So, is the apparent redefinition of success by the Russian military an off-ramp, or just a desperate ploy?
Nobody seems to know. It could very plausibly be either.
3:. Why not both? Or maybe just a temporary switch in pr strategy?
Also just saw on Twitter that a Russian brigade commander was killed by his own troops. That's always a good sign, right?
There seem to be conflicting reports about that. The ones that seem more reliable said he was just injured, not killed. They ran over his feet with a tank.
One time my feet got run over by a Greek taxi cab.
I ran over my brother with a Pontiac station wagon.
They ran over his feet with a tank.
I thought they were running out of precision weaponry.
Oops. I was going to use "Lionel Hutzov" to sign a joke comment and then forgot to change the name back when I decided not to post it.
That's exactly what a Russian spy would say.
From the sidebar at 10:30 am, it looks like we've been invaded by spam.
No invasion. Only liberation of the blog.
By a battalion of Mumbai call girls?
That was pretty gangster the way Biden dropped the "Putin can't remain in power" bomb and then called takebacksies.
Biden's remarks didn't strike me as a gaffe. This had the look of something carefully calibrated. Biden made an extreme remark in a prepared speech, then his people walked it back afterwards. Biden was, in effect, telling Putin (and his generals, and NATO) that NATO still has cards to play, but also that the alliance isn't necessarily going to back Putin's generals against him.
Putin needs to understand that there are consequences, but he also needs to know that he still has something to lose -- that his fate isn't sealed yet.
Being gangster is an over-rated virtue. The gangster thing to do here is to walk away from Ukraine. Trump is a gangster.
Oh, it was certainly intentional and calibrated. I don't get why the media is playing it as a gaffe.
It could have been a mistake - time will tell. But not a gaffe.
The next step is Biden drops sanctions on importing fish to Russia, but just for one fish.
Do you think the remark the other day about US troops going to Ukraine was also a gaffe or a "calibrated" thing? If both those "gaffes" weren't, I think it's new rung on Kahn's Escalation Ladder: say something scary then walk it back, leaving it up to the listener to decide which statement to believe. Uncertainty!
Which remark is that? I haven't seen it.
20: "You're going to see when you're there, and some of you have been there, you're gonna see -- you're gonna see women, young people standing in the middle in front of a damned tank just saying, 'I'm not leaving, I'm holding my ground,'" Biden said.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/25/joe-biden-says-us-troops-will-be-in-ukraine-in-apparent-gaffe/
To me that one sounds a lot more like a standard, off the cuff Biden gaffe.
It isn't a gaffe at all, it's entirely accurate. Some of them have been there - on training teams, before the war. He didn't say "and you saw this while you were there".
And the phrase "you're going to see X when you're there" does not mean "you are definitely going there in the near future". "You'll be amazed, when you go to Cairo, just how visible the Pyramids are". Doesn't mean that you're off to Egypt any time soon.
Also, from two years ago, ""Gaffes" and "misspeaking" are about the dullest possible thing to base your politics on..."
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_17155.html#2065367
23: Yeah, I think that gets at the actual gaffe. US troops will see this "when you're there." But in the world of gaffes, that seems pretty trivial and the intent, per 23.2, seems clear.
The language of Biden's call for regime change also seemed pretty clear, whether or not it was a gaffe.
Fox News headline: Russia: Biden's comment that Putin 'cannot remain in power' is 'alarming'. It's always interesting to me the way context changes content. Fox (I contend) serves here as a conduit for Russian propaganda. On CNN, I'd read an identical item as straight news.
That plus Fox is deeply invested in the idea that Biden is mentally unfit to be in office too. But, yes, they frankly admire Putin.
Did I get this from here or from Twitter? Anyway, worthy Canadian initiative.
Bellingcat can confirm that three members of the delegation attending the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia on the night of 3 to 4 March 2022 experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning with chemical weapons. One of victims was Russian entrepreneur Roman Abramovich.
Oh right, that was around the same time they shot and killed a supposed double agent. I don't recall seeing much follow-up on that story.
28 And the WSJ too but I'm having a hard time buying this story. Symptoms were attributed to either an unknown chemical agent or electromagnetic/microwave source and I think the Havana syndrome stuff is bs.
I have no additional information, but I don't have trouble buying it. It seems perfectly in character for Russia under Putin.
Has anyone linked this very solid Modern Major General parody here yet? https://twitter.com/andrejnkv/status/1507365192405073920?s=21&t=qkAzJJy-Yvm6ayBHL1W-YA
Obviously I had tried a version and gave it up because I couldn't get it to work.
30. I have no problem believing it. Putin has previous with this method. Google Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Is Russia just going to become a great big North Korea? I mean, in the good case scenarios that don't involve something happening to Putin.
