Ukraine

[LFC]

Mar 31, 2022 13:56:20 GMT jackd said:

Try toilet seats.

Many years ago I worked with a guy whose mother was a civilian employee in military procurement. She said some procedures were just poorly written. The example he told me about was the requirement that they purchase black desk phones, even though they were more expensive. The additional cost came about because the rules specified "black" back when those were the cheapest phones. By the 90s tan phones were the cheapest and black was a designer color. If it had simply been written to say "least expensive color" they wouldn't have been wasting money on black phones.

[indy]

There is a lot of that I'm afraid. I rent a building to a (non-military) US agency which has about 10-12 employees. There were some pretty insane requirements for infrastructure like 25 pair of incoming phone lines, a 10ft by 10ft computer room with it's own cooling system and anti-static flooring (and which houses about 3 cubic feet of equipment in it), four separate lines of cat 8 ethernet running to like 30 locations (yet had an incoming DSL line) but no requirement for incoming fiber. It's like somebody had specified it for an equipment room in the 90s but had only updated one item in the interim. Last I looked they still had people going from building to building on a rotating schedule to do backups to tapes but that may have change in the last few years.

[LFC]

TPM provides a reminder that Trump's first impeachment was all about Ukraine.

Before Volodymyr Zelensky faced down Vladimir Putin, he stood up to another megalomaniac.

The first impeachment of President Trump is just over two years old, but it remains lost on many Americans that it was all about Ukraine. And not just about Ukraine in a generic sense, but specifically about Trump using Ukraine’s vulnerability to Russia to pressure it to find dirt on the Bidens.

To force Ukraine’s hand to his advantage, Trump thwarted longstanding U.S. policy to support and arm its ally in the face of the Russian threat. Zelensky didn’t waver.

The saga of the first impeachment went down the memory hole quickly, overwhelmed by COVID-19, Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and Biden’s win. But now, in a sense, we’ve come full circle.

As Kyiv draws on stockpiles of American weaponry and bipartisan support today to defend against Vladimir Putin’s attack, it’s worth a brief refresher on how Trump threatened to and for a time did withhold that kind of support for his own personal political ends.

[LFC]

There have been a pile of recent headlines on just how bad a cluster-f*** Ukraine has been for Russia. Take them for what they're worth.

U.K. Spy Chief Says Russian Military Is a Bloody Mess, Shot Down Own Plane

In a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra on Thursday morning, GCHQ director Sir Jeremy Fleming said the Russian leader’s “unprovoked and premeditated attack on Ukraine” has been “shocking in every sense of the word.” He also said Putin, a former KGB officer, was caught completely flat-footed by what he found.

“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Fleming said. “He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime. He overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory. We’ve seen Russian soldiers—short of weapons and morale—refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”

Russian Troops Suffer ‘Acute Radiation Sickness’ After Digging Chernobyl Trenches

Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials.

The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.

Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of the country’s nuclear power stations, said the Russian soldiers had panicked and fled.

“It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this morning to the Ukrainian personnel of the station," the agency said in a statement on Telegram, adding that a small number of Russians still remained at the facility.

The agency said it had also confirmed reports of Russian forces digging trenches in the Red Forest, “the most polluted in the entire exclusion zone.”

“Not surprisingly, the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it showed up very quickly.”

Putin’s Soldiers Caught on Tape Lamenting Losses and Blasting His Army of ‘Stupid Morons’ (and Putin is calling up an enormous number of conscripts, something he won't be able to hide from the Russian people.)

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is calling up another 134,500 conscripts even as more and more of his own soldiers appear to be turning on him over humiliating losses in Ukraine.

According to a decree published on a Russian government portal Thursday, the troops will be called to begin service on April 1 until July 15. The Defense Ministry promised earlier this week that they “will not be sent to any hot spots,” and that all those called up in last spring’s draft will be sent home.

But those assurances seem likely to be overshadowed by a multitude of reports that say Russia’s senseless war against Ukraine has been marred by lies from the top down, with Russian troops claiming they were misled into the war and Putin’s own advisers said to be shielding him from the extent of the devastating losses.

Even as Putin signed the decree on Thursday, Ukraine’s Security Service released an intercepted call said to capture a Russian soldier railing against the incompetence of his own army.

“Our brigade has totally shit themselves. There are losses, many wounded,” he tells his wife.

Asked if the losses are a result of someone screwing up, he offers a blunt response: “The whole army with us is stupid morons.”

“It’s unclear why we are even here,” he says.

[andydp]

Hmmmm, where have we seen this before in Russian history ?

