Russia

[LFC]

It's the classic case of "The executions will continue until morale improves."

[andydp]

The news for Russia is not going to improve.  (Reminder: US estimates of UKR casualties are also in the 100K range)

110,000 Dead Russian Soldiers: Putin Is Facing a Historic Disaster in Ukraine

(Paragraphs taken from the article)

Overall, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Monday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 111,760 Russian troops (and wounded approximately twice to thrice that number), destroyed 285 fighter, attack, bomber, and transport jets, 275 attack and transport helicopters, 3,080 tanks, 2,069 artillery pieces, 6,147 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, 434 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 16 boats and cutters, 4,809 vehicles and fuel tanks, 217 anti-aircraft batteries, 1,856 tactical unmanned aerial systems, 183 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles, and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems, and 723 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.

Meanwhile, calls for more security assistance to Ukraine continue to grow. Following the joint U.S. and German decision to send M2/M3 Bradley and Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles, more countries are willing to send more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.

Finland is the first country to announce that it is willing to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Kyiv. Helsinki has conditioned the shipment of the tanks to the willingness of other European nations to also provide main battle tanks to Ukraine.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/110-000-dead-russian-soldiers-putin-is-facing-a-historic-disaster-in-ukraine/ar-AA169HwG?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=02f3dc4643324e97ac078a65ff4821d4

[andydp]

There's an old joke with the punchline: "I guess its not your day"

Seriously, its starting to look like anything dealing with the Russian military seems to be doomed from the start.  Troubles like this should have been apparent to the Soviet Leadership.  What is apparent: no one told Putin.

Admiral Kuznetsov: Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Looks Dead

The Ukrainians believe the carrier is now under a state of emergency. Workers are struggling with the ship at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in the Barents Sea port city of Murmansk. The Russian navy tried to send it to another dry dock, but somehow the engines are not working correctly, leaving the vessel stuck. The ship’s hull reportedly has a problem, and tugboats are struggling to move it.

The list of troubles for the Admiral Kuznetsov is long, and 19FortyFive has chronicled its problems extensively. Most recently, the ship had another fire in December, although this one did not cause any casualties. It often breaks down mid-mission, and tugboats have to accompany the carrier on deployments. It lost two airplanes during Russia’s intervention in Syria. It belches black smoke due to its use of a messy fuel called mazut, giving the ship an appearance of ill health.  (See article below)


www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/admiral-kuznetsov-russia-s-only-aircraft-carrier-looks-dead/ar-AA16bCHy?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=53e1237888444eaab678a6268bbb613e

There's a joke among navies and military around the world the world: Aircraft Carrier = Bomb magnet.  Ergo its important not to give your position away.  (At least until you get to the operations area.)  Parts of the article are here.  Just one more thing to reinforce the ineptitude of the Russian military.

Russia's Aircraft Carrier Is a Smokey Mess: Here's Why

Key Point: Everyone can see the carrier coming because of its smoke. It comes from the toxic fuel it burns to keep running.

Mazut is a heavy petrochemical fuel. While most sources refer it to being taken from the very bottom of a distillation stack, this is inaccurate as "mazut" is a blanket term for very-heavy oil products, including those that can be formed from blending heavier oils with some slightly lighter ones.

nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/russias-aircraft-carrier-smokey-mess-heres-why-163606

[LFC]

The impact of companies leaving Russia are about to hit it right in the phone service.

When telecoms gear makers Nokia (NOKIA.HE) and Ericsson (ERICb.ST) leave Russia at the end of the year, their departure could steadily cripple the country's mobile networks over the long-term, setting off a deterioration in communication for everyday Russians.

Five senior telecoms executives and other industry sources said Russian mobile phone users will likely experience slower downloads and uploads, more dropped calls, calls that won't connect, and longer outages as operators lose the ability to upgrade or patch software, and battle over dwindling spare parts inventories.

Ericsson and Nokia, which together account for a large share of the telecoms equipment market and close to 50% in terms of base stations in Russia, make everything from the telecom antennas to the hardware that connects optical fiber carrying digital signals.

