Comments sidebar to get where I'm going so I don't notice if a post scrolls off. And can I say thank you to all of you for helping keep me informed? I felt it when this Serious Blog went kind of silent on one of the weekend nights.
Well, we seem to be at the point where shit gets really bad. The pros are openly regretting watching videos out of Kharkiv (cluster munition strikes on civilian targets) and point out that the casualties are quite likely to be ethnically Russian or Russian speakers. I believe, although I can't find my source atm, that the invading convoy that has been trundling over to Kyiv is now just a few miles outside the city. No break in hostilities as a result of talks.
That convoy is now about 16 mile long. Just amazing incompetence by the Russians four days in.
S/b miles, I sound like my Geordie pub mate now.
It's amazing what an utter complete own goal this has been for Putin in every single dimension.
Interesting thread https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1498381975022940167
13: Thanks, that is interesting. It seems like we're getting an understanding of why things appear to be going as they are: fundamentally, a lack of seriousness on the part of Russian leadership. This piece over at LGM ties in well with that thread: essentially, Putin wanted a quick-strike victory that could be declared successful by the 8th anniversary of the Crimean invasion (which was Saturday). Since the goal was as much PR as it was any kind of concrete military objective, they didn't do any of the legwork, from troop morale to logistics to operational planning.
I do wonder just how much stomach Putin will have for pursuing this. There's plenty of unused force in place, but on some level they almost have to start from scratch in rescuing the operation as a whole. That is:
IMO the initial expectation was scattered, mostly ineffectual resistance that would leave Russian forces all but unopposed within 24-36 hours, at which point Zelensky flees/resigns/is deposed. That's where Putin would get to declare victory, install a puppet, and conduct further operations almost at leisure.
None of that happened, a lot of forces have been squandered, and whatever revised objectives are set, the logistics and positioning are not in place. Doing what they've been doing, but MORE, doesn't accomplish what they need to, because it's too late to declare swift victory, Zelensky, even if captured or killed, is now a national hero, and Ukrainian resistance simply won't collapse. So Plan A is torn up, and Plan B looks very different.
Things are terrible and only likely to get worse in the near future, BUT I have been heartened and, frankly, completely shocked by how quickly and decisively the international community has responded (while still trying to preserve at least some distinctions that might prevent this from escalating to another world war). While this response obviously wouldn't have been possibly with Trump in the White House, I honestly didn't think Biden or the Europeans were going to be able to pull things together either, and that strong and quick response created a lot of momentum for states outside of the EU and NATO to act as well.
14: If you'll forgive an analogy: let's say you have a team of spies and/or thieves whose objective is behind locked doors. There are two approaches: Mission Impossible-style infiltration, where the object is taken without tripping any alarms or causing any alerts or even hurting anybody, or main force--not necessarily frontal assault, but enough bodies to overwhelm defenses and take the thing in plain sight. If you have the resources, both are viable, but if 1 fails, you can't succeed by doing more 1. You need to switch to 2, and 2 won't work as well as it would have if it had been the Plan A in the first place--surprise is lost, your assets aren't in the right place, Tom Cruise is now tied up or dead, etc.
Meanwhile, to go back to Russia, the world has been shockingly unified in response. I've seen it written that Putin has been preparing for sanctions, that they've got hard currency reserves, etc. But nobody in the West expected this firm a response, and I see no reason to believe Putin did either. So he's getting hurt worse than expected, and without any positives to balance it out.
Even if he achieves a version of his objectives through overwhelming force in the next few days, the "clean" victory he obviously was aiming for is gone: Russia is a pariah, Ukraine is a martyr, Zelensky is a hero, and relations won't be normalized for the foreseeable future. FFS, Germany has decided to fund a real army, Finland is sending arms, and it's pretty obvious that NATO is finally going to get serious about defending the Baltics. And bombing the shit out of Kyiv in order to accomplish all that doesn't make things any better.
15: Yep. I think that the US being on top of this from very early on, and being very vocal about what was happening/going to happen, then being proved correct, has been crucial. You can't undo what happened with Iraq, but it's been literally the opposite process, and IMO has led to this both strong and quick response.
Conversely, Russia lying to their own soldiers and to their non-Belarus allies (most notably China and Kazakhstan) about what they were up to seems like a huge mistake.
Agreed with 9-13. On the ground, Russia seems to be doing badly. In other ways? Switzerland has given up on neutrality. Not just Ukraine but also Sweden and Finland are looking to join NATO. Cutting off Russian money means less money for Republicans and there already seems to be some dissension among them about it. I get that doom and gloom is popular around here, and that any actual invasion is bad by definition, but still, this could be going a hell of a lot worse.
I'm (tentatively) very impressed with how the Biden administration has handled it so far.
great thread here - https://twitter.com/yorksranter/status/1498274035897180161?t=BcDlEF30YfBk1PudIupNYg&s=19
particularly the observation about state capacity.
Oh and here's a "fun" one: Starlink liabilities.
Does anyone here who has been following more closely than me have more thoughts on Russian engagement in Syria as precedent? I need to force myself away from the media, lest I turn into an actual sponge.
The thread in 21 is indeed very good, as is this thread on Ukrainian historical geography that it links to.
22.1 Well they seemingly haven't been able to take down many of Ukraine's drones which have been freely loitering over Russian columns and taking out high value targets.
22.2 Russia was fighting irregular largely untrained insurgents. Ukraine is another beast entirely.
Major caveat to 25.1 Musk is totally full of shit and I don't believe a word he says about Starlink accessibility in Ukraine until proven otherwise: "Fibbers' forecasts are worthless" as DD has said.
:
Ukrainian history is really fascinating. I knew about John Hughes and Hughesovka/Donetsk because it's come up in my epidemic research (they had a bad cholera epidemic in the 1890s, typical for nineteenth-century industrial cities), but I didn't realize Luhansk had a similar origin decades earlier.
I realize that this is completely Friedmanesque.
I saw my dental hygienist today. Her mom is here in the US, but she had been planning on a trip in the fall and did not go because of COVID. She made some comment about most people in Russia believing the official propoganda.
She mentioned a Russian acquaintance who is in the US and very well educated (her husband is a professor at Tulane - something health related). My hygienist thinks the woman must be watching Russian television in the US, because she told her that Ukraine provoked the attack.
My hygienist also said she went to the protest in Boston on Sunday, which was something she had never done before...and at least you didn't get arrested when you did that in the US.
24: The only caveat that I would add to 24 is that imho there's not a whole lot of distinction to be made between Party, post-Party, and mafia structures when you're talking about privatization shortly after 1991. The Red directors who had been up to their eyeballs in corruption before 1991 -- because that was pretty much the only way anything got done -- were stealing or controlling as much as they could while the framework for privatization was getting set up. Alliances of cadres within the Party morphed quickly and easily into mafia-type structures.
That said, the failure of the Viktor and Yuliya show after 2004 is one of the great recent tragedies of Eastern Europe.
The county Democrats are planning a rally and wanted to invite the county Republicans, but I think my "invite those Trump-loving Putin collaborators are you fucking kidding me?" objection may have carried the day.
Richard Engel who was a fucking basket case during the Afghanistan withdrawal continues in that vein:
Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far. A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?
So much wrongness.
Putin's bet that NATO and the EU would be divided and unable to sustain a coordinated response seemed ... kinda reasonable to me.
I think the bet was that leverage over energy resources would be sufficient to prevent European buy-in. I'm impressed that it wasn't.
How is it that Putin can't even get most Republicans on his side for this thing?