Troops led by incompetents

Insufficient supplies

Angry soldiers

Authoritarian ruler being lied to

More conscripts being "fed" to the machine

All Putin needs now is a "special" train from Berlin, a deranged monk (may have that already), an emerging competitor
 

[LFC]

Mar 31, 2022 16:46:58 GMT andydp said:

All Putin needs now is a "special" train from Berlin, a deranged monk (may have that already), an emerging competitor

Check.

Until very recently, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, was most famous for being the owner of a phantom wristwatch. It had the magical property of disappearing from sight, visible to onlookers only as a reflection.

Don’t believe me? Google ‘Kirill’ and ‘watch’ and you’ll find a photo of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ meeting the Russian justice minister. It was taken in 2009, the year Kirill succeeded the late Patriarch Alexy II as spiritual leader of 110 million Russian Orthodox Christians.

On his head Kirill is wearing a white koukoulion, the so-called ‘helmet of salvation’, with side flaps like the ears of a giant basset hound. But his cassock is plain black and his wrist is bare. Only the polished table reveals the glimmer of his phantom wristwatch, a £20,000 Swiss Breguet.

With that sort of price tag, you’d have thought the Russian Orthodox could afford a better class of Photoshopper. At any rate, the humiliated Patriarch threw a fit. ‘There will be a thorough investigation to determine why in this instance there was a crude violation of our internal ethical code [against digital manipulation],’ said his spokesman. ‘The guilty ones will be punished severely.’

We can be sure that promise was kept. You don’t mess with Kirill, a fanatical supporter of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, who was born 75 years ago as Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev. It’s probably his patronymic that explains why for decades he was known as ‘Mikhailov’ by his superiors.

His superiors in the KGB, that is, not the Orthodox Church. As a young priest and bishop, Kirill spent years infiltrating the World Council of Churches (WCC) and other international bodies on behalf of the Soviet Union.

The evidence is set out in a paper entitled ‘The Mikhailov Files: Patriarch Kirill and the KGB’, published by the historian and human rights activist Felix Corley in 2018. His sources are documents from the KGB archives in Moscow which, he writes, ‘were seen by a number of researchers after the archives were briefly opened in the wake of the failed August 1991 coup, but access was then closed again after the Russian Orthodox leadership protested against the extent of the revelations’.

The panic was understandable. The then patriarch, Alexy, was himself a KGB agent. No religious leaders were allowed out of the country unless they were doubling as spies, and that included Catholics, Muslims and Buddhists from the USSR. So it goes without saying that Father Kirill would have been one. What’s interesting is the sinister nature of the tasks to which he was assigned.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 31, 2022 14:35:28 GMT indy said:

There is a lot of that I'm afraid. I rent a building to a (non-military) US agency which has about 10-12 employees. There were some pretty insane requirements for infrastructure like 25 pair of incoming phone lines, a 10ft by 10ft computer room with it's own cooling system and anti-static flooring (and which houses about 3 cubic feet of equipment in it), four separate lines of cat 8 ethernet running to like 30 locations (yet had an incoming DSL line) but no requirement for incoming fiber. It's like somebody had specified it for an equipment room in the 90s but had only updated one item in the interim. Last I looked they still had people going from building to building on a rotating schedule to do backups to tapes but that may have change in the last few years.

This is a problem in all forms of government agencies.  Because they are spending tax dollars the writers of the procurement rules go into great detail so that they can show they are going for the cheapest.  If they were written more broadly to give the people with expertise the ability to recognize and use the more advanced technology that is cheaper in the long run, the anti tax crowd would roar because they think everyone and everything in government wastes money...and they bring up the toilet seats incessantly.  

[jackd]

The toilet seat issue was real. Remember Senator Proxmire and the "Golden Fleece Award"?

[goldenvalley]

Mar 31, 2022 18:36:05 GMT jackd said:

The toilet seat issue was real. Remember Senator Proxmire and the "Golden Fleece Award"?

Oh yeah.  Totally real, but that doesn't mean that every government expenditure should be treated as if it were the toilet seat.

[indy]

Mar 31, 2022 18:02:42 GMT goldenvalley said:

Mar 31, 2022 14:35:28 GMT indy said:

There is a lot of that I'm afraid. I rent a building to a (non-military) US agency which has about 10-12 employees. There were some pretty insane requirements for infrastructure like 25 pair of incoming phone lines, a 10ft by 10ft computer room with it's own cooling system and anti-static flooring (and which houses about 3 cubic feet of equipment in it), four separate lines of cat 8 ethernet running to like 30 locations (yet had an incoming DSL line) but no requirement for incoming fiber. It's like somebody had specified it for an equipment room in the 90s but had only updated one item in the interim. Last I looked they still had people going from building to building on a rotating schedule to do backups to tapes but that may have change in the last few years.