They also provide crucial software that enables different parts of the network to function together.

"We are working towards the end of the year and that's when all exemptions (from sanctions) expire," Ericsson's finance chief Carl Mellander told Reuters. Ericsson received exemptions to sanctions from Swedish authorities.

Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark echoed that sentiment in a interview: "Our exit will be complete. We are not going to deliver anything to Russia."

[LFC]

Assuming support from the West stays high and Ukraine wins the war, their decision on joining NATO sounds like almost a done deal. As long as somebody like Orban doesn't hold out for some fat Putin cash I suspect they'll be accepted.

If Moldova pushes Russia out as well, and they just might with the help of Ukraine, that creates a pretty solid, contiguous wall against Russia's imperial aggression with the exception of Kalingrad. If Belarus joined as well someday the line would be even cleaner since outer curves are harder to defend than inner curves. Looking farther ahead I think that Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are bridges too far.

[LFC]

If this is what Russia admits to, you know it's much, much worse.

[LFC]

This ... is ... Russia. These are quotes from the linked piece. It is frighteningly familiar to anybody who has followed American conservatism over the past decade or so. Is it any wonder that the GOP is now talking about no longer supporting Ukraine? Russia fits their desired political model so much better.

As the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt and the Russian fascist Ivan Ilyin recommended, Russian politics begins from the definition of an enemy.

Ukraine as an enemy is simply, in official Russian rhetoric, a kind of repository for all things propagandists find frightening: Nazis, gays, Jews, gay Nazi Jews, etc. At the moment, a leading idea is that Ukraine is the homeland of Satanism.

An anxiety Putin shares with his far-right admirers is that of demography: soon there will not be enough of us, and there will be too many of them.

The onset of the war, and then the announcement of mobilization, drove much of the Russian intelligentsia and the middle classes abroad. From Putin’s point of view, this was a necessary “self-cleansing,” in which Russia was “spitting out” traitors (his phrasing) like insects.

For a decade, Putin has been speaking of a world without rules, a world of a permanent struggle for resources, which will determine (to quote a speech from 2012) “who will take the lead and who will remain outsiders and inevitably lose their independence.”

[LFC]

I guess this is what happens when you go with the low bidder, especially when that low bidder is an autocratic nation rules by a sociopathic emperor wannabe. And once again Russia shows themselves to be a major exporter of instability.

The Russian space agency may be willing to return 36 satellites it’s been keeping hostage in Kazakhstan in exchange for parts of its Soyuz rockets that are being held in French Guiana.

According to a report by Russian Space Web, French aerospace company Arianespace might be looking into a deal with Roscosmos to swap components of the Russian Soyuz rocket for 36 OneWeb satellites that have been held at its Kazakhstan launch site since March. Roscosmos’s newly appointed head Yuri Borisov is reportedly open to negotiations with Arianespace, a source told Russian Space Web.

Arianespace and OneWeb did not immediately respond to our request for confirmations of the Russian Space Web report. We’ll update this post should we hear back.

Under the helm of former Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, the space agency severed ties with Europe in retaliation for Western-imposed sanctions against Russia. That included an ongoing deal it had with British company OneWeb to launch its internet satellites to orbit aboard the Soyuz rockets. OneWeb refused to agree to a list of unreasonable demands put forward by Roscosmos in March, prompting Russia to hold on to the company’s 36 satellites and store them indefinitely at its launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. OneWeb eventually forged new partnerships with SpaceX and India’s space agency to launch its remaining satellites to orbit, but its 36 lonesome satellites remained out of reach.

