Sometimes I Cry Quietly

You can't always see the wounds.

The cruelty of war is in what we expect from normal people, who should be hanging out at home with friends and family - having a little barbecue and a beer and some pleasant conversation - not wiping the blood of their fellows from the inside of a BMP because some asshole in Moscow decided he needs to wave his dick around, and pretend he's a world-beater.

And no one who hasn't been there will ever understand.

We can't let these people down

Слава Україні

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Hobson's Choice

I can stop wondering why Russians continue to subject themselves to the high probability of having monumentally shitty things happen to them as they go to fight Putin's war with minimal training, and sometimes with weapons and equipment that saw their better days 75 years ago. 

Poor dumb bastards.

A Quick Death or a Slow Death’: Prisoners Choose War to Get Lifesaving Drugs

An estimated 20 percent of Russia prisoner recruits are H.I.V. positive. To some, the front lines seemed less risky than prisons where they said they were denied effective treatments.

In Russian prisons, they said they were deprived of effective treatments for their H.I.V. On the battlefield in Ukraine, they were offered hope, with the promise of anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight.

It was a recruiting pitch that worked for many Russian prisoners.

About 20 percent of recruits in Russian prisoner units are H.I.V. positive, Ukrainian authorities estimate based on infection rates in captured soldiers. Serving on the front lines seemed less risky than staying in prison, the detainees said in interviews with The New York Times.

“Conditions were very harsh” in Russian prison, said Timur, 37, an H.I.V.-positive Russian soldier interviewed at a detention site in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, and identified only by a first name, worried that he would face retaliation if he returned to Russia in a prisoner swap.

After he was sentenced to 10 years for drug dealing, the doctors in the Russian prison changed the anti-viral medication he had been taking to control H.I.V. to types he feared were not effective, Timur said.

He said he did not think he could survive a decade in Russian prison with H.I.V. In December, he agreed to serve six months in the Wagner mercenary group in exchange for a pardon and supplies of anti-viral medications.

“I understood I would have a quick death or a slow death,” he said of choosing between poor H.I.V. treatment in prison and participating in assaults in Russia’s war in Ukraine. “I chose a quick death.”

Timur had no military experience and was provided two weeks of training before deployment to the front, he said. He was issued a Kalashnikov rifle, 120 bullets, an armored vest and a helmet for the assault. Before sending the soldiers forward, he said, commanders “repeated many times, ‘if you try to leave this field, we will shoot you.’”

Soldiers in his platoon, he said, were sent on a risky assault, waves of soldiers with little chance of survival sent into battle on the outskirts of the eastern city of Bakhmut. Most were killed on their first day of combat. Timur was captured.

Units of former prisoners have made up the bulk of forces in Russia’s attack on Bakhmut, one of the bloodiest and longest-running battles in the war. Beginning on a wide scale last summer, inmates were promised pardons for going into combat.

When captured by Ukrainian soldiers, many wore red or white rubber wristbands, or both, signifying they had either disease, both widespread in the Russian prison system. They were made to wear the wristbands ostensibly as a warning to other soldiers in case they were wounded, although they would not necessarily be infectious if properly medicated.

Anti-viral medication can indefinitely treat H.I.V. and suppress the virus to the point where an individual is not infectious. Ukraine allows those who are H.I.V. positive to serve in combat roles with approval from their commanders. The United States does not allow people who are H.I.V. positive to enlist, but lets soldiers who become infected continue to serve while receiving treatment.

“If a person is in treatment, and continues treatment, the virus can be undetectable and he can serve, he can work and is not dangerous to those around him,” said Dr. Iryna Dizha, a medical adviser to 100 Percent Life, an H.I.V. advocacy group in Ukraine.

The wristbands pose a risk to those wearing them. They are intended to protect other soldiers from infection if the wearer suffers a bloody battlefield wound, the prisoners of war said. Reluctance of fellow soldiers or medics to be exposed to the blood, however, could delay first aid.

Another H.I.V.-positive prisoner of war who fought in the Wagner group, Yevgeny, said that he had suffered a gunshot wound a month before his capture by Ukrainian forces, according to a videotaped interrogation by Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency that was reviewed by The Times. He had received timely medical help despite wearing a red bracelet, he said, but was treated in a hospital where he felt doctors were careless about infecting other patients.

“There were no conditions for the H.I.V. infected,” he said. “We were all treated together, the healthy and the unhealthy.”

And in the chaos of battle the bracelets serve little purpose, said Vadim, 31, who was convicted of robbery and served in Wagner before being captured in a bunker.

