Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[Bob Schroeck]

Part I is here.

A new thread for the next six months of the war planned to last six days.

[Labster]

Day 169 of the war of Northern Aggression:

The big news is the attack on the Russian Saki Airbase in Novofedorivka, Crimea.  A series of closely timed explosions erupted around the entire base, making black clouds.
-- Here's a video of the event but with an old Soviet movie cut in: just when you thought it was safe to go back to the beach. (In the original film, apparently it was escaped tigers swimming ashore.)
-- But no, really.  Traffic jams are miles long on both sides of the Kerch bridge, as Russians realize for the first time that their country is at war.
-- "what airdefense doing?" is the current Russian twitter meme, in English for some reason.
-- Officially Ukraine doesn't have missiles that can reach this far.  They could have repurposed a torpedo, or developed their own missile, or gotten some from the U.S.  Most likely this was a strike by Ukrainian Special Forces working behind enemy lines.  Either way, they're not showing their cards just yet.
-- Russia announces that it wasn't a Ukrainian attack, it was just an unfortunate accident.
-- Chain of explosions was just an Ivan chain smoking.
-- UA Deputy Defense Minister: "The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again reminds you about fire safety rules and the ban on smoking in improper places."
-- No really, imagine being a country where
-- Supposedly something like 60 pilots were killed in the attack, which if it's true is just really bad news for Russia.
-- But if they can't find the bodies, they don't have to buy the parents a Lada, right?
-- At least 10 aircraft were destroyed
-- This was the only airbase in the Crimea.  That's the whole show for the peninsula.
-- Luckily Russia has installed new inflatable anti-air systems that only slightly deflate on camera.


Elsewhere in the war:
-- Kherson under increasing pressure.  To defend the city, they're erecting wooden hedgehogs
-- Soldiers are evacuating their families from Kherson back to Russia.  Why were they there in the first place?  Well, someone needed to vote for that referendum to join Russia.
-- Railway linking Crimea to Kherson oblast has been blocked, so they can't easily  resupply the other side of the Dnipro, either.
-- Meanwhile in Mariupol, an image of locals lining up for water.
-- US Undersecretary of Defense for personnel estimates Russia has taken 80000 casualties since the beginning of the war
-- Russian Deputy Defense Secretary has two US citizen daughters and an apartment worth millions.  Such an offshore patriot!
-- Russian Army recruiting up to age 60 now.
-- The Wagner Group is recruiting convicts into the army.  It's like The Dirty Dozen, except the convicts are the ones who committed less war crimes.
-- "Dynamic" armor from Russian tanks is just rubber and metal plates. The explosives were removed for storage/theft/corruption in peacetime, but not reinstalled before the "special operation".  Maybe if they knew they were going to war they'd had time to reinstall them?  Not really news but here's a new video of a captured tank. Saint Javelin watches over them.


Internationally:
-- The EU and UK have a full embargo on Russian coal now.  Sadly they're still importing coal from other countries, because it's okay to make war on future generations, but not Ukrainians today.
-- EU importing ⅓ of Russian gas from before the war, and about ⅕ of 2019 levels.  Graph
-- Kazakhstan has joined the international sanctions on Sberbank.  No one tell Borat.
-- Over 1000 members have left Amnesty Sweden in protest of their report on Ukraine, including a cofounder.
-- "Amnesty International deeply regrets the outrage caused by our press release on the combat tactics used by the Ukrainian military."  I deeply regret that non-apology.
-- I've seen lots of probable misinformation out there, like a Russian general who supposedly mined the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, or Russians selling Ukrainian women as sex slaves to the UAE.  I mean, it's certainly possible, but there are already plenty of war crimes they are actually doing.  Or, like training children as soldiers at a monastery.
-- FBI raids home of known Russian sympathizer and Florida man, looking for highly classified documents stolen from the government
-- A truly charming propaganda piece from the Moscow Metro:

-- Clear message: If you use a VPN, Guy Fawkes will come and steal from your purse if you're a lesbian groper.
-- Clear summary of American diplomatic doctrine:

[classicdrogn]

I had been wondering all along if, and more recently when, we'd start seeing stuff about 'operations in occupied Crimea' etc. No surprise at all there.