Roscosmos also halted its cooperation with Europe on Soyuz rocket launches from French Guiana and withdrew 87 employees from the launch site. But with Russian involvement in French Guiana terminated, the Soyuz rocket components were left abandoned, as Anatoly Zak writes at Russian Space Web:

On orders from Roskosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, dozens of Russian specialists were abruptly withdrawn from French Guiana in early March 2022, leaving behind the rocket stages, containers with propellant, support hardware and documentation. The Paris-based Arianespace company, which contracted Roskosmos to provide and support Soyuz launches with European and most non-Russian commercial payloads, took custody of the stored equipment until its expected return to Russia. However, due to the severe breakdown in diplomatic relations and economic activities between Europe and Moscow, the Russian hardware remained in French Guiana for the rest of 2022.

[LFC]

How NOT to do Russian propaganda about Ukraine.

[indy]

Especially if you are prone to falling out windows or falling down several flights of stairs.

[andydp]

Once more proving how Putin is a "Genius":


The West Calls Putin's Bluff


Kremlin officials and Russian state-controlled media outlets responded to the news of the tanks with outrage. But George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government professor Mark N. Katz told Newsweek that the message from the West was clear: Putin's rhetoric wasn't going to cause them to back down.

"Putin's redlines are designed to deter Western states from crossing them, but Putin has not been able to prevent the West from crossing several of them," Katz said.

<SNIP>

"The U.S. and NATO do seem to take seriously the possibility that there are some things Ukraine might do which could result in Putin escalating the conflict," he said.

Another reason why Ukraine's Western allies may feel emboldened in their support of Ukraine is that Russia for the most part has stumbled in its war efforts, according to Katz.

"If Putin's forces are not doing so well against Ukraine, it is hard to see how they can do better by escalating the conflict by attacking any NATO member," he said.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-west-calls-putin-s-bluff/ar-AA16Mfm7?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=2237d6e2ee2a454087120b95b3546543

[andydp]

I'm sure many here know the Monty Pithon Holy Grail scene where the knight is says:  "It's only a flesh wound."  Sometimes Vlad's wartime management reminds me of that'

Russia fumes over NATO tanks heading to Ukraine, revealing a Kremlin coming to grips with reality

WASHINGTON — Russia responded with anger and scorn after Germany and the United States revealed that they would be supplying Ukraine with powerful, advanced battle tanks. Moscow invoked history and warned of a broader conflict.

But in doing so, the Kremlin only highlighted its own political and military constraints.

The move was a “blatant provocation,” said Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, ahead of President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday afternoon that his administration would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.

Germany said the same day that it was sending 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks.

“A losing scheme,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “We have repeatedly said that these tanks go up in flames like all the other armor,” he boasted, even as Russian forces continued to experience astonishing battlefield losses, including an estimated 123,000 soldiers killed and some 3,100 tanks lost.

“NATO must be destroyed, there are no other options,” mused Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent state television host whose impassioned tirades are valued by the Kremlin for their reach and visceral appeal.


“Of course this is an escalation, of course this is a movement strictly towards nuclear midnight,” said another state television host, Anatoly Kuzichev, referencing the recent decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move its Doomsday Clock to within 90 seconds of an atomic-weapons exchange.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-fumes-over-nato-tanks-heading-to-ukraine-revealing-a-kremlin-coming-to-grips-with-reality/ar-AA16LPeM?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a36e03def9aa4600a5ec9aa6026793ac

(ED note: Sounds like a Russian copy of our friend Tokyo Rose Tucker)

[andydp]

Just keep on truckin`Vlad !!  Some may not know this, a designation of "Guards" for a unit indicates its an elite force.  Based on performance of these other Russian units I'm going to say that's not an accurate description.

Beaten Twice In Ukraine, Russia’s Elite 1st Guards Tank Army Is Poised To Attack Yet Again

The Russian army apparently is repositioning heavy forces in advance of a widely-anticipated winter offensive in Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The forces include elements of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army, which has spent months in Belarus, recovering from its near-destruction by Ukrainian brigades during two previous, large-scale operations.

A Luhansk offensive would be the 1st Guards Tank Army’s third chance to prove itself in Ukraine. Or, alternatively, a third chance for Ukrainian forces to wreck the formation.