This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine--of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. So, Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here's a guy who's very savvy, I know him very well. Very, very well.
34: I don't think I could have come up with a stupider response if I had days to work on it. I guess that's why I'll never be President.
It's even worse than not getting Republicans beyond Trump and Carlson on board, he's even lost FIFA and the IOC!
Why is it "Zelenskyy" and not "Zelenskiy"? They're two different letters in Cyrillic alphabet. (I'm from Pittsburgh I should be better at this.)
37: According to a blog post, most people were spelling it -y, or more rarely -yi or -iy, when the president's office came out with the double y, confusing everyone. And there's no standardized Ukrainian transliteration system.
I didn't eat a perogie until like 2014.
I really enjoyed the historical geography thread. I know this is ridiculously naive of me, but I can't help wondering if giving the Donbas to Russia wouldn't take care of a big chunk of Ukraine's corruption issues.
One more thing that is both surprising AND good-- Financial Times has taken down the paywall on some of their Ukraine coverage and this map is excellent:
https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5
Part of the reason I was skeptical Putin would go for a big invasion rather than try to keep lopping of regions sequentially is that I didn't think Russia would win a war without massive destruction, and I wasn't sure he wanted to win a destroyed country.
When Russia seemed like they were going straight for Kyiv I thought they'd decided on war on a massive scale so I was surprised they didn't seem to be making quick progress. But I guess they thought they could win a short invasion. I'm still holding out hope they won't be able or willing to pursue massive destruction.
This isn't very high up my long list of worries, but I can't help but wonder how quickly the coronavirus is going to spread in Ukraine and neighboring countries (particularly in Poland). Fleeing war and taking in refugees are both worth it regardless, but this aspect makes the entire situation even more terrible.
Yeah, there hasn't been much discussion of the interaction of the pandemic with the war that I've seen, but Russia at least has been having a bad time with it lately and it's very plausible that all the troop and refugee movements are going to contribute to further spread.
NBC News:
"Ukraine is coming off its largest spike in Covid cases yet -- its seven-day average hit a record of 37,408 on Feb. 10, according to an NBC News tally. Less than 40 percent of the population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 15.
What's more, Ukraine has been trying to control a polio outbreak since October. Two children with paralytic polio have been identified, and 19 more were identified as infected with the virus but did not develop paralysis."
Russia's been having a bad time with COVID, that is. Though they've also been having a bad time with the war.
I don't see how it could avoid spreading in the packed train cars and buses I'm seeing, not to mention shelters and the like.
Maybe I'll cheer myself up with a light-hearted animated film. Perhaps I can find one about a robot apocalypse.
I think the surprising unity of the west is completely due to the conduct of the Ukrainians -- Zelenskyy, the Snake Island soldiers, the sunflower lady, thousands of others -- and their ability to communicate what they are doing (or want the West to think they are doing). It's been phenomenal and if Russia reduces Kyiv to wreckage and kills Zelenskyy, Putin is still going to have a reviled puppet regime and a mouthful of ashes. If anyone actually liked the guy they'd be trying to help him find an off-ramp.
I hadn't realized how bad covid still is on most of the continent, I'd been following the US carefully and the UK somewhat, and hadn't realized that cases are still so high in say Germany.
37: the two y's are also different letters -- the final y is a consonant and the first y is a different vowel from the one transliterated as i. I think Ukrainian represents those two vowel sounds with different Cyrillic letters than Russian, which makes things more confusing and causes my brain to overheat when I sound out Ukrainian words.
I acknowledge the propaganda/general comms success of Ukraine, which has been truly overwhelming, but I did have this moment of vertigo reading about this episode at the UN. Have circumstances really aligned such that I see something like that and think it's probably authentic? Wouldn't we normally see a government official brandishing such a pitch-perfect text and just laugh at the emotional manipulation? I have no idea if those sad messages are genuine, but if so, it feels like I've suddenly reached a different plane of reality where black-and-white moral judgments are more routine. I find the halo effect really unsettling.
Maybe I'll cheer myself up with a light-hearted animated film. Perhaps I can find one about a robot apocalypse.
_The Mitchells vs the Machines_ was solid.
54: I actually watched it chez teo! It was good, but it was not the lighthearted children's film I had been expecting it to be (and had represented it as).
53: It was on Reddit, which has the best LOTR memes, so it's probably true.
To 17, I was just thinking that this is the first major event with downside/things not going as intended where the Biden Administration seemed to have feasible contingency plans that they then immediately put into place, because Lord knows they didn't seem to with Afghanistan or delta or Sinema and Manchin deciding to be wreckers.
49, 54, 55: The funniest part was that she explicitly represented it as "a lighthearted children's movie about the robot apocalypse." And then somehow we were all surprised.
52 is correct. The "И" in Ukrainian is considered the same vowel as "Ы" in Russian (although they're pronounced slightly differently), and both are usually transliterated as "y" in English; Ukrainian uses "i" for the same sound as Russian "И", usually transliterated as "i" in English. And "Й" in both Ukrainian and Russian is a consonant usually transliterated as "y". I find it weird to see a double Y, but I guess it differentiates it from the Russian spelling that would be transliterated as "iy".
17,57: Maybe this is the bit where having an 80-year-old as President means fortunately he peaked when Russia did, so his instincts are right? Impressive. Imagining a week where the NYT/similar are taking very seriously the question of the
independent states that Russia is suddenly defending....
53: I don't know Ukrainian or Russian, but I wonder if they sound less over-the-top in cultural context. I feel like Slavs don't reflexively avoid over-the-top emotionality in speech in the way we do, so things that are natural to them can sound ridiculous in translation. Not that that would make the text genuine, but it would make it more understandable if it's a creation.
That would explain like two of the Brothers Karamazov.
I know 61 is almost a cliché, but my experience has been so much the opposite. My Slavic stereotypes are all understated irony and cheerful profanity, plus jarring yet hilarious bluntness. Maybe there's a gender component here, though? (Also, I don't reflexively avoid over-the-top emotionality in speech; I'm a drama factory. I may not have any meaningful perspective here.)
I mean, they have many modes, I just think they're stronger on this one than we are, in general.
I've asked someone in a better position to say. Also, maybe Smearcase?
53, 61, 63: I don't know much about Slavic culture (I think reading the Night Watch series is inadequate), but the content of the texts didn't seem as strange to me as the translation did. This seems more credible.
64: In conclusion, Slavs are a land of contrasts.
Over the last 30 years or so I've formulated a tentative rule that Czechs are Monty Python fans (dry humour, strong sense of the absurd), Poles have a combination of very dark humour, serious commitment, and high levels of personal tragedy, Ukrainians (and Moldovans for that matter) tend to be highly efficient and amazingly foul-mouthed, Hungarians regard learned eccentricity as the highest virtue that anyone can possess and cultivate it accordingly, and Russians are just insane paranoiac drama queens. (So, I suppose, "Marry Czechs, employ Ukrainians, befriend Hungarians, support Poles, avoid Russians.")
This is interesting - https://www.stimson.org/2022/ukraine-did-china-have-a-clue/
Argues that Russia persuaded China it wasn't really going to invade, and China is now not happy
Chinese people usually seem not happy to me. I guess it's possible I piss them off somehow. There's not a good way to ask.
68: My theory (based on extensive non-reading of primary sources) is that Putin thinks he did the Chinese a solid, by waiting until after the Olympics to invade.
I was wondering if he did that deliberately, because it seemed to me that if your leverage was providing natural gas, you'd not wait until spring was on the horizon. But I though Putin was probably waiting so as not to waste the effort spent drugging athletes.