[Labster]

The operations appear to be commencing.  In mid-August, hey, that's what was predicted.  We're on schedule, and we've come a long way, baby.  So many Russians smoking near ammunition dumps, you'd almost say it's a Lucky Strike.  The secret?  It's toasted.  I watched a video of stacks of wooden ammo boxes -- all meticulously stacked one a time by orcs --  filmed from a passenger train that passed by.  It only took a few hours after the video was posted for that one to go up in smoke.  It's like the warning label says, "Smoking kills."

A reddit thread already had this summary for me in the proper format, even:
- Explosions at munitions depot, Timonovo, Belgorod
- Explosions at Stary Oskol Airfield, Belgorod
- Explosions in Nova Kakhovka Kherson
- Explosions near Belbek airport Crimea
- Air defence activity near Kerch strait
- Russian bases hit in Luhansk
- FSB base hit in Crimea

And that's just last night.

But, let's talk about the Kerch strait one first.  As you may remember, Russia built a pair of giant bridges across this strait separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov, as a land link to Russia.  The Crimean Bridge is the longest bridge in Europe at 19km, and it's only been open since 2018.  There are two spans -- one automotive, and one for rail which opened a year later.  Now, it's been obvious that Ukraine doesn't want a land link to Russia, and people have been pretty widely speculating that they are going to blow up this bridge.  Today Zelensky said that the bridge will be removed, "willingly or otherwise".  And furthermore, it wasn't approved under Ukraine's environmental regulations.  Ukraine has been a model at removing invasive, non-native organism.

There are two parts of this bridge that should be considered differently.  First, the rail bridge is an obvious target.  All of Russia's military supply comes over the rail, including heavy weapons, artillery, armor, APCs.  They are not going to drive tanks 19km across civilian roads, it's just not happening.  So as Ukraine has worked towards HIMARS range -- or special forces, or even partisans -- this is a juicy target.

The vehicular side is not that great of a target, at least not right away.  And boy, has it been busy with traffic.  Since the first set of bombings, Russians have been fleeing Crimea like orcs leaving a ruined beach holiday.  I'm not sure if the traffic jams are still there, but after the initial wave, Russians started inspecting all the cars crossing to make sure no Ukrainians were trying to sneak into Russia.  After your base blew up, it's not unreasonable, even if it is bad optics.  Anyway, Ukraine wants as many Russians as possible to leave, so why cut off the line of retreat?

So tonight, we got some air defense activity near Kerch.  These are the decoys.  Send up some drones, some little missiles, and see what lights up on American satellites and reports from local spies.  When the next set of strikes happen, it will be to take out the air defenses.  The rail bridge will fall soon after.  Or, it's a feint.  I have no idea.  I just know orcs are running.

And speaking of running, it appears the leadership of the occupiers in Kherson has moved across the Dnipro, leaving their soldiers trapped.  Not entirely trapped, they just can't take their armor and large vehicles with them, because Ukraine keeps blowing up the Russian "road repair".  There's a lot of folks who want blood and retribution, but honestly we just want these invaders to leave, right?  To lose their will to fight.

One of the folks who lost the will to fight was Pavel Filatyev, who wrote a 157 page memoir on his war experience, which is about what you think it is.  This is a paratrooper complaining about how little support they got, how they turned into savages and looters because they could not bathe, or eat, or have shelter for weeks.  It took him weeks to realize that there was no invasion of Russia, and that what the government had said was a complete lie.  This isn't some green recruit, this is a paratrooper, y'all.  Anyway he gave a few interviews in Russia about how bad the war really is, before his friends finally convinced him to get the hell out of Russia, which seems like a good plan.

Meanwhile, someone managed to smuggle footage, taken inside his pocket, from inside the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant, showing about 10 military vehicles on the turbine level of the nuclear power plant.  Yesterday, Rosatom told a lot of workers not to bother showing up today.  Between the threats of an accident, it seems ominous.  Given the weather patterns, if they cause a nuclear "accident" in the next couple of days, wind will blow most of the fallout away from Russia and toward Kyiv... and Poland.

So, we're left with the question: does Putin want to cause a nuclear incident?  On the pro side, it would likely force a cease-fire due to the danger, and anything that buys time for Russia to resupply its beleaguered troops is good for them -- and pushing closer to the winter.  On the con side, Poland would almost certainly trigger Article 5, which would involve NATO directly.  Does this qualify for a nuclear second strike?  I'm doubtful, but conventional forces would definitely move in.  It feels like too big of a gamble.