After Ukrainian soldiers tossed several hand grenades into the bunker, the Russian soldiers, including two who were H.I.V. positive, hunkered in a corner. Three of 10 soldiers in the bunker were killed and most others wounded, Vadim said. He emerged splattered with blood. “I was always afraid of this disease,” he said in an interview at a Ukrainian detention site. After the exposure, he tested negative.

Since the summer, about 50,000 prisoners have signed up to fight in Ukraine, roughly 10 percent of the incarcerated population, according to Russia Behind Bars, a nongovernmental group monitoring Russian prisons.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said in a statement last fall that some captured soldiers had H.I.V. and hepatitis C. The domestic intelligence agency has made available videos of interrogations with Wagner prisoners of war describing H.I.V. infection and showing red bracelets. The Ukrainian authorities provide anti-viral medicine to H.I.V.-positive prisoners of war.

H.I.V., hepatitis C and tuberculosis, including drug-resistant strains, are prevalent in Russian prisons and penal colonies. About 10 percent of Russia’s incarcerated population is H.I.V.-positive, said Olga Romanova, the director of Russia Behind Bars. About a third of the total inmate population has at least one of those three infections, she said.

In interviews, H.I.V.-positive prisoners of war said they were asked only to do push-ups before a recruiter to prove their fitness to serve.

Ruslan, 42, had served one year of an 11-year sentence for drug dealing when he joined Wagner in December. The medications he received in a penal colony were not suppressing the virus, he said, and he feared for his life.

Last year, he had been bedridden for weeks with pneumonia. Ruslan said that after joining Wagner he had a mild bout of pneumonia at a training camp in January. A month later, he was sent on a human wave assault in Bakhmut and was captured.

Ruslan said he welcomed Wagner’s policy of accepting H.I.V.-positive inmates. He said he thought he would die in any case from his illness in prison and accepted the frontline for a chance at freedom and treatment.

“If you have a long sentence,” he said, “it gives you a chance to begin life again.”

Ukraine

Ukrainian soldier near Bakhmut, Ukraine
(Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

Opinion
Leaks painted a grim picture of the Ukraine war. Here’s the reality.

Hope is not a strategy, as pragmatic military analysts often observe. But still, Ukraine’s will to win — its determination to expel Russian invaders from its territory at whatever cost — might be the X-factor in the decisive season of conflict ahead.

Nearly two months have passed since U.S. intelligence analysts assessed that the war in Ukraine was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate,” according to one of the scores of documents allegedly leaked by Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira.

So, what’s the order of battle, on the eve of Ukraine’s planned spring counteroffensive to break the impasse and drive back the Russians? Rather than depend on older assessments from the leaked documents, I spoke Thursday with several senior U.S. officials who follow the war closely. This account is based on their comments.

Little has changed to alter the basic picture, officials told me.

The good news for Ukraine is that Russia’s planned winter offensive has failed to take much ground. The Russians have lost thousands of soldiers in an attempt to seize Bakhmut and control the surrounding Donbas region. They have gained control of 70 to 80 percent of Bakhmut, but the Ukrainians have held on at a terrible cost, avoiding a symbolic defeat.

U.S. officials have argued for months that Ukrainian forces should retreat to higher ground west of Bakhmut, which they could defend more easily. But the Ukrainians, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, chose to stand and fight. As in the first days of the war, a Ukrainian campaign buoyed more by hope than military logic did better than the Pentagon expected.

Bakhmut has been a “meat grinder,” according to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who controls the Wagner Group militia, whose convict-troops have spilled rivers of blood there. Prigozhin wrote in a Telegram post on Friday: “Bakhmut is extremely beneficial for us, [as] we grind the Ukrainian army there and restrain their movement.” But a further Russian breakthrough remains, “to put it mildly, not very likely.”

The unbelievably cynical attitude coming from the Russians is typical of their battle doctrine over the last 100 years - "We have more guys than they do, so all we have to do is to keep feeding our guys into the meat grinder until the other side gets tire of killing Russians."

We can stop wondering why Moscow hasn't bothered training their guys.

The “special military operation,” as Russia calls its Ukraine invasion, “will solve many of [its] tasks” by holding current territory, “plus or minus a couple of tens of kilometers,” Prigozhin said. This continuing stalemate apparently would satisfy Russian hopes for a limited victory. Prigozhin’s dark salutation: “See you at Bakhmut.”

Russia keeps feeding the grinder. They resupply their lines around Bakhmut as fast as they lose people, one U.S. official said. But he cautioned that some members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle know that this protracted campaign is folly and that resistance to Putin inside Russia is slowly growing.

“Many of those who supported the special operation yesterday are now in doubt or categorically against what is happening,” Prigozhin noted.