This is a problem in all forms of government agencies.  Because they are spending tax dollars the writers of the procurement rules go into great detail so that they can show they are going for the cheapest.  If they were written more broadly to give the people with expertise the ability to recognize and use the more advanced technology that is cheaper in the long run, the anti tax crowd would roar because they think everyone and everything in government wastes money...and they bring up the toilet seats incessantly.  

The thing is, from the outside, it is hard to tell where one should concentrate on efficiencies. The US government is the largest lessor of real estate in the United States (maybe the world, I don't know). Most of it is in urban areas in large office complexes, for the obvious reason that that is where people are. The kind of real estate I lease to them and is subject to these requirements is an infinitesimally small part of it, especially the dollar amounts.  They would certainly be better off concentrating their resources on the requirements for the large spaces. And the truth is, lots of stuff falls through the cracks and there are lots of inefficiencies. But that happens in all large businesses.

[LFC]

Apr 1, 2022 1:51:30 GMT indy said:

And the truth is, lots of stuff falls through the cracks and there are lots of inefficiencies. But that happens in all large businesses.

When people make broad "the government sucks at everything" comments with the inferred "private businesses can handle it better" I ask if they've ever had to use Comcast customer service. Between our past experiences with them and the Social Security Administration I'll take the SSA every single day.

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

3/18 : 1574 (244) 20.3%

3/19 : --

3/20 : 1616 (254) 21.7%

3/21 : 1662 (263) 21.9%

3/22 : 1676 (268) 22.3%

3/23 : 1721 (271) 22.6%

3/24 : 1785 (280) 23.3%

3/25 : 1831 (289) 24.1%

3/26 : 1920 (300) 25.0%

3/27 : --

3/28 : 2015 (318) 26.5%

3/29 : 2059 (331) 27.6%

3/30 : 2104 (345) 28.8%

3/31 : --

4/01 : 2175 (359) 30.0%

They lost roughly 30% of their tanks in two weeks. Putin must be losing it.

[andydp]

Apr 1, 2022 13:08:37 GMT LFC said:

Apr 1, 2022 1:51:30 GMT indy said:

And the truth is, lots of stuff falls through the cracks and there are lots of inefficiencies. But that happens in all large businesses.

When people make broad "the government sucks at everything" comments with the inferred "private businesses can handle it better" I ask if they've ever had to use Comcast customer service. Between our past experiences with them and the Social Security Administration I'll take the SSA every single day.

I heard the DEA was going to send all the confiscated drugs to Comcast Customer Service, that way NOBODY gets any

[Bact PhD]

Apr 1, 2022 13:25:35 GMT andydp said:

Apr 1, 2022 13:08:37 GMT LFC said:

When people make broad "the government sucks at everything" comments with the inferred "private businesses can handle it better" I ask if they've ever had to use Comcast customer service. Between our past experiences with them and the Social Security Administration I'll take the SSA every single day.

I heard the DEA was going to send all the confiscated drugs to Comcast Customer Service, that way NOBODY gets any

(wipes coffee off phone…)

[LFC]

Did Ukraine just directly attack a fuel depot over 20 miles inside of Russia? It's certainly a strategic military target.

Ukraine Allegedly Strikes Back At Russia Amid Kremlin’s Brutal Invasion

• The Guardian: “Ukraine accused of helicopter attack on oil depot inside Russia”

• Al-Jazeera: “Russia alleges Ukrainian helicopters struck Belgorod fuel depot”

• The New York Times: “Ukrainian helicopters strike an oil depot in Russia, an official there says.”

Bonus ridiculous statement points from this Kremlin spokesperson. You know, because wanton destruction of cities and slaughtering of civilians are perfectly comfortable conditions.

“What has happened is certainly not something that can be perceived as creating conditions comfortable for the continuation of negotiations,” Peskov said.

[indy]

It's possible of course but I'm not believing it yet. There doesn't seem to be a reason for it. Perhaps some rogue element pf the Ukrainian defense forces?

[andydp]

Apr 1, 2022 15:24:07 GMT indy said:

It's possible of course but I'm not believing it yet. There doesn't seem to be a reason for it. Perhaps some rogue element pf the Ukrainian defense forces?

One thing to note if attack helicopters were involved, this means there are no Russian air defenses.

Helicopters don’t operate unless they know there won’t be any enemy air to contend with.

