Ukraine-invasion-part-15

[Ijsbear]

Next part.

A very interesting thread on India's evolving relationship with Russia
twitter.com/tanvi_madan/status/1505571340039843840

Twitter is full of academics and journalists; they talk, do a tweet. 4 hours later there is a story on Reuters, another 4 hours later there is a story on BBC. Quite a few stories hit MN before the BBC

Another thing to do is chose a misinformation/bot account to follow. It will tip you off on the fake news to come.

How do you mean by "sheer grunt" and could you expand a little bit more in the blend of infrastructure, institutions and resources maybe please? Kinda new concept to me (or Im not picking up your meaning properly) and if I've got a basic grasp of what you mean then I can go and read some more.

@DGRossetti

Thank you for much-needed laugh!

Well it is The End Of The World As We Know it (and I feel fine)

Some of us have been here before, remember. All this is so much deja vu only the fashions and music are much much worse.

I once made the mistake of recounting on these very forums my waking into the 1987 hurricane and briefly thinking this was "it" and The Bomb had been dropped. To a chorus of piss taking and general unkindness. but I stand by what I said in that post. That was the day I made peace with my maker. The subsequent 35 years have been a bonus really. I've spent 30 years in the bathroom baby and when they come to take me away I will be clean.

Exactly--I'm a very late Boomer and lived through some of those times.

My husband was in the army at the time the Red Army was still supposed to be coming through the Fulda Gap, while he was posted in Germany.

Thanks @RedToothBrush and @shreddednips for your thoughts on that transcript. It took me a long time to read and it's good to see your response to it, unpicking the key takeaways. It's the most useful piece I've read so far. And all I'm doing at the moment is reading about this, not sure how I'm holding my job down 😂

^Channel One has finally responded to Marina Ovsyannikova’s on-air protest.

Kirill Kleimyonov, head of the news division, accuses her of being a British spy.

He said she has “betrayed [her] country and all of us … coldly, duplicitously, for a bonus.”^

(Max Seddon).

@MagicFox

Thanks *@RedToothBrush and @shreddednips* for your thoughts on that transcript. It took me a long time to read and it's good to see your response to it, unpicking the key takeaways. It's the most useful piece I've read so far. And all I'm doing at the moment is reading about this, not sure how I'm holding my job down 😂

It was such a fascinating read! I'll get to the end of it later, there's a lot to unpick.

@Ijsbear

^Channel One has finally responded to Marina Ovsyannikova’s on-air protest.

Kirill Kleimyonov, head of the news division, accuses her of being a British spy.

He said she has “betrayed [her] country and all of us … coldly, duplicitously, for a bonus.”^

(Max Seddon).

At the same time, they showed footage of her (and most importantly her poster) over and over again. Obviously it would be nice to think this was deliberate and subversive but maybe it was another technical error and they forgot to blur it out

@Ijsbear

^Channel One has finally responded to Marina Ovsyannikova’s on-air protest.

Kirill Kleimyonov, head of the news division, accuses her of being a British spy.

He said she has “betrayed [her] country and all of us … coldly, duplicitously, for a bonus.”^

(Max Seddon).

Utterly fascinating.

Its media so blame the British.

That will be the BBC they don't like then. Noting how they tried to call up Nadine Dorries the culture Secretary.

It would be extremely unwise to defund the bbc don't you think?

Steve Rosenberg @BBCSteveR
Russian TV reporter (dressed in military garb) reports from Ukraine, with a Russian APC & Russian naval vessel behind him, & talks about the “demilitarised port of Berdiansk.”

But Winston, thats not a tank.

It would be extremely unwise to defund the bbc don't you think?

I’m not really up to date with the BBC situation but I agree any de-funding sounds like sleep walking into a big problem to me

I say that as someone who grew up o/s and is aware of the strong international reputation it has, where I grew up at least. Viewed through that lens it is an asset to be looked after imo. I’m not completely up to date with plans but it would be crazy to deplete that asset.

MagicFox I’m part way through that transcript and it is very good. Some words I like so far - agency when talking about Putin, rational (I always thought the mad stuff was off) and escalation risk.

www.motherjones.com/food/2022/03/wheat-russia-ukraine-war-scott-reynolds-nelson-oceans-of-grain/
How War in the World’s Breadbasket “Changes Everything”
What the history of wheat tells us about what’s to come.

Today, Russia is a global wheat powerhouse, the world’s number-three producer of the staple crop, and its number-one exporter. Ukraine, too, is a major wheat exporter, and has recently emerged as a corn powerhouse, too, supplying China and its booming meat industry with nearly a third of its feed corn imports.