66: Hungarians are not Slavs. Some of them may be Martians.
67: Oh my God, I saw a clip of Pat Robertson and he sounded crazier than before - if that's even possible. He was so shrunken, I wasn't sure if he was a real person.
||
General FYI -
My coworker's bank account was hacked. Fairly large sums were taken from her savings. The bank recognizes that this was an error, but she had to freeze all of her accounts. So, watch your accounts.
|>
73.1: Yes, he was not the picture of health.
73.1: Yes, he was not the picture of health.
The idea that God would compel a leader to do something evil is theologically novel in a way that suggests senility isn't the only issue.
The idea that God would compel a leader to do something evil is theologically novel
Unsettlingly, not really. Exodus viii.1-3:
And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
The Lord not only tells Moses to inflict plagues on Egypt, but also compels Pharaoh not to yield.
Any thoughts on this Fiona Hill interview? I know if I quote pieces of it you'll just respond to the quotes without clicking through, and I don't actually want to sow panic about hypersonic missiles, but the claim that "if he has an instrument, he wants to use it" is the big live question here. There must be more examples of forbearance that one could line up, right?
Putin tried to warn Trump about this, but I don't think Trump figured out what he was saying. In one of the last meetings between Putin and Trump when I was there, Putin was making the point that: "Well you know, Donald, we have these hypersonic missiles." And Trump was saying, "Well, we will get them too." Putin was saying, "Well, yes, you will get them eventually, but we've got them first." There was a menace in this exchange. Putin was putting us on notice that if push came to shove in some confrontational environment that the nuclear option* would be on the table.
The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can't? [details murders of Litvinenko and Skripal and the collateral damage] So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn't use something that he's got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, "No, he wouldn't, would he?" Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.
* I wasn't sure if the nuclear threat was implicit or explicit here. Via follow-up research I am truly delighted to have conducted, namely by following the link in the Politico article, I see that:
In March 2018, Vladimir Putin, in the first of several speeches designed to rekindle American anxieties about a foreign missile threat, boasted that Russia had two operational hypersonic weapons: the Kinzhal, a fast, air-launched missile capable of striking targets up to 1,200 miles away; and the Avangard, designed to be attached to a new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile before maneuvering toward its targets. Russian media have claimed that nuclear warheads for the weapons are already being produced and that the Sarmat missile itself has been flight-tested roughly 3,000 miles across Siberia. (Russia has also said it is working on a third hypersonic missile system, designed to be launched from submarines.) American experts aren't buying all of Putin's claims. "Their test record is more like ours," said an engineer working on the American program. "It's had a small number of flight-test successes." But Pentagon officials are convinced that Moscow's weapons will soon be a real threat.
Pat does not make a good case for why people should follow God. "God decided to start a senseless war? Guess I'd better hustle off to church and sing his praise!"
78: right, where Jesus says that "my Father will stop doing all that Old Testament crap, I promise, even if things go seriously, seriously south which I guarantee you they will."
Jesus talks about Jerusalem being destroyed but not that the Romans would need compelled to do it. Romans were big on that kind of stuff without being pushed.
I guess I get nervous when politically relevant people have a preference ordering that puts "end of the world" ahead of "Donald Trump looks like a fuck head."
the claim that "if he has an instrument, he wants to use it" is the big live question here.
Well, no doubt that's true, but it doesn't mean that he's undeterrable. If he was undeterrable, he'd have shot down the first planeload of Javelins that turned up last week. And more to the point, it isn't just about deterring him; Russia is as deterrable as the most deterrable person in its chain of command and/or within shooting range of Putin.
That passage in 77 confused and upset me so much when I read Scripture as a good Catholic kid. I never found an authority figure who could give me a good spin on it.
I guess the moral is that "if he has an instrument, he wants to use it" applies to God too.
Pretty sure "the evil is necessary because God's plan" is pretty constantly near the surface in the Left Behind series too.
Right, the whole eschatology of people like Pat premised on needing an Antichrist and Megiddo and so on. God's doing this to get them closer to their red heifer.
The Greeks and the Romans didn't worship the gods for being good, because in many cases they self evidently weren't. The idea was to cut a deal with them by following the script accurately and making the right sacrifices at the right time and holding the proper festivals in the proper order and so on. And if you got it right, the gods would keep their side of the bargain and toss you a cookie. I wonder if that kind of thinking was present in second temple Judaism, given that the elite seems to have been substantially Hellenised.
85: it reads to me like all those passages in the Iliad that Julian Jaynes got so excited about. It's coming from a time when people believed that thoughts were the work of the gods, and not internally generated. So Odysseus doesn't have an idea - Athene whispers an idea to him. Hector isn't brave - Ares fills him with bravery. That kind of thing.
It looks like the difference, going by marketing, is that hypersonic missiles combine that level of speed with the maneuverability of cruise missiles, unlike ICBMs which, being ballistic missiles, just fly in a parabola.
84: there you go, an example of forbearance. I wish it were more comforting, but in light of current events it's hard to find much comfort.
89: that kind of thinking is present in most aspects of Judaism that I'm aware of, but you could be right that it got a substantial reinforcement during the Second Temple period...
93: Has the word "supersonic" been retired? (Sincere question, idk)
Suppersonic isn't very good. I tried one because I could eat in my car during covid.
94 Ironically that increase in speed actually comes at a cost in speed, regular ICBMs are faster than hypersonic glide vehicles. Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk has been really good on this, and here's Joshua Pollack on the same over at ACW: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1208662/hypersonic-glide-vehicles-what-are-they-good-for/
89: No need to invoke Hellenization; that attitude was standard throughout the Near East as well and permeates the OT. Second Temple Judaism is more noteworthy for the rise of sects that start to move toward a more moralistic approach, probably influenced by Zoroastrian dualism. Christianity is the most successful of these sects but there were lots of others.
I'm hardly a Russia expert but I'm very unimpressed by Fiona Hill in that interview excerpt. "The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can't" This analysis strikes me as jejune and lacking in any explanatory usefulness. I can think of several reasons why Putin has used polonium and exotic nerve agents against dissidents. For one thing it sends a clear message with a clear return address and one that the Western powers have been nothing but feckless in their response. Maybe she has an incisive analysis of Putin's character and motives and it's the journalist's fault in conveying her views. God knows it wouldn't be the first time.
97.1 s/b Ironically that increase in maneuverability actually comes at a cost in speed
Doesn't maneuverability usual come at a cost in speed?
101 Yes, but call it a 'hypersonic' missile and everyone goes "oooh, faaaaast!"
This missile is automatic, it's systematic, it's hydromatic.
Rhymes like yours can never be stopped.
98. Thanks, that's informative. I don't know much about near eastern beliefs and practice in general. I've seen it said that post-exilic Judaism was influenced by Zoroastrianism, but not what that influence was. Christianity got its break by being open to sympathetic non-Jews joining (at least some currents of it), but presumably the other comparable currents weren't.
"Sympathetic non-Jew" would be a great pseud.
I thought the whole Fiona Hill interview was worth reading for background but I don't think anyone's likely to have much insight into the nuclear weapons probabilities. Also it was kind of a longer read than I expected.
Nukes are very low on my list of worries, but Kyiv getting destroyed is high. Also, this thread was really interesting. The Chomsky/Kissenger consensus. https://twitter.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1498491107902062592?s=21
I met a George Kennan's daughter. She was very pro Howard Dean and also kind of obsessed with the deficit.
