Ukraine Notes
Lots of stuff
A Russian tank unit commander took his own life. When the build-up for the war began, they built a depot to bring up "reserve" or moth-balled units that could be 'reactivated' to replace units lost in combat. He went there. Of ten tanks that were supposed to be reactivated, only one could be made operable, and according to the article, it had some serious considerations whether it could fight. Optics were missing, which is kind of important if you're interested in some minor things, like, say, AIMING. Anything containing precious metals was missing. Most of the tanks were missing their ENGINES. All of this stuff was stolen when they were sitting in their bone yards somewhere, and they were all shipped to the refurbish depot next to the war zone in this condition. And the tank commander reported the situation up his command chain and then shot himself.
This is a classic kleptocracy/dictatorship. All of Putin’s friends got rich off of stealing from the government, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one or more of them was connected to stripping these reserve units.
Speaking of Russian tank commanders, the one whose crew ran him over? Apparently he survived! His legs are mangled, but there is video footage of him talking after the incident. He was taken to Belarus for repairs and probably is going home.
Ukraine may have started shelling inside RUSSIA. Two towns have been placed under military orders, one reporting four injured and the other reporting an explosion at an ammunition depot. The sad thing is that Putin will probably spin this to the Russian people as “SEE! This is why we had to invade, to prevent them from attacking us!”
A Russian oil depot is on fire after being attacked by two helicopters, no lives lost as of yet. Ukraine has not yet said they made the attack, but if so, BLOODY GOOD FOR THEM! Russia invaded them, time for some good payback! The depot is in Belgorod, just across the border north of Kharkiv, if you're up on your geography. Ukraine is denying that they attacked the depot, so the possibilities are: they are lying, or Russia did a false flag operation and attacked their own depot with two repainted helicopters. The attack helicopters, Mi-24 Hips, are used by Ukraine, but the attack would have required precision low altitude flying, nape of the earth, at night, to make the attack, evade air defenses, and get away.
Turkey and Romania are finding mines floating in their harbours and are having fun isolating and neutralizing them before they can damage ships and possibly kill people. It is suspected they were placed in Ukraine’s harbors and drifted.
Speaking of mines, Russia is leaving huge numbers behind as they withdraw. This makes driving on roads tricky. The anti-tank mines aren’t difficult to deal with: they require LOTS of weight driving across them to set them off, so the soldiers just scoot them off the road with their boots gently. Anti-personnel mines? Very dangerous. Those can go off with very little pressure. This is going to be a cleanup for a decade or more to come.
While the "peace negotiations" have been going on, Russia has been claiming that they would reduce the amount of shelling and fighting, but that has never happened. There's an old joke about "How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." Just substitute Putin for Politician. You can't trust a word from his mouth or his press secretary. Shelling actually intensified after negotiations began.
Ukraine published a list of SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY alleged spies for Russia’s FSB, the successor of the KGB, whom they allege have engaged in criminal activity but provide no detail. The list has names and contact information, I imagine life will become a little uncomfortable for these people for some time. I am curious how they got the list.
U.S. President Biden was talking about America and NATO having a response planned if Russia uses chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. A Fox News reporter pressed him, wanting details. Joe tried to be evasive and nice and finally said “Look, I’m not going to tell you that! If I tell you our response, then Putin will no!” This is the same reporter that Biden was caught in a hot mic moment saying “What a moron”.
The Independent has reported Russian military units disobeying direct orders, and in one case, accidentally shooting down one of their own aircraft! Another story wrote about three large Siberian units refusing orders to mobilize to the Ukraine! That is pretty damn serious, that strikes me as courts martial-level offense for the command echelon. Apparently the units did a rapid demobilization instead.
Good article in The Atlantic about how badly the West and everyone else so overestimated Russia’s competence and quality and underestimated Ukraine’s pluckiness. No one knew how badly Russia’s military had been rotted by corruption and bad morale. Everybody - including me - assumed Russia was just going to roll over Ukraine, I’m so happy to see Russia get slapped upside the head. The article quotes Mike Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.”
