Military Veterans and Patriots

Tag: Russia

How Russia Uses….

This is a very interesting practice.
For me, having zero knowledge of anything Ukrainian and hearing Putin mention the ethnicity of certain regions of Ukraine, it may provide an outlook.

How Russia Uses Immigration and Naturalization to Grow State Power

Ryan McMaken for Mises.org

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion has been a central issue in the Russian decision to go to war with Ukraine, this is certainly not the only issue. Moscow has repeatedly maintained that a central factor in its decision was the protection of ethnic Russian minorities in eastern Ukraine from human rights abuses committed by the Ukrainian state.

This justification for military intervention has used more than once in recent decades. We saw similar tactics used in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both in Georgia. The Russian annexation of the Crimea in 2014 used similar rhetoric. Moreover, the Russian state has justified military interventions on grounds that it was protecting the local political independence and autonomy of these minority groups from their respective states’ central governments.

Notably, the Russian regime extended citizenship to the populations of the separatist regions in question either before or after the military intervention in each case. This was done by granting passports to the residents of each region en masse, in a process called passportization.

Most recently, this has also been done in eastern Ukraine, where passportization—as in Georgia—helped set the stage for military intervention.

This use of citizenship and naturalization as a tool of foreign policy helps to illustrate some of the geopolitical implications of the existence of unassimilated ethnic or linguistic minorities within a state’s borders. These realities also call into question what are often overconfident assumptions that ethnic minorities will “assimilate” and abandon political allegiances with foreign states. In fact, as the Russian efforts in these areas suggest, the process of assimilation can actually be thrown into reverse, with disastrous results for those who are on the losing end of these changes.

A Brief History of Passportization

The Russian passportization effort stems from an apparent shift in the Russian regime toward incorporating Russian ethnics and other sympathetic groups—and the territories they inhabit—into a de facto or de jure union with the Russian state. Some have attributed this strategy specifically to Vladimir Putin, to whom has been attributed the so-called Putin doctrine of “Once Russian, always Russian.”

This doctrine, to the extent that it actually exists, is nonetheless heavily constrained by political realities. Even if Moscow has big plans for reclaiming numerous parts of the old Soviet Union, the fact is Moscow does not possess the military capability to do so. The fact Moscow’s occupation efforts in Ukraine are limited to the south and southeast is only the latest evidence of this. Rather, efforts to bring new territories under Moscow’s sway have only worked in areas where the Russian state has first turned a sizable portion of the local population into Russian citizens via the passportization strategy.

The Russians did not invent the idea of basing citizenship on ethnicity or cultural bonds. Broadly speaking, the idea that a regime has duties toward subjects living outside its own geographic jurisdiction is an ancient one. Citizenship and state control have not always been tied to physical location, as they are in the modern system of territorial states.

Nonetheless, the Russian state has apparently adapted the notion for modern use. The current passportization tactic began approximately twenty years ago. As explained by the Verfassungsblog:

Since 2002 Russia started its passportization policy and intensified it in the contested regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia. Both regions fought wars of secession from Georgia during the early 1990s with Russian covert support, and in both regions, peacekeeping operations including Russian troops were deployed. By 2006 already 90% of the population of Abkhazia and South Ossetia held Russian passports. The Georgian refusal to allow the Abkhazian population to use a neutral UN laissez-passer contributed to the demand for Russian passports. Moreover, both Abkhazia (since 2005) and South Ossetia (since 2006) allow for dual citizenship only with Russia.

(Passportization has also been a significant development in Transnistria, a separatist region of Moldova that lies on the southwestern Ukrainian border.)

Similar tactics were then used in the Donbas region of Ukraine after 2019:

Five years after the self-proclamation of the separatist “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in spring 2014, Russia decided in April 2019 to allow residents of the separatist-controlled, Russian-backed parts of these two Ukrainian regions to become Russian citizens via a simplified procedure with Presidential Decrees 183 and 187. In July 2019, the fast-track procedure was extended to residents of the Donbas territories controlled by the Ukrainian government. By mid-August 2021, the approximate number of newly passportized Donbas residents appeared to be about 530,000—around 250,000 in the LPR and 280,000 in the DPR. Internationally, these passports are not recognized as valid travel documents.

In each case—Georgia in 2009 and Ukraine in 2022—this reverse assimilation of ethnic Russians was followed by military action to secure the territories newly populated by Russian citizens.

Encouraging Immigration into Crimea

When Moscow annexed the Crimea in 2014, the order of events was slightly different. In the case of the peninsula, annexations preceded widespread passportization, but Moscow benefited from the fact the Crimean population was already overwhelmingly ethnic Russian and sympathetic toward Russia. Crimean residents that did not have Russian passports received them soon after the annexation was executed. Moreover, to ensure the annexation had “staying power” the Russian regime encouraged immigration of ethnic Russians into the Crimea. Some sources estimate that more than a hundred thousand Russian migrantshave resettled on the peninsula in the wake of the annexation, while a similar number of anti-Russian residents have left.

Demographics and Legal Citizenship Matter

It is important to note that in these cases, the extension of Russian citizenship was not simply a formality. Russian citizenship has come with access to social benefits through the Russian state, such as pensions, and recipients of the new passports have in many cases also been able to vote in Russian elections. Moreover, Russian citizenship brings with it a right to immigrate to Russia, which is a step up for many residents of the territories targeted for passportization. Russia’s GDP (gross domestic product) per capita, after all, is nearly twice that of Ukraine. Many residents of eastern Ukraine have elected to migrate to Russia following passportization. This has helped to buttress Russia’s population in a time of demographic decline.

For the most part, passportization has served an important geopolitical purpose for Moscow: it has fundamentally changed the demographics of each targeted region, increasing the proportion of residents that are closely tied to the Russian state and fostering a larger role for Moscow in these areas that were formerly controlled by other states.

