Today's Reminder

Ignore for a minute the privilege and the class stratification implied, and notice the straightforward racism couched in terms of American exceptionalism.

"If black people study hard and work hard, they stand just as good a chance of success as anybody else."

The implication being that since most black people are still having inordinate difficulty attaining the status and the wealth and the success that white people enjoy here in USAmerica, then there must be something wrong with black people.

But no - there's no racism here - certainly no systemic racism - we're not a society built on racist policies - blah blah blah.

Tim Wise: It's not a glitch, it's a feature. The system has not failed brown people - the system is working as designed. 

COVID-19 Update

It seems like there's a lot of info that's even more conflicting and confusing than usual.

There's a sizable surge going on in some places (S Korea, Germany, France, Vietnam), while most other places are easing safety measures on travel, and indoor venues and other large group thingies, at the same time the progress towards full vaccination has slowed to a crawl (not quite 66% of Americans, and the weekly average is down 17%).

All I can say is don't get happy, and don't let your guard down.

COVID-19 Update

WaPo: (pay wall)

Covid vaccinations — including boosters — fall to lowest levels since 2020

With another pandemic surge possibly on the way, vaccination for the coronavirus in the United States has all but ground to a halt, with initial doses and boosters plummeting to the lowest levels since the program began in late December 2020.

On Wednesday, the seven-day average of vaccinations fell to fewer than 182,000 per day, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That is lower than at any time since the first days of the program.

The daily total has been in free fall for the past six weeks. On Feb. 10, the nation was averaging more than 692,000 shots a day. Booster shots have been more common than first or second doses since October, and the low rates have long caused concern among some experts.

Now, with authorities bracing for a possible increase in covid-19 cases caused by the BA.2 subvariant, 65.4 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated and just 44 percent have received a booster shot. That is substantially less than the totals in many Western European nations — which nevertheless have seen a sharp rise in cases in recent weeks and months.

Federal health officials are now considering authorizing fourth shots for people 65 and older. But the nation’s booster campaign, which was initially plagued by conflicting guidance and disagreement among advisers and scientists, has faltered: People who were willing to roll up their sleeves for first and second doses are seemingly less inclined to go for a third.

“This is an unforgivable liability that we did not get people boosted at a much higher level,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego.

- more -

And if that was enough to pucker your poop shoot...

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion: Dangerous covid variants could emerge from North Korea if the world doesn’t act

North Korea’s nuclear-tipped missiles are not the only threat from the rogue nation that demands the world’s attention. It is also at high risk of a runaway coronavirus outbreak, which could create a breeding ground for new, dangerous variants.

For two years, North Korea has imposed a “zero covid” policy. Pyongyang claims that this has been successful in keeping the country covid-free, but it has also cut off critical food and medical supplies, resulting in severe shortages. It has also left its population of approximately 25 million people both unvaccinated (despite multiple offers from Covax, the United Nations-backed global vaccine initiative) and probably with minuscule immunity from prior infections.

An expert panel convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found this month that this has made North Korea uniquely susceptible to a sudden outbreak of the covid-19 omicron variant that could kill more than 100,000 people. That would obviously be terrible from a humanitarian perspective, but it could also worsen the pandemic by giving the coronavirus more chances to evolve and potentially even escape immunity provided by vaccines or previous infection.

What to do about this risk? The Biden administration has hit a rut in addressing North Korea’s nuclear threat, with Pyongyang expressing no interest in talking. But a stalemate in the denuclearization sphere should not stop the United States from considering multilateral pathways to prevent a covid-19 crisis in North Korea.

One possible initiative that might persuade North Korea to reconsider its previous rejection of coronavirus vaccines would be a high-volume offer from Covax of enough mRNA doses to inoculate more than 80 percent of North Korea’s population, combined with enhanced testing and eventual access to antivirals. This would probably get North Korea’s attention, especially as it witnesses the surge in hospitalizations and deaths in Hong Kong. In private settings, North Korean officials have indicated their preference for mRNA vaccines over the less effective Chinese Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines that Covax has previously offered. Such a program would also allow North Korean leaders to partially reopen their economy.