90: Right, as far as I know Bruno Snell's The Discovery of the Mind was the first extended working out of that theory. Great book even if you have to be wary of the Geistesgeschichte grand claims.
99: That's all fair. I do feel there's a pretty limited number of people whom you can call essentially evil/ in it for the thrill. "He's a supervillain" lacks explanatory power for sure, so I'm just trying to read between the lines a bit. Dismissing it follows Occam's razor. My take on the assassinations was pretty much the same as yours as it was happening, although I did not remember the story about the charity box. In conclusion, this shit is really not my forte.
There are lots of reports that Russian soldiers are surrendering in droves and abandoning working equipment with fuel in it. Russian planning for this operation seems astonishingly bad and morale is correspondingly low. They still have plenty of missiles and stuff, of course, so they can still do tons of damage.
George Kennan was a George Kennan's son.
109: Those all assume it is Russia that is making the decision rather than Putin, and that Putin is afraid of NATO invasion rather than him viewing NATO as an obstacle to rebuilding the Russian empire.
116: I guess the relationship was more distant than that.
109 is interesting, but I note that it lumps every NATO expansion between Berlin and the Donbass into one basket of bad geopolitics. AFAICT there's been no serious effort on anyone's part to actually bring Ukraine into NATO--it's something Ukrainians talk about in the context of 2008 and 2014, and I guess it was talked about in the '90s when 8 former USSR/Warsaw Pact countries joined, but, unlike the EU, joining NATO is a long, hard process, and if Russia ia serious about being worried, then they'd probably distinguish between op/eds in the Kyiv Times and Ukrainian parliament actually triggering the 10 year (right?) process.
117 is more or less the other thing I was going to say in 119. Rerun the timeline, don't add any countries to NATO except unified Germany. Does anybody think that, in this scenario, the Baltics remain free? Or, for that matter, that someone less autocratic/imperial than Putin's in charge?
I'm suddenly concerned that I literally cannot take my own side in an argument. Do I ever take a side in an argument here? It's obscene.
Ukraine almost certainly couldn't join NATO now, unless it wanted to cede its claims on Crimea (and probably the Donbass); states with "ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes" are explicitly told that they are unlikely to be admitted. (Sweden and Finland, otoh...)
I think Sweden has accepted that Finland is no longer part its empire.
Finland should try to get the Karelian Isthmus back.
It's probably very nice, as isthmuses go.
The Chomsky/Kissenger consensus.
Adding to 117 and 119: Chomsky and Kissinger share a lack of interest in the legitimate desires of Ukrainians. The people of Ukraine wanted to align with the West. Subsequent events have vindicated their collective wisdom in this choice.
An analogy: If only we had been nicer to our homegrown American fascists and stopped making them feel bad about what assholes they are, then they wouldn't be such assholes.
Another analogy: She wore a short skirt and was asking for it.
The key to the Kissinger/Kennan/Chomsky view is that it denies the role of Ukraine as an interested and effectual party in this matter. Yet another analogy: It's all about meeeeeeeee.
112: Perfect.
125: Isthmusi?
119: Joining the EU is longer and harder because you have to take on the whole body of existing EU law and incorporate it into your national statues. EU and NATO are complementary, but EU membership is meant to be transformational because (1) you have to build the state capacity to deal with a squazillion little things that the Union regulates; (2) you have to get practiced in the horse trading of the community method; and (3) you have to implement reasonable democracy on all kinds of different fronts.
NATO is a life-or-death commitment that's generally tightly bounded. The EU is merging extended families and all of them living together under one roof with one budget, working up continuous rota of meals and chores.
Until Ukraine stood up I hadn't realize how much of a fixture Putin had become in my mind, how resigned I was to this malevolent force domestically and internationally.
It feels like that 40 mile long column north of Kyiv isn't going to be a sitting duck forever, and will be pretty dangerous once it gets to where its going. Interesting time for NATO to slam the breaks on transferring old Migs to the Ukraine Air Force.
130: I agree, but possibly it's not just slow but stopped?
Also, when does the mud season come?
I think they have paved roads by now.
State of the Union Thread. Biden's just said that childcare is up to $14k per year in a major city. Heh. I've heard of $26k for 5 half-days a week around here.
Maybe that's just for one kid that's kind of an asshole?
Those of you who appreciated Greg Yudin's pieces linked in the previous thread might be interested in this update:
Last Thursday evening, Grigory Yudin, a sociologist and philosopher, and his wife Anastasia Yudina, a marketing researcher, went to Pushkin Square to protest the invasion. They got off the subway and then, Yudin told me, "Something happened. I realized that I was falling down." Yudina was taking a picture of the swarms of police in riot gear at that moment. When she turned around, her husband had disappeared. Yudin had been loaded onto a police bus, and, with many other people, he was taken to a precinct on the outskirts of the city. The next time that Yudina saw him, about an hour and a half later, it was in an ambulance outside the police station. "He was in a neck brace," she told me. "He was covered with dirt--they must have dragged him. He was confused." Yudin had been in and out of consciousness. When we met on Sunday, at one of those cozy and delicious Moscow restaurants, Yudin still had a swollen eye and a noticeable scrape on his left temple.
As we wrapped up our late lunch on Sunday, Yudin argued for his right to pick up the tab. "I have to spend this anyway," he said, because Russian currency would soon become worthless. "Tomorrow, markets will collapse," he predicted, and then Russians would begin to grasp the scale of the catastrophe that the country was facing.
The Kissinger piece from 2014 is the sort of bullshit you'd expect. He offers a four-point plan:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.
3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea's relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea's autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
The only thing missing from the Kissinger plan is a pony.
On the whole, Ukraine and the West accommodated Russia more than Kissinger proposes here. It was only two weeks after this piece that the Crimean referendum was held -- under Russian administration and with a ridiculous 97% supporting reunification with Russia.
I agree, but possibly it's not just slow but stopped?
There is a loophole left open that would allow them to be delivered on the ground. Possibly the migs aren't in great working order anyway.
Robert Farley thinks the MiG transfer is mostly symbolic and unlikely to make much difference militarily even if it does happen.
It would be a shame if symbolism got in the way of actual military operations. But that leaves the question open of what Ukraine can use to blast the shit out of this 40-mile column.
I can't believe Goose gave his life just to see MiGs become allied planes.
Well, they do still have some of their own planes. Part of the Russians' inexplicable incompetence at this is that they still haven't put the Ukrainian air force out of commission.
Its hard to imagine that state of affairs will be allowed to continue much longer.
Sure, but 10 more planes or whatever won't make a difference on that account.
And the Ukrainians have been having some success hitting various convoys with drones. The overall impact is hard to tell, as with everything else.
93: Has the word "supersonic" been retired? (Sincere question, idk)
Not at all, but "hypersonic" means "more than Mach 5" while "supersonic" means "Mach 1.2 to Mach 5". (The 0.8-1.2 bit is "transonic".) While it seems weird that you can be going faster than sound but not count as supersonic, the definitions are really driven by what they mean for aircraft design. There's even "high hypersonic" which is anything over (I think) Mach 10 - pretty much limited to "things re-entering the atmosphere from space".
I am really comfortable being on the other side of a question which has Noam Chomsky, Henry Kissinger, Jeremy Corbyn, Tucker Carlson, Paul Keating, Aleksandr Dugin and Vladimir Putin all clustered together on one side of it. It's a real Guy Crouchback moment of clarity; "The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off."