“Ukrainian intelligence relatedly noted that elements of the 2nd Motor Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army of the Western Military District have withdrawn from Belarus and partially deployed to Luhansk Oblast,” the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War noted on Wednesday.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/beaten-twice-in-ukraine-russia-s-elite-1st-guards-tank-army-is-poised-to-attack-yet-again/ar-AA16R7tR?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c538d9eab9854e09b11bcfd7585fee9a

[LFC]

It should not shock anyone that Russia has purchased a variety of European politicians.

Key Findings

• Leaked emails show how a Duma insider built a network of analysts, journalists, and others who helped him push the Kremlin’s interests abroad.

• His group offered cash to European politicians to propose pro-Russian motions in their local legislatures, and paid far-right activists to publish pro-Kremlin articles in European media outlets.

• The network arranged trips to occupied Crimea for European politicians and businessmen, with travel and accommodation covered by Russian state-funded organizations and honoraria apparently offered to some individuals.

• It also helped bring European political figures to Russia to act as election observers, with a 68,000-euro budget allocated to the project.

[LFC]

David Frum provides some reality on "negotiations." The heavily pro-negotiation crowd has a lot of splainin' to do on why negotiations with Putin constitute the best, or even a reasonable, course of action when history shows otherwise.

A thread about "negotiations." 1/x

Since 1991, post-Soviet Russia has fought two wars inside Chechnya. It has waged wars across internationally recognized borders against

Moldova
Georgia (twice)
and Ukraine (2014 and then again in 2022).

Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war and between Armenia & Azerbaijan.
It's often claimed that "all wars end in negotiations." But to date, none of post-Soviet Russia's many wars have ended that way. 3/x

Instead, post-Soviet Russia's wars have tended to freeze into perpetual unresolved conflicts, with Russia retaining chunks of other people's territory - enduring international opprobrium - and waiting out any ensuing sanctions. 4/x

A reason that post-Soviet Russia's wars end as "frozen conflicts" is that they have ended on terms more or less satisfactory to Russian leadership. Russian leaders have never seen any need for a more formal resolution that might require some concession to adversaries. 5/x

If the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were to end today, it would end as another "frozen conflict." From a Russian point of view, there'd be little to negotiate. They've still got Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. They didn't colonize the rest of Ukraine, but they mauled and terrorized it.

The status quo is acceptable enough to post-Soviet Russia. So when prominent people urge negotiations now, they are urging a policy that would award Russia a good-enough win - and leave Ukraine broken and vulnerable to further Russian aggression/pressure. 7/x

What might induce Russia to change its established pattern and -for the first time- negotiate an end to a war that it started? Only one thing: fear that the war is trending in a direction even more unacceptable than any concessions necessary to end the war Russia started. 8/x

To get to negotiations with Ukraine, Russia needs to genuinely fear that it could lose its war against Ukraine- lose catastrophically enough that negotiations become a less unacceptable alternative to Russia's leaders. 9/x

The way to get to negotiations is, therefore, to arm Ukraine to the point where Russian leaders fear defeat.

The way to thwart negotiations is to withhold arms from Ukraine and leave Russia's leaders with hope they can preserve the status quo. 10/x

To put it more formally, Russia's preferences look like

Russian victory > frozen conflict > continuing war > negotiations requiring concessions.

The West can only "jump to negotiations" after it has denied Russia any hope of success from first three preferences. END

[goldenvalley]

Feb 6, 2023 20:29:58 GMT LFC said:

David Frum provides some reality on "negotiations." The heavily pro-negotiation crowd has a lot of splainin' to do on why negotiations with Putin constitute the best, or even a reasonable, course of action when history shows otherwise.

A thread about "negotiations." 1/x

Since 1991, post-Soviet Russia has fought two wars inside Chechnya. It has waged wars across internationally recognized borders against

Moldova
Georgia (twice)
and Ukraine (2014 and then again in 2022).

Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war and between Armenia & Azerbaijan.
It's often claimed that "all wars end in negotiations." But to date, none of post-Soviet Russia's many wars have ended that way. 3/x

Instead, post-Soviet Russia's wars have tended to freeze into perpetual unresolved conflicts, with Russia retaining chunks of other people's territory - enduring international opprobrium - and waiting out any ensuing sanctions. 4/x

A reason that post-Soviet Russia's wars end as "frozen conflicts" is that they have ended on terms more or less satisfactory to Russian leadership. Russian leaders have never seen any need for a more formal resolution that might require some concession to adversaries. 5/x

If the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were to end today, it would end as another "frozen conflict." From a Russian point of view, there'd be little to negotiate. They've still got Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. They didn't colonize the rest of Ukraine, but they mauled and terrorized it.

The status quo is acceptable enough to post-Soviet Russia. So when prominent people urge negotiations now, they are urging a policy that would award Russia a good-enough win - and leave Ukraine broken and vulnerable to further Russian aggression/pressure. 7/x

What might induce Russia to change its established pattern and -for the first time- negotiate an end to a war that it started? Only one thing: fear that the war is trending in a direction even more unacceptable than any concessions necessary to end the war Russia started. 8/x

To get to negotiations with Ukraine, Russia needs to genuinely fear that it could lose its war against Ukraine- lose catastrophically enough that negotiations become a less unacceptable alternative to Russia's leaders. 9/x

The way to get to negotiations is, therefore, to arm Ukraine to the point where Russian leaders fear defeat.

The way to thwart negotiations is to withhold arms from Ukraine and leave Russia's leaders with hope they can preserve the status quo. 10/x

To put it more formally, Russia's preferences look like

Russian victory > frozen conflict > continuing war > negotiations requiring concessions.

The West can only "jump to negotiations" after it has denied Russia any hope of success from first three preferences. END

Negotiations are not possible when one of the parties has no desire to give up anything.  The same is true domestically. 

[jackd]

Unfortunately, western unwillingness to allow Ukraine to attack targets within Russia's internationally accepted borders, forces Ukraine to fight with a hand tied behind its back. Russian missiles are frequently fired from Russian soil or from aircraft launched from Russian airfields. Russia's logistical supplies are warehoused in Russia. It may not be possible to "defeat" Russia under those conditions.

[LFC]

Yes, Putin really is the epitome of "small dick energy." He's a nasty little boy who never matured.

Russia’s federal media watchdog has a secret team of people tasked with protecting Vladimir Putin’s ego—and alerting the president’s spooks should there be any online mentions of him as a “bald dwarf,” Hitler wannabe, or a “thief.”

That’s according to the independent outlet iStories, one of several news organizations to reveal the surreal findings of a leak from Roskomnadzor this week. The agency was targeted by a group of Belarusian hackers late last year that said they had breached an internal network and made off with a ton of data from a division tasked with “regulating” the media. That data was subsequently handed over to independent Russian journalists who released their investigations this week.

Among the most disturbing revelations, staffers at the federal agency compile reports on all “negative publications” about Putin and use an internal messaging system to brief the presidential administration and Russia’s security services on all of the president’s critics.

Putin’s image is reportedly monitored almost around-the-clock, with staffers signing on at 8:30 every morning to look for any online chatter that could pose a threat to the Russian leader—including any memes that diminish his macho image, such as his face superimposed over the body of a crab, or the equally threatening declaration, “Putin is a crab.”

One report compiled following a visit by Putin to Kaliningrad focused obsessively on “negative reactions” on the Russian internet to the president’s dialogue with local residents, according to iStories. The censors honed in on complaints that Putin’s interactions with locals were a “cheap spectacle” and that the “locals” were likely just members of his security team in disguise.

Apart from the war against Ukraine, federal censors are said to have also relentlessly focused on messages about Putin’s health being in “critical condition.” In a report detailing their efforts to thwart the “destabilization of Russian society,” the censors included a few gems found online, including: “Putin 100% has dementia! The old man has lost his mind!” and “Will a sane Russian support a president with mental illnesses?”