What does it mean when a war of conquest descends upon one of the globe’s great breadbaskets in the 21st century? With trade routes embattled and markets roiled by Russia’s invasion, wheat prices have already shot up to their highest level in 60 years. This far exceeds the spike of the early 2010s, which led to bread riots in the Middle East that helped bring about the Arab Spring and the still-simmering civil war in Syria. “It’s a core food,” Nelson says, “and when you double its price, it just changes everything.”

I recently spoke to Nelson about what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means for a crop that provides about a fifth of the world’s food calories.

and

Much of that wheat goes to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia—places like the Philippines, which are highly dependent on foreign grain for people’s survival. And it’s used in many forms. It’s in Nigerian noodles, it’s in Egyptian baguettes, and it’s in the Algerian flatbread. These are places where something like 30 to 40 percent ofof average household expenditures go to food. And so, a doubling of price in this short amount of time is going to be chaos, just like [the price hikes of the early 2010s] had something to do with Arab Spring. The blocking off of Black Sea wheat flows because of the war is going to mean starvation. Starvation may be too strong of a word, but certainly household collapse in much of North Africa and the Middle East. And then on top of that, there’s the Covid pandemic and a drought in Algeria and Morocco. It’s going to cause so much pain.

and

The central character of your book is Alexander Parvus, a largely forgotten Ukrainian grain trader, communist, anti-imperialist intellectual, and mentor to Russian revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky, as well as to the Polish-German radical Rosa Luxemburg. You argue that Parvus’ insights on the grain trade, and connections in Russia and Germany, played pivotal roles in the course of World War I and the Russian Empire’s collapse. What would Parvus think of the present moment?

I think he’d say that when we see tanks in Ukraine, it won’t be long before we’re going to see tanks in lots of other places. But not invasions: tanks being used against people who are rioting in the streets. There have already been a lot of peaceful marches about food prices. I see a kind of Byzantine Empire redo or Ottoman Empire redo, where you’ll see conflicts over bread prices lead to street violence, and then protests, and potentially revolution. In 2011, a lot of us were excited about Arab Spring, but the result over the long term was pretty terrible because of the amount of military force that states can now use against their populations, that they couldn’t do in the 1920s, or even the 1950s. The kind of impunity states have to rough up their own citizens and kill their own citizens to maintain the peace.

But Parvus would be optimistic, I suppose, because he would know everyone—he would have the cell phone numbers of all of the activists in North Africa and in the Middle East and elsewhere, and would know how to capitalize on the crisis. He would have very practical suggestions for how to revolutionize those states. I’m a historian, so I don’t have those cell phone numbers. I do think this is a time of revolutionary possibility. But given what happened at Arab Spring, I also worry about the casualties.

And my biggest fear over the very long term is that we go back to some sort of world in which there is not a tremendous exchange of ideas and objects and commodities around the world. The longest term problem is global warming. The opportunities for say, nuclear-fusion power and other innovations are very exciting, but they need a massive international collaboration. And if that starts to break down, and we’re back into the kind of medieval system of everybody defending their own territory, I worry that in the very long term, none of us will be ready for the chaos of global warming.

Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof
Looks like Russian soldiers used tear gas to disperse the protest in occupied Kherson today, in addition to live fire. If so, it is a war crime and a clear violation of the 1925 Geneva protocol, ratified by Russia, that forbids the use of riot control gas by military forces.

twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1505917930621612040
Video with tweet

Ceasefire negotiations have been going on around the clock for many days, mediated by a neutral state which has said that both Russian and Ukrainian sides were showing huge commitment. They reported yesterday that they were close to agreement. Another report - not from the neutral mediator - said that they said that they thought that Zelensky was being influenced from outside. I hope that the people who are worried about nuclear war can be given hope by this. Public opinion wanting this will make a huge difference too, I think.

I think that Azoz is a huge issue which is something which agreement needs to be reached on before ceasefire, I think the situation is likely to be so bad now there that all sides should be working together to resolve it, ie disarming all members, and UN going in for a period, ie an international effort.

Azoz was seen as a huge issue around the world in the last few years, I am not sure why it hasn't had more press coverage during the war.
Because it has been armed (via military funding to Ukraine from the West for years) and semi legitimised in its role fighting in Donbas, it has grown stronger. I think that the situation is going to be completely out of hand now as you will have had neonazi volunteers go there who are now also armed, with the huge arsenal which has been and is continuing to be supplied in significant amounts. Even before the war, Azoz had attempted to interfere in government administration, not allowing officials to leave a meeting until they had signed off on a budget which Azoz wanted them to sign off. This would mean democracy was being significantly threatened.