Such an initiative is feasible. Global supplies of mRNA vaccines and tests are ample, and North Korea has the infrastructure and experience necessary to implement mass vaccination campaigns at a relatively rapid pace (before the pandemic, more than 95 percent of North Korea’s population received shots for diseases such as measles and polio). Additional cold-chain investments for a national mRNA vaccine campaign would not be prohibitively costly.

Such a campaign would have to overcome some systematic hurdles. Although there is no “anti-vax” culture in North Korea, its leaders would have to actively engage with residents to explain why the nation is now turning to vaccines after saying that there was no need for them. North Korea would also probably push back against monitoring requirements or raise concerns that vaccine donations would be tied to requests, such as denuclearization.

North Korea’s approach to negotiation also creates challenges. Its leaders often do not reveal what they want, and they also “forum shop” among various aid organizations to seek the best possible deal. China, which adheres fiercely to its “zero covid” approach, may object to efforts to move North Korea beyond such an approach.

These problems have workarounds. Monitoring could be recast as “technical support,” with UNICEF or the World Health Organization serving as the main interlocutors with Pyongyang (not unlike their current role in sustaining health programs in Afghanistan). Washington could endorse a multilateral humanitarian approach, as it has previously, that emphasizes its de-linking of aid from strategic interests such as denuclearization.

This may seem a strange proposal coming on the heels of yet another series of North Korean missile tests. But the humanitarian crises already unfolding in North Korea, which would be exacerbated in the event of a covid-19 outbreak, can and should be addressed with urgency and separately from the nuclear issue. The inauguration of South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol in May could provide an opening for this type of initiative. While Yoon has advocated a tough line on denuclearization, he has not opposed humanitarian engagement with North Korea.

It is certainly possible that a mass-vaccination initiative could create better atmospherics between Washington and Pyongyang and dissuade North Korea from starting a new cycle of provocations. But even if it did not, it would still be a worthy endeavor. Protecting innocent North Koreans from a deadly disease is not only the right thing to do — it’s also in the interest of countries everywhere that seek to end the pandemic.

More Ukraine

Reporter:

This city has an historical relationship with Russia. What are your feelings towards Russian now?

Fire Fighter:

Frankly, I don't want to think about them. They did this to our city - to our Ukraine. People close to each other nationally and spiritually don't do this. We have nothing in common now.

These people are amazing. We can't let them down.

Слава Україні

🌎❤️🇺🇦

Ukraine

Got us some badass Ukrainian kids here.

22-year-old Vlad - 22nd Motorized Infantry, Ukraine - to his Russian counterparts:

"Run away. Either you stay here in the ground or you go back home."

BBC World:

Defiant Ukrainian troops tell Russians: 'Go home while you're still alive'

The tale of Kharkiv is the story of the army that didn't fail, and an army that failed to win.

While Russia stumbles, Ukraine stands firm. Defying widespread expectations that it would collapse in short order, Russian forces have been unable to breach the Ukrainian army's lines around Kharkiv and have not managed to encircle the city.

Russia invaded at 05:00 on 24 February. The night before, 22-year-old Vlad and his brother-in-arms Mark, also 22, were at a fellow private's wedding. Columns of Russian tanks, howitzers, armoured vehicles and troop transports rolled across the border, just 40km (25 miles) away. Despite the long build up of Russian forces, the move came as a shock to the inhabitants of Kharkiv. Troops scrambled to defend the city.

When they learned of the attack, Vlad and Mark joined their battalion - the 22nd Motorised Infantry - and headed straight to the front lines. They have been there ever since. I have visited them there twice on the city's northern edge - a once pleasant suburban neighbourhood, which has now become a muddy battlefield strewn with corpses and burned-out Russian tanks and vehicles.