In each case, Moscow was only able to carry out these efforts because the pro-Russian minority groups were never “assimilated” or integrated into the linguistic and ethnic majorities. This created cleavages in the Ukrainian and Georgian populations that Moscow was able to exploit.

The Limits of Western Ideas about Minority Populations

In the West, where institutions (i.e., governments, markets, schools) are richer, stronger, and consequently better able to integrate minority groups, this phenomenon of reverse assimilation is not nearly as plausible. In much of the world, however, weak states bordered by larger and richer states are quite susceptible to efforts by foreign states to entice residents with offers of citizenship and access to foreign labor markets and foreign social benefits. Georgia and Ukraine—relatively poor and isolated states—are prime examples of where this strategy can work.

These developments also illustrate the limits of many proimmigration bromides about immigration. Residents of the wealthy West tend to have great confidence that ethnic minority groups are all on a clear path to integration and that all ethnic groups within a state will all enthusiastically work together to peacefully unify. It is also assumed that ethnic minorities within states are extremely unlikely to destabilize local regimes or pose any sort of real geopolitical threat. This is very often—if not usually—not the case outside the wealthy West.

16 April 2022
Destination Disaster: Russia’s Failure At Hostomel Airport
By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans | Oryxspioenkop.com

Six weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it can be argued that the full array of issues affecting the Russian military and its operational planning have been laid bare. Setting out to first seize Kyiv within days in order to have a strong position in negotiations with the West about the future status of Ukraine in exchange for a reduction of sanctions, it suddenly finds itself a month past that deadline with meagre territorial gains, an army in tatters and severe reputational damage, not to mention an economy buckling under some of the heaviest sanctions ever instated on a nation. [1] Having lost more than 2.500 military vehicles and heavy pieces of military equipment, including at least 480 tanks, Russia has meanwhile been forced to adjust its ambitions to conquering just the Donbass territories of Donetsk and Lugansk with the aid of its proxy forces, aside from the southeastern part of Ukraine that had already been largely secured. [2] Though Russia maintains that its offensive on Kyiv was merely a ruse to keep Ukrainian forces busy while degrading their combat capabilities and advancing elsewhere, and that the retreat from the Kyiv operational zone was to give space for negotations, it doesn’t take a skeptic to point out that these are mere face-saving excuses for grave military failures. [3]

Hostomel Airport, located 10 kilometres northwest of Kyiv, played an important part in Russia’s plans to cut off Kyiv. Hostomel is the home of Antonov Airlines, the cargo division of the Antonov design bureau, and notably also housed the An-225, the world’s largest aircraft, at the time of the Russian assault on the city. Sadly, this awe-inspiring aircraft could not be evacuated in time, and was destroyed during the fighting. The Russian plan entailed the rapid occupation of Hostomel Airport (popularly known as Antonov Airport) so that it could be used as a staging area for the subsequent encirclement and conquest of Kyiv. In keeping with its important role, Hostomel was taken with much fanfare by a heliborne assault using VDV forces on the 24th of February. Even though Ukraine had been made aware that Hostomel was a target by CIA director William J. Burns in January 2022, the speed with which Russia’s heliborne operation was conducted still appears to have caught Ukrainian troops by surprise. [4]

During the assault, Mi-35 and Ka-52 attack helicopters operating out of Belarus softened up the airport’s defences so that Mi-8 transport helicopters carrying VDV airborne troops could safely land. Over the course of these manoeuvres one Ka-52 was hit by MANPADS before making an emergency landing just outside the airport’s perimeter. [5] However, Ukrainian defences were left largely intact and without any meaningful air support, the VDV was soon facing counterattacks by Ukrainian forces.

A Ukrainian serviceman walks by an Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft destroyed during fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, Saturday, April 2, 2022. At the entrance to Antonov Airport in Hostomel Ukrainian troops manned their positions, a sign they are in full control of the runway that Russia tried to storm in the first days of the war. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

As the VDV troops battled it out with Ukrainian forces for control over the airport, Russia’s ground push from Belarus managed to break through Ukraine’s defences near Ivankiv and raced towards Hostomel, running into several Ukrainian ambushes on the way. Nevertheless, Russian troops managed to fully secure Hostomel Airport on the 25th of February. The Russian Army and VDV then set out to turn Hostomel into a forward operating base from which the push on Kyiv could be initiated. It was at this time however that Russia’s offensive into Ukraine began to bog down, leading to the forming of the infamous 40-miles-long convoy and complete units that had to halt their push due to a lack of fuel.

Not to be deterred by setbacks elsewhere, newly arrived VDV and Russian Army units attempted to break out of Hostomel Airport into the nearby town and press their advance into Bucha and Irpin. However, these poorly coordinated pushes ran into ambushes in Hostomel and Bucha with significant losses in manpower and equipment as a result. Though the Russian military had prepared for an easy lightning takeover of Ukraine, it now found itself in a situation it had not bargained for, with Russian forces seemingly clueless about where to expect its enemies and how to best combat them. The ambushes in Hostomel and Bucha not only inflicted substantial casualties, but also set in a stark realisation of what was to be expected when advancing further on Kyiv.

The next developments turned out to be crucial. Rather than adapting to the new reality, and looking for ways to deal with it, the VDV and Russian Army around Kyiv largely became a static force, waiting for additional supplies and for the 40-miles-long convoy to advance and complete the encirclement of Kyiv (which would never occur). Faced with poor or absent leadership, a lack of supplies, daily shelling and significant casualties and low morale, the VDV and Russian Army were forced to bunker down, digging in on the roadsides to defend themselves against Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes. Increasingly they began to be pestered by such drones (often scouting targets for artillery) and SOF inflicting heavy casualties during the night, against which Russia is poorly prepared, having invested little in night equipment for its soldiers. All the seeds for an army that would soon turn its guns on civilians and begin looting were planted.

What remains of a Russian convoy that got ambushed by Ukrainian forces in Bucha.