An example of this internal dissent was in evidence on a phone call that was leaked last month, in which two prominent Russians denounced the country’s leaders as “stupid cockroaches” who are “dragging their country downwards” and “destroying its future.” According to Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “rage and despair” are increasingly widespread among the Russian elite.

A startling sign of this ferment was the defection in October of Gleb Karakulov, a member of Putin’s Kremlin palace guard known as the Federal Protective Service, or FSO. “Our president has become a war criminal. It is time to end this war and stop being silent,” Karakulov said after fleeing to Turkey from Kazakhstan, where he had accompanied Putin on a trip. Until he defected, Karakulov had been responsible for Putin’s communications security and had made more than 180 trips with him.

What’s the Ukrainian combat goal? To break out of the Donbas stalemate, Zelensky has been planning a counteroffensive that would use new tanks and other mobile vehicles, protected by air-defense equipment and backed by recently recruited and trained troops. The aim is a fast-moving combined-arms campaign that would punch through heavily fortified Russian lines in the east and south.

U.S. officials recognize the obstacles that Ukraine faces in this ambitious plan. Officials still concur with a February assessment: that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” and that the most likely outcome remains only modest territorial gains.

But the Ukrainians have accomplished combat miracles before, and U.S. officials share the hope it can happen again. “Based on rehearsals and war games, they do have a chance of success,” says one senior Pentagon official.

As Ukraine steps toward the moment of decision, the United States must be certain it has given them all the tools they need to succeed. President Biden doesn’t want to start World War III, but he will look back with regret if the United States and its allies leave any weapons or ammunition on the sidelines that could responsibly be used in this conflict. Whatever Biden might wish later he had done if things go badly, he should do now.

We can't let these guys down

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Ukraine - Russia

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a fierce Putin critic, is handed a 25-year prison sentence

The Moscow City Court on Monday sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, to 25 years in a high-security penal colony after convicting him of treason over his criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unusually harsh sentence that drew international condemnation.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s supporters said the length of the sentence evoked memories of Stalin’s terror, and the verdict will likely send a chilling message to remaining anti-Kremlin activists in Russia and beyond as the Kremlin continues to clamp down on dissent over the war in Ukraine.

Many Russian political activists have been prosecuted since the invasion, including Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison last year on charges of “spreading false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine — but the length of Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentence was the longest yet. Ivan Pavlov, an acclaimed Russian human rights lawyer, called it “unprecedented,” saying that even murderers receive shorter prison terms in Russia.

As they get more and more paranoid about the spread of resistance, Daddy State assholes like Putin come down harder and harder on dissidents. It could be a strong signal that Mr Putin is (or at least thinks he is) beginning to lose his grip on power.

“It is a terrifying but also very high assessment of his work as a politician and a citizen,” Maria Eismont, one of Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyers, said outside of the court, according to Sota, a Russian news outlet. She said the verdict will be appealed.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s mother, Yelena, told Sota after the hearing that she felt like “she woke up in a Kafka novel.”

“We live in 2023, in the 21st century, what is this, what is happening,” she told Sota.

An activist, historian and journalist, Mr. Kara-Murza, 41, has for years been one of the most uncompromising voices against Mr. Putin and had long drawn the Kremlin’s ire, surviving what he characterized several years ago as two state-sponsored attempts to poison him.

Shortly after Mr. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Kara-Murza, who contributes to the opinion section of The Washington Post, gave a number of speeches in the United States and Europe strongly condemning the invasion.

Though many supporters advised him not to come back to Russia, Mr. Kara-Murza continued to work in the country. He was detained there last April while on a trip to Moscow and accused of disobeying police orders. He was sentenced to administrative arrest, during which the authorities charged him with spreading “fake” information about the Russian Army. He was later charged with taking part in an “undesirable organization” and treason. The verdict on Monday combined all of the charges into one sentence.

The trial, which human-rights organizations decried as politically motivated, took place behind closed doors. Neither the prosecutors nor the investigators presented any evidence in public that would support the treason charge. Vadim Prokhorov, Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyer, said in a post on Facebook in October that the treason charge related to public statements made in the United States and Europe which criticized the Kremlin.

On Monday, the United Nations human rights office decried Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentencing as “a blow to the rule of law" while Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called it “a travesty of justice.”

The U.S. State Department condemned the sentence and said Mr. Kara-Murza was “yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression.” Britain’s Foreign Office said it had summoned the Russian ambassador in London to protest what it described as a “politically motivated” conviction that runs “contrary to Russia’s international obligations on human rights, including the right to a fair trial.” In March, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned three individuals, including a judge and an investigator, involved in prosecuting Mr. Kara-Murza.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman refused to comment on the sentence.