Not to mention, of course, that Ukraine isn't in NATO and hadn't applied to join NATO and couldn't in fact join NATO under NATO's own rules. What pissed Putin off, as all these decaying old monsters should know, is that Ukraine was getting too close to the EU, and Ukraine becoming a prosperous and stable democracy next to Russia was the real threat that Russia couldn't tolerate.
Oh, the specs associated with the term "supersonic"? I can field this one. The s is for "super", and the u is for "unique". The p is for "perfection" and you know that we are freaks. The e is for "exotic" and the r is for "raps".
So tell those nosy people just to stay the hell back. Supersonic.
The little seat back map app on our flight on Sunday read a cruising speed of 799mph but I assume that was ground speed and we were in the jet stream, not that JetBlue secretly revived the Concorde.
146: Don't forget George Kennan! Reading the piece in TNR about his diaries was very clarifying. I always thought that except for that one good idea ("containment") he was an idiot, and a dangerous one at that. It was interesting discover that he was a bigot, a eugenics fan, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, ... and it goes on and on.
People used to have more free time after work.
"The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off."
I keep seeing accounts of Russian troops walking away, sabotaging their tanks, etc. I assume that much of this is propaganda, and clearly Ukrainian cities are being hammered relentlessly. Still, the Russians have gained barely any ground.
The FT map shows gains along the northern shoreline of the Sea of Azov between Berdyansk and Mariupol, but that is about it. Even the separatists in the Donbas have taken control of very little of the territory that Russia recognised.
https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5
The most outrageous account that I heard described Russian ships based in Crimea approaching Odesa-- then stopping and retreating, as if their crews simply refused to proceed. It seems to incredible to believe, but the is Odesa, relatively untouched.
One more item:
https://kyivindependent.com/national/exclusive-voice-message-reveals-russian-military-units-catastrophic-losses-in-ukraine/
NBC covering itself in glory.
Chuck Todd last night:
Chuck Todd: Think Biden's State of the Union address will resonate with Ukrainians?
NBC correspondent in Lviv, Ukraine: So its 6am here and people may be a little preoccupied because Russians are invading their country and trying to take it over.
Almost beyond parody.
Even Lester Holt* who I think is generally pretty good for a network anchor got in on the act earlier: "do you think Putin will try to upstage Biden by bombing Kyiv in the middle of SOTU?" And he and Andrea Mitchell were lamenting our not going directly against the column. Almost like they work for a network whose chief foreign correspondent has lost his freaking mind (Engel).
*However, I am guessing his primetime interview with Barr will be in line with the reputation-washing Barr has been trying for.
145: thank you for facilitating my unwillingness to google the most basic fucking things! I shamefully appreciate it.
146: This also looks gruesome, although I haven't read it yet.
153. That exchange needs to be on a t-shirt sold to support refugees.
148: Took the words out of my mouth, heebie!
154.2: Funny, I saw the Tobias & Lindsay meme applied to people thinking that they should agree to be interviewed by Chotiner, but I didn't know who had made the fatal mistake today.
154.2: Mearshimer probably went into the interview thinking, "Chotiner is a smart guy. I'm going to enjoy this conversation." And he probably read the result and said, "What a fine interviewer he is. I came out of that looking really good!"
In this fallen world, at least we have Isaac Chotiner.
The interview, by the way, is Mearsheimer defending the Chomsky/Kissinger thesis on Ukraine. It does not go well for Mearsheimer, but it's also true that he has absolutely no cause for complaint. His views get a thorough airing. The miracle of Chotiner is that he is able to step out of the way even as his subjects hang themselves. His interviews are never about him, even though it's hard to think of anyone who can imitate his style. It's what objective journalism is supposed to be, but seldom is.
The one I was a GA for was openly pro-Trump in 2016. I haven't checked since.
Interesting thread from Unfogged favorite agriculture expert, Sarah Taber. She points out both the impacts on Ukraine's grain exports from the damage so far (mostly to ports) and the impacts of soil conditions on the invasion itself (it's very muddy so the Russians have to stick to the roads).
Russians have taken Kherson. First major city to fall.
Seconding 163; that's a very informative thread.
In that link, that's hilarious that the link for a discussion of the grain regulator anti-monopoly case from 388 BC comes from the Cold Case files of the Justice Department.
You have to admit that's a pretty cold case.
164:
The significance of the battle along the coast between Berdyansk and Mariupol dawned on me eventually-- it gives Russia a land bridge which is now extended by Kherson. I think Kherson (or along the Dnipro in that area) is where a Ukrainian engineer blew up a bridge, knowing he would be killed in the process. He held off the Russians for a while, at least.
That should have been "land bridge to Odesa".
Here is the engineer and it was Kherson:
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/war-in-ukraine-soldier-killed-while-trying-to-stop-russian-army-awarded-hero-title-4813952.html
Here is a better reference:
https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022/02/25/ukrainian-marine-sacrificed-himself-to-slow-a-russian-tank-column-officials-say/
For some reason. the MSM media did not cover it at all and I didn't want to quote the NY Post . . .
The US House of Representatives has voted 426-3 in support of Ukraine. My congressman is one of the three. Christ, what an asshole.
The ancient grain collusion analysis is actually pretty interesting. (It's an economic analysis rather than an actual legal document; "cold case files" in the title seems to be metaphorical.) He concludes that the Athenian government giving the grain dealers monopoly buying power in the wholesale market also effectively gave them monopoly selling power in the retail market, so retail prices ultimately went up rather than down.
Even if Special Ops et al walk this all the way back, and obviously I hope they do, I stand by my earlier comments about hating the cheerleading and dreading the future.
160: Agreed, but neoliberal institutionalists are more annoying.
AIMHMHB, JM is fun to talk to over drinks, but is also one of those people who is basically a walking parody of himself (which I think comes across in this interview). I used to love using his work as a foil for teaching, because his style is so crisp (even when his theories are so questionable).
I once saw Robert Keohane, but I wasn't the one who recognized him.
I'm told he's a wonderful mentor, but I haven't subjected myself to hearing him speak or reading his work in a very long time.
I recently gave away every book I owned on the "neo/neo" debate, and it was wonderful.
I probably still have them. It's already on a shelf and I'm not really buying new books (except electronically).
At least you'll be prepared if anyone ever asks you for a comprehensive explanation of absolute vs. relative gains.
I have an unwritten thesis chapter on that.
Not exactly. About public opinion on that type of issue.
Proper tire maintenance and more on mud:
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1499164245250002944
I just have nightmares of pretending to care about the issue for a few weeks.
I found "Neorealism and Its Critics." I think that was from my first year of graduate school. It's stacked below Kahneman & Tversky, which is the last social science book I bought.
Probably good that I didn't give away all the books in the box I labeled "Russia box" when I packed up after dropping out of grad school but also I probably will never read all of them.
I might take some Russia box books if you're sick of them.
Is this going to be like the Winter War? You've got the same bullshit justifications for the invasion, the same plan to do a quick knock-out of what should be a much weaker opponent, and the same failure of that plan, and same the revelation (even if there's an eventual Russian victory) of how weak Russia actually is.
187: I think the box is in my parents' garage where it's been for something like 15 years. I wrote the titles down but not where the box is. If it's in the storage I'm renting here I might prune it.
Speaking of books, could someone recommend a good book or two on post-2003 history of the Middle East (however broadly or narrowly defined as you'd like, but not primarily focused on the US foreign policy/military aspects).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-tells-government-to-be-quiet-on-russia-and-focus-on-iran/
"Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the government to take a more guarded approach to the ongoing war in Ukraine and instead focus its attention on the Iran nuclear deal, in his first public statement on the European conflict since Russia invaded its neighbor on Thursday."