[jackd]

No reason for it? They mention an oil depot and Russia has logistical issues.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 1, 2022 15:24:07 GMT indy said:

It's possible of course but I'm not believing it yet. There doesn't seem to be a reason for it. Perhaps some rogue element pf the Ukrainian defense forces?

My super espionage movie watching wonders if the Russians didn't do it to give them an excuse to pound the Ukrainians ever harder.

[jackd]

The implication of some of the comments about this story is that it is somehow an "escalation" or "provocation" for a country that has been invaded and whose cities and civilian populations are being bombed and shelled to counter attack the invader as though the invader has a right to immunity from such action.

[LFC]

TPM flags an analysis from somebody in Austria who believes that Russia is pulling back in preparation for a second offensive.

To stop Russian imperialism and expansionism in Ukraine (which is in our best self-interest), the West must continue to deliver arms to Ukraine before it is too late. Only if Ukraine can blunt the sword of Russia’s second strike may Vladimir Putin accept that he can’t achieve his aims in Ukraine militarily, writes Gustav Gressel.

Gustav Gressel is a senior policy fellow of the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Four weeks into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the fronts are stalled. Except for the besieged city of Mariupol, Russia’s forces have not made progress.

In the first days, Russian operative planning rested on wishful thinking, running into unexpectedly stiff resistance. Now, much of the confidence in their superiors is gone amongst Russian soldiers, and the organisational chaos that unfolded in the first phase of the war is hard to recover from.

This situation has convinced some that Ukrainian victory would be within reach; others believe Putin may soon seek a compromise in negotiations.

But it is too soon to celebrate. In fact, the Russian invasion forces are in an operational pause, but they have had their pauses in the war in Donbas and Syria, respectively. Pauses do not mean the war is over and 1 April is approaching.

It is an important draft date, where over 100,000 conscripts enter the Russian armed forces. Equally, the day before, last year’s April draftees leave military service – or sign a contract with the Russian armed forces to stay as “kontraktniki” – contract soldier, then to be deployed abroad.

The hysteric propaganda on Russian TV and Putin reassuring that the “heroic service” of Russian soldiers in a “special operation” which is “going according to plan” is nothing but an attempt to mobilise these young men to sign up – and an implicit order for their superiors to force them into volunteering.

So there will be a second wave of offensive once Moscow can throw new forces into the theatre.

Negotiations on the one hand and nuclear threats on the other are a diversion to keep Europeans hopeful and nervous at the same time. Moscow wants the West to de-prioritise arms deliveries, either for the hope of a negotiated settlement or the fear of nuclear war. Neither will happen.

In fact, the West needs to double down on arms deliveries: only if Ukraine can blunt the sword of Russia’s second strike, Putin may accept that he can’t gain his aims in Ukraine militarily. To do that, Ukraine needs to resupply and re-equip its armed forces. These three weeks have been exhaustive for both.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 1, 2022 19:11:59 GMT LFC said:

TPM flags an analysis from somebody in Austria who believes that Russia is pulling back in preparation for a second offensive.

To stop Russian imperialism and expansionism in Ukraine (which is in our best self-interest), the West must continue to deliver arms to Ukraine before it is too late. Only if Ukraine can blunt the sword of Russia’s second strike may Vladimir Putin accept that he can’t achieve his aims in Ukraine militarily, writes Gustav Gressel.

Gustav Gressel is a senior policy fellow of the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Four weeks into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the fronts are stalled. Except for the besieged city of Mariupol, Russia’s forces have not made progress.

In the first days, Russian operative planning rested on wishful thinking, running into unexpectedly stiff resistance. Now, much of the confidence in their superiors is gone amongst Russian soldiers, and the organisational chaos that unfolded in the first phase of the war is hard to recover from.

This situation has convinced some that Ukrainian victory would be within reach; others believe Putin may soon seek a compromise in negotiations.

But it is too soon to celebrate. In fact, the Russian invasion forces are in an operational pause, but they have had their pauses in the war in Donbas and Syria, respectively. Pauses do not mean the war is over and 1 April is approaching.

It is an important draft date, where over 100,000 conscripts enter the Russian armed forces. Equally, the day before, last year’s April draftees leave military service – or sign a contract with the Russian armed forces to stay as “kontraktniki” – contract soldier, then to be deployed abroad.

The hysteric propaganda on Russian TV and Putin reassuring that the “heroic service” of Russian soldiers in a “special operation” which is “going according to plan” is nothing but an attempt to mobilise these young men to sign up – and an implicit order for their superiors to force them into volunteering.

So there will be a second wave of offensive once Moscow can throw new forces into the theatre.