During pretrial detention, Mr. Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dual national, said that he had been denied the right to call his family and his health began to deteriorate rapidly.

In his final address to the court before the verdict last week, Mr. Kara-Murza likened the current climate in Russia to the terror of the Stalin era.

“The day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate,” he told a Moscow courtroom. “When black will be called black, and white will be called white; when at the official level, it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper.”

Spoils

A Russian T90A Main Battle Tank, captured in Ukraine last fall, was being delivered - uh - somewhere (?)

I'm not sure how to react to the fact that the truck being used to transport the thing broke down, and now the tank sits at a joint in Louisiana called Peto's Travel Center and Casino.

DOD meanwhile disavowed any knowledge of this weird episode.

The Department of Defense said they had no information on what the tank was doing in Louisiana.

Writing for The War Zone, defense expert Howard Altman speculated the tank may "be intended for some sort of display," though he added: "If it was not imported by the military, exactly how it made it from Ukraine to Peto's parking lot is quite puzzling."

They touch on it in the video, but the extent of the problem with corruption and outright theft in the Russian military throws big shade on everything we've ever had to deal with here.

• As Moscow was spending $3.2 billion on the Russian Navy, Putin's oligarch buddies were spending $4.1 billion on Mega-Yachts for themselves
• Weapons that are supposed to contain explosives, have been shown to contain wood or plastic or rubber instead
• Soviet era radios
• Chinese walkie-talkies
• Cell phones or Garmin GPS in fighter jets

The prevailing thought among the Russian leadership class was that as long as Russia has that big bad nuclear thing going for them, there would never be another conventional war, so there's no need for conventional weapons intended for use in - oh, I dunno - Ukraine maybe?

Conclusion: Lobby to keep funding tanks, and the artillery, and the soldier suits, and then steal as much of it as you can - while you can - because it'll never have to be used, and we need to party.

But - question: The "regular" military is total Swiss cheese because of corruption-gone-wild, so how do they have any confidence that their nuke forces are doing any better?

"The fight is here.

I don't need a ride -

I need ammunition."

-- Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukraine

The scorecard - as best we can determine - thru February 2023.

Russia

Total Casualties: 200,000

                   KIA:    43,000

Ukraine

Total Casualties: 128,000

                    KIA:  17,500

Dead Ukrainian Civilians: 8,400 (UN estimate)

More than twice as many Russian troops as Ukrainians have been killed in Putin's war, leaked estimates show

Leaked US intelligence documents reveal that more than twice as many Russian soldiers as Ukrainian soldiers have been killed while fighting in Ukraine.

The documents, which were recently leaked on social media and are currently the focus of a federal investigation, offer estimates for Russian and Ukrainian casualties. US officials have described the information included in the leak — which appear to provide detailed assessments on the Ukraine war — as highly sensitive and classified.

- more -

Today's Beau

My, how things do change. Main point: if this is the signal most everybody believes it too be, then Putin's illness (cancer?) is the least of his worries. He has his hands full of something autocrats always end up dying from.

And - about 50 miles WNW of Grozny, Chenya.

Reports: 2 senior Chechan cops killed, 5 wounded, and the rebels got away clean.

Armed clashes between russian forces and armed militants in zazikov-yurt 6-4-2023
by u/_TNT_- in CombatFootage

Ukraine

Takeaways from AP’s interview with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

ON BOARD A TRAIN FROM SUMY TO KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A team of journalists from The Associated Press spent two days traveling by train with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he visited the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, which still faces regular shelling from Russian forces, and northern towns in the Sumy region that were liberated shortly after the war began a year ago.

Zelenskyy rarely travels with journalists, and the president’s office said AP’s two-night train trip with him was the most extensive since the war began. Here are some takeaways from an interview with Zelenskyy as he returned to Kyiv late Tuesday.

WESTERN WEAPONS

Throughout much of the war, Ukraine’s military has been bolstered by billions of dollars of ammunition and weaponry from Western nations. Zelenskyy welcomed the help but said some of the promised weapons had not yet been delivered.

“We have great decisions about Patriots, but we don’t have them for real,” he said, referring to the U.S.-made air defense system.

Ukrainian soldiers have received training in the U.S. since January on how to use the Patriot system, but it hasn’t yet been deployed in Ukraine.

Ukraine needs 20 Patriot batteries to protect against Russian missiles, and even that may not be enough “as no country in the world was attacked with so many ballistic rockets,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy added that a European nation sent another air defense system to Ukraine, but it didn’t work and they “had to change it again and again.” He did not name the country.