Russians making steady progress toward Odesa in the south (and perhaps Transnistria in Moldova)--
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/odesa-in-russia-s-sights-amid-faster-progress-in-ukraine-s-south
Small glimmer of hope:
"A cold reception from Russian speaking citizens of towns such as Berdyansk that President Vladimir Putin aimed to liberate, with residents chanting "go home" rather than wave flags, suggests the expanse from Mariupol to Odesa -- like the rest of the country -- may be easier for Russian troops to capture than to hold."
"easier for Russian troops to capture than to hold."
Mykolayiv to Berdyansk - the width of the 58th Army area of operations - is 445 km. In that space the Russians have an estimated 17 BTGs on three axes of advance, diverging from each other. (Compare: 30 odd on two converging on Kyiv, 20 against Kharkiv, 12 in Donbass.) So there are three reinforced brigades separated by hundreds of kilometres and therefore unable to support each other, with at least one on the other side of the Dnieper to the others. If the Ukrainians can put together a mobile reserve there are opportunities to hit that hard.
This may be a comedy stunt but if not it's up there with jumping onto the inflatable slide.
I don't know, things are getting crazy, people's minds are going in weird places, here's an entire thread on what happens if a huge nuclear power plant is on fire -- I think really everyone needs to chill out and stop catastrophi
All right, I laughed out loud at "ok, everyone needs to take a step back and not jump to conclusions. Stay with me. Yes, a fire at any nuclear plant is a bad thing but there are a few things to know." PLEASE STOP CATASTROPHIZING ABOUT THE ARMY ACTIVELY SHELLING THE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. IT WILL MOST LIKELY BE FINE.
198: And Lindsay graham on the TCV screen to remind folks that none of this would have happened if Donald trump had won.
My dad made his career in nuclear reactor safety and if he were here today he would tell you that shelling a nuclear power plant is bad.
199: He's also asking for someone in Russia to assassinate Putin. Holy shit, for once in your benighted life, just shut up.
199: undoubtedly. Trump would have ensured that Russia was in the capital already.
Remember when fear of nuclear war and the desire to preserve American prestige was enough to keep even the shittiest elected officials from vomiting garbage during a crisis?
That may just have been the lack of twitter.
Up "late" to do personal things but instead just reloading Twitter to see if Russia has declared martial law yet, suckerpunched by "We do know that Ukraine is losing this war, right? That it's awful but it's happening?" (Argument follows)
205: hmm. I mean, "losing this war" means "there is a credible scenario in which Russia has won the war, and not only that, but the current situation makes this the most likely scenario to happen".
I think a lot of that leans on what "winning the war" looks like. There is a definitely plausible scenario in which Russia ends up with Crimea and the DPR/LPR territories, and Ukraine recognises that - essentially Ukraine accepts the status quo ante. In fact I think that's the most likely outcome and it's arguably a bit of a loss for Ukraine.
But is that a win for Russia? Not in terms of what Russia has announced publicly that it wants to achieve. It wants a demilitarised and "denazified" Ukraine. That means occupying and controlling substantially all of Ukraine, in order to force the disbandment of the Ukrainian military and the removal, imprisonment or execution of most of its political leadership. Basically what the US did in Iraq. That scenario seems a lot more remote in time and probability.
205: "That scenario seems a lot more remote in time and probability."
I think Putin is serious when he says Ukraine isn't even a country, but rather part of Russia. He will continue until he achieves his stated goals. What will stop him? He is willing to destroy Russia as well as Ukraine. In a few weeks the rasputitsa will be drying out. The "better trained" forces will be available. Soviet-era anti-tank weaponry from Germany is not enough.
A lot of people realize this, which is why we are seeing fanciful calls for (or predictions of) a coup or assassination: pulling a rabbit out of your hat.
The "better trained" forces will be available.
What are these? The very first in were their airborne.
The new troops are reading up on the safest ways to shell a nuclear power plant.
The "better trained" forces will be available.
I would be fascinated to read anyone with any sort of expertise who thinks that Russia has deliberately put its cannon fodder in the first wave to get shredded, rather than doing what every other country does and give the important jobs to the best available troops. Why would he do this? What possible sense does it make?
You should note that they certainly aren't doing this with their equipment. They aren't sending in loads of poor-quality troops in BMP-1 and T-64. Pantsir-S1 is first-line kit. T-72B3 is first-line kit. Ka-52 Hokum is first-line kit. They're all there. Many of them in small bits.
Soviet-era anti-tank weaponry from Germany is not enough
Javelin and NLAW are not Soviet-era, and they seem to be doing OK, to be honest.
He will continue until he achieves his stated goals. What will stop him?
Unsustainable losses following over-extension of an advance with inadequate logistics and planning? Same thing that stopped every Soviet offensive for the first two years of the war, before they learned?
I think "better trained" in quotes is the key. Troops with political instruction so they'll not flinch from violence against all targets in Ukraine and that will fear for their future and family if they surrender or drain their gas or whatever.
The thing is it seems like if Russia just wants to slowly destroy all the cities they can, and they've done it before in Grozny. The Russian troops don't want to fight, but shelling from a distance is different.
Unless there's a genuine chance of Russia running out of supplies or a real mutiny, eventually Russia can just destroy all the buildings.
210 it seems like a mix really. A lot of the regular infantry does appear to be about cannon fodder level and then there's a bunch of VDV and Spetsnaz (who appear to be getting absolutely chewed up, probably because they're being misused). The AA assets are top of the line but there don't seem to be many T-90s (though there are many upgraded T-72s). This guy has been invaluable in tallying up the Russian assets lost https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop (lately he can barely keep up).
One can't rule out that both sides lose. One has to imagine that Russia's initial plan involved everyone buying "we're just here to support an independent republic that happens to be near our training exercises" and Europe not uniting quickly enough to do anything before Kiev (Kjiv?) fell. That's not happening, so what's plan B? Shelling Ukraine into bits?
And I see you've noted that "T-72B3 is first-line kit." But there's a lot of older stuff mixed in. It's all very bizarre.
"President Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts in the past week, The Times has learnt.
Two different outfits have been sent to kill the Ukrainian president -- mercenaries of the Kremlin-backed Wagner group and Chechen special forces. Both have been thwarted by anti-war elements within Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
Wagner mercenaries in Kyiv have sustained losses during their attempts and are said to have been alarmed by how accurately the Ukrainians had anticipated their moves. A source close to the group said it was "eerie" how well briefed Zelensky's security team appeared to be."
216 If there's anything to that it could well be US intel that's being passed along to the Ukrainians. It really does appear that the US IC has penetrated deeply into Russian military and security services.
One can't rule out that both sides lose
As I see it, this is the closest thing to a certainty. Actually, not only both sides lose. Everyone else loses too.
Anyway, I think it's possible (even likely) that Russia won't be able to hold much Ukrainian territory but will be able to cause enough death and destruction that Ukraine's win will mostly be continuing to exist. Which is an important win, but nothing at all like life in a typical EU country.
I'd imagine there's US assets directly working on Zelenskyy's security team? If we offered to get him out of Kyiv it makes sense we have someone directly in personal contact with him?
219 sounds right, but in the longer term I wonder whether Europe might pay to rebuild?
Almost twenty years ago I took a class on landscape change in Poland and Czech Republic-- some medieval, but mostly Soviet to post-Soviet era. What really amazed me was the incredible amount of money being poured into both countries as they prepared to join the European Union. Everywhere that we went, EU money was flowing like water, and private investment followed.