The situation was entirely analogous in Hostomel, where the VDV and a sizeable Russian Army contingent was stationed waiting for the order for a push on Kyiv that never came, while under constant shelling. On the 4th of March, Russian state-owned television channel Channel One Russia aired footage that already showed large amounts of destroyed Russian equipment struck by Ukrainian artillery scattered around the base. [6] Russian forces stationed here had essentially become sitting ducks, with no order given to advance and no order to retreat.

Relief came only when such an order finally was given on the 29th of March, after which Russian troops at Hostomel began their retreat from Kyiv Oblast. [3] Damaged equipment that couldn’t be taken along was blown up, while Ukrainian artillery shelling covered the flight. At Hostomel, such equipment included 16 of the VDV’s most modern AFVs, the BMD-4M, and a 1L262E Rtut-BM EW system. Their position indicates they were either destroyed while they were staging to retreat or blown up by the Russians themselves. After Ukrainian troops reentered Hostomel, they encountered evidence of Russians having left in a hurry everywhere, including anything from unopened packages of food, passports, bank cards and even captured Ukrainian armoured vehicles that couldn’t be taken back. [7] A video of the carnage can be watched here.

Carnage at Hostomel Airport.

A detailed list of destroyed and captured Russian vehicles and equipment at Hostomel Airport can be seen below. This list only includes vehicles and equipment destroyed or abandoned on the perimeter of Hostomel Airport. The total amount of equipment captured and destroyed in and around Hostomel itself is far larger than recorded here.
(Click on the numbers to get a picture of each individual captured or destroyed vehicle)

Armoured Fighting Vehicles (7, of which destroyed: 5, recaptured: 2)
- 1 T-72 Obr. 1989 MBT: (1, destroyed)
- 1 BMD-1KSh-A command vehicle: (1, destroyed)
- 1 Unknown BTR-D/BMD-2: (1, destroyed)
- 1 RKhM-6 Povozka CBRN reconnaissance vehicle: (1, destroyed)
- 1 GAZ Tigr-M IMV with Arbalet-DM turret: (1, destroyed)
- 2 Kozak-2 IMV: (1 and 2, captured by Russia and recaptured by Ukrainian forces)
Infantry Fighting Vehicles (23, of which destroyed: 20, damaged: 1, recaptured: 2)
Armoured Personnel Carriers (3, of which destroyed: 3)
- 1 BTR-80: (1, destroyed)
- 2 BTR-MDM ‘Rakushka’: (1, destroyed) (2, destroyed)
Towed Artillery (2, of which captured: 2)
- 2 152mm 2A65 Msta-B howitzer: (1, captured) (2, captured)
Anti-Aircraft Guns (1, of which captured: 1)
- 1 23mm ZU-23: (1, captured)
Jammers And Deception Systems (1, of which destroyed: 1)
- 1 1L262E Rtut-BM: (1, destroyed)
Helicopters (3, of which destroyed: 2, damaged: 1)
- 1 Mi-8 transport helicopter: (1, destroyed)
- 2 Ka-52 ‘Alligator’ attack helicopter: (1, destroyed) (2, damaged)
Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (67, of which destroyed: 64, captured: 2, recaptured: 1)
Battered and bloody Hostomel stands as a monument to Ukraine’s struggles against Russia’s invasion force. Like a true David against Goliath, it broke the back of the Russian assault on Kyiv, in the process sadly losing its own gentle giant. Yet like the dream of a Ukrainian nation free from enemies and oppressors, the An-225 Mriya lives on in its unfinished sister airframe. [8] Perhaps its construction, like the construction of this free Ukraine, will someday soon be accomplished.

The second (unfinished) An-225, which Turkey has shown interest in completing.

[1] Putin thought Russia’s military could capture Kyiv in 2 days, but it still hasn’t in 20 https://www.businessinsider.com/vladimir-putin-russian-forces-could-take-kyiv-ukraine-two-days[2] Attack On Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html[3] Russia in retreat: Putin appears to admit defeat in the Battle for Kyiv https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-in-retreat-putin-appears-to-admit-defeat-in-the-battle-for-kyiv/ [4] Vladimir Putin’s 20-Year March to War in Ukraine—and How the West Mishandled It https://www.wsj.com/articles/vladimir-putins-20-year-march-to-war-in-ukraineand-how-the-west-mishandled-it-11648826461 [5] https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1504790211011571714[6] https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1499643176998641664
[7] https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1510936820736999424[8] Sky Giant: Turkey Mulls To Complete The Second Antonov An-225 Mriya https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/01/sky-giant-turkey-mulls-to-complete.html

Original Here.

Editors note: The list of large equipment losses maintained by Stijn Mitzer, Joost Oliemans, Kemal, Dan and Jakub Janovsky at oryxspioenkop.com is easily the most reliable source of that information. All losses are visually confirmed and cross-referenced with images.
14 April 2022
Why Regime Change in….

Why Regime Change in Russia Might Not Be a Good Idea

Politico Opinion

Russia’s great power status also may bolster the likelihood that a post-Putin Russia will remain autocratic. Personalist autocrats often promise to increase their country’s power on the global stage and use anti-Western and anti-liberal appeals to court their political base. Russia can drink far more deeply from this well of nationalist disenchantment than countries with less global reach.

But the prospects for a post-Putin Russia are not all grim. Russia is a personalist autocracy, but it is also a relatively wealthy one, which suggests that its prospects for stability and more open government might be better than expected. One well-regarded study found that it is hard to predict why and when autocratic regimes fall, but when they fall in relatively rich countries, they are more likely to become and stay a democracy.

Other features augur well for a post-Putin future. Russia’s high level of education bodes well for a greater political openness; Russia is better educated than any of the democracies in Latin America, for instance. In addition, Russia’s relatively ethnically homogenous and secular population — about 80 percent of the population is ethnic Russian — suggests that Russia could avoid the ethnic or religious conflicts that have often plagued more diverse countries after the fall of an autocratic government. These structural features are good predictors of democracy and point to a potentially more optimistic outcome for Russia that may counter the legacy of personalist rule.