Russia has only managed to shoot down TWO of Ukraine’s TB-2 drones that have been wreaking so much hell on their armor and so many other soft targets. No one knows exactly how many they’ve bought from Turkey, but they have more than gotten their money’s worth from them. And Turkey has gotten some great battle testing endorsement and probably model stepwise refinement in the process. In a cost/benefit analysis, clearly the TB-2 has been a huge benefit to Ukraine and a huge cost to Russia.
Putin is recruiting mercenaries from Syria. Let’s break this down. Syria has been torn apart by a war for years now, with Russia playing a large part in it. Putin is a friend of its leader, Bashar al-Asaad. The country hasn’t quite been reduced to the level of Afghanistan, but they’re trying. Now Putin is paying people an initial payment of $7,000 to go to Ukraine and kill. I would expect these soldiers to be poorly trained and not integrated into the rest of the Russian army, which means they’ll be used as cannon fodder and probably be given an unrestricted remit, which means more atrocities and rape. I’m hoping that, even though there’s not much of an economy in Syria anymore, word will soon get back that the $7k is not worth it and that soldier supply chain will evaporate for Putin.
Why does Putin want foreign mercenary fighters? A lot of it is that it reduces the number of ethnic Russian soldiers returning in body bags, which reduces the number of Russian mothers and family members protesting in the streets, holding large framed photos of slain family members. Russian mothers have lots of power that is hard to suppress. He starts throwing Russian mothers in prison, he starts getting a major PR problem, moreso than he has already. Second, we’re back to that Dictators Need Two Armies problem. He’s probably saving a lot of the ethnic Russian army for internal control, or control against possible aggression from adjacent countries who decide that now might be a good time to try and grab some land back from the Rodina. Finally, trying to construct a tissue-thin defense against war atrocities. “I didn’t order those war crimes, those Syrians/whoever committed them all on their own!”
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area, after digging trenches. It’s possible they have hit radioactive hot spots and suffered radiation exposure. It’s highly unlikely that these troops were trained for working in a nuclear environment or were equipped with proper detection equipment.
Sean Penn is calling for billionaires to buy Ukraine a new Air Force consisting of F-15s and F-16s. He thinks that for $300mil you can get a dozen of each and with very little retraining, their pilots will completely dominate and eliminate the invading Russian Air Force. I think he is sorely underestimating the costs and retraining required, not to mention the logistics chain required to keep them flying, but what do I know. There’s also the matter of what air fields they would fly out of: guaranteed Russia would redouble their artillery and rocket attacks on them and pulverize their runways.
In early March, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was kidnapped by Russian forces and held for five days. I’m not sure if this was the incident where another person was released and it was announced by the Russians that “this” was the mayor, a Potemkin mayor. Anyway. Ivan is now in France, making media appearances to drum up further support for Ukraine. He says Russian forces knew nothing about Ukraine or the situation they were going in to. They were becoming increasingly aggressive because their plans for a lightning victory didn’t work and the locals were not welcoming them. His kidnapping was caught on public surveillance cameras. His interrogators said “…they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I've never seen a single Nazi”. “He said that after that the soldiers told him they wanted to defend the Russian language. "I told them 95% of us speak Russian already and nobody's stopping us, so there's no problem," Fedorov said. After that, they told Fedorov they had heard that veterans of World War II were beaten during the last commemoration day. "I told them I know these men personally, because there aren't many of them left, and they're treated as heroes," he said.” The NPR article says that 29 other elected officials are still being held by the Russians. I wonder how many of them are victims of the diaspora and have been sent all over the Russian Federation.
Spring is the traditional time that Russia has its annual conscription drive for mandatory military service. Needless to say, the youth in Russia are a bit nervous.
Meanwhile, Putin is enjoying an 84% approval rating at home. Whether this is effective propaganda and news control or telling the pollsters what to report, who knows.
