Ukraine Notes
We had another power outage yesterday, or I would have made my intended Thursday post. I got busy with other things and it didn't happen.
Within: Donbas fighting begins, debt defaults, Russian QAnon, and tennis not happening.
The fighting in Donbas has begun all along a 300 mile/480 km front. Missile strike still continue deep into Ukraine including to Kviv in the western part of the country. Mariupol is still besieged. The defenders in the Donbas region have had a lot of successes in pushing back the orcs in a number of places, but they are outnumbered approximately five to one, is one ratio that I heard. One big advantage that served them well was abandoning Soviet tactics and getting LOTS of NATO training.
Russia has about 60,000 troops total in the Donbas offensive. 10-20,000 of those are foreign mercenaries through the Wagner Group, and they are without armored vehicles or advanced support: just a mass of people. Russia still has the same logistics problems they were having at the start of the invasion compounded by low morale getting lower. Ukrainian resistance have been damaging railroad lines and roads, further hampering Russian resupply, and new weapons for the defenders continue to arrive.
A very grim note: apparently Putin’s army recruiters are targeting youth clubs and signing up 16 year olds and they have been put in to combat and have been dying.
Ukrainian farmers are being kept from their fields by Russian land mines, a little parting gift. Combined, Ukraine and Russia export 30% of the world’s wheat supply, another reason the Putin wants to annex it, its always been a bread basket. With the war disruption, food prices are going to be crazy for a couple of years and poor countries that rely on outside help to feed themselves are in for a lot of hurt. And it is Spring, those fields need to be planted! They are being slowly cleared, but how much will this disrupt the harvest, and how much will sanctions prevent Russia from selling its wheat?
Here’s a shocker for you - the Russian QAnon fan base is pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin! Literally up until the actual invasion their Telegram channel was saying that it wasn’t going to happen as Ukrainians and Russians are all Russian people. They’re still absolute anti-vax nutters that believe 5G causes Covid, but at least they’re respectable in this one way.
The Brits are sending Stormer anti-air missile vehicles to Ukraine. They shoot high-velocity missiles at Mach 3 and only require a crew of three. Mainly useful at low-level targets. The USA is sending a dozen or so howitzers with 40,000 rounds of ammunition. They are doing “train the trainers,” so the Ukrainians they train can go back and train others.
Noted Putin critic, political opponent, and imprisoned poisoning survivor Alexei Navalney showed a photo of a passport of a 60 y/o man with the same last name that was placed next to the body of a murdered man killed by Russian soldiers from the town that Navalney's father is from. He thinks that the man was murdered as a possible relative and as a threat/retaliation/in spite/because of who or what Navalney is in opposing Putin's regime? He says he has no idea if the person might have been related.
The Russian ambassador to the USA has not met with Putin in FIVE YEARS. If that isn’t useful for diplomacy, I don’t know what is.
Russia has a very big problem. Technically it has missed a sovereign debt payment. Because of the sanctions against it, they can no longer convert Rubles to U.S. Dollars, and they had two contracted debt payments due April 4 for a cool $650 mil. The amount isn’t a problem as they normally take in a billion dollars U.S. a day in oil and gas revenue, but they can’t convert currency right now and the contracts call for payment in U.S. Dollars! They’ve been given a 30 day extension to try to come up with the dollars, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Putin recently said that the sanctions were having no effect, I wonder what he would have said if asked about sovereign debt payments. The last time Russia defaulted on foreign debt was in 1918, something was going on inside their country, I don’t recall what. They had an internal default in ‘98, but purely internal. And keep in mind they have the Moskva to replace - certainly several billion dollars, that transport ship to overhaul, all those tanks and other pieces that they’ve donated to the Ukrainian Army that have been moved by the Ukrainian Tractor Corps. The list goes on. Putin is pouring out money and after almost two months has nothing to show for it except lots of dead bodies, broken things, and spent capitol.
They had a great joke on the Reddit page about Tractors Stealing Tanks, talking about the sinking of the Moskva. "Let me get this straight. You lost your fleet flag ship. In a land war. Against a country that has no navy?"
The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and the Committee of Management of The Championships have announced that Russian and Belarusian tennis players will not be invited to this years Wimbledon tournament. This includes the men's number 2 seed, Daniil Medvedev of Russia and women's world No. 4 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus. Medvedev has denounced the war, surprisingly the war yet continues.