But honestly I've felt like that this entire war.  I've never understood why Putin didn't just take his gains back in April when everything started going wrong -- or when the Azovstal was captured would have been a great time to declare a propaganda victory.  Whee, we got the Nazis we can go home now.  But nope.  These all feel like sunk costs on an unwinnable war, and just to be clear, those sunk costs are in lives.  Why keep throwing it all away when the damage keeps getting worse? 

I've thought quite a bit about the character Balalaika in the anime Black Lagoon in the context of Russia now.  Her backstory was that she was a top shooter and officer for the USSR -- and she and her unit were treated as useless by the government through their botched invasion of Afghanistan -- and she turned her back on her country.  We have Paratrooper Filatyev above who seems similar.  How many more will turn against the government.

But also they've lost at least twice as many people in six months of Ukraine than in ten years of Afghanistan, with estimates of forty to over a hundred thousand young men deceased.   With more to come.  Putin is bringing back Stalin's old policy of the Hero Mother -- a woman who bears 10 living children gets a medal.  And now, she'll also become a millionaire, with a prize of one million rubles!  So, like $15k, or one semester of college in the US.  Because he's set up a demographic time bomb, as well as the financial damage sanctions have done.

We are still at the stage of the war that Americans would call softening defenses.  If you remember either Iraq War, the first thing they did is to take out supplies, anti-air, communications by air and missile.  All before sending any ground forces in.  Things are going to get really hot in the next couple of weeks.  Thousands of people will die, for a cause that never needed to happen.

I hope and pray that this is one of the last wars of imperialism ever fought.  If things go bad enough for Russia, it could tip the scales towards a world where it's demonstrated that imperial conquest is no longer worth it, and safety and prosperity is best achieved together.  Long live democracy, long live NATO!  Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava!

[hazard]

It's important to remember that the absolute casualty count is irrelevant compared to the steady beat of losses. And also that 'casualty' does not equal 'dead'.

What defeats an invasion like this is despairing at victory, not the pile corpses that need to be buried.

[robkelk]

There are two parts of this bridge that should be considered differently.  First, the rail bridge is an obvious target.  All of Russia's military supply comes over the rail, including heavy weapons, artillery, armor, APCs.  They are not going to drive tanks 19km across civilian roads, it's just not happening.

Are you telling me that Girls und Panzer is unrealistic?

Maybe somebody should tell the Russians that cartoons are unrealistic...

[hazard]

You can move a few tanks over public roads without issues. You can't move an army worth of tanks over public roads without destroying the roads.

[classicdrogn]

The local Army post used to bring a tracked APC (not even an actual tank) out for various fairground events, and just that one passing by two or three times a year put noticeable wear on the asphalt in the pattern of the cleats on its treads. I could easily see having enough to be significant in military terms tearing a road up to the point civilian vehicles would have trouble driving on it, though I suppose a bridge probably doesn't have a thick layer of asphalt over the concrete, which would be somewhat tougher to cause more than scuffs on.

My understanding is that more modern tracked vehicles have rubber shod treads to reduce that kind of thing and give them better traction on paved surfaces, as well, but we are talking about what the Soviet army is able to scrape up for armor at this point, which probably still makes the backwater reservist training vehicle from twenty years ago look top-notch.

e: more thirty years now

[Bob Schroeck]

The local Army post used to bring a tracked APC (not even an actual tank) out for various fairground events, and just that one passing by two or three times a year put noticeable wear on the asphalt in the pattern of the cleats on its treads.

Similarly, when I was very young there was a parade held in my home town that went down the nearest intersection to where I grew up. There was a tank in the parade, and you could see the "footprints" it made in the street for years afterward.

[Inquisitive Raven]

And also that 'casualty' does not equal 'dead'.

I've had to point this out to people on a number of forums.

However, one could treat "casualty" as the human equivalent of "mission killed." A casualty who survives isn't going back into combat immediately, and may not be returning to combat ever. If they end up needing long-term care, that's more damaging to the war effort than dying which is over and done with. Either they're tying up resources that could be used for the war effort, or they're being allowed to die which is potentially demoralizing to anyone aware of this.

[Dartz]

Casualties need medical help, evacuation, care and general upkeep - and will likely still lifetime support.

Corpses need a box, a prayer and a shovel and they're done. Unless, of course, you're happy to just leave the dead for the crows.

