Ukraine: Slava Ukraini!!!

[Wilbur]

I have received this analogy three times so far today, and I have laughed hard every time.  "Cholos with RPGs" is my favorite.

 

[Zorral]

BD does an assessment on the end of this first year of the war that wasn't even expected to be a war, but a few days of invasion on Unmitigated Pedantry -- btw he also informed me, at least, because I didn't now it:

Quote

.... Also let’s get an essential caveat out of the way early: the title of this post is in a way a bit of a misnomer. The current War in Ukraine is, after all, a continuation of what I’ve seen termed the War in the Donbas, which began in April of 2014. That said, I think it is reasonably clear that the current conflict is, at minimum a marked change in scale from that ongoing conflict, featuring the open rather than convert involvement of the main of the Russian armed forces as well as a massive expansion of war aims to include the capture of Kyiv. Consequently, I’m going to distinguish between the War in the Donbas (2014-present) and the War in Ukraine (February 24, 2022 to present; aka, “Putin’s War”) as connected but distinct conflicts; two parts of a larger whole. .....

https://acoup.blog/2023/02/24/collections-one-year-into-the-war-in-ukraine/#respond

 

[Toth]

Is there no ball pit or something where you can drop off the Russian UN-ambassador while the adults are talking?

[Zorral]

Get ready for this to blow up out of the qnon/maggot reichlican cesspools and sewers.

The New, New Right Wing Thing: Maybe the Ukraine War is Fake?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-new-new-right-wing-thing-maybe-the-ukraine-war-is-fake

Quote

 

Since I spend time, for better or worse, swimming in the swill of right wing influencers and Trumpists, I’m often able to see things before they go fully mainstream – or rather before their existence gets picked up in mainstream media. Just over the last few days there’s been a burst of claims that something is not quite right about the Ukaine War, that the whole thing might be made up. Perhaps it’s a potemkin war. Maybe the Ukrainians are just crisis actors, as we sometimes hear claimed about the victims of mass shootings in the United States. The ‘questions’ are characteristically vague and open-ended, designed to sow doubt without stipulating to any clearly disprovable claim.

The particular claim or question is, where are the pictures? Why isn’t there more war reporting as we’ve seen with every other war. How is it world leader after world leader is able to visit Kyiv in relative safety?

Just asking questions, as they say.

Here is just one example posted to Twitter by a right wing podcaster/influencer named Kyle Becker. His bio notes that he started at Fox News and has worked at The Blaze, TimCast, and the Rubin Report. So he started at Fox, found that too mainstream and then moved on to more and more explicitly white nationalist and fascist news organizations. Now he is the “Becker News CEO”.

Here’s what he posted yesterday on Twitter.

I am sick and tired of the lack of footage of the Ukraine war. I worked in cable news. I am initiated. If it bleeds, it leads. Where is the war footage? Where are the Pulitzer Prize winning photos? This smacks of a scam and the American people are fed up.

Produce the documentary evidence or STFU already. We’re not sending our sons and daughters to die over a corrupt undemocratic country’s politics without documentary evidence. We don’t give a crap about your Russian bogeymen. This is not a matter of US national security. So, put up or shut up.

Of course, in the real world the Russo-Ukraine War is likely one of the most well-documented in world history. Volume doesn’t equate to quality or insight. But quite apart from the nonsense we’re discussing here, there is an avalanche of video, photography and satellite record of this conflict that really has no equal in history. Like so much else, a lot stems from the existence of the smart phone: most of the civilians and the combatants have smart phones which allow them to create high quality records of events in real time. These circulate on social networks and encrypted distribution networks like Telegram. Drones also play a role. They’re all generating video coverage whether they are surveillance drones or simply recording the final moments before crash or detonate themselves.

It’s a good moment for me to remind you that I’ve created two pretty good curated lists for reliable sources about the war. This Twitter list covers the progress of the war generally while this one focuses specifically on military analysts.

But why is this happening? Why this seemingly sudden new chorus questioning whether the whole conflict is happening at all? Part of what is difficult about answering these questions is that in the far-right media ecosystem it is often difficult to disentangle who is believing the fiction and who is creating it. The best way to understand this world is to recognize that the dividing line is much blurrier than it seems. The Dominion lawsuit trove shows the bright line is often present. But the professional liars have a way of partly convincing themselves and the recipients have been weaned on absorbing lies. You ‘believe’ what is helpful to believe. ‘Belief’ of a certain sort becomes a species of fractured information age aggression – a post-modern way of owning the libs.