Could they repel a North Korean invasion? With those logistics?
Incidentally, there are recent reports that Ukraine has been advancing in some places recently.
Yeah. I'm worried they will have trouble fighting soldiers and decide to kill civilians as a threat to help them negotiate something that can pass as a win. Enough atrocities and you've got a pariah state regardless of the war ending.
39: it's a strategy they've used in Syria and it seems to have worked - but it involves encircling the cities first, and that is not easy for large cities.
38: yes. it's pretty limited so far, but it's happening. Any of the things that make it difficult for the Russians to manoeuvre also work against the Ukrainians - the Russians have plenty of anti-tank weapons, machine guns, and artillery, the weather, terrain, and damage to infrastructure is the same for both sides, and the Ukrainian combat engineers did a lot of counter-mobility things like blowing up bridges, flooding river valleys, and laying mines that tend to stop anyone manoeuvring, while the Russian ones have already been filmed scattering mines and digging entrenchments. Also the Ukrainian defence was made out of lots of light infantry with anti-tank and anti-air missiles and counter-mobility support, but they now need to attack and this package is a lot less suited for that.
The Ukrainians seem to be fighting shy of committing too much to any one big-red-arrows plan and instead going with smaller operations they know they can pull off - they're getting very close to relieving Sumy, way back up the Russian line of communication near the border, and they're gradually rolling the Russians back from the Kyiv suburbs. Basically they don't want to spend what reserve they have until they absolutely know the balance of forces has changed in their favour, and they may hope that the Russian army strung out in isolated and exhausted BTGs from the border all the way to Kyiv will eventually crack.
Until the Ukrainians can get rid of one of the major threats (so either side of Kyiv, or else Kharkiv) it will be difficult for them to find enough troops to do anything dramatic in the south-eastern theatre. The Russians have said they are giving up on the Kyiv front but nobody's going to believe that until they find them gone.
40: It also involves having your guy already controlling the state, right?
42: not in Chechnya it didn't. But it does involve you being able to run your convoys of ammunition trucks up to the gun line safely, because you. This is easy in Syria because it is flat and bare and there's no air threat and the enemy is an Arab irregular force. Ukraine is not flat and has lots of trees and an enemy air threat and a Western-trained regular opponent. Even in Syria it took months. You can afford months if you're losing ten of your own guys every month, as the Russians were in Syria. Not if you're losing forty thousand a month.
43: That's one of the things I really have a hard time getting a grip on. I've seen the 40,000 out-of-action estimates for the Russians, and I find them stunning and hard to believe, but these guestimates seem reasonably credible, right? This plays havoc with my intuitions about how this should work out militarily.
I had been impressed with the sanctions effort, but that doesn't seem to be having the impact I'd hoped for. It seemed to me that Russia was more integrated into the world economy than, say, Iran or North Korea. But I guess if you're Russia and can still sell oil products, you're still in halfway decent economic shape.
44: also it's the kind of thing that needs time to work, oilfield gear to wear out and need replacing, but even so people have been panic-buying sugar and some Russian regions are refusing to let it out of their patch.
Let them eat high fructose corn syrup.
44: yes, it's a huge number. You probably had similar numbers of casualties per month in the Iran-Iraq War and the Badme War - same order of magnitude anyway, and Iran lost 600 tanks in two months of the Iraqi invasion, at the end of which Iraq had ground to a halt. Iran probably took two million casualties over the war, so that's roughly 20,000 dead and wounded per month on average, so the peak months must have been considerably higher. Iraq probably took about 100,000 casualties during Desert Storm, albeit from a much larger force.
So it isn't unprecedented.
Jim Sciutto@jimsciutto·1h
Breaking: Russia is beginning to withdraw some forces from around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, in what the US assesses is a "major" strategy shift, two senior US officials tell me. US is already observing movements underway of Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) 1/
2/ In the US view, this is not a short-term adjustment to regroup, but a longer-term move as Russia comes to grips with failure to advance in the north. Russian MOD said Tuesday it has decided to "drastically reduce hostilities" in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions.
Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦@IAPonomarenko·58m
I don't know if Russians are really withdrawing troops from Kyiv, but what I know for sure is that Ukraine continues engaging them northwest of Kyiv.
Jack Detsch@JackDetsch·3m
JUST IN: Russia has committed 70 to 75 percent of its TOTAL military to the war in Ukraine, top U.S. general in Europe tells Congress.
Ukraine can "certainly succeed" in stalling Russia, said Gen. Tod Wolters.