But it is sound, not sight, that is so jarring here. All manner of Russian artillery and missiles are fired at these positions almost continuously. When there is a respite in the shelling, or the roar of Russian Grad rockets, the silence itself comes as a shock. Ukrainian forces have lived under this terror for weeks now.

At a nearby command post, its windows all gone, broken furniture is strewn around. In an outbuilding, a belt-fed machine gun sits incongruously by a baby's pram. Children's climbing frames are surrounded by impact craters, and on one nearby abandoned house, a For Sale sign flaps in the freezing wind. Against the regular beat of Russian artillery outside, I ask Mark and Vlad what they are fighting for.

Vlad's reply is short and to the point, "For peace in Ukraine." Mark shoots him a glance, "My comrade says for peace in Ukraine," he laughs, then he swears and asks, "Who knows? These people came to our land. No-one was waiting for them here, no-one was calling them."

On that first day, one group of Russians made it into the centre, but were repelled after three days of hard, bloody fighting - with heavy casualties on both sides. The Russians were forced out beyond Kharkiv's edge.

A month on, while Russian missiles still strike at the city centre and at least half the 1.4m population have fled, there are neighbourhoods that remain untouched.

But, the city's eastern and northern residential neighbourhoods, which were largely intact when I arrived here three weeks ago, are unrecognisable. A tree has an unexploded Russian shell in its base; an apartment block has a 500kg bomb resting on its roof - if it had detonated, the whole building would have been brought down.

Mark and Vlad keep this grimness of war from family ears on the calls home they make most most days, just a couple of minutes each to mothers and girlfriends. So there is no mention of the dead bodies at the back door and in the next garden, no mention of the colleagues killed by Russian shelling, or of the tank commander who died the previous day. And nothing that could reveal operational details.

"Mainly we discuss when this will all end, when we can return to normal life, when everything is good and it won't be dangerous to walk outside," says Vlad.

A bank of phone chargers is connected to a generator in the building. The room where they sleep is warm and orderly. An elderly German Shepherd dog lives with them, she's traumatised by the chaos around her and moves from Mark to Vlad, soldier to soldier. A brief head rub and she goes to the next man seeking comfort from the noise and disorder outside.

The two men live everyday with Russians targeting their positions. Full-time soldiers, the Ukrainian army is their life.

The Ukrainian soldiers might have it rough, but the Russians seem to have been particularly unprepared for anything other than the shortest possible campaign in Ukraine. The corpses I have encountered in the snow have been poorly dressed for a winter campaign, and Ukrainian soldiers say they found the most meagre of rations with them.

Do they think of the soldiers on the other side, I wonder? Vlad says he has a message for them, "Run. Run away. Either you stay here in the ground or you go back home." He pauses but then adds, "Don't kill kids, destroy homes and families." This time it is Mark who is to the point, "Go back home while you are still alive."

The Russian war machine is a formidable adversary - but in the initial phase of the war, the Ukrainian military put into practice lessons learned from Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, where the Ukrainians were found seriously wanting. Ukrainian forces however, are still significantly outmatched in numbers, technology and airpower.

So how have they held off the Russians so successfully?

A purported intercepted phone call, along with Western intelligence reports, may provide some of the answers. It is from a Russian commander in Mykolaiv, near Odesa in south-west Ukraine, to his superiors on 11 March. It was released by Ukrainian officials and has not been independently verified. It paints a picture of Russian misery and incompetence in the Russian campaign that both the US Pentagon and the UK's Ministry of Defence have, in part, detailed.

Troops lack basics such as tents and body armour - and are digging trenches in freezing ground to sleep. Two weeks ago, at another front line position in the city, I asked a young Ukrainian commander if his men slept in trenches. "Why would we sleep here when we can sleep in houses. The Russians sleep in trenches, but we sleep over there," he said, pointing to a well-heated house filled with men. He explained that the dead Russians had Kevlar body armour but many lacked the armoured plates that make the vest effective.