Many think that sanctions don't achieve the desired outcome - even if there were a ceasefire due to sanctions that wouldn't solve the problem going into the future. Sanctions cause huge problems for normal people. These issues have been reported even in the US, and Biden criticised, now by mainstream media. Obviously the arms companies are doing well in the US, shares are leaping, but for normal people all around the world - US, Europe, UK, Asia, Russia, Africa (who will feel the most serious effects of grain and oil shortage) - they are disastrous for normal people.

Pressure on India and China to "get off the fence" is not helping, I don't think. A war between two countries turning into two power groups (ie countries forming alliances) is what will lead to world war/nuclear war not save us from it. We really should be learning more from the past, the last two world wars, about this.

As for Russia being made a terrorist state, as a pp said, Biden is now considering deals with Iran I think?

For the US to invest in the diplomatic negotations in a positive way, investing in the negotiations to reach ceasefire agreement with both parties, and to negotiate international arrangements to deal with neo nazi issues, is what is needed, today if possible.

And my biggest fear over the very long term is that we go back to some sort of world in which there is not a tremendous exchange of ideas and objects and commodities around the world. The longest term problem is global warming. The opportunities for say, nuclear-fusion power and other innovations are very exciting, but they need a massive international collaboration. And if that starts to break down, and we’re back into the kind of medieval system of everybody defending their own territory, I worry that in the very long term, none of us will be ready for the chaos of global warming.

Yes yes yes to this, this has been on my mind for a couple of weeks now

The threats to Poland chime in with the supposed FSB leaked documents; Russia makes increasing threats to NATO countries in order to get its way in Ukraine.

Russia has reportedly dragged away five grain ships in the Black Sea. I suppose that's a very direct way to get around sanctions.

Russia said that Ukraine would stage a false flag chemical attack, involving ammonia, around Sumy. Russia then attacked ammonia tanks near Sumy, but fortunately the wind blew the leak away from densely populated areas.

Several stories about very organised looting by Russian soldiers, including a lorry, backed up by a tank, being filled up with goods from raided houses. I guess there are other ways of compensating poorly paid soldiers.

Mariupol has more people than Manchester.

Now imagine Manchester being cut off without water, medicine, and food. This is what Russia is doing to Ukraine: killing civilians because it couldn’t win militarily.

Yesterday it was believed that about a third of the population remained. Russian troops keep bombing the city. According to the city authorities, every 5 minutes, new missiles hit the land. The city is under siege. There is no water, food, gas or electricity. People are drinking water from the puddles.

No, we can't send in a boat full of supplies, look at a map.

Ten's of thousands of people are likely to die. But heck don't use the word BAD.

This would mean democracy was being significantly threatened even before the war, from within I meant

Mark Hertling @MarkHertling
A new stream on an unfortunate topic: battlefield deaths & casualties.

Last night, @ErinBurnett on @CNN asked me why it seemed the casualty rates on the RU side were so high.

I didn't want to talk "body counts," as the numbers differ depending on who is reporting. 1/25

So I started by reminding her that early in this fight I had predicted that the casualties incurred on a high-intensity, technology-heavy, conventional force battlefield would likely be significant...in the tens of thousands.

When I first said that, it was met with surprise. 2/

But that shouldn't suprise anyone.

The kind of fight we see in UKR is nothing like what the US army experienced in OPN Just Cause, OPN Desert Storm...& especially not what we saw in OEF & OIF.

The 1st two were one sided affairs, the latter 2 were complex counterinsurgencies. 3/

In insurgencies, fighting is up close and personal, with rifles, some artillery, & the "new" threat IEDs.

While each casualty was deeply personal for those who fought in these places, they were relatively low.

As importantly, med support & casualty evac was excellent. 4/

Soldiers had better first aid training. There were "combat lifesavers" aiding well-trained medics. New type bandages to treat wounds, etc.

The "golden hour" for evacuation from battlefield to various levels of care was quick & effective...a standard that became a norm. 5/

The skills of medevac pilots & their crews were terrific (one of my medevac crew chiefs in Iraq told me he had flown 1700 missions, and never lost a patient in flight)...

...and the docs/nurses at Combat Support Hospitals (CSH) and above were phenomenal. 6/

This illegal RU invasion of UKR is very different.