If Ukraine manages to "continue to exist," they will get help. The amount of death so far is appalling but still pales in comparison with the 112,000 people who have died of Covid in the last year or so.
213: there is a mix, including some older kit, and my deduction from that is not "they're only sending cannon fodder" but "they're sending everyone they can". There were estimated between 150,000 and 190,000 Russian troops on the border before the invasion began. Their entire army is only 280,000, so putting even half of that into action is a major commitment.
There are IIRC units there, identified in photos, that are normally based in the Far East.
There aren't many T-90, but then most of the Russian tank fleet is still T-72 variants.
On the "they can just take their time and destroy cities" point... well, the longer it takes the more severe the economic damage. Taking a modern city takes months. Grozny was hellish, and Grozny is one-tenth the size of Kiev (300k inhabitants vs 3 million, more or less). Mosul is half Kiev's size and took nine months, with a garrison outnumbered more than ten to one, without modern ATGMs... and it almost burned through the entire US stock of PGMs to do it. Russia is running short on PGMs already.
If they've tried to assassinate Zelenskyy three times, we may owe Lindsay Graham an apology because it sounds like capping Putin is fair game.
No one owes Graham an apology regardless.
More to the point, Kyiv sprawls. It covers four times the area of Mosul. Most of the buildings are postwar - so, I would expect, lots of reinforced concrete construction, not just breezeblock and brick. You could get through most walls in Mosul with a sledgehammer and a halligan tool. In Kyiv you'd need explosive breaching.
Just destroying all the buildings with artillery... man. Rubbling three hundred square miles of city? I mean, it could be done - nothing's impossible - but the sheer quantity of ammunition you'd need is beyond belief.
Only works once you've already captured the city, otherwise people will dissuade you from doing it.
Hopefully. But I worry they have enough artillery to block fire fighting.
Whats the Russian equivalent of a B-52? Seems like that would be effective.
No, I mean, if you want to burn a building with matches and gasoline, you have to be able to walk into the building carrying matches and gasoline. You can't do it remotely. So you have to have taken that building first.
230: Tu-22, Tu-160 or I suppose Tu-95. But they haven't got very many of them, and, again, Kyiv is huge. The Allies in WW2 launched thousand-bomber raids against German cities for months on end, and, though they damaged them, the cities weren't destroyed or rendered non-functional. It took five RAF bomber sorties to kill one Berliner.
Come to that, think about Linebacker II. Not particularly effective.
It took five RAF bomber sorties to kill one Berliner.
The RAF killed Kennedy?
No. He's coming back. People are waiting in Dallas.
Russians should surely know that turning a city into rubble only makes it easier to defend.
"In the South the Russian troops coming out of Crimea have continued to expand their positions in all directions. But this is not without setbacks. As well as a stubborn Ukrainian army defence, they face many logistical and morale problems as they go deeper. In places like Berdyansk, a port city in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the local population have simply refused to let the troops stay and have driven them out by strength of will, character, and numbers.
The Russians claim ownership of cities like Kherson, but Ukrainian flags are still flying over the government buildings. Russians are there physically, but somehow not mentally. The major city on the sea of Azov, Mariupol, continues to survive despite heavy around the clock shelling and ground attacks. The Russians have been unable to gain control. Odesa and Mykolaiv on the Black Sea have awaited landings from Russian naval forces for several days now but there are unconfirmed rumours that the Russian marines have mutinied. The ships appear on the horizon, and then go back.
Overall the Russian forces are suffering badly. It is no surprise. They were poorly prepared despite the claims of previously outstanding training and exercises from Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Valary Gerasimov. Their leadership is weak with many officers avoiding combat where they can, and the tasks given by their generals are often militarily stupid or simply suicidal. Some soldiers have been waiting since before Christmas near the borders in poor conditions with poor food (ration packs with eat-by-dates of 2015) so have little enthusiasm for a fight."
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion/glen-grant-ukraine-stands-firm-despite-russian-offensive/
For Moby and other IR theory nerds and recovering nerds: https://twitter.com/seanmolloyir/status/1499665416964161536?s=21 (actually the linked thread, but I appreciated the UK framing)
I wonder whether Europe might pay to rebuild?
Presumably with seized Russian assets?
238: That's the problem with realists. Everything interesting and important was exogenous to their theories.
Shoigu
IIRC, Shoigu is the only minister to have served continuously since 1991. The ultimate post-Soviet political intrigue survivor. I wonder if this is the end of his run.
And, to finish my thought, that works great if you want to be a whiney asshole. Everyone who disagrees with you is wrong and if they try to argue, they're wrong because it's not in their theory.
Maybe this is a naive way of looking at things, but since the Ukrainian army has portable weapons that can destroy armour and also low-flying aircraft, then there's some attrition arithmetic that can be done. When the Russian inventory goes below a certain number, and they can't replace it, and they still haven't forced a capitulation, and there's still an organised Ukrainian army with ATGMs etc., then they lose?
Obviously win/lose has a range of definitions, but let's start with what seems pretty clearly to have been Putin's immediate "Mission Accomplished" goal: Kyiv relatively peaceful under Russian control, Zelensky dead or fled, a puppet in charge, and the Donbass pacified up to its paper borders, all with minimal casualties (on both sides, really, but certainly Russian). At that point, Ukraine would be a puppet that might even "vote" to rejoin Russia, but certainly Belorussified, and the world would be awed by Putin (in his accidentally-released victory speech, one of the lines is "this is no longer a unipolar world").
So that's gone, completely impossible. What's something else that could have a clear feel of victory? An ugly slog to Kyiv, many casualties, but Zelensky dead or fled, puppet in place, and a large chunk of Ukraine under direct Russian control. That's maybe still on the table, but ISTM that it's not really clear that they can take and hold any substantial amount of territory. Like, the BTGs simply aren't getting it done, and per above, it's not a given that Putin can keep pouring in more of them. The fact that they're ineffective means that Ukrainians won't be running scared (you don't get a second chance to make an awe-inspiring first impression). So they might damage cities, kill citizens, and run a few tanks down Main Street, but that's not really what taking territory means.
And that leads us back to 206.2. That's something Putin could plausibly call victory and convince propagandized Russians, but in any meaningful sense, it's a terrible loss given the blood & treasure committed to a paper win, plus the loss in military prestige, plus the damage to the economy, plus stiffening the resolve of Europe. I mean, arguably, German rearmament alone outweighs any plausible "win" unless perhaps the Russians had been greeted as victors throughout Ukraine.
Like, if you could convince Putin of 10 days ago that moving even a single tank into Ukraine would result in the geopolitical changes that have happened beyond Russia/Ukraine, what possible positive could he have countered that would have made it worthwhile? I literally think nothing short of "Allies reach Paris" levels of Ukrainian adulation would do it. His intended scenario isn't really glorious enough--maybe a Gulf War 1 victory would be. But anyway, all of that is off the table now.
This is very good https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/letter-from-kyiv-putins-war-on-ukraine-is-pozor-rossii/
hen the Russian inventory goes below a certain number, and they can't replace it, and they still haven't forced a capitulation, and there's still an organised Ukrainian army with ATGMs etc., then they lose?
No, then they win because Ukrainians will have no more armor to shoot at.