Mark and Vlad are well equipped. As we move through forward positions, there is ammunition and weaponry everywhere. Piles of rations and, in the kitchen, tea and coffee being made from a dark, cast-iron kettle. Inside their vehicles there are plenty of cigarettes - despite the familiarity with the chaos around them, many of the men chain-smoke.

When news comes over the radio that a colleague has been injured, an ambulance arrives within minutes and the casualty is covered in a heat blanket. He is bleeding, but is quickly stabilised. A Russian shell has peppered him with shrapnel and he has lost most of his fingers on one hand.

Hours later, as we head back to the rear, news comes over the radio that the soldier is stable and will recover.

The Ukrainians revel in their home-team advantage. They offer us biscuits and freshly delivered cakes from local factories. Their enemy has no such luck. There have been reports of Russian troops looting and foraging for supplies, villagers near Kharkiv complain that chickens and produce have been stolen.

A video of a captured Russian army cookhouse gives an unappetising glimpse of the meals served to troops. Servings piled high with onions and potatoes - all held together with congealed fat. Russian army rations - Meals, Ready-To-Eat (MRE) - with an expiry date of 2015.

When I met Mark and Vlad the first time, their commander gave me one of their sturdy green packs of Ukrainian daily rations - a leaving gift, he said.

There were 17 different things inside: wheat porridge with beef; rice and meat soup; beef stew; chicken with vegetables; pork and vegetables; crackers; biscuits; tea bags; coffee; blackcurrant drink; honey; sugar; black pepper; chewing gum; bar of dark chocolate; plastic spoons; moist wipes.

Ukrainian field rations

Ukrainian fortitude may be partly thanks to an unlikely suspect - Vladimir Putin.

In 2014, the Ukrainian army was in a terrible state. As it fought and failed to prevent the annexation of Crimea, its troops went hungry. Corruption was rife, training and equipment lacking and its chain of command unresponsive. Vlad and Mark's battalion was reconstituted the same year. The whole Ukrainian army underwent an overhaul - to make it ready for the next war with Russia.

Vlad and Mark, and almost every fighting man I have met on the front line over the past three weeks, have one thing in common - they have all fought in the eastern Donbas region. Some sport combat patches on their body armour with "donbasonia" written on them.

In the separatist Donbas enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukrainian forces have been combat-tested for the past eight years. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Ukrainian men may have done tours of duty there since 2014.

"Ukraine is not the same country it was in 2014," one front line commander told me - echoing a sentiment that was repeated again and again to me in Kharkiv.

This has created a more professional army, and one with common purpose. An army that knew Russia wouldn't stop in Donbas or Crimea - and that a day of reckoning was sure to follow for the rest of the country.

In short, Ukraine isn't the pushover it once was.

As many as 190,000 Russian troops have been deployed to Ukraine - with additional Chechen and Syria forces boosting their ranks. Ukraine's army stands at 100,000, but Kyiv claims it can rapidly mobilise significantly more.

And a month in, here in Kharkiv and across many other fronts in Ukraine, morale is strong among Ukrainian forces. "We are fighting for our land," Mark told me. What are Russia's mainly conscript fighters dying for? There are plenty of dead Russian fighters at various battlegrounds around the city. The Ukrainian dead, on the other hand, are quickly cleared away - but no official casualty numbers have been released.

Few of the Russian corpses appear to be ethnic Russians, instead they are ethnic minorities. White bands on their uniforms distinguish them from regular Russian troops. "These aren't real Russians," another Ukrainian fighter said as we passed bodies by the road. "They don't know why they are here," he said.

For the Ukrainians, this is seen as a good thing. Ethnic-minority Russian troops have weaker allegiance to Moscow, they say. One senior Kharkiv figure told me, "We don't fear Chechens, it's the Russians in Moscow restaurants who are afraid of them."

Kamil Galeev of the Wilson Centre, a US think tank, explores the condition of the Russian army. He suggests the troops are underpaid and undermotivated. Certainly, recruitment is a problem in Russia where dropping fertility rates mean there are fewer young Russians available to fight.