It's a "force-on-force" fight between a"technologically advanced army" (RU) vs an army w/ less equipment, but with more heart (UKR).

RU had 190k troops attacking. UKR had 250k defending.

Fights were not squad vs squad.7/

On the RU side, it's hundreds of T72/T80 tanks, BMPs, BTRs, BRDM (personnel carriers), self-propelled & rocket artillery, jets, drones hundreds of support vehicles roaming the battlefield.

On UKR side...some of the same, but also high-tech tank & aircraft weapons. 8/

From my read of the battlefield, RU's plan was filled with hubris, lacked combined arms operations, and was dysfunctional in logistical support.

UKR's plan was to fight RU by "holding on to their belt-buckles," prioritizing targets, & destroying their killers & logistics. 9/

RU used 4 axis of advance for a grand plan of a battle of annihilation (google it).

UKR always wanted to conduct a campaign of attrition (google this, too).

Both of these kinds of fights result in massive amount of battlefield casualties. 10/

RU is likely sustaining more, based on reports of kills, their lack of casualty evacuation & an apparent lack of combat medical systems (has anyone seen a red cross painted on ANY RU vehicles yet?).

But their casualties are also due to how they fight. Here's why. 11/

Look at films of UKR ambushing RU columns.

Every UKR soldier/territorial has some type of anti-tank (AT) weapon slung over their shoulder.

Every UKR soldier is a RU armored vehicle/truck killer. 12/

If a UKR squad ambushes a RU column, each soldier with 1 AT missile engages 1 vehicle, and.

-A RU tanks has a 3-man crew (they have auto-loaders instead of 4 crewmember, like us).
-A RU BMP has a driver, a vehicle commander, and a squad.
-RU Artillery has 5-10 crew members. 13/

A seque: in 1994, as a Squadron Commander, I was part of a "Partnership for Peace" delegation to Moscow.

The RU's knew I was a tanker, and allowed me to see their newest tank, the T80. I climbed inside...& quickly understood why they recruited only "short" tankers. 14/

It was cramped, tank rounds were visible (ours are behind ballistic doors to protect the crew if the tank is hit), armor on the top & rear was light, and there were blind spots preventing the crew from seeing outside.

They thought it was a great tank. Me...not so much. 15/

Now, I share all this to say:

RU tanks are matchboxes.
-crews have a hard time seeing attacking infantry
-there is no reactive armor on top (where Javelins strike)
-if hit, they'll burn, with secondary explosions
-if hit, the crew will have a tough time getting out. 16/

BMPs/BRDMs/BTRs are actually worse.

In Desert Storm, we saw these vehicles after they were hit, and most were destroyed by smaller caliber weapons....and all burned. Their fuel tanks are in the back doors...so they burn, fast and hot, and crews can't get out. 17/

Russian Fuel, Ammo, and supply (medical, parts, etc) trucks are all the same design.

And from what I saw on exercises, RU troops pack as much as they can in each truck, sometimes mixing cargo.

Not good for crew survivability, if the truck is hit. 18/

Now, back to the UKR infantryman with a Javelin versus a RU tank...or BMP...or truck. It's easy to see who has the advantage in a Javelin fight.

Especially when the RUs are road-bound, not being able to maneuver due to the UKR weather & "rasputitsa" (mud...like a bog). 19/

Add to all this UKR's ability to block roads and create ambushes.

That 40 mile column everyone was hyped about? Vehicles couldn't go forward due to a lack of success by the RU force & it couldn't go back because UKR forces blocked the roads.

^UKR got around to it.20/^

BTW, in that column were medical supplies. And medical trucks with other types of supplies.

Losing those put a damper on treating & evacuating the RU wounded. 21/

Summary:

In this thread I've not mentioned # of RU casualties. There are many estimates, but I'll just say...I suspect they're higher than any estimates.

I've also not mentioned the 5 RU generals reportedly killed...I believe that happened, but not all are confirmed. 22/

I've also not mentioned the UKR casualties, because there's been no release of numbers.

I'm sure they're high, but also likely significantly less than the RU #.

As UKR soldiers have been taught first aid, Combat Lifesaver techniques & the importance of medical evacuation. 23/

One last thing;

Casualties in war are gory. Deaths affect soldiers & units in ways most can't imagine.

Combat deaths are ugly. Those killed are mostly 18-24 yr olds who had an entire life in front of them. Their bodies are savaged or burned beyond recognition. 24/

That's why most soldiers who have seen war never want to see it again.

And why some professional soldiers do all they can to prevent wars in the future, with an understanding of what is at stake.