Biden says he’s ‘not walking anything back’ on comments he made about Putin

Beyond these structural features, the circumstances under which Putin leaves power will also go a long way toward determining what comes next. Should Putin be replaced by a coup, the likelihood of a transition to democracy is much lower than if he is replaced by a mass revolt. Svolik finds that following coups, only 1 in 10 personalist autocracies were replaced by democracies. The same figure is 4 in 10 if the ruler is overthrown by a mass revolt. Clearly, anyone rooting for democracy to take root in Russia should be sober about the prospects for a successful pro-democracy uprising. Of course, the prospects for political change are even lower should Putin stay in power.

In addition, who comes after Putin is also relevant. Leader personality and background are more important in foreign policy and during crises than in domestic policy. Putin’s obsession with Ukraine does not seem to be broadly shared among the Russian foreign policy-making elite. To be sure, members of Putin’s war cabinet are very anti-Western, but unlike Putin, they don’t have the same long record of viewing Ukrainians and Russians as the same people. In this case, policy toward Ukraine might be different with a different leader even if the successor comes from the inner circle. A leader who comes from outside the inner circle might offer better prospects for greater political openness in Russia as well.

Biden called for Putin to leave office, but autocratic politics is often less about the personal quirks or personalities of a single individual than about the nature of autocracy itself. A Russia without Putin that remains a personalist autocracy may disappoint those hoping for a Russia that is less corrupt, repressive and at peace with its neighbors. In the end, real political change in Russia will require more than removing Putin.

As Putin seems to creating change through his purging, it could be nothing less than total chaos to try to remove him!

13 April 2022
The purge is on: Putin reportedly fires 150 FSB agents

Yuri Kochetkov/Pool Photo via AP

Allahpundit | HotAir

Here’s another way in which the U.S. and Russia are different. In America, we seem to be reliving the 1970s.

In Russia, it’s more of a 1930s-40s kind of vibe.

A related difference: Unlike in the U.S., when Russian intelligence officers screw up, there are actual consequences.

You may remember the rumors a month ago that Sergei Beseda, head of the Fifth Service of Russia’s FSB, had been placed under house arrest. The Fifth Service is in charge of spying inside Russia and within countries in the near-abroad, like Ukraine. Understandably, Putin is unhappy with the agency’s performance lately. Reportedly around 150 FSB operatives have been sent packing and, ominously, Beseda is allegedly locked away in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, a facility where the NKVD used to carry out mass executions.

But other than that, the war’s going great.

The FSB purge was reported by Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat, the investigative organisation that unmasked the two Salisbury poisoners in 2018. He did not reveal the source of his information.
“I can say that although a significant number of them have not been arrested they will no longer work for the FSB,” Grozev told Popular Politics, a YouTube channel about Russian current affairs.
Last month FSB officers also carried out searches at more than 20 addresses around Moscow of colleagues suspected of being in contact with journalists.

Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov told the Times of London he’s surprised that Putin had Beseda sent to prison instead of simply humiliating him with a demotion. Maybe that’s a function of the magnitude of the intelligence failure, with Russia left embarrassed on the world stage by how it failed to anticipate the fierce Ukrainian resistance. But Soldatov, writing today in the Moscow Times, thinks there might be more to it. It turns out that Beseda used to be the FSB’s liaison to the CIA in Moscow, which may be significant:

He could have fired Beseda, as he did with Roman Gavrilov, the deputy commander of the National Guard. Putin could have also transferred him to another agency, as he did with the powerful General Oleg Syromolotov some years ago, when he made him deputy minister of foreign affairs. Instead, Putin placed Beseda under a false name in Lefortovo prison – the only prison in the country under control of the FSB, a place with a gruesome reputation from the 1930s and 1940s. The prison still has an underground shooting range pitted with bullet holes made during Stalin’s purges when this cell was used for mass executions.
The most likely explanation is that Beseda’s Fifth Service was also still in charge of maintaining official contacts with the CIA. Many people in Moscow and the Kremlin have been asking themselves why U.S. intelligence before the war was so accurate. This might have added more to the already existing climate of paranoia. And when Putin gets paranoid, he starts looking for traitors in the places and institutions which are known to have official contacts with American intelligence.

Putin was reportedly “incandescent” with rage before the war that the U.S. was somehow reading his battle plans and publicizing them to the world, another humiliation for Russia. He may suspect Beseda of having leaked those plans via his longstanding relationships with the CIA, or he may be looking for a fall guy in light of the fact that someone was obviously leaking. (It’s not as if Beseda ran a tight ship at the Fifth Service either. Soldatov says agents from the department were “caught red-handed” repeatedly in the field during Russian conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.) That would also explain why the FSB has been sniffing around to see which agents might have been communicating with reporters lately. Maybe the agency has a massive leak problem, enough so that more than 100 personnel had to be cashiered on suspicion of sharing secrets.

But why would there be such a massive leak problem at the FSB during Putin’s war? This theory seems completely plausible to me:

https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1513691098987827209?s=20&t=neNqaCvTG8u165fdsAFcdw

Putin’s disaster in Ukraine seems to boil down to two factors, widespread skimming — really looting — of the public coffers by bureaucrats who were supposed to be using that money to upgrade Russian capabilities and Putin immersing himself in a bubble of yes-men who refused to tell him that Russia’s army would have a hard time in Ukraine. WaPo has a worthy story today about the stupendous amount of willful blindness that seems to have informed Russia’s war strategy. It began with Putin’s hubris in believing that Russia already knew everything it needed to know about Ukrainian identity based on the country’s colonial past, which led him to misjudge the degree to which Ukraine would resist. His cronies didn’t dare disabuse him of those assumptions either, which gave him a false sense of confidence about the invasion. Meanwhile, the FSB was either pocketing the money that was supposed to buy Ukrainian officials’ loyalty towards Russia or wasting it on Ukrainians who weren’t truly interested.