In Kharkiv, the winter snow and frost is beginning to melt. I join Mark beside his foxhole - a pit dug in the ground, on an embankment that is the front line. His boots squelch in the mud, the battlefield has become gooey, difficult terrain.

The thawing weather might not help Russia either - two weeks ago the temperature here was -13C, it is now eight degrees. As the mud deepens to grip boots, vehicles and kit, it becomes a trap for attackers and a boon for those defending the farmland around the city.

Further down the line, a soldier spots movement in nearby woods and opens fire. There is gunfire in response. "We have to move, there isn't enough protection here," says Mark "One hundred per cent, they will respond [with artillery]."

Sure enough, shells begin to fall only metres away and dirt is thrown up in the air. The shells land close enough to feel the shockwaves in your chest. Our team scrambles for cover under a nearby vehicle.

But Mark and Vlad seem untroubled. Everyone here told me the first three days were the worst. "This is much easier now," says the men's commander, who never once breaks into a run during the constant shelling, and hardly takes his phone from his ear, or the cigarette from his lips.

A quick glance over their shoulders to check where the explosion hits, and Mark and Vlad continue the conversation. "It's OK, you get used to it. Humans adapt to everything quickly," Mark says as another explosion punctuates his sentence.

What's going on right now, I ask, aware that cameraman Darren Conway is rolling. "They are working on our position," says Mark. "It's artillery," adds Vlad, with a nonchalant upward nod.

As the two men head back to shelter for a smoke and some tea, they pass the spent cases of US and UK-supplied anti-tank weapons. These, too, have been a decisive factor in this war. I have seen the aftermath of those missile strikes - at least a dozen rusting shells of Russian armoured vehicles, trucks and tanks.

But "the Ukrainian version is just as good," says another soldier, patriotically. Now is the time for once-sceptical Western governments to throw their weight, with more supplies and intelligence, behind Ukrainian resistance, another commander tells me.

The Ukrainian national anthem contains the following lines:

Our enemies shall vanish

Like dew in the sun

We too shall rule

In our beloved country.

Soul and body shall we lay down

For our freedom

There is little chance of Russian troops vanishing from Ukrainian soil.

Already there are reports that north of Kyiv, they may be digging and forming defensive positions, since their advance was stymied. And Russia, with nuclear and chemical weapons, as well as a range of sophisticated conventional weapons, has the power to escalate its bombardments of Kharkiv and other cities. It has done so before in Grozny and in Syria, and there, Russia with all its firepower proved that artillery requires little morale or motivation to be effective.

But Ukrainian forces, a month into this war, are satisfied they have defied expectations. With each week that passes, their chance of remaining independent grows, they believe. Russia isn't going anywhere, but neither are Mark and Vlad, nor the dozens of other Ukrainian soldiers I've met who say they are in this fight until the very end. Whenever that may be.

Modeling And Representation Are Important

Ketanji Brown Jackson didn't just say it out loud for women. Every parent should've been able to hear that voice of universal uncertainty about how they're raising their kids.

And the money quote:

Because even when the kids are grown, we’re still figuring out whether we gave them our best selves.

Anybody with kids and a living thinking brain knows it's not only women - even as we acknowledge the simple fact that dads are very rarely saddled with the same level of expectation, which means women carry the heavy end of the boat most of the time.

It's good to hear that someone like Judge Jackson shares a thought that occurs to every one of us - that small aggravating voice from the back of our head telling us we're doing it wrong.

She showed me there's an extra degree of humanity in her that seems lacking in the six "conservatives" on SCOTUS, and that she has the brain power to express a complex concept in language we can all understand.

WaPo - Michele Norris (pay wall)

Opinion: The timeless truth Ketanji Brown Jackson said out loud

She said the quiet part out loud.