Staffers at the federal agency are reportedly required to seek out “negative, discrediting” information about the Russian president using some of the most famous slurs against him as search terms, including “Putin’s a thief,” “Putler,”’ “bald dwarf,” and a reference to Putin as Zaches, a freakish little boy from an 1819 German fairytale.

[LFC]

Why does America's right-wing love Putin so much? They're just like him, or at least they desperately want to be.

Vladimir Putin believes time is on his side. A leader with no concern for the lives of his ill-trained and shockingly led men, can keep sending conscripts to their deaths until Western opposition to Russian imperialism crumbles.

Putin knows the West’s greatest weakness is the movement that once boasted that it was freedom’s staunchest defender: the US right. Come next year’s American presidential election, there’s a chance that it might take power. If Donald Trump or a politician like him wins, so does Putin – again.

A poll on 6 February captured conservative Americans’ indifference and contempt. The Washington Post reported that support for Ukraine had become a partisan issue – like so much else in US politics. Half of Republican voters were now saying that “we’re doing too much” for Ukraine – up from 18 percent in April 2022. Meanwhile an NBC News poll showed 63 percent of Republicans opposed “providing more funding and weapons to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile this week, as every week, Tucker Carlson parroted Russian lines on Fox News. So grateful is the Kremlin for the efforts of its very own Lord Haw-Haw, it has established a Russian-dubbed YouTube channel, Taker Karlson na russkom ("Tucker Carlson in Russian"), which has nearly one million subscribers.

Fox News was making an argument Putin is keen to spread. The Washington “war machine” was “itching for another conflict,” Carlson announced, as he turned the Ukraine crisis inside out. On the ground, Moscow is waging an imperialist war against a free nation that dared to leave the Russian empire. But according to Fox News. NATO is the imperialist aggressor. The West will be emboldened to engage in more colonial wars, if Russia is not victorious.

Looking at the dominant right-wing forces in the United States, Hungary and France, it takes an effort for those of us who remember the 20th century to adjust to a new right that wants to emulate Russian autocracy, not oppose it. The Ukraine war has revealed what anyone paying attention in the 2010s already knew. The Western far right objected to the godlessness and the communism of the Soviet Union, but not the dictatorship.

Today it is comfortable with a dictator who prays at the Russian orthodox church and has made anti-LGBT conspiracy theories state ideology. When Steve Bannon praises Putin for being “anti-woke,” he is not just engaging in America First isolationism. Tucker Carlson is not simply making a reasonable assessment of Ukraine’s chances of ultimate victory when he asks: “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”

The populist right sees the world changing in ways it hates: white nation-states becoming progressively more multicultural, old sexual norms going, and, for let us be fair, a ruthless and illiberal movement on the bourgeois left cancelling traditional morality.

Like their predecessors on the far left, the far right looks to a great empire in the east for relief. Whereas deluded western Marxists in the 20th century saw Russia as a socialist hope, today’s far right sees it as the last bastion of muscular, Christian conservatism. As in the past, it’s hard to know which is worse: the malice or the self-delusion. But the effects are clear. The denial of the 2020 election result and the storming of Congress were examples of American Putinism in action.

Power worship is an under-examined phenomenon. Thousands of books have been written about conspiracy theory, but few talk about the pure pleasure that comes from watching a strongman crush your enemies. A large part of extremist politics consists of little else. Putin has the power to destroy the Western far-right’s enemies, and they love him for it.

Nor does Russia’s crony capitalism and gangsterism repel people whose parents believed in free markets.

[LFC]

The more I pay attention and the more this war exposes the warts, the more I think that Russia has been treated more seriously for the past few decades than they should have. They are mostly a petro-economy. Their tech is dependent upon other nations and they've been suffering brain drain for some time. Pairing with them on the space station was a feel good project but in 20-20 hindsight it looks like it was a mistake. Their space program suffers from many of the same problems endemic to the nation as a whole.

Russia's state-owned space corporation, Roscosmos, reported Saturday that a Progress supply ship attached to the International Space Station has lost pressure in its external cooling system.