Part of it creates the seedbed of a new crop of conspiracy theories. Just in the last day I’ve seen these. One says that the fake Ukraine War is being used as a ruse to ship all of the US’s heavy weaponry abroad presumably to denude it of defense against some unnamed adversary. Another ties it to the cottage industry of conspiracy theories about the “Biden Crime” family embezzling money out of aid to Ukraine. Basically one or two degrees of separation from what you hear from the House Republican investigations bosses.

At a more basic level, like so much agitprop and misinformation this stuff is meant to create confusion: a general distrust and disinclination to believe that anything we hear is accurate, true, real. This is true whether the sources are foreign or domestic, official or DIY. It would be wrong to suppose that any political force, movement or dispensation runs solely on rational deliberation over emotion and impulse. Irrationalism is a part of the human condition and at best a tamed force within ourselves. But in a contest between authoritarianism and civic democracy, confusion and force is the friend of the former and clarity the friend of the latter.

 

"At a more basic level, like so much agitprop and misinformation this stuff is meant to create confusion: a general distrust and disinclination to believe that anything we hear is accurate, true, real."  And that's as Russian as it gets.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Get ready for this to blow up out of the qnon/maggot reichlican cesspools and sewers.

The New, New Right Wing Thing: Maybe the Ukraine War is Fake?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-new-new-right-wing-thing-maybe-the-ukraine-war-is-fake

"At a more basic level, like so much agitprop and misinformation this stuff is meant to create confusion: a general distrust and disinclination to believe that anything we hear is accurate, true, real."  And that's as Russian as it gets.

That’s not new.  I’ve been seeing it off and on on Twitter for about 3 months.

[House Balstroko]

^What a depressing thing to read. I’ve noticed time and time again that those on the “fringe” (AKA nutjobs) will throw any angle at a situation to see what sticks. 

[Zorral]

War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe Forever
No event has transformed the continent more profoundly since the end of the Cold War, and there is no going back now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war.html

Quote

 

HELSINKI — A year ago, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion a devastating European ground war, President Sauli Niinisto of Finland declared: “Now the masks are off. Only the cold face of war is visible.”

The Finnish head of state, in office for more than a decade, had met with President Vladimir V. Putin many times, in line with a Finnish policy of pragmatic outreach to Russia, a country with which it shares a nearly 835-mile border. Suddenly, however, that policy lay in tatters, and, along with it, Europe’s illusions about business as usual with Mr. Putin. 

“Many of us had started to take peace for granted,” Mr. Niinisto said this month at the Munich Security Conference after leading Finland’s abrupt push over the past year to join NATO, an idea unthinkable even in 2021. “Many of us had let our guard down.”

The war in Ukraine has transformed Europe more profoundly than any event since the Cold War’s end in 1989. A peace mentality, most acute in Germany, has given way to a dawning awareness that military power is needed in the pursuit of security and strategic objectives. A continent on autopilot, lulled into amnesia, has been galvanized into an immense effort to save liberty in Ukraine, a freedom widely seen as synonymous with its own.

“European politicians are not familiar with thinking about hard power as an instrument in foreign policy or geopolitical affairs,” said Rem Korteweg, a Dutch defense expert. “Well, they have had a crash course.”

Gone is discussion of the size of tomatoes or the shape of bananas acceptable in Europe; in its place, debate rages over what tanks and possibly F-16 fighter jets to give to Kyiv. The European Union has provided some $3.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine.

Overall, European states, as part of the union or individually, have pledged more than $50 billion in various forms of aid to Kyiv, imposed 10 rounds of sanctions, absorbed more than eight million Ukrainian refugees (nearly the population of Austria), and largely weaned themselves off Russian oil and gas in a sweeping shift under acute inflationary pressure.

“Zeitenwende,” or epochal turning point, is the term Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany used almost a year ago in a speech announcing a $112 billion investment in the German armed forces. He meant it for Germany, a country traumatized by its Nazi past into visceral antiwar sentiment, but the word also applies to a continent where the possibility of nuclear war, however remote, no longer belongs in the realm of science fiction.

The post-Cold War era has given way to an uneasy interregnum in which great-power rivalry grows. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia,” President Biden said this past week in Warsaw. He spoke as China and Russia held talks on their “no limits” partnership and Mr. Putin suspended Russian participation in the last surviving arms control treaty between the two biggest nuclear-armed powers. ....