In an opening statement before more cameras than she had probably ever faced, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took a deep breath Monday and explained that she was “saving a special moment in this introduction for my daughters.” With her girls seated behind her, she said, “I know it has not been easy as I have tried to navigate the challenges of juggling my career and motherhood. And I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right. But I hope that you have seen that with hard work, determination, and love, it can be done.”

I’m fairly certain womenfolk everywhere saw themselves in that statement and felt something deep inside their souls.

With a lifetime appointment to the highest court within her sights, Jackson put the spotlight on the constant fear that, as a mother, you’re not getting it right. She gave voice to that gnawing worry that lives inside so many of us, that if anyone looked too closely behind the veneer of an orderly life, they might see something a little more raggedy around the edges.

That it was part of her prepared statement makes this even more remarkable. She chose to bring the sometimes rickety confidence of a working woman’s psyche into a hearing room dominated by men who probably never figured out the schedules for snack week, music lessons or dental cleanings.

Women everywhere, whether they work outside the home or full time at home keeping it all intact, wrestle with the concern that the idealized standard of motherhood might be just beyond their reach. But here’s the thing: They rarely say that out loud.

That’s because the people who depend on (or marvel at) your ability to juggle ten thousand things need to know that you can step into each day with a confidence so glistening that it’s contagious.

You don’t admit that the juggling is hard, because you might let down the sisterhood if you can’t fly the flag for supreme efficiency.

You don’t “fully admit that I did not always get the balance right,” because copping to one’s missteps on the balance beam means others might falter now and then, too. Or, worse, that someone could use your candor as a cudgel in an unsuspecting moment down the road. With all due respect, you said yourself you didn’t always get the balance right.

But by speaking honestly about the challenges of navigating career and motherhood, Jackson has made her own contribution to the arsenal of truth. Women need to chip away at the ridiculous idea that motherhood is an exercise in perfection. Giving your best self to your loved ones and your job is the goal — and both are laudable.

But giving your best self on that particular day is the reality. And recognizing that your best self on any particular day is not the same thing as it was yesterday or tomorrow or on that lucky day when the planets all line up in your favor is the gift women must give themselves every day.

When Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked her to expound on her motherhood mea culpa toward the end of the second day of testimony, Jackson talked of early mornings and late nights and what it meant when there were judicial hearings during a daughter’s recital and courtroom duties that collided with birthday celebrations. Her ambitions meant she was absent, and you could see how much that hurt. She said she hoped her daughters would see her ascent to the high court as proof “that you don’t have to be perfect in your career trajectory and you can still end up doing what you want to do.”

Though Jackson talked about “balance” in her mea culpa, we would do well to shift away from that language. Balance is a mirage from almost every angle; women earn less for comparable work on the job and are still responsible for the bulk of household duties whether they work in or outside the home. This holds true even as more men shoulder a broader range of parental duties. Balance is unrealistic. It’s just a cruel invitation to failure.

Let’s instead view this never-ending challenge as a “journey” with ups and downs and twists and turns and no fixed end point. Because even when the kids are grown, we’re still figuring out whether we gave them our best selves.

This puzzle has no easy answer, and it never fully recedes, because the journey is long and magnificent and, yes, complicated. And if Judge Jackson can admit that under the glare of national klieg lights, more women may be empowered to follow her lead and know that if you’re doing your best, you’re doing enough.

COVID-19 Update

The 7-Day Average for New Deaths in the USA has been under 1,000 for about 10 days.

We're still on track to see an "official" number of 1 million dead Americans from CDC in the next month or so.

There was a small uptick in the weekly average for Cases, as reported by WaPo.

Слава Україні 🌎 ❤️ 🇺🇦

The Sun: (large grains of salt recommended)

Footage shows the landing ship, named Orsk, on fire as black smoke can be seen coming from the port in occupied Berdyansk.

Moscow’s trio of sea ships had been supporting their advance in the besieged port city of Mariupol.

While Orsk sank, and ammunition onboard exploded sending black smoke billowing into the sky, another Kremlin Navy ship was damaged and a third attempted to leave port before it too was obliterated.