Zelenskyy also reiterated his longstanding request for fighter jets, saying “we still don’t have anything when it comes to modern warplanes.” Poland and Slovakia have decided to give Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine, but no Western country so far has agreed to provide modern warplanes amid concern that it could escalate the conflict and draw them in deeper.

PUTIN’S ISOLATION

Zelenskyy was unsparing in his assessment of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, calling him an “informationally isolated person” who had “lost everything” over the last year of war.

“He doesn’t have allies,” Zelenskyy said, adding that it was clear that even China — an economic powerhouse long favorable toward Moscow — was no longer willing to back Russia. Chinese President Xi Jinping recently visited Putin in Russia but left without publicly announcing any overt support for Moscow’s campaign against Ukraine.

Zelenskyy suggested that Putin’s announcement shortly after Xi’s visit that he would move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, closer to NATO territory, was meant to deflect from the fact that the Chinese leader’s visit did not go well. Putin said the move was a counter to Britain’s decision to provide more depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine.

Despite Putin’s nuclear provocations, Zelenskyy said he does not believe the Russian leader is prepared to use the bomb.

“If a person wants to save himself, he really ... will use these,” he said. “I’m not sure he’s ready to do it.”

AVOIDING A NUCLEAR DISASTER

On Zelenskyy’s itinerary this week was a meeting with Rafael Mariano Grossi, the visiting head of the UN’s atomic energy agency. Grossi was in the region to take stock of the situation at the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which Russia took control of last year.

Fierce fighting around the plant, Europe’s largest, has put the facility and the broader region at significant risk. During his meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday, Grossi said the situation was not improving.

Grossi has called for a “protection zone” around the plant but has failed to come up with terms that would satisfy both Ukraine and Russia. Grossi told the AP on Tuesday he believed a deal was “close.” However, Zelenskyy, who opposes any plan that would legitimize Russia’s control over the facility, said he was less optimistic a deal was near. “I don’t feel it today,” he said.

THE FIGHT FOR BAKHMUT

The longest battle of the war is raging in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been locked in a grinding conflict for seven months.

Some Western military analysts have questioned why Ukraine is willing to suffer so many losses to defend the territory, arguing that the city is not of strategic significance. Zelenskyy argued otherwise, saying any loss in the war will give Russia an opening. He predicted that if Russia defeats Ukraine in Bakhmut, Putin would set out to “sell” a victory to the international community.

“If he will feel some blood, smell that we are weak, he will push, push, push,” Zelenskyy said, adding that the pressure would come not only from the international community but also from within his own country.

“Our society will feel tired,” he said. “Our society will push me to have compromise with them.”

Zelenskyy recently traveled near Bakhmut for a morale-boosting visit with troops fighting in the hard hit city.

CALLS FOR TOUGHER SANCTIONS

Western sanctions against Russia don’t go far enough, according to Zelenskyy, who called for more far-reaching measures against people in Putin’s inner circle.

More than 30 countries, representing more than half the world’s economy, have imposed sanctions on Russia, including price caps on Russian oil and restrictions on access to global financial transactions. The West has also directly sanctioned about 2,000 Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families. More than $58 billion worth of sanctioned Russians’ assets have been blocked or frozen worldwide, according to a recent report from the U.S. Treasury Department.

Zelenskyy said more should be done to target Putin’s enablers, who “have to know that they will lose all their money … all their real estate in Europe or in the world, their yachts everywhere.”

RIDING THE RAILS

Most of Zelenskyy’s travel in Ukraine is done by rail. There are few other options: Commercial air travel has been grounded and Ukraine’s expanse, as well as the unpredictability of life in a war-torn country, make road travel arduous.

The state railway system, however, has remained remarkably stable throughout the war and largely untouched by the constant barrage of Russian missiles. One notable exception: the April 2022 bombing of the crowded Kramatorsk train station that killed dozens of people.

Though Zelenskyy rides on a train set aside for him and his delegation, it is largely indistinguishable on the outside from the blue-and-yellow trains ferrying other people and goods across the country. Most Ukrainians barely looked up to acknowledge Zelenskyy’s train as it zipped through towns across the countryside, passing picturesque fields and the occasional bombed-out building or bridge.

Слава Україні

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We can't let these guys down

Dissent In Russia

The beginning of the video shows the usual scenes of Ukrainians blowing up a bunch of Russian shit, but at about 1:34, a Man-On-The-Street interview shows us how Daddy State gaslighting doesn't stand up forever - people will find their way out of the darkness.

I just hope the guy doesn't get slammed too hard.

Ukraine, Russia, China

Putin fucked up in various ways, aside from some pretty dumbass assumptions that the Ukrainians would just roll over and play dead.