So when Putin finally started sending troops to the border, everyone panicked. Russian military leaders presumably knew that their not-very-modernized army was in no condition to pull off a lightning conquest of Ukraine. And Russian intelligence officials like Beseda presumably knew that Ukraine’s government, let alone its people, weren’t about to roll over. But none of them could tell Putin that. So they leaked the whole operation to the U.S. in hopes that having the plan exposed and seeing western allies mobilize against Russia would back Putin off and get him to cancel the war.

Didn’t work. Now Beseda’s in prison. And Putin’s left babbling that he had no choice but to invade:

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1513821357087379457?s=20&t=neNqaCvTG8u165fdsAFcdw

I’ll leave you with one more rumor, this one regarding a top Putin crony and Ukraine war enthusiast. If this guy’s under arrest, it means the purges are reaching towards the very top.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1513681957749596162?s=20&t=neNqaCvTG8u165fdsAFcdw

Original here

12 April 2022
Latvia Becomes the Newest Target for Russia’s Denazification Program

Russian Presidential Press Service via AP

STREIFF | RedState

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was nothing more than your basic landgrab, Putin felt obliged to tart up his justification with a noble purpose. First, he cited the plight of the people living in Donbas without bothering to mention that their plight is a direct outcome of Putin’s policy of violating Ukrainian sovereignty by setting up two feeble, bullsh** “republics” whose sole purpose was to create a perpetual casus belli with Ukraine. Then he brought up the necessity for denazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine and bringing the perpetrators of “genocide” in Donbas to account.

To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.

The term “nazi” has a very particular meaning in Putin’s Russia. Putin crony Sergey Karaganov says nazism isn’t about antisemitism, “[i]t is about hating and suppressing all other nationalities.” In Russian parlance, “all other nationalities” is a set of one: Russia. Russia doesn’t seem all that concerned about the presence of actual fans of the Third Reich so long as they are singing Putin’s song.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1512169844334116866?s=20&t=K31ajqoKuSCGdIDcf5eVSQ

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1511996583671382016?s=20&t=K31ajqoKuSCGdIDcf5eVSQ

https://twitter.com/war_news247/status/1512858018882465796?s=20&t=K31ajqoKuSCGdIDcf5eVSQ

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1511003890023645192?s=20&t=K31ajqoKuSCGdIDcf5eVSQ

For Russia, May 9 is a huge thing. That is the day they take credit for single-handedly defeating Nazi Germany. In their mythos, Normandy, North Africa, and Italy didn’t happen. There was no strategic air campaign. No convoys made the Murmansk Run carrying untold thousands of Studebaker trucks, P-40 fighters, and millions of pounds of Spam. It was just Stalin fighting the forces of evil while FDR and Churchill played tiddlywinks. The millions of dead Russian soldiers owe much more of their fate to their leadership’s tactical and operational stupidity and political commissars directing NKVD murder squads than to some German gefreiter in a bunker.

In the Baltic States, which have a substantial Russian population transplanted to colonize and “Russify” those countries after Stalin’s deportations and purges, Russia uses May 9 festivities to increase cultural awareness and a sense of separateness from the legal government of those countries. Last Thursday, Latvia took steps to squash pro-Putin pomp.

On Thursday, 8 April, Latvia’s Saeima passed in the final reading the Law on the Day of Commemoration of Victims Who Died in Ukraine, providing that 9 May becomes a day of mourning.
…
In addition, the parliament also decided to pass the proposal from Mārtiņš Šteins to prohibit sales of fireworks on 9th and 10th of May 2022.
The goal of this law is turning Latvian residents’ attention towards Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine and demonstrating solidarity with Ukrainian people in the fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. With this law 9 May in the entirety of Latvia becomes a day of commemoration of victims in Ukraine, honouring the civilians and armed forces personnel who died as a result of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.
During this day of commemoration it will be required to hoist the flag of Ukraine next to Latvia’s flag at all public buildings, buildings owned by private legal persons and associations, as well as apartment homes, Riga Castle, the State President’s Residence, Saeima and Cabinet of Ministers buildings.
Law does not allow the organisation of any public festivities and celebrations and for municipal administrations to not issue permits for public events.
The law also provides for municipal administrations to annul permits issued for this year’s 9 May events if they were issued before the law has come to force.
This law will lose its power on 11 May 2022.

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1441247689430106113?s=20&t=K31ajqoKuSCGdIDcf5eVSQ

Russia, as you might well imagine, shat itself. Part of the so-called “Putin doctrine” is that Russia is the guarantor of security for Russian communities abroad. A quarter of Latvia is ethnic Russian, down from over 40% when the nation regained its independence in 1991. Estonia, recognizing the danger of a large and unassimilated Russian population that looks to Moscow for inspiration, requires Estonian to be used for instruction in public and private schools, and anyone whose family arrived in Estonia after 1940 had to take a citizenship test and show proficiency in Estonian to hold any government and many professional positions. In addition, since the invasion of Ukraine began, Estonia has blocked Russian television and other media influences. The policies in Estonia guarantee that within a generation, the Russian ethnic minority in Estonia will be like the Italian, Irish, and other ethnic minorities in the United States. They will be Estonian while retaining some Russian cultural influences. It is pretty much like how America operated before our “melting pot” became “a bowl of salmonella, listeria, and e. coli infected mixed salad.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova went on an epic rant.

According to Kremlin-backed media, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the decision ‘an attempt to humiliate the Russian-speaking community living in Latvia, which cherishes the memory of the exploits of anti-fascist heroes’.
She added: ‘The blasphemous decision of the Latvian parliamentarians is subject to strong condemnation by all sensible forces not only in Russia, but throughout the world.
‘At the same time, this legislative act is not surprising, since the ruling regime in Latvia has long been well known for its neo-Nazi preferences and attempts to whitewash the atrocities of Nazi Germany ‘s henchmen.
‘Just as Riga in every possible way covers the crimes of the Kiev regime against civilians in Ukraine and Donbas. We are convinced that that history will put everything in its place.’