[Labster]

I've watched a video of a Russian squad just leaving people behind, flailing about on the ground, after a drone strike.  A quick look behind, and they decide, "welp, not my problem," and scurry off to avoid the next drone.

The thing making me maddest today is this: Forced conscription: how Russia wipes out the male population of occupied Donbas.  In the occupied territories, under the guise of the client states, they have drafted nearly every able-bodied adult male under age 65 into the army.  It is now "legal" there for press gangs to go into private homes at night in search of men, which they have been doing quite regularly. How can you avoid service?
1. Have a Russian passport (guaranteed safe)
2. Be a complete collaborator (most of the time)
3. Work on critical infrastructure (some of the time)
4. Get a medical exemption medical issues are no longer a reason to avoid army service
5. Bribe the press gangs (every time they come by)
Of course these are not Russian soldiers, they are filthy Ukranian "allies" so they are sent to the front first.  Given only a rifle and a WWII-vintage helmet, they are sent forward to test the defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as the vanguard "Novorussia divisions".  If it is safe enough, trained Russian soldiers will follow behind.  If it is not safe enough, you will be shot by either Ukrainians in front, or by Russians preventing your retreat from behind.  I mean, it's obviously genocide.  Still waiting to hear from Amnesty International, but they only care about war crimes committed by Ukraine.

Could this be exaggerated for propaganda purposes?  Possibly.  Possibly it's only this bad in certain areas.  I also saw an item suggesting that the Luhansk People's Republic refuses to fight for the Donetsk People's Republic.  But honestly, it all feels very likely.  What else would you expect from a country so stuck in the past?

-- Russian ambassador in Vienna tweets, in response to a Zelensky tweet about sending military aid to Ukraine, "No mercy to the Ukrainian population!"  He later deleted it, because he accidentally told the truth, which is not allowed for Russian officials.
-- You all laughed at me when I said Ukraine had mutant supersoldiers.  But how else can you explain this waterspout over Crimea, huh?
-- After a large "mysterious explosion" in Belgorod ammo dump, another traffic jam develops as people start to leave the Russian mainland city en masse.
-- Poland may have donated less arms to Ukraine than the US, but Polandball is more enthusiastic about it
-- Just a picture of a man breaking down in front of his broken house
-- Pro Russian propaganda icon "Babushka Z" is actually just an anti-war nitwit, who thought that her use of the Soviet flag would remind Russia and Ukraine of the good times they had together. 

Spoiler

it didn't

-- Ukrainian Army general staff says about their counterparts that about a third of Russian generals are under investigation and suspended from duty
-- Russian army appears to be focusing its planning efforts on who gets the blame for all of this
-- Just a reminder that Mariupol still has no drinking water and electricity, but at least the city name signs have been fully denazified
-- The front itself is near-stagnant, though there are lots of reports of fires and explosions behind the lines.  Russian supply lines are being weakened.
-- Some level of fires are normal, but this is more than normal, and with all the propaganda it's impossible to tell what is really enemy action, since neither side wants to publicly claim that Ukraine attacked inside Russia.
-- Russia Has Lost Two Squadrons of Its ‘Best’ Su-35 Fighters.  That's 24 fighter jets.  Rumor has it that they're trying to trade Su-35s to Iran in exchange for (more effective) drones.
-- Russia Has Run Out of Long-Range Missiles to Terrorize Ukraine.  Remember back when they were launching them everywhere?  They can only manufacture 19 long range missiles a month.
-- Apparently there was an actual aerial dogfight yesterday?

Are you telling me that Girls und Panzer is unrealistic?

Maybe somebody should tell the Russians that cartoons are unrealistic...

I can point out with one hand all of the places Girls und Panzer is actually realistic... if I stretch my fingers a bit too much.  Still a great show.

[Labster]

The Institute for the Study of War has been a good resource throughout this entire conflict for getting the big picture on the war of Russian aggression.  Yesterday's post is more or less typical of their daily updates.  Most of it is trying to understand the Russian perspective, presumably because Ukraine is fighting with NATO tactics and intelligence, so the Russian side is the more opaque one to us.