 

 

[Maithanet]

Not a ton of news coming out of Ukraine.  Indications are that Russia pulled Wagner out of Bakhmut, so that the army could have the glory of capturing the city.  But the mobilized troops in the army did not perform well and failed to capture much ground.  So Russia brought Wagner back in, and they are attacking again (along with some regular army units).

Overall the situation in Bakhmut is getting more and more tenuous, as Russia is making progress both north and south of the city.  I don't want to be pessimistic, but it looks like just a matter of time before the threat of encirclement is too great and a retreat must be ordered. 

Bakhmut is basically rubble at this point and its value is primarily symbolic.  The Ukrainians have well built defenses in place behind the city and the Russians have paid dearly for this advance.  Nonetheless, this is the largest city the Russians have captured since Lysychansk on July 3.  Ukraine has recaptured significant territory and several cities since then (notably Kherson), so Russia is desperate to be seen as moving forward once again.  

[Zorral]

What do you all hear/see about the drones arriving / spotted inside Russia yesterday-last night?

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-attacks-drones-e02372ef4b84fc3b4cf6afe8ed141a77

 

[Maithanet]

Reports are vague thus far.  We'll know more in a bit. 

There are also continuing reports of explosions happening in Mariupol, which is just outside of HIMARs range.  It's possible this is the extended range munitions being put to use for the first time, or it could be something else. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

NATO says Ukraine will be a member… eventually.  Interesting:

 

[Zorral]

Big Ukraine news in the news, today -- good photos too, btw:

In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes
A three-week fight in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/world/europe/ukraine-russia-tanks.html

Quote

 

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.

The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor.

“We say, ‘Please, don’t let us down in battle,’” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic. “‘Bring us in and bring us out.’”

Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard II tanks.

The sophisticated Western tanks are expected on the battlefield in the next several months. The new Russian armor turned up earlier — and in its first wide-scale deployment was decimated. ....

.... In the extended battle, both sides sent tanks into the fray, rumbling over dirt roads and maneuvering around tree lines, with the Russians thrusting forward in columns and the Ukrainians maneuvering defensively, firing from a distance or from hiding places as Russian columns came into their sights. 

“We studied the roads they used, then hid and waited” to shoot in ambushes, Sergeant Knignitsky said.

Lack of expertise also bedeviled the Russians. Many of their most elite units had been left in shambles from earlier fighting. Their spots were filled with newly conscripted soldiers, unschooled in Ukraine’s tactics for ambushing columns. In one indication that Russia is running short of experienced tank commanders, Ukrainian soldiers said they captured a medic who had been reassigned to operate a tank.

The Russian army has focused on, and even mythologized, tank warfare for decades for its redolence of Russian victories over the Nazis in World War II. Factories in the Ural Mountains have churned out tanks by the thousands. In Vuhledar, by last week Russia had lost so many machines to sustain armored assaults that they had changed tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.

When it was over, not only had Russia failed to capture Vuhledar, but it also had made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks earlier in the war: advancing columns into ambushes. 

The depth of the Russian defeat was underscored by Russian military bloggers, who have emerged as an influential pro-war voice in the country. Often critical of the military, they have posted angry screeds about the failures of repeated tank assaults, blaming generals for misguided tactics with a storied Russian weapon. ....

.... In a detailed interview last week in an abandoned house near the front, Lt. Vladislav Bayak, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 1st Mechanized Battalion of the 72nd brigade, described how Ukrainian soldiers were able to inflict such heavy losses in what commanders said was the biggest tank battle of the war so far. ....

.... Private Hrebenok, only 20 years old, had no formal training in tank combat when the war started. But in the frantic first days of the war he was assigned to a tank, and has fought continuously in them since, picking up tricks along the way.

Training still looms as a problem. Ukraine, too, is losing skilled soldiers and replacing them with green recruits. And many Ukrainian tank crewmen are being trained on Western tanks in countries like Germany and Britain.

“All my knowledge I gained in the field,” he said. The Russian tank crews, he said, are in contrast mostly new recruits without the benefit of any combat to season them. ....