• He didn't bring enough guys

You need a 3:1 advantage in numbers of invaders-to-invadees

You need 1 Russian occupier for every 50 Ukrainian occupy-ees

• He didn't think his own brand of corruption had taken hold in the Russian military almost top to bottom, side to side, and front to back
• He didn't figure on his little excursion becoming a unifying force for NATO
• As rich as he is, he hadn't stolen enough to survive what looks like it could be years of crippling economic sanctions

China is watching this clusterfuck closely, knowing it's practically a lead pipe cinch that Vlad will not survive it.

Xi would need at least 500,000 guys to invade (probably more because it's an amphibious landing), and he'd have to leave all of them on Taiwan for years as an occupying force.

Mike's Guess:

The need to reduce the number of occupation troops is what drives the inevitable slaughter of the occupied country's population, as well as the push to keep throwing more of your own people into the meat grinder. For the guy calling the shots, it becomes a fairly simple matter of "better them than me".

War has always been the stupidest fuckin' thing humans do. And it's even stupider now.

Grey Zone Tactics - Mar 2022

Question 1. How Does China View Competition in the Gray Zone?

Chinese analysts view gray zone actions as measures that powerful countries have employed both historically and in recent decades that are beyond normal diplomacy and other traditional approaches to statecraft but short of direct use of military force for escalation or a conflict. While Chinese scholars do not typically use the term gray zone to describe Chinese gray zone activities, the Chinese conceptualization of military operations other than war (MOOTW) is helpful for understanding how China may use its military for such activities. Chinese analysts characterize coercive or confrontational external-facing MOOTW as stability maintenance, rights protection, or security and guarding operations. China believes that MOOTW should also leverage nonmilitary actors and means.

Question 2. What Drives and Enables Chinese Use of Gray Zone Tactics?

Chinese activities in the gray zone support PRC leadership's overarching domestic, economic, foreign policy, and security objectives in the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing views as China's priority region. Gray zone activities balance China's pursuit of a more favorable external environment by altering the regional status quo in its favor with a desire to act below the threshold of a militarized response from the United States or China's neighbors. Recent developments have provided an increasingly varied toolkit for pressuring other countries across four key domains: geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO. These developments are laws and regulations enabling Beijing to harness nongovernmental personnel and assets growing Chinese geopolitical, economic, and military power and influence vis-à-vis other countries increasing linkages between China's military development and economic growth the integration of military and paramilitary forces.

Question 3. How Does China Employ Gray Zone Tactics?

Overall, China tailors its gray zone activities to the target and has an increasing variety and number of more-coercive tools. Beijing layers the use of multiple gray zone tactics to pressure allies and partners, particularly on issues related to China's core interests. Combining multiple geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO activities means that China no longer has to rely on significant escalation in any single domain and, if needed, can sequence actions to apply pressure in nonmilitary domains before resorting to use of military activity. China also appears to be more cautious and selective in using high-profile gray zone tactics against more-capable countries—for instance, employing a smaller variety of tactics against Japan and India than against Vietnam and the Philippines.

China has increasingly leveraged military tactics, and there is no evidence to suggest that China will use fewer military tactics as its overall military capabilities grow or that improved bilateral relations will discourage China from pressing its territorial claims. Likewise, there is little reason to believe that China will use fewer military gray zone tactics as its geopolitical or economic power increases. China has recently relied heavily on air- and maritime-domain tactics, for example.

China exercises caution in its use of high-profile, bilateral geopolitical and economic tactics and has become more active in wielding its influence in international institutions or via third-party actors. Since at least 2013, China has expanded its involvement on the ground in select regions, recruiting local proxies and engaging in various information efforts. In terms of nonmilitary tactics, China uses geopolitical and bilateral tactics most often.

Question 4. Which PRC Tactics Could the United States Prioritize Countering?

Given the wide range of PRC gray zone tactics and the diverse collection of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, the United States faces the difficult task of determining how to prioritize which PRC activities to counter. The U.S. government, experts, and academics do not currently agree on how to assess which PRC gray zone tactics are most problematic. Policymakers could consider aggregating across three different criteria: (1) the extent to which PRC tactics undermine U.S. objectives and interests in the Indo-Pacific region, (2) how difficult it is for allies and partners to respond to and counter tactics, and (3) how widely China uses specific tactics (against one or multiple allies and partners).