TPM: Interested In 'Open-Source Intelligence' From Ukraine? Start With These Reliable Sources
This is also good and gets at something I've been wondering https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations
Here is a trade I would make, and maybe Putin would too: Russia withdraws from Ukraine, US withdraws from NATO
That would not be something I support, but I agree Putin might. He certainly pays enough to various Americans to weaken support for NATO.
Right. Putin would be all over that deal. I guess that means that the failure of the US to make that offer means that the US is responsible for the war in Ukraine.
I do wonder about 248 in light of Ukraine's increasingly frantic calls for a no-fly zone.
My thinking is that NATO is a dinosaur legacy of the cold war that's no longer suited to purpose. This would be an opportunity to transition to a global order in which Europe takes responsibility for its own defense.
Right now NATO is hobbled because any action against Russia comes with the necessary implication of global nuclear war. Take away that implication by removing the United States, and NATO can be a lot more flexible with respect to operations like bombing the shit out of that 40 mile column.
249-251: Putin would not go for that. Maybe if the US abandoned all its military bases in Europe, and pledged not to intervene militarily in Europe. In that case, there might be a temporary withdrawal and then Putin would invade again once the treaty was signed.
Right. That's why I wouldn't support it.
252: TBH I really only see calls for a no-fly zone coming from Western hawks. And what ISTM they're imagining is a situation where the Ukraine air force and drones can operate with impunity but the Russians can't operate at all. But a no-fly zone wouldn't actually look like that, if only because, per 248, it's distant Russian SAM batteries, not the Russian air force, that's limiting the Ukrainian air force.
TBH I really only see calls for a no-fly zone coming from Western hawks.
Here is Zelensky asking for "the West to impose a no-fly zone over significant parts of Ukraine" and an article with links to other Ukrainian requests. I swear I saw either Zelensky or Kuleba saying something like "if you can't close the skies, give us planes!" and I thought it was last night, but I can't seem to find it now. Now that NATO has given a definitive no, as of this morning, I think they've pivoted to requesting harsher sanctions.
I think American troop levels and base sizes in Europe can be negotiated down, especially as they are less needed to support our Middle Eastern wars these days.
"US leaves NATO" as the headline is enough of a face-saving deal as to allow Putin to walk away from this and still keep his job, so I think the particulars could be managed as to limit the losses in actual strategic capacity. Presumably Germany would be staffing up those bases as we are staffing down, so...
253: having recently discovered much more than I'd like about current Russian nuclear doctrine, I think in that scenario - and assuming their military remains aligned with the leadership and is still willing to follow orders - Russia starts using tactical nukes. It has a stated policy of using its 'deterrent' if the existence of the state is threatened, and destroying their army might possibly qualify, in their eyes. They have also supposedly done live exercises based around the idea of invading the Baltics and then immediately using tactical nukes to halt a - say - Polish or German counter-attack.
It is all just so fucking nasty, tbh, and you wish that for the love of god they'd stop and take up gardening instead.
Basically, in this scenario NATO becomes the military wing of the EU. Sucks for the UK, I guess, but they shouldn't have Brexited.
Also, NATO contains three nuclear weapons states (US, UK & France).
257 cont'd: Oh and, from ten minutes ago, Zelensky is angry about the refusal.
Assuming the UK bails, rump NATO would retain France's 290 nuclear warheads, which ought to be enough to keep it interesting.
So you want to avoid global nuclear war but encourage regional nuclear war?
No, teo, it's a basilisk! Don't look at it!!
I don't deny that its all a very tough chicken to unfuck.
If you pay extra for Bell and Evans, you know the chicken has never been fucked.
257: Thanks
Of course, even with 262, there's no guarantee it's a realistic request as opposed to domestic posturing. IOW, "Z, you know they'll never say yes." "I know, but my people have to know that I asked."
About the jet donation: Poland was told by the US that it couldn't fly them into UA airspace. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-03-01/poland-nato-russia-invasion-ukraine-5185737.html
And that's how NATO is actually a working as a strategic advantage to Putin right now.
268: It can be posturing, but it can also be a sincere desire to see it happen. Or some combination of both. And as you suggest, neither attitude means that he thinks there is some scenario where a no-fly zone could happen.
If I were in Zelensky's place, I'm not sure I would be fretting too much about the danger of Washington being nuked. He's in a desperate spot.
272: Yeah, I'm pretty sympathetic to (or at least forgiving of) his anger. He could be killed at any moment, he's facing a brutal and seemingly unpredictable campaign from an enemy with a tenuous hold on reality, he just watched that enemy rashly attack and then seize a nuclear power plant, maybe he watched the video with the little kids being massacred in Chernihiv that was going around Twitter that I of course didn't watch. I think at that point, and with tremendous sleep deprivation, I might well feel that everything was on the table already and people who didn't see that were wilfully averting their eyes. He seemed a lot more pro forma about negotiations.
Am I literally seeing people arguing that the US should leave NATO so NATO can be more bellicose and aggressive?
"Why don't you guys just declare war on Russia? It'll be fine, now we're not in it."
260: Given that NATO membership and EU membership don't fully overlap, NATO as the military wing of the EU doesn't work, even if the US were to leave. Just for starters, Turkey and a bunch of Balkan countries (and the UK, as mentioned) are NATO members. Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Finland, etc., are in the EU but not NATO.
I think the Irish are still allowed to join the British army.
April 15: US leaves NATO
April 16: US and EU join NATU, the North Atlantic Treaty Union.
There's already an obvious Pokémon mascot.
Now the Soviet Union is gone and the Germans are getting back up, it's time for the United States to get out of NATO.
I thought the only way Russia would win - if the goal was to take over the whole country - was through a longer, more destructive war, but it's certainly starting to look like they might not be able to do that. They certainly can destroy a lot of lives in the process.
It's hard to tell what winning would look like for Ukraine, beyond holding out. It seems more likely that Russia would withdraw than that they'd be pushed back to the borders. So Ukraine winning could look like Russia withdrawing after a political settlement.
Lot of redundancy in that last comment. Oh well.
275: Strange times. I have seen people say that Putin was justified in invading Ukraine, and describing this as the "anti-war" position.
Did the US and the Soviet Union not fight it out during the Korean War (without it turning into a nuclear war)?
289 No, Soviet direct confrontation with UN forces was limited to some Soviet pilots flying MiGs with Chinese or North Korean markings.
Speculation that some Russian pilots flew in Vietnam: they definitely supplied radar, planes, training. I get the sense that the earlier years of the Cold War were the most dangerous, as the 'rules' were developed. Very much wish that the no fly zone dweebs would pipe down.
286: The Russians seem bent on taking over the power plants. The two huge nuclear plants (one already taken) provide a huge segment of Ukraine's electricity. They've also attacked at least one coal plant. I assume the goal is to make the big cities that depend on them unlivable.
288 points to a curation problem on your part, pf.
I'll throw a Ukraine thread on the front page?
No erudite analysis-- just part of today's post from my favorite Instagram jewelry artist:
"I must point out that not only the military is involved in the destruction of Russian equipment. For example, today in Kyiv, a woman saw a Russian drone from a balcony and shot it down with a jar of cucumbers. We have local dudes capturing enemy armored personnel carriers. In our country, local gypsies stole a tank from the Russians. We have homeless people who bring bottles to the territorial defense to make explosive cocktails. And these bastards hope to defeat us, seriously?"
Cucumbers, huh? Too good to be true but it does reflect a remarkable attitude.
I heard it was a jar of pickles, not cucumbers. There is so much disinformation these days. Were they or were they not cured in brine?
When does a cucumber turn into a pickle?
Once the fermentation level reaches 51%