A Russian tank unit commander took his own life. When the build-up for the war began, they built a depot to bring up "reserve" or moth-balled units that could be 'reactivated' to replace units lost in combat. He went there. Of ten tanks that were supposed to be reactivated, only one could be made operable, and according to the article, it had some serious considerations whether it could fight. Optics were missing, which is kind of important if you're interested in some minor things, like, say, AIMING. Anything containing precious metals was missing. Most of the tanks were missing their ENGINES. All of this stuff was stolen when they were sitting in their bone yards somewhere, and they were all shipped to the refurbish depot next to the war zone in this condition. And the tank commander reported the situation up his command chain and then shot himself.
This is a classic kleptocracy/dictatorship. All of Putin’s friends got rich off of stealing from the government, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one or more of them was connected to stripping these reserve units.
Speaking of Russian tank commanders, the one whose crew ran him over? Apparently he survived! His legs are mangled, but there is video footage of him talking after the incident. He was taken to Belarus for repairs and probably is going home.
Ukraine may have started shelling inside RUSSIA. Two towns have been placed under military orders, one reporting four injured and the other reporting an explosion at an ammunition depot. The sad thing is that Putin will probably spin this to the Russian people as “SEE! This is why we had to invade, to prevent them from attacking us!”
A Russian oil depot is on fire after being attacked by two helicopters, no lives lost as of yet. Ukraine has not yet said they made the attack, but if so, BLOODY GOOD FOR THEM! Russia invaded them, time for some good payback! The depot is in Belgorod, just across the border north of Kharkiv, if you're up on your geography. Ukraine is denying that they attacked the depot, so the possibilities are: they are lying, or Russia did a false flag operation and attacked their own depot with two repainted helicopters. The attack helicopters, Mi-24 Hips, are used by Ukraine, but the attack would have required precision low altitude flying, nape of the earth, at night, to make the attack, evade air defenses, and get away.
Turkey and Romania are finding mines floating in their harbours and are having fun isolating and neutralizing them before they can damage ships and possibly kill people. It is suspected they were placed in Ukraine’s harbors and drifted.
Speaking of mines, Russia is leaving huge numbers behind as they withdraw. This makes driving on roads tricky. The anti-tank mines aren’t difficult to deal with: they require LOTS of weight driving across them to set them off, so the soldiers just scoot them off the road with their boots gently. Anti-personnel mines? Very dangerous. Those can go off with very little pressure. This is going to be a cleanup for a decade or more to come.
While the "peace negotiations" have been going on, Russia has been claiming that they would reduce the amount of shelling and fighting, but that has never happened. There's an old joke about "How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." Just substitute Putin for Politician. You can't trust a word from his mouth or his press secretary. Shelling actually intensified after negotiations began.
Ukraine published a list of SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY alleged spies for Russia’s FSB, the successor of the KGB, whom they allege have engaged in criminal activity but provide no detail. The list has names and contact information, I imagine life will become a little uncomfortable for these people for some time. I am curious how they got the list.
U.S. President Biden was talking about America and NATO having a response planned if Russia uses chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. A Fox News reporter pressed him, wanting details. Joe tried to be evasive and nice and finally said “Look, I’m not going to tell you that! If I tell you our response, then Putin will no!” This is the same reporter that Biden was caught in a hot mic moment saying “What a moron”.
The Independent has reported Russian military units disobeying direct orders, and in one case, accidentally shooting down one of their own aircraft! Another story wrote about three large Siberian units refusing orders to mobilize to the Ukraine! That is pretty damn serious, that strikes me as courts martial-level offense for the command echelon. Apparently the units did a rapid demobilization instead.
Good article in The Atlantic about how badly the West and everyone else so overestimated Russia’s competence and quality and underestimated Ukraine’s pluckiness. No one knew how badly Russia’s military had been rotted by corruption and bad morale. Everybody - including me - assumed Russia was just going to roll over Ukraine, I’m so happy to see Russia get slapped upside the head. The article quotes Mike Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.”