The port’s fuel depot was also understood to be ablaze.

The Ukrainian Navy said on a Facebook post: "A large paratroop ship 'Orsk' of the black sea fleet of occupiers was destroyed in the occupied Russian port Berdyansk.Glory to Ukraine!"

CNN confirming:

And Then There Was Fragging

Add this to the reports of Russian officers shooting Russian troopers who aren't exactly keen on fighting Putin's fucked up war.

The grunts will figure out who the enemy is.

The Daily Beast:

‘It’s a Shitshow’: Russian Troops Are Now Turning on Each Other

“Even in Chechnya, there was nothing like this,” a soldier told a pal in an intercepted call, and reports emerge of another getting so fed up he ran over his colonel with a tank.

Two Russian soldiers have been caught venting about Putin’s “bullshit” war against Ukraine in an intercepted phone call as devastating losses reportedly led one soldier to drive over his colonel with a tank.

“Basically, it’s a shitshow here, I’ll put it that way,” an unnamed soldier near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine can be heard telling a colleague in a recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service late Tuesday.

After telling his friend that Ukrainian forces “tore apart” a column of Russian forces sent along with his own unit, he described complete disarray among the Russian military, with 50 percent of the unit suffering from frostbite on their feet.

“But they don’t plan to treat them in the [field] hospital,” he said.

On the fourth day of their deployment, he said, the general commanding the unit, General-Lieutenant Yakov Rezantsev, told them it’d be over quickly.

“Do you know what he told us? ‘It’s no secret to anyone that there are only a few hours until this special operation is over.’ And now those hours are still going.”

He said soldiers are complaining about having Kevlar vests that lack the hard-armor panel, but they are ignored.

“‘Comrade General, damn it, I have this situation,’” he recalled troops telling their leader. “And he just says, ‘Son, be strong,’ and then he fucks off. It’s such trash here… our own plane dropped a bomb on us,” he said.

“They couldn’t even send off the 200s here,” he said, using a Russian military term for dead bodies. “They rode with us for five days.”

“Even in Chechnya, there was nothing like this,” he said, describing the situation as a “madhouse.”

“This ‘special operation,’ damnit… with respect to homes not meant to be destroyed… it’s bullshit.”

Even though “on TV” they said the Russian troops were advancing, they were actually surrounded “on all sides” by Ukrainian forces, he said.

The damning conversation was released as reports surfaced that things were so bad for Russian troops that it led one soldier to attack a colonel he blamed for troop losses.

Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsymbaliuk reported Wednesday that two tactical groups of Russian soldiers in Makarov, in the Kyiv region, lost at least half of their men in battles against Ukrainian forces.

One of the Russian soldiers “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” Tsymbaliuk wrote on Facebook.

“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs. Now Col. Medvedev is in a hospital in Belarus, waiting for monetary compensation for combat wounds received during the ‘special military operation to protect the Donbass.’ Colonel Medvedev was awarded the Order of Courage,” he wrote.

The Daily Beast could not independently confirm Tsymbaliuk’s version of events, but Putin lackey and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed Medvedev was injured during fighting in a VK post this month.

Alongside a video of an injured Medvedev being evacuated on March 11 by Chechen troops sent in to bolster Russian forces, Kadyrov claimed Medvedev’s rescue was proof of how successful Putin’s “de-Nazification” of Ukraine was.

“There are no more threats to [Medvedev’s] life. I hope that he will soon be back on his feet,” he said, before adding that “such moments on the battlefield bring us together.”

Laying It Bare

Chris Hayes, with a look at the blatant Lee Atwater-style racism built in to the GOP.

Republicans beat up on black nominees for being black (ie: not voicing a yessir boss desire to be white).

Then they try to sell it as being no different from Dems beating up on a religious zealot who says her faith and her deference towards her husband will color her decisions - or a boozing sexual predator who came to the nomination with questions about how his predecessor was ushered out, and some shady-as-fuck shenanigans involving his finances.

But hey - money talks and integrity walks