Latvia knows the danger posed by the rapacious regime in Moscow. It was conquered and colonized once, and doesn’t want it to happen again. It had to look at the first Russian invasion of Ukraine when Crimea was annexed, and an insurgency created the “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk with foreboding because a disloyal Russian-speaking population demanded to be separate and Russian troops arrived to back up the demand. Back in 2014, I wrote about the danger that Russia’s behavior posed not only to the Baltic States but to NATO by American weakness (Obama’s Tallinn speech probably guarantees peace in our time and How Putin Dismembers NATO Without Firing A Shot. A Scenario From the Cold War).

The silver lining to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is that he has done what was previously thought impossible, expand NATO to Finland and Sweden and wean part of Europe from cheap Russian gas. He has also convinced countries that were once afraid of Moscow to take positive actions for their own security because everyone now knows Moscow’s demands are non-negotiable.

Original Here.

11 April 2022
Ukraine says it’s holding the bodies of *7,000* Russian soldiers

ALLAHPUNDIT | HotAir Apr 08, 2022 11:21 AM ET

AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

This claim is tucked away halfway through a WaPo story about Russia leaving its fallen soldiers behind, as though it’s common knowledge and not a newsworthy fact to mention up front.

Uh, it was news to me. And I follow reporting on the war reasonably closely.

The true number of Russian KIA has been a subject hotly debated since the start of the war. The Ukrainians’ latest estimate is north of 18,000; Russia has acknowledged 1,351 but hasn’t updated that number recently. If Ukraine has the bodies of 7,000 Russians in its possession, we’re forced to assume that their estimate is fairly close to the true number. Figure that for every Russian that’s died on the battlefield whose body is unrecoverable, another has died and their body has been retrieved by their comrades to be returned to Russia.

So, 14,000 dead — equivalent to the number the Red Army lost in a decade in Afghanistan. Maybe more?

Do note: Ukraine isn’t refusing to return those 7,000. They say they’ve offered to do so multiple times, only to be rebuffed by Russia. We can guess why.

Ukraine has about 7,000 unclaimed Russian corpses in morgues and refrigerated rail cars, according to Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration. He said his government’s figure of 18,600 Russian dead was based on Ukrainian reports from the battlefield and intercepted Russian military communications.
Ukraine tried to return the bodies of 3,000 Russian service members on the third day of the war, he said. “They said, ‘We don’t believe in such quantities. We don’t have this number. We’re not ready to accept them.’ ” Ukraine proposed an exchange several times, he said, but “they won’t discuss this at all yet.”…
Keir Giles of the London-based think tank Chatham House said the difference between Western and Russian military attitudes about their war dead was “night and day … in exactly the same way as their attitude to civilian casualties and collateral damage is utterly unrecognizable from how Western militaries operate.”

That figure doesn’t include Russians who died and were abandoned in parts of Ukraine where the morgue may be overwhelmed and refrigerated cars aren’t available. Those bodies need to be disposed of quickly: “In nearby Bashtanka village, Mayor Oleksandr Beregovyi said dead Russians were buried in mass graves after their documents were collected.” Add those to the unknown but swelling number of KIA.

As for why the Kremlin doesn’t want them back, each body that’s returned to Russia for burial is further evidence that the “special military operation” has been costlier than the Russian public may have assumed it would be. We’ve already reached the point where Russian casualties are sufficiently high that Putin’s own spokesman feels compelled to acknowledge it. Repatriating thousands of dead soldiers would increase domestic chatter that the war is going badly and risk public unrest. Better to leave those bodies behind and assure the parents of the fallen that they’re MIA or “in the field” and currently indisposed.

No wonder the Russian army’s morale sucks.

As for Ukrainian casualties, no one knows but we’d have to guess that they’re higher than 18,000 given that the Russians are attacking civilians, not just Ukrainian troops. Ed wrote earlier about the horrible Russian missile attack on a crowded train station in the Donbas, which killed 39 people and counting as I write this:

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1512347247740166144?s=20&t=JlM0tAmBdqJ3MR2I0MJwQw

Here’s a detail that shouldn’t go unnoticed, though:

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1512425792021712909?s=20&t=JlM0tAmBdqJ3MR2I0MJwQw

It’s usually hard to prove genocidal intent but writing “for the children” on your armaments as you bomb civilians helps clarify things.

Meanwhile, there’s a too-good-to-check story circulating about a tactic the Ukrainian army has supposedly been using to frighten Russian soldiers. A former Zelensky advisor told MSNBC yesterday that Ukrainian troops are outfitting commercial surveillance drones “to look like something out of the worst Terminator movie, so it looks incredibly scary.” Why do that? His answer:

What would you do if you’re a Russian soldier and you see something that belongs to Skynet? You run. Where do you run to? You run to your mama. Because you don’t have your mama, you run to your base.
That way they lead us to their bases and no camouflage works against that, and then our artillery shoots at the base and that way we protect, you know, our civilians, we protect, you know, the land of Ukraine from any collateral damage, and we don’t waste any shells. So, you know, if there’s a major problem, just be creative.

I’m skeptical that a Russian on the ground could see a drone in the air in such fine detail as to be terrified by its appearance. The truth is probably much simpler: The Russians know that Ukraine is now getting lethal anti-personnel Switchblade drones from the U.S., and so if they happen to encounter a drone overhead they might reasonably conclude that they’re about to die. And so they run.