The assessment today is that the entire Russian offensive has culminated.  While Russia continues to make tactical gains -- a village here, a coal mine there -- there is no way for them to get the momentum to build them into strategic gains at this time.  Ukraine's overall strategy continues: increase attrition for Russia's forces by attacking their supply lines.  But every once in a while I learn something that's just facepalm fodder:

Russian military recruiters are likely allowing Russian volunteers to behave in a lawless and disorderly way during their training and prior to their deployment to Ukraine so as to not discourage the limited number of interested recruits. Russian opposition outlet Verstka interviewed 12 residents of Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod, and compiled social media complaints from locals who discussed volunteers' behavior around the town. Mulino is home to a massive Russian military training area and reportedly is the base for the new 3rd Army Corps.[47] Locals told Verstka that ”several thousand servicemen” arrived in Mulino prior to deploying to Donbas and six groups of unspecified size have already rotated out of training (and presumably into Ukraine) since July.[48] Locals stated that these volunteers are largely between the ages of 40 to 50, which confirms ISW’s previous observations that some recruits appeared to be older than the traditional age for new and raw recruits.[49] Mulino residents reported that volunteers are committing robberies, harassing women, instigating fights, and heavily abusing alcohol after their training days end at seven o'clock at night.[50] Mulino authorities reportedly began patrolling the town as of last week, but residents speculate that the local police are likely releasing arrested volunteers because they are needed for deployment to Ukraine. One resident stated that these volunteers are ”meat” for deployment, while other social media users expressed concern that rowdy and lawless volunteers will harm Russian servicemen at the frontlines.

Verstka’s report likely indicates that Russian military authorities are unwilling to discipline these new recruits, lured into service at great cost and effort. Indiscipline and de facto immunity from discipline during training will very likely translate into a poorly trained and entitled volunteer force that is used to committing crimes and getting away with it. Such behavior among volunteers may lead to conflicts with fellow Russian servicemen, disobedience, alcohol and drug abuse, looting, and potential victimization of Ukrainians in occupied areas. The report also further confirms that Russian forces have deployed some unspecified groups of volunteers to Ukraine after a short training period. The ages of volunteers and reported criminal and addictive behaviors also indicate that Russian military recruiters are scrambling for any volunteers regardless of criminal background, age, or military experience. The negative comments by locals about the recruits can also harm public perception of the Russian Armed Forces by Russians in the future, potentially further reducing the already-low proclivity to serve among Russians.

-- "Russian Parade" of destroyed military hardware continues in Kyiv.  Come see a the metal harvest!
-- Darya Dugina, daughter of Russian nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, killed in a car bomb intended for the father.  Don't be too sad, she was a Nazi too.
-- Russian partisan group National Republican Army takes responsibility for the attack, says it will revolutionize Russia.  Everyone else: who did you say you were?
-- Ukraine denies all involvement with the attack
-- Russian government blames Ukraine for the bombing, says it is justification to destroy the Ukrainian state and their infernal evil
-- I don't know, it could still be a false flag?
-- If you're interested, here's a brief trip down the Russian nationalist rabbit hole.  The Middle Ages couldn't have happened because of math, and the Protestant Reformation is actually a secret Catholic plot.  That explains everything!
-- Speaking of bad explanations, the FSB (née KGB) already found the person who killed Dugina and whoops she's already out of the country while being supermom, explosions expert, and a secret agent.  And this is why women belong in the kitchen, I guess.

-- Crowds of people hoping to hop a train out of Crimea as the war grows close
-- Russian military, probably: A train station crowded with civilians?  Let us bomb it!  Oh wait, it's one of ours, never mind.
-- Video: How many Russian Generals does it take to open a car door?
-- Image: New Russian advanced attack robot ($3730 on AliExpress)
-- Image: vacationing in Crimea at 45.180317, 33.232232, look at this big antiaircraft truck I saw, Facebook peeps! Content warning: dad bod. 
-- Gazprom needs to shut down Nord Stream 1 pipeline again for "maintenance"
-- Maybe in retrospect it was a bad idea for Germans to let Gazprom own most of the gas storage in Germany.
-- Rail service from Ukraine through Moldova has been restored.
-- Bridge in Kherson gets hit again, reportedly while ammunition was being convoyed across.  Bada boom.  There are reports the road deck collapsed, but no confirmation came today.
-- Ukraine cancels Independence Day celebrations, citing a risk of extremely vicious attacks
-- Turkey's defense minister says the grain deal is a foundation of a permanent peace deal
-- Zelensky says Ukraine will withdraw from peace negotiations if Russia goes forward with trials of the Azovstal defenders
-- Russian diplomat says he does not see any chance of a diplomatic solution in Ukraine
-- Remember back in the early phase of the war, when Emmanuel Macron and others argued that we had to leave Putin an exit to the war, so he wouldn't feel humiliated?  Well, here we are six months into the war, and it looks like humiliation and surrender are the only ways out.
-- Ukrainians have continued their campaign to get other nations to close to Russian tourists, but only Eastern European nations have done so.  I understand how galling it is to watch relatives of invaders having good times across the border, but I don't think a ban is particularly helpful.
-- Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches have received a shipment of British food.  Amnesty International is already working on its next report.
-- Russians accuse Ukrainian partisans of poisoning their food and making soldiers sick.
-- Russian soldiers at the Zaphorizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have symptoms of poisoning -- radiation poisoning.
-- Russian army ran out of MREs/rations months ago, and are now buying Chinese rations.  So, probably botulism poisoning too.
-- Moscow wants a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the ZNPP tomorrow.  Bring popcorn and butter, the radiation will pop it for you.
-- What air defense doing?  Firing flares from a helicopter, 5m over a tourist beach, apparently
-- Video of "elite" Kadyrovites doing "special training".  Looks like a cross between the first week of Basic and a bunch of drunk weekend militia guys showing off at the gun range.  This is in fact more training than most Russians.