Negotiations on the one hand and nuclear threats on the other are a diversion to keep Europeans hopeful and nervous at the same time. Moscow wants the West to de-prioritise arms deliveries, either for the hope of a negotiated settlement or the fear of nuclear war. Neither will happen.

In fact, the West needs to double down on arms deliveries: only if Ukraine can blunt the sword of Russia’s second strike, Putin may accept that he can’t gain his aims in Ukraine militarily. To do that, Ukraine needs to resupply and re-equip its armed forces. These three weeks have been exhaustive for both.

A talking head last night said something similar.  But also thinks Russia will focus on eastern Ukraine from now on.

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

3/18 : 1574 (244) 20.3%
3/19 : --
3/20 : 1616 (254) 21.7%
3/21 : 1662 (263) 21.9%
3/22 : 1676 (268) 22.3%
3/23 : 1721 (271) 22.6%
3/24 : 1785 (280) 23.3%
3/25 : 1831 (289) 24.1%
3/26 : 1920 (300) 25.0%
3/27 : --
3/28 : 2015 (318) 26.5%
3/29 : 2059 (331) 27.6%
3/30 : 2104 (345) 28.8%
3/31 : --

4/01 : 2175 (359) 30.0%

4/02 : --

4/03: 2394 (410)

4/04: 2414 (416)

I dropped the percentages since Russia seems to be trying to resupply and regroup so I have no idea what the denominator would be at this point.

[LFC]

It now sounds like just slaughter out of spite (paywalled).

As I’ve shared with you, I’ve spent a lot of the last month closely reading on the ground reports from Ukraine as well as accounts from a spectrum of military analysts, reporters, soldiers of fortune, people on the ground in Ukraine and more. In recent days I had seen a number of claims that Russian troops had carried out mass executions before evacuating or being driven out of towns in Ukraine. Most of these were claims of mass killings of men of military age but others of men and women of all ages. I haven’t known what to make of these accounts because claims of civilian atrocities are the most established kind of wartime propaganda. There is the deceit of war and the fog of war that demands caution in evaluating all new information. Most of these were either anecdotal, second hand or from sources I wasn’t familiar with. But over the last two days reporters have followed in the wake of Ukrainian troops or evacuating Russian troops. Now some of these claims are being validated. They may be widespread, not limited to a few incidents.

I’m still waiting to find out more information. By this I mean both that I’m trying to make sense of how and what has been confirmed and also that I’m just trying to catch up on the news that has come out over the course of today. But I share this with you because it seems like we’re on the verge of getting some very dark news out of Ukraine, actions that are reminiscent in their character if hopefully not at the scale of what many of us remember from the collapse of Yugoslavia and the various wars and ethnic cleansings left in its wake.

If atrocities like I’m describing have happened that is obviously tragic in human terms. But there’s another dimension of this to which I want to draw your attention. When wars break out one wants them to end as soon as possible. Outside parties try to find some settlement that both sides can agree to. Ceasefire negotiations have been ongoing for weeks as the war has unfolded. But certain actions are very hard to unwind. You just can’t set back the clock. If events such as I’ve described have been happening it will likely intensify the conflict and lead it in unpredictable new directions.

More on Russians slaughtering civilians (paywalled).

The Times has this harrowing, disturbing report from the Bucha near Kyiv. This is the scene of the main reports to date of mass executions during the Russian occupation of Ukrainian towns and cities. It’s a good, reported, observational piece on what happened. One key takeaway is that civilians describe the initial Russian occupying force as professional and agreeable enough. Eyewitnesses describe many of them as disoriented, not even quite sure why they were there. (Remember, the Russian soldiers apparently had very little advance warning they were actually going to war.) But as time went on they got antsy and started running low on supplies. That led to a cycle of looting and the tensions that follow from it. But things really went bad when this initial force was cycled out and replaced with Chechen paramilitaries. These are the products, organizationally if not always individually, of the Chechen wars of almost two decades ago: with a brutal reputation and a specialty in repression and war crimes.

These as yet very incomplete reports suggest a combination of two overlapping and reinforcing factors: one, a policy of organized terror aimed at a denationalization of Ukraine (some hint of the ideology here) and then second, poor discipline and the downstream effects of Russian military failure. In this latter case, as Russian troops failed in military terms they increasingly shifted to attacks on civilians.

[goldenvalley]

Clearly the international organizations created post WWII are not equipped to deal with the behavior of Russia.  They were built in an idealistic time when all agreed that world war was a bad thing.  Now we have a country (and probably more than one) that does not honor the intent and spirit of those orgs and that has nuclear weapons...one that even has veto power in the UN Security Council.