And sometimes they do end up running right back to their base. That much of the story is true. I’ll leave you with this, which probably resulted in the need for another refrigerator car.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1512160782246629377?s=20&t=JlM0tAmBdqJ3MR2I0MJwQw

Original Here

8 April 2022
Did Russian state media just publish a Putin genocide manifesto?

AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Ed Morrissey | HotAir

Suuurrrre looks that way. RIA Novosti, a state-owned Russian domestic media outlet, published a lengthy essay today about Russia’s attempts to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Analyst Sergej Sumlenny first alerted Twitter users to this eye-popping essay:

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1510910740261134338?s=20&t=PbnukMLJybms74k-qpoW2g

When Vladimir Putin announced that as his chief war aim in invading, the argument was that the government in Kyiv had been taken over by a Nazi clique and that the people needed and would welcome liberation. Now the people are the problem, RIA Novosti declares, lumping them all together as Nazis (translation via Google):

The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. No significant distinction should be made between the APU and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration [purification — Ed]. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned.

It’s no longer the Azov battalion to which Russia objects, but all forms of national defense. That essentially rejects any recognition of the Geneva conventions of warfare. But it gets even worse when it comes to non-combatants:

However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, carried out with the utmost care and discretion in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime overRussia , Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, as well as an eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism. …
Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, he passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.

That’s a recipe for complete obliteration of the Ukrainian people. Oddly, it also serves as a rebuttal to earlier Russian claims that Ukrainians were being held hostage by a tiny clique of Nazis and that Putin had a duty to come to the defense of fellow Slavs. RIA Novosti now acknowledges that the Volodymyr Zelensky government is legitimate — elected by the Ukrainian people of their own will. That’s in fact the new basis for this genocide manifesto — not just some need to excise the ruling class to restore order in their neighboring republic.

That would certainly explain all of the war crimes now being exposed by Putin’s withdrawals. Indeed, this essay acts as a defense of those crimes.

How long will this genocide take? “[I]n no way less than one generation,” the essay declares:

Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine,
The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine continued for more than 30 years, beginning at least in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for “independence” towards Nazism.

That spells a return to Sovietification, to coin a countering term, along the lines we saw in eastern Europe for more than forty years. And for that matter in Ukraine for much longer, which also experienced a major genocide along the way (the Holodomor). How well did that succeed? It didn’t; it made the former Soviet-occupied countries more eager to unite with the West and to distance themselves from Moscow despite two generations of Kremlin “denazification.”

At the very least, though, this represents a very clear change in Russia’s public aims about the war, domestically as well as internationally. This manifesto from RIA Novosti leaves Putin no wiggle room on declaring victory by simply firming up positions in Luhansk and Donetsk. It raises the stakes impossibly high, not just for Putin but for Russians altogether. It’s a call for greater mobilization in a war that has already chewed up a large portion of Putin’s effective military forces. How many more sons will Russians sacrifice on the pyre of Putin’s dreams of empire?

And just how much longer will Russians — oligarchs and the rank and file — blithely go along with the genocide of fellow Slavs next door?

Original Here

4 April 2022
The White House Hands Vladimir Putin Another Massive Gift

By Bonchie | RedState

One of the big debates raging in Washington right now is whether to sanction Russian oil imports to the United States. The idea has gained steam among a wide range of people with varying political backgrounds as a way to actually hit Vladimir Putin where it really hurts.

My thoughts on the matter are a little more nuanced (I support sanctioning Russian oil, but only if the Biden administration allows more domestic production to offset it on the global market). Still, the general consensus seems to be that stifling Russia’s oil industry is the most effective means of making him feel the pain of his decision to invade Ukraine.

But the White House is not part of that consensus. Jen Psaki announced on Friday that they will oppose a popular, bipartisan proposal in the Senate to ban Russian oil imports.

https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1499828216760086531?s=20&t=EZ5jGAmVD6mYY-6rP45Odw

This is a replay of the White House’s rush to lobby for Putin against Ted Cruz’s sanctions bill, which would have nuked the Nordstream 2 pipeline prior to Russia’s invasion. Now, despite all that has taken place, the Biden administration is still bending the knee. At what point do even mainstream media outlets start asking why the president and his handlers are so subservient to Putin? That’s mostly rhetorical, but you get the point.

As to the idea that banning Russian oil imports would hurt American families, that’s actually true in a vacuum. But the administration has the tools to change that, possibly even bringing down prices lower than they were at the beginning of the year. That would help American families, but it would require that Biden stop placating the climate change hysterics by greenlighting pipelines and more oil and gas leases.

Is that going to happen? Of course, it’s not going to happen. Instead, the White House is going to gaslight everyone by claiming that gas prices have only risen because of the situation in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1499829782544105477?s=20&t=JsvB_0UwfKPo7jdaB7TO_w

Everyone reading this has been alive long enough to have seen the gradual increase in gas prices over the last year. All the while, the Biden administration has nuked pipelines and frozen federal leases, exacerbating the problem that is now slamming the poor and middle-class. And for what? To “save” the climate? No one actually believes that pumping oil in Russia is somehow better for the environment than pumping it in the United States. That has never made sense. The greens and the politicians who do their bidding would choose people dying of exposure and wind turbines covering every square mile of the United States if it meant they got to harm the oil companies. In the end, their stubborn position is just about partisan politics and valuing ideology over common sense.

And congrats, you get to pay the price so Biden can pretend he’s saving the planet. Meanwhile, Putin gets richer and Ukraine gets invaded. Does any of that sound like a good deal to you?