[Dartz]

What a modern world.
I can pay some lad 2000 dollars to write a message on a grenade and deliver it to a Russian soldier.
And receive a video of the delivery - with casualty.
----
When future people read this shit, what will they think?

[nocarename]

I'm worried about when one side starts selling streaming rights. I've read those books and it's not a piece of a future I want to live in.

[robkelk]

Ukraine marked Independence Day this year with no large public gatherings.


President Zelenskyy, laying flowers on the occasion. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service, via Reuters and CBC)

[Norgarth]

Beau of the Fifth Column - Let's talk about 6 months in Ukraine...

[Labster]

The counter-attack has begun!  Or at the very least a feint of a counter-attack!  Ukrainian forces are moving towards Kherson right now (well maybe not right right now  because it's nighttime Himars O'Clock).



-- Ukrainian forces recapture 4 villages, which is not amazing because Russia has been averaging a new village every day or two, but still
-- Ukrainians claim to have cut off all crossings to the Dnipro, except to pedestrians.
-- Since the next was pretty much obvious to everyone -- Kherson is the target, and even idiots like me know that -- this was essentially a ruse to draw reinforcements to positions that could not be resupplied later.  And, Russia seems to have just taken the bait?
-- There are something like 25k orcs in the pocket, with no way to leave except without vehicles.
-- This war is really testing the definition of "encirclement" in military circles.  A few times I've read someone say a force was encircled, then another guy says that they aren't surrounded because they are technically still connected to friendly territory.  And then another guy says, yeah, but they still can't leave the area without getting killed so how is that not encirclement? 
-- There were reports that "Donetsk People's Republic" "volunteers" fled the field, after one guy asked, "Hey, what happened to all of the Russians with us?"
-- Ukraine Armed Forces asks for everyone to stop posting on social media any details of the Kherson operation.  OSINT blackout pls
-- But Russians will never read this forum, so I feel safe telling you about crazy guy I saw from my back yard in Antonivka.  He was wearing grey leather and had speakers playing music on his helmet, and totally zapping orcs left and right with electricity while riding a motorcycle.  The US biolabs in Ukraine definitely worked out well guys.
-- Zelensky says any true patriot will not talk about ongoing operations
-- Not gonna name names, but you know who you are, Petro Poroshenko
-- Twitter reports of mass surrenders near Kherson, but honestly who fucking knows at this point
-- After Dugina got firebombed, there's been a bit more sabotage on important fascists, like Yevgeny Sekretarev, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces
-- Russian media say 65-year-old Elena Belova, who set fire to a Russian military official's car in Moscow, was kidnapped by Ukrainian special forces, hypnotized and taught by them how to burn cars.
-- If this story sounds somehow familiar to you, maybe you've read a few issues of Black Widow?  Yes, Elena Belova is her real name.
-- Satire was pronounced dead at the scene
-- Why on earth would Russians believe that all of these attacks on Russian supply depots are actually caused by careless Russians?  Fire, Explosions At Russian Military Base Force Evacuations is an article from June 3, 2011.
-- Russians bemoan attack on Nova Kakhovka which knocked out water and power.
-- Reminder: Months later, Mariupol still has no running water, no working sewer, and will not provide central heating to the old Soviet-style buildings
-- International atomic inspectors welcome in Zaporizhzhia NPP, but gosh, it's too dangerous because "Ukraine" keeps attacking us.
-- I mean, look at these holes in the top of the reactor building that Ukraine definitely did, just like they did 9/11.
-- On the other side of the lake, Ukraine is distributing iodine tablets in the city of Zaporizhzhia.
-- Russia blocks renewal of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because of a clause that says they can't occupy ZNPP with tanks and shit.
-- Kazakhstan has been cozying up with Azerbaijan, just across the Caspian Sea.  Both countries have now denounced Russia's attacks.
-- The plan is to send oil across the Caspian, then through Azerbaijan and Georgia (south of the Caucasus) into the Black Sea, so that Kazakhs are no longer reliant on Russian pipelines to sell to the West.
-- Once Russia was discovered to be weak, all of her "allies" seem to have deserted her?  One wonders if this is people waiting for a chance, or simple pragmatism.
-- What the Russians call Russophobia is actually what happens when people stop being afraid of Russians.
-- Ukraine has lost one Denmark's area of land to Russia.
-- Ukraine planning to turn down it's Soviet central heating to 17-18°C this winter, which seems reasonable.
-- Germany is no longer worried about having enough gas for the upcoming winter, assuming they get 10% conservation or so.
-- Tomorrow, EU defense ministers meet in Prague to consider once again: should the EU train Ukraine's military directly?
-- "I don’t quite understand why we send training missions to the Mozambican army and not to the Ukrainian army."
-- Russian babushkas responding to America's sanctions.  This is comedy gold.
-- Image: A freeway road sign in Vilnius, Lithuania
-- Just a post reminding me of the cost of the war to individuals: ruzzians destroyed everything I held dear