And why Putin's illegal & criminal war in Ukraine is such an abomination. 25/25

How do you mean by "sheer grunt" and could you expand a little bit more in the blend of infrastructure, institutions and resources maybe please?

Basically it's why when a storm hits the UK - unpleasant as it is for those affected - it's possible to simply clean up, patch up,. and move on. You can't get to that position in a few weeks, months or even years. It's a generational shift.

It's why the UKs covid response - whatever you may think of it - was able to throw up Nightingale hospitals, and vaccinate an entire nation almost as a matter of course. That's what "first world" countries do. Hell it's why they are "first world" countries.

Interestingly, the UK is made up of four "first world" countries.

Some extracts from the Pentagon daily brief. I won't put them all up.

Dan Lamothe @DanLamothe
Pentagon still is not confirming Russia’s claim that it used hypersonic missiles in the war.

“We’re not able to refute it but we can’t independently confirm it, either,” the senior defense official said.

The senior defense official adds that it’s a “bit of a head scratcher if they did” use hypersonics to hit the reported targets they did (buildings).

Says it may be they were trying to demonstrate the capability, or to gain leverage with the Ukrainians in negotiations.

[rtb: this is starting to get traction, because no one has confirmed - either officially nor on crowdsourcing]

Dan Lamothe @DanLamothe
The most recent package of military aid approved by President Biden has not reached Ukraine yet, the senior defense official says.

That package included, for the first time, tactical drones.

Continued Russian naval activity is occurring in the northern Black Sea. Unclear what that means yet.

About a dozen Russian war ships are there, the senior defense official says

U.S. still is not verifying reports of Russian generals killed. That keeps coming up. Same answer from Pentagon.

That said, senior defense official makes point that “there’s a certain logic to make sure that you have general officers in the field” in a war this size. Pentagon assesses U.S. and Russians operate differently, w/ experienced enlisted U.S. troops providing leadership, too.

The Pentagon assesses that a Russian drone that flew into Polish airspace recently occurred because of a mistake. It appears the drone lost its datalink, went into Poland and then crashed, senior U.S. defense official says.

[quote Ijsbear]@RedToothBrush

I'm deeply afraid they will literally kill/deport 90% of Mariupol population either through shelling, siege tactics or outright killing. So so hope I'm wrong. But its strategic location is so important they are bound to want it and if the Ukrainians are too much trouble, it's easier to kill them and rebuild the useful port facilities.[/quote]
I posted nearly a fortnight ago that Mariupol is stuffed.

This is what being stuffed looks like. It is the slow, inexorable application of increasing force. And that seems to be the Russisn game plan. Not shock and awe/blitzkrieg.

About this before others comment:

Ruslan Stefanchuk @r_stefanchuk
Today, Czechia, Estonia, Poland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S. have signed a joint statement “On the urgent necessity to upgrade Ukraine air-defence”. Genuinely grateful for support 🇺🇦 in this challenging time

I believe this is an unofficial letter of support rather than a formal giving of support. I think it will cause some confusion.

Certainly seeing Ireland on the list made me question it.

The UK signatory is Tom Tugendhat. He is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but not a government minister.

So if you see this circulating, do understand what it is and what it doesn't mean...

A Ukrainian MP who has been involved in convoys delivering aid within Ukraine said that they just can't get to Mariupol.

The Black Sea situation is interesting. Russia has reportedly fired on Odesa from the sea today, they've fired on ships from Panama, Bangladesh and Estonia, they've blocked cargo ships from leaving, they've laid mines, and they've stolen grain ships. IIRC, Turkey can legally block entry to the Black Sea unless a ship is returning to its base. Annexing Crimea was part of a long term strategy, otherwise Russia wouldn't be able to conduct warfare in the Black Sea. As it is, it seems unbelievable that Russia is being allowed to bully foreign ships in this way, or that they are allowed into the sea, knowing that they have intentions to commit war crimes.

The Pentagon assesses that a Russian drone that flew into Polish airspace recently occurred because of a mistake. It appears the drone lost its datalink, went into Poland and then crashed, senior U.S. defense official says.

Not quite sure why it's not possible to program said drone to drop the moment it loses it's datalink ?

Also, what would the situation be had a Polish citizen be killed by a falling drone ? Although experience would tell the Russians that since they killed a UK citizen on UK soil, and managed to secure Boris blessing, the chances of anything bad happening are zeroski.

Not quite sure why it's not possible to program said drone to drop the moment it loses it's datalink ?

Possibly because the loss of signal can be intermittent.