48, 49: it sure is looking like the best case outcome* for Ukraine remains on the table: actual military victory in the field in the north (seems to be happening), prevention of permanent territorial gains in the south/southeast. The exact disposition of the Donbas will I suspect be determined at the treaty table, but at the moment it seems decent odds that Russia will be unable to consolidate the entire Donbas up to its paper borders. The odds are much worse for that than for holding Kyiv, but it's still on the table in a way that seemed impossible 4 weeks ago and unlikely even 2-3 weeks ago.
41 is true, but it's still the case that Ukraine's internal lines are easier to manage than Russia's, and that it's pretty damn clear that Ukraine's armed forces are more effective on a per-man and per-unit basis. Maybe not enough to drive Ivan back into the sea but enough to think that it's not given that any Russian positions are safe.
It'll be interesting to see how Zelensky balances negotiating position (which means punching back as much and as long as possible) against civilian losses. That is one hard calculus, but certainly the populace is united so far. At some point Putin will be at risk of strategic losses on a scale that he won't be able to win anything at the treaty table. Whether he'll recognize that in time, who knows.
*assuming we rule out Putin giving up after 3 days and calling a mulligan
Crimea is just different from everywhere else, there's no chance that Ukraine will recapture that, and no reason to expect any kind of insurgency there. But yeah there's reason to think that Ukraine could continue to defend parts of Donbas for a while.
One weird thing is that even if you decide that Donbas is a separate country, if they're allowed to have free elections the pro-Russia candidates will just lose exactly like what's happened in Ukraine since 2014. So Russia has to just keep occupying it as hostile territory forever even if there is a peace treaty.
They'll just run a fake election and annex it outright.
51, 52: One thing I wonder about it whether Putin would accept annexation of just the Russian-leaning parts. Practically speaking, it's the most sensible thing--Russia doesn't have to govern a lot of people who despise it, Ukraine isn't losing anything it's had control over in the past 8 years--but it's a black eye in a very concrete way because anyone can see on a map that Russia used to claim X square kilometers of Donbass as wanting to align with them, but only X/3 or whatever actually does it. Like, it's not a wiggle in the border, it's a massively smaller territory.
But after what's happened, i don't see how Russia can want to control the Ukrainian-aligned bits. I mean, I guess they're OK with being authoritarian assholes, but it's just a permanent thorn in their side.
How Russian-aligned are they going to be after Russia shipped their teenagers into the fight and got them killed?
At least that's why I think they annex outright.
Russian soldiers are selling their night-vision goggles on eBay, so they can't fight at night.
They have to do a better job at removing the serial number without leaving it looking so defaced. That's going to hurt the price.
They apparently go for like $2,000 even with the defacement. That's a lot of rubles these days.
I almost bought a Swedish WWII- style military jacket but then I realized I was probably overdoing out with the wool outdoor clothing.
One thing I wonder about it whether Putin would accept annexation of just the Russian-leaning parts.
Other than the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that Russia backed separatists already took in 2014 are there really any remaining parts of Ukraine that are Russian-leaning after 5 weeks of getting the shit bombarded out of them by Russia? Kharkiv, for example, used to be very favorable to Russia before the war. Not so much anymore.
59: googled for these and they look dope; you should buy one.
I am getting so much schadenfreude from this joke about a terrible situation. (He clarifies that he's thinking of the video game, not the movie, of which he estimates "0.1% chance any of them have watched it haha." Still, TOO AWESOME.)
Also, more details on the bullshit local producers get from foreign journalists, with reference to Fox et al.
Sorry I'm showing poor etiquette and ignoring most of the live threads. My mind is partitioning itself oddly right now.
Who hit Belgorod? The Ukrainian government says "the Russian allegations it was behind the attack were not correct."
Also here is a Greg Yudin thread worth reading on how it's going for ordinary Russians. Answer: distressingly well.
https://twitter.com/YudinGreg/status/1509758606689939497
65: Maybe Ukraine wants to be able to say they're acting purely in their own defense? Or it's irregulars they don't want to take responsibility for, or something? It's kind of embarrassing for Russia so I don't know why Russia would announce it was a Ukrainian attack if it weren't true.
Maybe it really was a drunk Russian soldier?
67. Simultaneously remove a disliked local commander and provide ex post facto justification for Mariupol-- "see, everybody does it!"
66: That is distressing. Strong side-eye at the TNCs.
66: I dunno about this:
Medvedev says TNCs approaching the government to signal they have to pay lip service to sanctions fever but are unwilling to leave.
Also: The lurkers support Medvedev in emails. But yeah, the fact that the rouble has recovered suggests that the people with money are prepared to do business.
Anyone here? God, the news is awful.
Yeah. I'm not checking what's confirmed or not because I don't want to read it.
A side effect of this is that I've been seeing/following Bosnian scholars on Twitter, who find that their experience is suddenly and depressingly relevant.
I've given up compartmentalizing for the moment and am just letting it get to me. The helplessness isn't great either, though.