 

~~~~~~~~~~

Ukraine says it’s sending reinforcements to the embattled city of Bakhmut.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have been rushed to the front line, helping Moscow seize villages and towns around Bakhmut and surround the city on three sides.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/world/europe/ukraine-bakhmut.html

Quote

 

.... “The most difficult situation is still Bakhmut and the battles that are important for the defense of the city,” Mr. Zelensky said on Tuesday in his nightly address, the second day in a row that he has referred to problems facing the city’s defenders. “The intensity of fighting is only increasing.”

On Monday, he said that Russian forces were destroying anything that could shelter the forces fighting to defend the city.

Much of the fighting in and around Bakhmut has been conducted by troops from the Wagner Group, a mercenary force whose leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, has close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Mr. Prigozhin said on Wednesday in a broadcast audio message that there was no sign that Ukrainian forces were withdrawing from the city. Moscow turned its attention to the capture of Bakhmut in the summer after it had seized two cities in the nearby Luhansk region, but it now stands as the most protracted battle of the full-scale war and both sides have sustained heavy casualties. .....

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Does anyone know what happened? @Werthead

 

[Maithanet]

It's not super clear what is going on, but apparently there are some social media postings of an alleged "Russian Volunteer Corps" who are operating in Bryansk (Russia, near the border).  Russia is claiming that these are actually Ukrainian soldiers in some numbers invading Russian territory.  But from what I have seen, there aren't any reports of them doing much of anything other than holding some flags and taking pictures in front of houses.  Not much of an invasion. 

[Maithanet]

Russia is claiming that the Russian Volunteer Corps opened fire on civilians in a civilian vehicle in Bryansk.  Don't know if it's true, since I don't take anything the Russians say at face value.  Could be made up, could be a false flag, could be true. 

[Zorral]

Anti-Putin group claims attack on Russian territory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/02/russia-ukraine-war-news/

Quote

 

Bryansk attack

* The Russian Volunteer Corps, which calls itself a group of anti-Kremlin fighters, claimed responsibility for an attack Thursday on Russian territory that Russia’s federal police had blamed on “armed Ukrainian nationalists.” The federal police said the attackers struck a village in the Bryansk region, near Russia’s border with Belarus. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the episode as a “terrorist act,” saying that the fighters opened fire on civilians. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the Russian report a “classic deliberate provocation.”

* Apparent members of the Russian Volunteer Corps, in unverified videos shared on social media, called themselves a “liberation army that came to its own land” and urged Russians to “take up arms and fight Putin’s bloody regime.” It also said the Russian claim that Ukrainians entered Bryansk and attacked vicilians was “a lie of the Kremlin propagandists.”
Putin said the attack in Bryansk was a “terrorist act” by “people who set out to deprive us of historical memory, history, traditions, and language.” Addressing an online ceremony for teachers, he added: “They opened fire on civilians. They saw that it was a civilian car and that children were sitting there.”

* No visual evidence of the attack had emerged by Thursday morning. Russia has a history of “false flag attacks,” or attacks staged or carried out by Russia and blamed on others.

 

 

[Maithanet]

I'm not super clear on what a false flag would accomplish in this case.  I guess it could help Russia's general propaganda war in places like China, India and Africa? 

[Maithanet]

According to what I can glean from usually informed people on Twitter, the "Russian Volunteer Corps" is a small (less than 100 members) neo-nazi organization within Russia.  They are accelerationists and anti-Putin.  Their leader is wanted Russia and in the US. 

Doesn't sound like Ukraine has much to do with whatever happened.  There still aren't any pictures or interviews or anything corroborating that an attack actually took place.  All that's out thus far are some people claiming to be part of this group, standing around in super clean uniforms holding a flag. 

[Werthead]

So the first actually-declared Neo-Nazi organisation that has played a role in the war (as compared to the Azov Brigade, which kinda used to be Nazi but was at least mostly denazified before the war even began, and Wagner, which isn't formally a Neo-Nazi organisation despite having a lot of Nazi leanings and members) is Russian?

I eagerly await Russia's denazification of itself.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

According to what I can glean from usually informed people on Twitter, the "Russian Volunteer Corps" is a small (less than 100 members) neo-nazi organization within Russia.  They are accelerationists and anti-Putin.  Their leader is wanted Russia and in the US. 

Doesn't sound like Ukraine has much to do with whatever happened.  There still aren't any pictures or interviews or anything corroborating that an attack actually took place.  All that's out thus far are some people claiming to be part of this group, standing around in super clean uniforms holding a flag. 

Russia will still use it as an excuse. What is more worrisome is whether or not China will use it as an excuse.