Omg, it's combined arms acting in concert! Must be the good guys.

[Bob Schroeck]

But Russians will never read this forum, so I feel safe telling you about crazy guy I saw from my back yard in Antonivka. He was wearing grey leather and had speakers playing music on his helmet, and totally zapping orcs left and right with electricity while riding a motorcycle. The US biolabs in Ukraine definitely worked out well guys.

Well, that's weird, because I heard he was on his way to Anatevka, not Antonivka...

[Norgarth]

But Russians will never read this forum, so I feel safe telling you about crazy guy I saw from my back yard in Antonivka.  He was wearing grey leather and had speakers playing music on his helmet, and totally zapping orcs left and right with electricity while riding a motorcycle.  The US biolabs in Ukraine definitely worked out well guys.

Well, that's weird, because I heard he was on his way to Anatevka, not Antonivka...

He probably forgot to make that left turn at Albuquerque

[Bob Schroeck]

Ukraine using wooden decoys to lure Russia into wasting its missiles.

[robkelk]

Putin refuses to attend Gorbachev's funeral - has a spokesperson say he's too busy.

The spokesperson also said that Gorbachev isn't getting a full state funeral.

[Labster]

This week has been hard on me, because Ukraine asked everyone to stop sharing information on social media during the offensive, and then every actually stopped sharing.  We have gotten some vague reports of gains by the Ukrainians, which is good.  They followed even vaguer reports like "Ukraine has broken through the front lines in places" which says everything and yet nothing.  The clearest indication that we've gotten so far is from Moscow, which has said the offensive is a total failure.  Applying the usual rule that everything they say is a lie, it means Ukraine is doing quite well.

I've seen some videos from out there, but they don't show all that much.  Ukrainians capturing Russians so drunk that they had to be slapped repeatedly in the face so that they knew they had been captured.  (Not a bad survival adaption, that).  Another of Russians waving a white flag to a drone, which did cause the Ukrainians to call off their air strike.  In any case, I pray that everyone makes it home safely, and that the Russians go home as soon as possible.

There has been a lot of news about the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently being visited by UN inspectors (IAEA).  Five of the six reactors has already been shut down, which is quite good news to be honest.  I feel like Russia decided a nuclear incident wasn't going to do anything, and the threats didn't work, so the crisis has been somewhat de-escalated.