In its statement, Roscosmos said there was no threat to the seven crew members on board the orbiting laboratory. NASA, too, said the hatch between the Progress MS-21 vehicle and the space station was open. Notably, the incident with the supply ship came within hours of the safe docking of another Progress ship, MS-22, which is in good health.

Although the initial Roscosmos statement was vague about the depressurization event, Dmitry Strugovets, a former head of space agency Roscosmos' press service, later clarified it was a coolant leak. "All of the coolant has leaked out," he said via Telegram.

This is the second Russian spacecraft to suffer a cooling system leak in less than two months at the space station.

[LFC]

Oh, those dangerous Russian windows.

A Russian military official in charge of financial provisions for the military district blamed for the Kremlin’s worst losses in Ukraine has been found dead after a nasty fall from a St. Petersburg high-rise.

Marina Yankina, head of the department of financial provisions for the Western Military District, was found dead on a sidewalk on Wednesday morning, according to multiple local reports. She is just the latest in a growing list of Russian military officials, defense industry figures, war critics, and gas and oil execs to die suddenly and mysteriously since the start of the full-scale invasion last year.

The 58-year-old’s belongings and documents were found on a balcony on the 16th floor of the building, Mash reports.

Russia’s Investigative Committee is looking into the circumstances of the deadly plunge, with their preliminary conclusion being suicide, according to Fontanka.

Prior to joining the Western Military District, Yankina worked in the Federal Tax Service.

The Western Military District has incurred some of the heaviest losses in Russia’s war against Ukraine—and been blamed for a string of humiliating battlefield losses.

[andydp]

More information on the "genius" move by Vlad.  (Emphasis mine)

Russia is 'running out of munitions and has lost as much as 50% of its tanks' in Ukraine, senior US official says

Russia has lost up to half of its tanks in Ukraine since the start of the war and is running low on ammunition, a senior US official said.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo made the assessment at an event Tuesday held by the Council of Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, DC.

In a version of his speech posted online by the Treasury, Adeyemo argue that US-led sanctions on Russian had harmed its economy and limited its ability to replace equipment lost in the war.

The sanctions, he said, "degraded Russia's ability to replace more than 9,000 pieces of military equipment lost since the start of the war, forced production shutdowns at key defense facilities, and caused shortages of essential components for tanks and aircraft production.

"Russia is also running out of munitions and has lost as much as 50% of its tanks," he continued, and had to "turn to mothballed Soviet-era weapons."***

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-is-running-out-of-munitions-and-has-lost-as-much-as-50-of-its-tanks-in-ukraine-senior-us-official-says/ar-AA17MDV6?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=846c94c12430456eac3dc54aa7c496e2

*** These weapons are not built for survivability in the modern battlefield. Target acquisition by modern tanks would destroy them before they were even in range of the NATO tanks.  Notoriously low tech and low dependability.  The older tanks have manual transmissions.  Its known drivers were issued hammers to help them shift gears

[LFC]

Putin is again stirring up the right-wing culture war.

One year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin took one of his final public steps towards war against Ukraine.

In a speech on Feb. 21, 2022, he moved to recognize the independence of two Russia-backed proxy states in Ukraine — and, in doing so, suggested that war was inevitable.

Now, in a new speech one year later, he remains defiant — but has added into his rhetoric ever-more-heaping doses of culture war tropes that for American listeners might sound familiar, pushing a dark worldview and conspiracy theories of the sort favored by Tucker Carlson and the U.S.’s right-wing religious fringe.

Putin set aside time in his Tuesday speech to Russia’s federal assembly to rail against “the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children, up to pedophilia.”

This might sound like a ripoff of an AM radio segment or Chris Rufo stratagem, but similar remarks have constituted a key part of Putin’s public outreach since he launched his murderous invasion of Ukraine last year.

Republicans are, once again, more of Putin's ally than America's or democracy's ally.

When President Biden appeared in Kyiv on Monday, he was met with two reactions.