While there are many ways to combine the three indicators, the most balanced approach might be to weight U.S. objectives and interests equally with allied and partner concerns (40 percent each) and the prevalence of PRC tactics less (20 percent). Based on this aggregate method, ten of the 20 most-problematic PRC tactics are military activities that the People's Liberation Army or Chinese paramilitary actors engage in, with many of the tactics involving operations near or in disputed territories. Other military tactics include China engaging in highly publicized and large-scale, cross-service military exercises; establishing military bases or potential dual-use facilities in neighboring countries to threaten a target; and building up or acquiring PRC military capabilities against targets.

Geopolitical, economic, and cyber/IO tactics also ranked among the top 20. While the most-problematic PRC activities were international geopolitical and grassroots economic tactics, other PRC economic activities and grassroots cyber/IO activities in the targeted region were also problematic. Relative to the other tactics, grassroots geopolitical activities and bilateral cyber/IO activities have been less challenging. These findings suggest that the United States should devote significant effort to helping U.S. allies and partners counter PRC international geopolitical and economic tactics (particularly PRC economic activity in the target region or in disputed regions) and address grassroots cyber/IO activities.

Recommendations

• The U.S. government should hold gray zone scenario discussions with key allies and partners to better understand their concerns, responses, and needs.
• The National Security Council or the U.S. Department of State should identify a set of criteria to determine the most-problematic PRC gray zone tactics to counter via whole-of-government efforts.
• The United States could prioritize countering Chinese activities in disputed territories and responding to PRC geopolitical international and economic tactics.
• The U.S. Department of Defense should develop gray zone plans similar to existing operational plans but focused on responding to a range of more-escalatory PRC gray zone scenarios.
• The U.S. Air Force should continue to build out intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and improve regional cyberdefense capabilities to increase domain awareness, identify and attribute PRC activities, and counter PRC cyber/IO tactics.

BETTER MEN THAN THESE

HAVE BEEN TRYING

TO CONQUER THE WORLD

FOR 2,000 GENERATIONS.

AND THE WORLD REMAINS UNDEFEATED

A Bold Move

They wouldn't do this lightly. There had to have been a lot of heated discussion, with a few main points, including:

Will it make Putin relent on some of his shittier policies?

- or -

Will it serve to push Putin's internal supporters to move against him?

- or -

Will it make Putin more of the dangerous cornered rat that he has characterized himself to as being?

International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Russian President Putin

Oops

Call me nutty, but I think the Russians are just totally free-styling at this point. Their invasion of Ukraine is in the crapper, and they don't know what to do about it, so they're just charging around like a bunch of maniacal monkeys, fucking with everybody's bananas, hoping the world will back off because "holy crap - them boys is crazy".

The problem, of course, is that they keep demonstrating a decided shortage of the skills needed to pull off whatever prank they think is a good idea at the time.

And BTW, in the last 130 years, when has it been a good idea to fuck with the US military?

Yes, you can bloody our nose a bit - you can kill some Americans, but the ratio is traditionally about 20:1 in our favor.

This shit is dangerous, and it's almost inevitable that bad shit will happen because some joker decides to pull some stupid glad-hat stunt, or somebody else doesn't get the word to stay cool, or they just get fed up and start shooting at the wrong guys at the wrong time, or whatever.

Nobody gets out this kinda nonsense unburnt.

Pentagon releases video of drone incident after US, Russia trade accusations

Summary

• First known direct U.S.-Russia confrontation since invasion
• Moscow says U.S. directly participating in war
• U.S. accuses Russia of behaving aggressively and irresponsibly

WASHINGTON/KYIV, March 16 (Reuters) - The Pentagon released on Thursday a video showing a Russian military jet intercept a U.S. drone downed over the Black Sea two days ago, in what was the first direct encounter between the world's leading nuclear powers since the Ukraine war began.

The rare Pentagon move came a day after U.S. and Russian defence ministers and military chiefs held phone conversations over the incident, in which the MQ-9 Reaper drone crashed into the Black Sea while on a reconnaissance mission in international airspace.

In the declassified, roughly 40-second video, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet comes very close to the drone and dumps liquid near it, in what U.S. officials say was an apparent effort to damage the American aircraft as it flew over the Black Sea.

It also shows the loss of the video feed after a second pass by a Russian jet, which the Pentagon says resulted from its collision with the drone. The video ends with images of the drone's damaged propeller, which the Pentagon says resulted from the collision, making the aircraft inoperable.

"There is a pattern of behaviour recently where there is a little bit more aggressive actions being conducted by the Russians," General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday, adding it was unclear whether the Russian pilots had intended to strike the drone.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told his U.S. counterpart that U.S. drone flights near Crimea's coast "were provocative in nature" and could lead to "an escalation ... in the Black Sea zone," a ministry statement said.