But in some ways, we're still fighting a war of the past, and not just in the antique weapons we're seeing on the battlefield.  Russians, and Putin in particular, see it as returning Russia to its rightful place as head of a Eurasian empire.  So in a way it's not surprising that the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev received little attention inside Russia.  He is, after all, the guy who was so bad at governing that he let the Muscovite empire disintegrate.  Just think about how Americans feel about James Buchanan as a US President -- even during his lifetime, people criticized him for how he could let the union fall apart like that.  In a weird way, it's almost unsurprising that Buchanan was ambassador to imperial Russia.  Yeltsin, Gorbachev's rival, was a far better politician who always favored the end of the Soviet Union, but he never could tame the ensuing corruption, and only let this obscure guy named Vladimir Putin succeed him because he promised not to prosecute him for corruption.

It's not coincidental that we're seeing lots of removal of Soviet names and monuments.  Latvia tears down Soviet era monument.  This was one I saw in person, though I never went close enough to actually notice what it was -- I have it in the far distance of two of my vacation photos, though.  Ukraine names Kyiv street after London as it scraps nearly 100 Russian-linked names.  Of course it didn't start just now; in April 2019 Kyiv City Council renames street to honor John McCain.  Why so early?  It's because he tried so hard to give Ukraine some Javelin rockets -- the recently canonized St. Javelin.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has requested the Secretary General to see documents proving that Russia is a member of the United Nations.  Of course, no such documents exist -- don't ask a legal question you don't already know the answer to.  The history of the UN vetoes are interesting.  Obviously, the great powers all wanted vetoes for themselves post war.  One was offered to India, but they refused it to focus on domestic issues instead, which I'm sure many people feel regretful over.  That veto was offered to China instead -- the Republic of China.  A few years after the nationalists were pushed out of China into Taiwan, and China's membership was officially transferred from ROC to PRC in a vote of the UN.

The Soviet Union was a charter member of the UN, of course, and that came with a veto.  They also sponsored Ukraine (SSR) as a member to the UN, which is kind of odd now that Russians are saying it was never a country.  And then people started leaving the Soviet Union.  Everyone started leaving.  Russia left the Soviet Union, leaving Kazakhstan as the final member, before the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself.  Ukraine is trying an outside theory here: Russia was never granted membership to the UN, and Kazakhstan is the rightful successor state.  The world just assumed Russia was the successor, because the Moscovites had always been at the head of the Russian empire, even when the capital was in St. Petersberg.

But as a matter of the rules-based order of international law, it is pretty clear that Russia has never been a member of the UN.  Of course in terms of realpolitik this is absolutely bonkers.  The vetos aren't really special privileges granted by documents: they're nuclear weapons and conventional armies.  The veto is an implicit threat: no, says me and my army.  It's a way to institutionalize this threat, the same way voting in republican elections institutionalizes revolution.  In theory, it's supposed to make the world safer, but it's hard to say if this has actually happened.

Which means the real message that the Ukrainian diplomatic corps is sending is: we assert that Russia is not a great power, and most certainly not a superpower.  It is on the same tier as other regional power nuclear states, like India, Pakistan, and Israel.  Do you accept this proposition?  If so, you can remove Russia's veto, and possibly get shit done.

Also:
-- The EU revoked the visa deal they had with Russia, which simply makes EU visas more time consuming to obtain. 
-- YandexTaxi hack sends hundreds of taxis into a traffic jam in Moscow.  Another NAFO strike, it seems.
-- Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov is the 8th Russian energy executive to die suddenly this year.  The poor guy "accidentally" fell out of a hospital window.  Authorities blame gravity for the incident.
-- Image: Russian general guy says Russia destroyed 44 HIMARS today.  So much green paint, MDF, and nails sacrificed in the name of victory.

-- Russian babushkas responding to America's sanctions.  This is comedy gold.

No one commented on this one, which obviously means that nobody watched it.  It will definitely brighten your day.

[classicdrogn]

I watched it, but just went "meh" personally. More propaganda as empty as the wind, more cringey than usual due to the kind of firearms safety offense I'd expect any kid who ever watched a cowboy movie to know better than to commit, let alone actual adults. Nice antique Mauser, though.

Russia losing its UN veto on top of everything else in this whole fiasco would really brighten quite a few people's days, but I don't see it as a likely proposition, alas.

[Norgarth]

the real scary thought is 'what if Russia's nukes are in as bad of shape as their military'?

I half expect to hear that one of their missiles cooked off in it's silo any day. god forbid what happens if they actually try to launch anything. Only Murphy would know what's happening.