Original Here

4 March 2022
Russian Sanctions
The Biden administration announced sanctions in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions target financial institutions, several individuals and the russian tech sector. The White House fact sheet details the sanctions.
- Severing the connection to the U.S. financial system for Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, including 25 subsidiaries, by imposing correspondent and payable-through account sanctions. This action will restrict Sberbank’s access to transactions made in the dollar. Sberbank is the largest bank in Russia, holds nearly one-third of the overall Russian banking sector’s assets, is heavily connected to the global financial system, and is systemically critical to the Russian financial system.
- Full blocking sanctions on Russia’s second largest financial institution, VTB Bank (VTB), including 20 subsidiaries. This action will freeze any of VTB’s assets touching the U.S financial system and prohibit U.S. persons from dealing with them. VTB holds nearly one-fifth of the overall Russian banking sector’s assets, is heavily exposed to the U.S. and western financial systems, and is systemically critical to the Russian financial system.
- Full blocking sanctions on three other major Russian financial institutions: Bank Otkritie, Sovcombank OJSC, and Novikombank- and 34 subsidiaries. These sanctions freeze any of these institutions’ assets touching the U.S financial system and prohibit U.S. persons from dealing with them. These financial institutions play a significant a role in the Russian economy.
- New debt and equity restrictions on thirteen of the most critical major Russian enterprises and entities. This includes restrictions on all transactions in, provision of financing for, and other dealings in new debt of greater than 14 days maturity and new equity issued by thirteen Russian state-owned enterprises and entities: Sberbank, AlfaBank, Credit Bank of Moscow, Gazprombank, Russian Agricultural Bank, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Transneft, Rostelecom, RusHydro, Alrosa, Sovcomflot, and Russian Railways. These entities, including companies critical to the Russian economy with estimated assets of nearly $1.4 trillion, will not be able to raise money through the U.S. market — a key source of capital and revenue generation, which limits the Kremlin’s ability to raise money for its activity.
- Additional full blocking sanctions on Russian elites and their family members: Sergei Ivanov (and his son, Sergei), Nikolai Patrushev (and his son Andrey), Igor Sechin (and his son Ivan), Andrey Puchkov, Yuriy Solviev (and two real estate companies he owns), Galina Ulyutina, and Alexander Vedyakhin. This action includes individuals who have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian state, and have elevated their family members into some of the highest position of powers in the country. It also includes financial figures who sit atop Russia’s largest financial institutions and are responsible for providing the resources necessary to support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This action follows up on yesterday’s action targeting Russian elites and their family members and cuts them off from the U.S. financial system, freezes any assets they hold in the United States and blocks their travel to the United States.
- Costs on Belarus for supporting a further invasion of Ukraine by sanctioning 24 Belarusian individuals and entities, including targeting Belarus’ military and financial capabilities by sanctioning two significant Belarusian state-owned banks, nine defense firms, and seven regime-connected official and elites. We call on Belarus to withdraw its support for Russian aggression in Ukraine.
- Sweeping restrictions on Russia’s military to strike a blow to Putin’s military and strategic ambitions. This includes measures against military end users, including the Russian Ministry of Defense. Exports of nearly all U.S. items and items produced in foreign countries using certain U.S.-origin software, technology, or equipment will be restricted to targeted military end users. These comprehensive restrictions apply to the Russian Ministry of Defense, including the Armed Forces of Russia, wherever located.
- Russia-wide restrictions to choke off Russia’s import of technological goods critical to a diversified economy and Putin’s ability to project power. This includes Russia-wide denial of exports of sensitive technology, primarily targeting the Russian defense, aviation, and maritime sectors to cut off Russia’s access to cutting-edge technology. In addition to sweeping restrictions on the Russian-defense sector, the United States government will impose Russia-wide restrictions on sensitive U.S. technologies produced in foreign countries using U.S.-origin software, technology, or equipment. This includes Russia-wide restrictions on semiconductors, telecommunication, encryption security, lasers, sensors, navigation, avionics and maritime technologies. These severe and sustained controls will cut off Russia’s access to cutting edge technology.
The sanctions fall short of denying access to the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system and sanctions on Putin himself. Nor is the Russian oil sector affected.
24 February 2022
War in Ukraine

As you should know by now, Vladimir Putin let slip the dogs of war last night US time/ this morning eastern european time after months of build-up. The initial attacks came as the UN Security Council was meeting to discuss the situation. Just before the first missiles impacted, and likely after they had launched, a prerecorded address by Putin was played on Russian state media. In that address he announced his plan for a special military operation aimed at disarming and de-nazifying Ukraine.

Before I go any further, I caution you about the news and reports coming out of the warzone. Not only do you have to wade through the typical fog of war misinformation, you need to deal with active Kremlin disinformation and PSYOPS. If it gets reported by me, it is as close to the truth as I can get from here. Again, be very wary of the information you’re consuming and sharing, spreading disinformation about this can cost lives.

Starting around 2130 EST Russian cruise missiles, short and intermediate range ballistic missiles and air launched precision munitions started hitting targets in Ukraine. Among the first targets were airports and ammo depots. However, not all targets were military in nature as several sites within the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv and Mariupol were hit.

Shortly before 0700 local time the ground offensive kicked off with armored columns moving out from Crimea, the Donbas region and the Belarus border. The Crimean column made good headway into Ukraine, but that’s to be expected, given that column consists of mainly elite VDV paratroopers.

The attacks from the Donbas and Belarus have not made nearly as much progress, though reports indicate that the Belarusan front has captured Chernobyl and most of the exclusion zone.

https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1496854817767145478?s=20&t=P4ZcXWSaGyoZyGdCu6BRZQ

https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1496864583230894082?s=20&t=P4ZcXWSaGyoZyGdCu6BRZQ

Things are looking grim for the Ukrainians, however it is not all bad. It seems the Ukrainians have slowed if not stopped the assault from the Danbas. And there are multiple, though unconfirmed, reports that the Ukrainians have shot down several Russian aircraft today. There are also many images and video of disabled and destroyed russian tanks and armored vehicles.

As I write this Ukrainian forces are fighting to take back Hostomel airport, just 15km from the capitol of Kyiv. Russian airborne forces landed there earlier today and managed to push back the defenders. As of 1515est at least part of the airfield is back under Ukrainian control.

I will try to keep you updated as much as possible, however the speed at which this is unfolding may not make that possible. Look for a separate piece about the western reaction to this naked aggression by Putin later today.

24 February 2022