Russia has only managed to shoot down TWO of Ukraine’s TB-2 drones that have been wreaking so much hell on their armor and so many other soft targets. No one knows exactly how many they’ve bought from Turkey, but they have more than gotten their money’s worth from them. And Turkey has gotten some great battle testing endorsement and probably model stepwise refinement in the process. In a cost/benefit analysis, clearly the TB-2 has been a huge benefit to Ukraine and a huge cost to Russia.
Putin is recruiting mercenaries from Syria. Let’s break this down. Syria has been torn apart by a war for years now, with Russia playing a large part in it. Putin is a friend of its leader, Bashar al-Asaad. The country hasn’t quite been reduced to the level of Afghanistan, but they’re trying. Now Putin is paying people an initial payment of $7,000 to go to Ukraine and kill. I would expect these soldiers to be poorly trained and not integrated into the rest of the Russian army, which means they’ll be used as cannon fodder and probably be given an unrestricted remit, which means more atrocities and rape. I’m hoping that, even though there’s not much of an economy in Syria anymore, word will soon get back that the $7k is not worth it and that soldier supply chain will evaporate for Putin.
Why does Putin want foreign mercenary fighters? A lot of it is that it reduces the number of ethnic Russian soldiers returning in body bags, which reduces the number of Russian mothers and family members protesting in the streets, holding large framed photos of slain family members. Russian mothers have lots of power that is hard to suppress. He starts throwing Russian mothers in prison, he starts getting a major PR problem, moreso than he has already. Second, we’re back to that Dictators Need Two Armies problem. He’s probably saving a lot of the ethnic Russian army for internal control, or control against possible aggression from adjacent countries who decide that now might be a good time to try and grab some land back from the Rodina. Finally, trying to construct a tissue-thin defense against war atrocities. “I didn’t order those war crimes, those Syrians/whoever committed them all on their own!”
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area, after digging trenches. It’s possible they have hit radioactive hot spots and suffered radiation exposure. It’s highly unlikely that these troops were trained for working in a nuclear environment or were equipped with proper detection equipment.
Sean Penn is calling for billionaires to buy Ukraine a new Air Force consisting of F-15s and F-16s. He thinks that for $300mil you can get a dozen of each and with very little retraining, their pilots will completely dominate and eliminate the invading Russian Air Force. I think he is sorely underestimating the costs and retraining required, not to mention the logistics chain required to keep them flying, but what do I know. There’s also the matter of what air fields they would fly out of: guaranteed Russia would redouble their artillery and rocket attacks on them and pulverize their runways.
In early March, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was kidnapped by Russian forces and held for five days. I’m not sure if this was the incident where another person was released and it was announced by the Russians that “this” was the mayor, a Potemkin mayor. Anyway. Ivan is now in France, making media appearances to drum up further support for Ukraine. He says Russian forces knew nothing about Ukraine or the situation they were going in to. They were becoming increasingly aggressive because their plans for a lightning victory didn’t work and the locals were not welcoming them. His kidnapping was caught on public surveillance cameras. His interrogators said “…they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I've never seen a single Nazi”. “He said that after that the soldiers told him they wanted to defend the Russian language. "I told them 95% of us speak Russian already and nobody's stopping us, so there's no problem," Fedorov said. After that, they told Fedorov they had heard that veterans of World War II were beaten during the last commemoration day. "I told them I know these men personally, because there aren't many of them left, and they're treated as heroes," he said.” The NPR article says that 29 other elected officials are still being held by the Russians. I wonder how many of them are victims of the diaspora and have been sent all over the Russian Federation.
Spring is the traditional time that Russia has its annual conscription drive for mandatory military service. Needless to say, the youth in Russia are a bit nervous.
Meanwhile, Putin is enjoying an 84% approval rating at home. Whether this is effective propaganda and news control or telling the pollsters what to report, who knows.