One was support from Ukrainians and from American politicians — in this case, Democratic and Republican — who back U.S. aid to the country’s war effort.

But the other, from a mixture of MAGA and further-right Republicans, was to suggest that Biden was neglecting the U.S. by appearing in Ukraine.

Pick your issue.

Immigration? Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) tweeted that Biden “has now spent more time in Ukraine than he has at our southern border,” accusing him of ignoring an “AMERICAN crisis.”

Nearly all of the commentary has the same unstated assumption: that U.S. support for anything, domestic or foreign, is a zero sum game. Help to Ukraine, in this telling, means that Americans are somehow being deprived.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) of 2020 Trump coup plot fame made a statement along similar lines, saying that it was “breathtaking” for Biden to appear in Ukraine to ensure their border is secure, while he “can’t do the same for America.”

If the border analogy that Perry drew seems too blunt and nonsensical, others tried to contrast Biden’s Ukraine trip with his absence in East Palestine, Ohio, the town that was victim of a recent Norfolk Southern train crash that resulted in chemical contamination.

“When Ohio burns with toxic chemicals, Biden’s admin says everything is fine,” wrote Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Twitter. “So on Presidents’ Day, I’m not surprised that Biden is ditching America for Ukraine. He ditched America’s interests since the start of his presidency. They can keep him!”

There’s a broader GOP effort ongoing to portray the Ohio derailment as the fault of government, and not monolithic corporate interests. But here, the disaster in Ohio serves more as a convenient prop to repeat the argument that support for Ukraine somehow means less support for America — a binary decision.

[LFC]

Putin's being Putin, yet again, as he blames the U.S. for deteriorating relations, not his war and war crimes. Is it any wonder that Republicans love this guy?

After decades of progress on limiting the buildup of nuclear weapons, Russia’s war on Ukraine has prompted renewed nuclear tensions between Russia and the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual State of the Nation address on Feb. 21, 2023, that Russia is “suspending” its participation in the U.S. and Russia’s last remaining nuclear arms agreement – known as New START.

“Our relations have degraded, and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” said Putin, who stopped short of entirely withdrawing Russia from the deal that aims to limit nuclear arms expansion.

[LFC]

Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, is desperate to place the blame for his failure to take Bakhmut on Russian generals. Welcome to the politics of war.

Wagner Group chief, U.S. election interferer, and onetime convict Yevgeny Prigozhin did something unusual, even for him, on Wednesday: he published a photo of Wagner’s losses in Ukraine.

It’s a graphic image, showing a ditch full of corpses mutilated by what appear to be military-grade weapons. But Prigozhin used it to reinforce a complaint that he’s been making over the past week: the Russian Ministry of Defense has stopped giving his mercenary army the ammo it needs to keep fighting.

It’s a rare example of infighting in the Russian war effort breaking out into the open.

Prigozhin has accused senior Russian military officials, sometimes by name and at least by rank, of sabotaging his mercenary company’s assault by halting full ammunition deliveries.

He started doing this last week via the press service of his company, Concord. That firm was indicted in the Mueller investigation for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

Now, in a series of increasingly unhinged recordings, Prigozhin is airing out his purported difficulties in obtaining ammunition, comparing himself to a beggar who has to “obey and apologize” for ammo.

“There is simply direct opposition that can’t be called anything other than an attempt to destroy PMC Wagner, it can be compared to treason,” Prigozhin yelled on one recording.

On another, he complained that the Russian regular army was sucking up too many supplies.

“A ton of near-military officers have decided that its their country, their people, they decided that this people will die when it’s comfortable for them, when they like it,” he said, adding that Wagner was receiving 20 percent of the ammo that it required to maintain its offensive. “Do you have ammunition? Or have you sold it to the Americans, or something else?”

“I have people dying by the truckload,” he added in a Tuesday recording.

Even if you don’t understand Russian, the vitriol bleeds through Prigozhin’s recordings. You can almost hear the spittle coming out of his mouth. Listen below: