Some info from the Ukraine

[68RR]

Well, it's getting stupid now!

Evening Update:
1. Russian MoD spokesman, a major general, stated at a press conference today the the United States has plans to send weaponized birds from Ukraine to Russia to initiate a bioweapons attack. No details on what kind of birds are in US government employ.
https://twitter.com/remilitari/statu...12187627433986...
2. The Russians have asked for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to present evidence they say will show US bioweapon labs have been operating in Ukraine. It is uncanny how similar these threats and allegations are to the ones the Russians orchestrated during the 1950-53 Korean War.
3. China has refused to offer spare parts to Russia's airline companies for their Boeing and Airbus aircraft. Two-thirds of Russian airliners (332 airplanes) are either Boeing made or Airbus made. Both Western companies have withdrawn all support for these Russian-operated aircraft, which will essentially ground almost 70% of Russian commercial aviation soon.
4. The nuclear reactor in the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology has gone off line after a series of Russian artillery attacks targeted the facility. The Ukrainians are calling this an "act of nuclear terrorism."
5. The Russians made slow but stead progress toward Kyiv today, including to the west. Antonov airport is in their hands now, and the Ukrainians blew up the fuel storage depot there to deny it to the Russians. The 40 mile long convoy is now largely dispersed.
6. The Russians are in a strategic and political box, totally trapped by their own decision to invade and their own military's inability to secure a swift victory. The longer this goes on, the more likely escalation will take place. Take a look at Christopher Chivvis' analysis of Russia's options and the likelihood this could turn into a transformational nuclear event.
https://www.theguardian.com/.../russia-ukraine-war...
7. Former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev went on MSNBC today and concluded that Putin's advisors are flat-out lying to him about the situation in Ukraine. "They'll overthrow him before telling him the truth" was his conclusion. See the interview here:
https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status...65189616476163...
8. Ukraine and Russia's foreign ministers met in Turkey to negotiate. Nothing substantive came out of those talks.
9. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin and discuss peace options informally. Schroeder has close ties to Russia and Russian energy businesses, and his refusal to resign from several board positions trigger a mass resignation of his staff. The current German chancellor has distanced himself from Schroeder in the recent days, so it is not exactly clear on whose authority, and for whom he speaks, while in Moscow.
10. In terms of how the Russian population will react to the sanctions and the destruction of their economy, there's not a lot of evidence that they will do anything other than retrench and blame the West and not their own government. In terms of getting the truth to the Russian people as to what is going on, I'll leave you with this series of intercepted cell phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their loved ones back home that Senator Rubio posted. This is the enemy Ukraine is facing.
https://twitter.com/maxtosc.../statu...51026784493581...

[68RR]

John R Bruning
Day fourteen - March 9 - Putin gives up on the UAF, rolls blackmail dice with the West, civilian lives
For todays’ review, I suggest a detour to southern Poland. There you will find, I think, two brigades of the US’ 101st Airborne Division (Screaming Eagles) and one brigade of the US’ 82nd Airborne Division (All American). They are in south-east Europe, instead of stateside, because smart people in Washington decided a good way to send Vladimir Putin a message, would be to park a full division equivalent of some of the best-armed, best-trained infantry in the world, on Nato’s eastern flank.
They call themselves "America's Best". They are fit, they are well-led, and if you give them a mission, any mission, they will do the job or die trying. These are units with history: they jumped into Normandy, they stuck it to the panzers at Bastogne, and they liberated one of Hitler’s death camps. Right now they are training, and waiting, and sneaking some Polish beer when the Sergeant Major isn’t watching, and training some more.
One country away, in Ukraine, there is not training but a real war. But on the fourteenth day of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s not much of a conventional war any more. Which makes me wonder what the American Airborne troopers only a few hundred km away, think about it.
Along the northern front fighting is continuing. It seems clear that the Ukrainians are holding, and at the point of greatest Russian Federation (RF) pressure, today, according to the Ukrainian Army General staff, a new RF push towards the village Irpen’ was turned back with heavy losses. It seems clear at least that the Ukrainians intend to fight on that line: today the mayor of Irpen’ was out and about, helping citizens evacuate so, effectively, their homes might be come fortifications or just be cleared for better fields of fire. He didn’t actually say that was what is going to happen, but once the civilians are gone, in a conventional war, civilian property gets trashed pretty quickly.
I really didn’t see any reports at all of movements or battles in the south and the east. The impression is that, aside from efforts towards Kyiv and Kharkiv, the RF ground forces are settling back on their haunches. Whether this is because the RF has figured out that attacking into the teeth of Ukrainian defenses is dangerous, or because the RF is running out of combat-capable units, is debatable. In any case, for the first time since the second day of the war, the Ukrainians did NOT estimate they killed close to or more than 1000 RF soldiers in the day’s fighting. I think that is a pretty good indicator, that relatively speaking, the direct fire shooting is dropping off dramatically.
Which you cannot say about indirect fires. Here's a compilation of what towns and villages were hit, and with what, over the last 24 hours, as I read the media:
Hammered with artillery - Village Lebedin, Sumy region; Hammered with artillery and air strikes - Kharkov (three districts); ground zero for an Iksander missile strike and a Tochka-U missile strike - Kramatorsk (Note: Pictures courtesy the local Territorial Guards show the Tochka did not blow up but grounded itself pretty much intact in a forest) ; Mykolaiv - shelled, hit with Smerch rockets. An air strike hit Zhytomyr’s heating plant. In Irpen’ and Izium there were reports, and in one case a video, of RF infantry opening fire on civilian vehicles, and even pedestrians.
The RF saved the worst for Mariupol where, as nearly as I can see, at least two air bombs weighing at least ton each left the center of the city devastated, particularly a children’s hospital. Seventeen child patients were injured. One other bomb left a crater 6-7 meters deep. The bombing took place during a ceasefire agreed upon the day previous. On state Russian TV, the announcers said the school bombing was faked. In the back of every one else's minds, is the unpleasant thought: probably, the West's leaders would prefer not to go to the trouble of holding Vladimir Putin accountable.
One battlefield conclusion is pretty obvious: the UAF’s ability to protect the entire country’s skies is degraded enough, that the Russian air force can pretty safely fly into Ukraine and drop bombs on big targets like cities, and unless they get lucky there’s not much the Ukrainians can do about it. Of course, it’s not likely the Ukrainians would use their air defense missiles first to protect cities from air attack, because who in the 21st century just bombs cities to kill civilians?
But there is a greater strategic conclusion we can make. Here, we see clearly, the focus of the RF’s overall effort has shifted. No longer is the RF trying to win on the battlefield, or to do a regime change by murdering Zelenskyy or parachuting into the Maidan square. The main RF strategy, as far as I can see, is simple and brutal: kill or injure Ukrainian civilians, and do it so long and intensely that someone - the Ukrainian government, the wobbling West, the Vatican, whomever - forces the Ukrainians to give the Russians what they want, effectively so the West can stop having to see horrific images on their televisions and smart phones.
Putin’s calculation is that the Western public will throw Ukraine under the bus, because confronting Putin is scary and the images of the bad things he’s doing are most easily dealt with by giving him what he wants. However, for that to happen the Ukrainians have to want to stop fighting, and as noted above it’s looking less and less likely the RF can beat the Ukrainians on the battlefield. Every time an RF bomb or shell kills a Ukrainian child, that’s a whole bunch of Ukrainians even more unwilling to compromise.
Which brings me back to the 101st and the 82nd in Poland. Here you have a battle-ready force of some of the toughest soldiers around, and they are back by far by the biggest and most capable military around. Moreover, the Poles alone have something like six combat brigades just on the east flank, as I recall. I did a recent count: Nato has concentrated close to 150 combat aircraft in Poland, Romania and the Baltics, and it’s the whole schmear: F-15Cs, F-35s, Tornadoes, Eurofighters, and all manner of Vipers.
All of this force is about a two hour’s flight by C5/C-130, and a lot less by fighter, to places where the Russian Federation is using air and ground forces to target and kill civilians, Ukrainian men, women and children.
No one believes Putin is going to attack Nato. Putin is betting the US and Nato will do nothing to stop him from murdering civilians in Ukraine.
A credo of the infantry is that you sacrifice for the greater good. I bet, there are plenty of American infantrymen in Poland right now, wondering what the Hell they’re doing sitting there, when innocent women and children are being bombed and killed so close by?
If stopping a crime like that isn’t a risk worth taking, or a sacrifice worth making - then they have to be asking: what is?

[68RR]

Corey C. Jordan
One other point that I consider telling... Recall the Iran-Iraq war. Hussein's forces were equipped with latest Soviet export weapons, aircraft and air-defense systems. Soviet advisors trained his army and air force. Their command structure was Soviet. Like the Russian army of today, the bulk of the Iraqi army were disinterested, unmotivated conscripts. They were thought to be regional juggernaut. Yet, they could not defeat the smaller, poorly equipped Iranians, who had little support from the West. Nothing has truly changed within that Soviet system. Let's take a look at the 3 month Soviet-Finnish war. Four huge Soviet armies invaded Finland, backed by a very large air force. Stalin's generals elected to attack in winter, when the ground was frozen, to best utilize their vast supremacy in armor. Though exhausted and near the end of their rope, the Finn's butchered the Soviets. Using hit and run tactics and only fighting fixed battles when necessary, produced 370,000 Soviet casualties. Finland suffered 70,000, half of which were civilians. This war ended in a negotiated peace, as Stalin was embarrassed and was aware that this war was displaying his military's weaknesses to Hitler, who, with his general staff, was paying close attention. Finland lost some territory, but survived. Stalin pushed the Finn's into an alliance with Nazi Germany, a byproduct he didn't want or expect. There are many parallels to drawn with the current war in Ukraine. It seems that Putin learned nothing from history. If he is as smart as some think he is, he will also negotiate a peace. Yet, he will also face long term consequences, that he cannot predict. If he fails to negotiate, he will have badly depleted his military hardware, and like Stalin, signalled Russia's weaknesses to rivals, such as China.

[68RR]

Corey C. Jordan
Israel may be the key to ending this war. Israel is offering to broker a peace. Putin accepted a request for an in-person meeting. In the meantime, I would not be so sure that Putin will push towards a full blown conflict for multiple reasons. One of those reasons is his support among his military seems to be eroding. Someone in the high command has been tipping off the Ukraine leadership about assassination plans on Zelensky and military ops. That helo special op was met by a large Ukraine force, and it wasn't a lucky guess. It seems that Ukraine is getting help from someone at the very top in Putin's circle. Before nukes start flying, I expect Putin will be deposed or assassinated. Remember 1991 and the army that refused to fight the people, turning their guns onto the Polit Bureau. NATO doesn't need a no fly zone, and talk of one is simply stupidity. Some have speculated that a large portion of Russian T-90 tanks are inoperable. Poor maintenance and a lack of spare parts to blame. They have already lost between 15 and 20 percent of the forces committed. That loss rate is not sustainable. Their inability to control the air, with the Ukrainian air force growing, while Russia's suffers serious attrition is significant. Turkey is resupplying drones and adding to their number. Turkey had large investments in Ukraine, and they are unhappy.

[68RR]

Some interesting comments on a post:

Peter Fey
Any no fly zone means taking out the Russian IADs, which obtw can shoot down planes at range from the confines of Russian territory. The range rings of SA-20 and 21s are impressive. So anyone advocating for that doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.

Reply13h
John R Bruning
Peter Fey An S400 shot down Ukraine's premier demonstration pilot over the weekend--from 150 kilometers away. The launcher wasn't even in Ukrainian territory. Peter, your expertise here is most welcome, thank you.

Reply13h
Peter Fey
John R Bruning and unfortunately that's not even max range... as horrific as this is, open conflict between NATO and Russia would be a lot worse. That's what a NFZ is.
Reply12h

John R Bruning
Peter Fey It astounds me that these people in the foreign policy establishment fail to recognize this. Insane.
Reply12h
William Tracy
Peter Fey Do you believe that even a very narrow no fly zone strictly on the western border between Ukraine, Poland and Romania be considered provocative by Russia?
Reply7h
Peter Fey
William Tracy Putin has already stated that. And those SAM ranges extend over all of Ukraine. If a system was in Kaliningrad, it would be capable of shooting down planes damn near in Germany. Any NFZ involves killing those systems, and direct conflict with Russia.
Reply56m

[68RR]

"Stalin’s policies that autumn led inexorably to famine all across the grain- growing regions of the USSR. But in November and December 1932 he twisted the knife further in Ukraine, deliberately creating a deeper crisis.
Step by step, using bureaucratic language and dull legal terminology, the Soviet leadership, aided by their cowed Ukrainian counterparts, launched a famine within the famine, a disaster specifically targeted at Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Several sets of directives that autumn, on requisitions, blacklisted farms and villages, border controls and the end of Ukrainization— along with an information blockade and extraordinary searches, designed to remove everything edible from the homes of millions of peasants— created the famine now remembered as the Holodomor.
The Holodomor, in turn, delivered the predictable result: the Ukrainian national movement disappeared completely from Soviet politics and public life. The “cruel lesson of 1919” had been learned, and Stalin intended never to repeat it."
~ Anne Applebaum, "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine"

[68RR]

Ukrainian Situation:
1. The Russians have made no significant gains in the past 48 hours. Lots of talk about what is going on, and many predictions suggest they will renew offensive operations within the next 12-96 hours. Other analysts are saying that the Russian situation is so bad they cannot continue major offensive operations. My best guess is there is a little bit of both going on here. The Russians have established a chain of forward operating bases west and northwest of Kyiv. These will be their forward supply points, where their wounded will be treated, etc. That has taken time to do, and they've invested the time because the first effort to take Kyiv failed. Additionally, the way Russian command & control seems to work is very cumbersome, and it is taking them on average about 72 hours to flex to counter Ukrainian moves on the battlefield. For example, if a particular bridge needs to be protected in the rear of Russian column, word is sent up their chain of command and it takes three days to get troops tasked with that bridge's security. By then, the Ukrainians have destroyed it. So basically, we're seeing a more nimble military in Ukraine's, and Russia's not very agile or capable of quick reactions to battlefield developments.
All of this has been interpreted by some Western observers as a collapse of the Russian offensive. There is evidence of that for sure, don't get me wrong. However, I think we're seeing a slow-ponderously slow, military shifting postures and preparing for a massive set-piece battle to take Kyiv.
2. The Russians are adapting to the battlefield. They were caught by surprise at the fierceness of Ukrainian resistance, and now they are flexing to meet the threats. Two examples: 1.) they are now escorting fuel tanker truck convoys with attack helicopters, something we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a move designed to deter or kill any Ukrainian guerrillas attempting to ambush these vital vehicles.
They clearly have not been able to protect all their convoys however, as plenty have been hit in the last 48 hours still. Plus, the MPAD (shoulder-launched anti-aircraft rockets) threat to Russian helicopters is very real, and the more Stingers, the more the Russian combat aviation units will suffer losses.
Another example of adapting to the environment: Russian truck drivers are now putting "hillbilly" armor on their vehicles. They're covering the front of their trucks with lumber and logs, which will not protect them against anti-armor rockets, but may afford these unarmored vehicles protection from small arms fire. Tankers have put "cope cages" on top of their turrets in an effort to protect their tracks against Javelin missile strikes. Evidence of wrecked tracks suggests this has been useless. The Javelins destroy the tanks anyway.
A final one: They've tried pushing resupply convoys off road, sometimes following rail embankments. This may have worked a few times, but in at least one case, local Ukrainian guerrillas detected their new routes and savaged a convoy.
3. The last 48 hours has seen a resupply and deployment of surface-to-surface missile systems into Belarus. These are short to medium-range missiles that can hit anywhere in Ukrainian territory. Somewhere around 30-50 missile reloads as well as some launchers have been spotted on highways moving into and through Belarus. See the map to show where these missiles can strike in Ukraine.
4. Russians are now employing at least one armored train to deliver supplies and vehicles in the South around Mariupol. Until this weekend, there was little sign the Russians were utilizing the Ukrainian rail net to resupply their forces. This is a development that will surely result in Ukrainian irregular forces targeting rail lines and rail bridges in the days and weeks to come.
5. Some follow ups:
a.) The Flood: The Ukrainians did indeed open their reservoir northwest of Kyiv and turned the Russian line of march into a gigantic swamp. Here is some overhead imagery showing just how much the ground around the Russian line of march was affected.
https://twitter.com/wammezz/status/1501240713975156742...
b.) The airfield attack at Kherson seems to have been a combined effort that involved Ukrainian Marine infantry, artillery and two SU-25 attack jets. Lots of conflicting reports came out of the operation as a result. No visual confirmation yet of the 30 helicopters claimed destroyed on the ground, but the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense included them in their running total of Russian losses, so they think they're destroyed.
6. There have been 9 local Ukrainian counteroffensives, mainly south of Kherson, but also around Karkhiv and near Luhansk. These seem to have been limited successes and resulted in the destruction of considerable Russian equipment.
7. The Deputy Chief of Staff of Russia's 41st Combined Army was killed apparently by a Ukrainian special operations unit. Major General Vitaily Garasimov. He was a veteran of the Second Chechen War and Syria. He is the third general (two Russian, one Chechen) to be killed in 12 days of fighting. The last US general to die on a battlefield was in 1970 during Vietnam.
8. Over the weekend, it was announced that the NATO & US effort to supply Ukraine delivered over 17,000 more anti-tank weapons in 6 days. The reason why the Ukrainians are holding out is the national morale and resolve of the Ukrainian people, the military reforms Zelensky undertook when he came into office that included sacking a bunch of moribund or corrupt generals, US/NATO training of its armed forces since 2014, and the weapons the West has been sending since 2018.
9. 27 policy experts, including former US ambassadors to Ukraine, Russia and NATO, have called for a limited No Fly Zone over Ukraine to protect civilian evacuation corridors from attack.
If the Biden administration or NATO implements this, it will mean open, conventional war with Russia with an extremely high likelihood of escalation. First, the evacuation corridors have not been threatened by Russian air attack. They've been mined or hit by artillery. So this is just an excuse to get NATO aircraft into the fight. Second, the Russians have made it clear that a No Fly Zone will mean war. Putin said as much the other day.
It alarms and astonishes me that so many people in our foreign policy establishment seem determined to push us into armed conflict with Russia. The Ukrainian situation is horrific and Putin must be stopped or tied up for years in an insurgency there, but risking the destruction of Europe, Russia and the United States, along with potentially hundreds of millions of lives over this conflict is insane. If NATO enters this fight in any capacity beyond what it is doing now, it means the end of our world and our daily lives as we know it.

[68RR]

Tuesday Afternoon Update:

1. Biden Administration announced a ban on Russian oil and energy imports into the US. Russian oil accounts for 8% of our oil imports--about 670,000 barrels a day. This is not an inconsequential move, and the cost to the US population will mean steeply higher prices across the board. Already, the average cost to fuel a long haul truck has gone from $900 to $1400. So we will not just see higher prices at the gas pump. Additionally, the loss of Ukrainian wheat on the international market has increased prices for that grain in some places of the world by 70% already.
Losing 8% of our imported oil without domestic oil production increasing to make up the deficit will require increased production from other nations like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico and Iran.
This may be why the US delegation working on a new deal with Iran has been giving the Iranians most of what they have asked for, without asking for much in return. Several US members of the negotiation delegation quit in protest. But it looks like to keep energy supplies flowing to Europe and the US, Iranian oil is going to be needed.
2. The UK and the EU both announced soon after that they will cut Russian oil imports by two-thirds over the course of the next year. Many European nations, especially Germany, are heavily dependent on Russian oil.
3. The Russians have made noise that they will shut off the Nordstream 1 pipeline in retaliation for the sanctions. That would be a significant blow to the German economy.
4. In the last three days, the rhetoric from Putin has been getting increasingly apocalyptic. He announced that the sanctions are "akin to an act of war" and warned the West that sending military and mercenary aid to Ukraine "would be catastrophic" and result in "global collapse." A lot of observers just blow this off as rhetoric designed to deter the West from the course of action its nations have embarked upon. My personal opinion is that Putin means it. These are not empty threats.
5. Ukraine's resistance has striped bare some massive failings in the Russian military, which makes use of his conventional forces in the future far less a threat than it had before. Additionally, the longer the fighting continues, the more the Russian military capabilities to face the West in conventional conflict degrade. Russian cannot easily replace its losses of material and equipment. It cannot easily replace or produce the precision guided munitions like cruise missiles and smart bombs they've already used.
This is actually a very destabilizing development, as it means Russia will have to rely more on its nuclear arsenal for deterrence, or for any battlefield victory against NATO in the event the conflict widens.
6. Lots of talk now that the Ukrainians might actually win a stand-up conventional fight. The Russians have committed about 200,000 troops to the war now. While their vehicle losses have been extremely heavy, keep in mind the Russian Army includes 12,500 tanks, of which about 8,500 are more modern T-90s. While there have been some of their -90s spotted on the Ukrainian battlefields, the Russians have been using older equipment, T-72s and T-80s, for the most part. Long term, I think it is impossible for Russia to win this with military effort alone, due to the growing insurgency we are already seeing behind their front line troops. For now, the conventional fight still favors the Russians, though it is nowhere near a forgone conclusion yet.
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[BLAKE]

These updates are fascinating.

[dcs13]

This story has been circling the drain for a few days, but it looks like we're admitting our involvement .. How fucking stupid are we ??? fucking around with biological weapons..

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/08/under-secretary-victoria-nuland-admits-u-s-funded-biological-research-labs-exist-in-ukraine/#more-229492

[Labora]

So if that ends up being the case maybe Putin and China nuke each other and they both fail 🤔

We kicked Russia out of our world banking system, leaving them with China to deal with. They might just become pals...

[ram57ta]

I had always thought China egged him on and knew he would fail, that way they would own that hemisphere alone.

So if that ends up being the case maybe Putin and China nuke each other and they both fail 🤔

[Shaggin Wagon]

My thoughts are that China is licking their chops waiting for Putin and Russia to fail and collapse. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of WW2 is in their dreams.

I had always thought China egged him on and knew he would fail, that way they would own that hemisphere alone.

[68RR]

My thoughts are that China is licking their chops waiting for Putin and Russia to fail and collapse. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of WW2 is in their dreams.

[dcs13]

Has anyone noticed the parallels with this situation and cancel culture within the US here recently? I mean it's really eerie. Orange man bad has become Putin and everyone that is assumed to be associated with him is being cancelled. Things that make you go hmmmmmmm. Cancel culture has become the new super weapon.

Good analogy ... its interesting to watch