JOINT RESPONSIBILITY

Russia, the statement said, has "no interest" in escalation "but will in future react in due proportion" and the two countries should "act with a maximum of responsibility", including by having military lines of communication in a crisis.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declined to offer any details about his conversation with Shoigu, including whether he criticized the Russian intercept.

However Austin added: "The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows. And it is incumbent on Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner."

The incident has been a reminder of the dangers of direct confrontation between the United States and Russia over Ukraine, which Western allies are supporting with intelligence and weapons.

Today's Tweet

Oh, pretty good - how's your day goin'?

Just another day on the outskirts of Bakhmut recorded by the Ukrainian defender. pic.twitter.com/W9t82CUIMm

— Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 (@maria_drutska) March 13, 2023

What If Peace Breaks Out?

Best be keepin' an eye on them pesky Georgians, Vlad.

Ukraine

(Looks a bit like David Crosby)

Taras Shevchenko 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861, also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist and ethnographer. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language, though this is different from the language of his poems. He also wrote some works in Russian (nine novellas, a diary, and an autobiography). Shevchenko is also known for his many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.

He was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he had never been a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Shevchenko was convicted in 1847 of explicitly promoting the independence of Ukraine, writing poems in the Ukrainian language and ridiculing members of the Russian Imperial House. Contrary to the members of the society who did not understand that their activity led to the idea of an independent Ukraine, according to the secret police, he was a champion of independence.

Слава Україні

🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

Ukraine

Say his name

Contact with Shadura was lost on 3 February 2023, near the village of Zaliznyanske (Soledar urban hromada, Donetsk Oblast).

As of 6 March 2023, a graphic 12-second video showing an unidentified soldier in camouflage Ukrainian uniform, unarmed, standing in a shallow trench in a winter wood, and smoking a cigarette. As the man is heard saying "Slava Ukraini" ("Glory to Ukraine"), salvos of automatic weapons from multiple sides are heard and seen shooting the man, who collapses.

Voices in Russian are heard saying "Die, bitch".

Слава Україні 

🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

Ukraine

A day or two ago, Prigozhin was making noise about "if Wagner is withdrawn from Bakhmut, the whole line will collapse." At the time, I thought he was issuing a not-so-vague threat - ie: give me what I want or I'm outa here, and you can kiss the Donbas good-bye.

Now I'm thinking Shoigu and Putin may be having to consider stripping their western front in order to shore up the defense of Crimea.

Of course, I don't know much about such things, but something's cooking, and it's starting to smell like several more "tragic accidents" are about to befall some policy makers at the Kremlin.

Слава Україні 🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦
... and stay lucky, you magnificent bastards.

Punching Back

It was a bad idea to fuck with Ukraine, and Putin keeps getting very strong and very loud messages about it.

So I'll say it again - Putin will not survive this. It's likely going to take a good while longer, but this spells the end for Vladimir Putin.

On the other hand, it could happen a lot more quickly than I expect. The cracks have really begun to show, and in spite of his doubling down - and tripling down, and fourpling down, trying to bull his way through - at some point, which we may or may not be able to see coming, the whole thing could easily collapse in a big fuckin' hurry.

Ukraine has been making some very bold moves. This one reminds me of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.

Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.

Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly have avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

The drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.

A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.

The drone did not cause any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object.”

Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

Russian forces early Tuesday shot down another Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.

Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in the capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighboring Adygea. It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed a facility it was supposed to attack.

Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported a fire at the oil facility, and some other Russian reports said that two drones exploded nearby.

While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod have become a regular occurrence, other strikes reflected a more ambitious effort.

Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.

Andrei Medvedev, a commentator with Russian state television who serves as a deputy speaker of Moscow’s city legislature and runs a popular blog about the war, warned that the drone strikes could be a precursor to wider attacks within Russia that could accompany Ukraine’s attempt to launch a counteroffensive.

“The strikes of exploding drones on targets behind our lines will be part of that offensive,” Medvedev said, adding that Ukraine could try to extend the range of its drones.

Russia hawks urged strong retaliation. Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian army colonel turned military commentator, called for a punishing strike on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv.

Another retired military officer, Viktor Alksnis, noted that the drone attacks marked the expansion of the conflict and criticized Putin for failing to deliver a strong response.

Also on Tuesday, authorities reported that airspace around St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, was temporarily closed, halting all departures and arrivals at the main airport, Pulkovo. Officials did not give a reason for the move, but some Russian reports claimed that it was triggered by an unidentified drone.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it was conducting air defense drills in western Russia.

Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.

In another development that fueled tensions across Russia on Tuesday, an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several regions. Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country.”

- more -

Слава Україні

🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

We can't let these people down