It has been reported that Ukraine now has more tanks than it had at the start of the war! This comes from crews abandoning them when they got stuck or ran out of fuel, then Ukrainian farmers with tractors who know how to tow things out of mud recovering them. They get towed to depots, undergo a bit of refurbishment and refueling, and probably some new paint, and go back into service! Gotta love it. But I've mentioned this before. I still laugh when I read it.
One thing that is sad is the Ukrainian Air Force situation. The bomber squadrons stopped flying as they were suffering too many losses from the far superior Russian jets and they gave up after the first couple of days after the invasion. The Ukrainian Mig-29s have a similar story. Recently there was news that more -29s had come into Ukraine and this was supposedly good. The reality is that it is a mixed bag. First, a newer news story said that they weren't aircraft, they were "air frames", so they may have just been spares or spare parts, not complete aircraft, or aircraft not in a fully flyable state. Second, there's always the pilot problem. With such a disparity in aircraft quality between Ukraine's Mig-29s and the infinitely newer aircraft that the Russian's are flying, it is absolutely no contest if they get into a fight in the sky. The Migs turn tail and run and hope to get away and home in one piece. That is all they hope for. If there are no Russian jet fighters, they'll look for helicopters and transport planes to shoot at. But if a Mig goes down, they will usually lose the pilot unless they're lucky enough to be able to eject, then it's a crap shoot if he's able to fly again any time soon. Retraining a retired pilot is a weeks to months proposition. Training a new pilot from scratch takes YEARS. And unless you were a pilot who was part of squadron who flew with, say, an American F-16 squadron, your ability to jump into a Falcon and going zooming off to engage Russians are very slim. So giving the Ukrainian Air Force newer jets isn't a solution, and giving them more Mig-29s doesn't help much either because of the lack of pilots. Modern air defense is good, but so much of it is mostly only useful against low-level attackers. Not so useful against high-altitude bombers. Mig-29s are most useful for fighting against Mig-29s and older aircraft, largely useless against anything newer.
Within: Donbas fighting begins, debt defaults, Russian QAnon, and tennis not happening.
The fighting in Donbas has begun all along a 300 mile/480 km front. Missile strike still continue deep into Ukraine including to Kviv in the western part of the country. Mariupol is still besieged. The defenders in the Donbas region have had a lot of successes in pushing back the orcs in a number of places, but they are outnumbered approximately five to one, is one ratio that I heard. One big advantage that served them well was abandoning Soviet tactics and getting LOTS of NATO training.
Russia has about 60,000 troops total in the Donbas offensive. 10-20,000 of those are foreign mercenaries through the Wagner Group, and they are without armored vehicles or advanced support: just a mass of people. Russia still has the same logistics problems they were having at the start of the invasion compounded by low morale getting lower. Ukrainian resistance have been damaging railroad lines and roads, further hampering Russian resupply, and new weapons for the defenders continue to arrive.
A very grim note: apparently Putin’s army recruiters are targeting youth clubs and signing up 16 year olds and they have been put in to combat and have been dying.
Ukrainian farmers are being kept from their fields by Russian land mines, a little parting gift. Combined, Ukraine and Russia export 30% of the world’s wheat supply, another reason the Putin wants to annex it, its always been a bread basket. With the war disruption, food prices are going to be crazy for a couple of years and poor countries that rely on outside help to feed themselves are in for a lot of hurt. And it is Spring, those fields need to be planted! They are being slowly cleared, but how much will this disrupt the harvest, and how much will sanctions prevent Russia from selling its wheat?
Here’s a shocker for you - the Russian QAnon fan base is pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin! Literally up until the actual invasion their Telegram channel was saying that it wasn’t going to happen as Ukrainians and Russians are all Russian people. They’re still absolute anti-vax nutters that believe 5G causes Covid, but at least they’re respectable in this one way.
The Brits are sending Stormer anti-air missile vehicles to Ukraine. They shoot high-velocity missiles at Mach 3 and only require a crew of three. Mainly useful at low-level targets. The USA is sending a dozen or so howitzers with 40,000 rounds of ammunition. They are doing “train the trainers,” so the Ukrainians they train can go back and train others.
Noted Putin critic, political opponent, and imprisoned poisoning survivor Alexei Navalney showed a photo of a passport of a 60 y/o man with the same last name that was placed next to the body of a murdered man killed by Russian soldiers from the town that Navalney's father is from. He thinks that the man was murdered as a possible relative and as a threat/retaliation/in spite/because of who or what Navalney is in opposing Putin's regime? He says he has no idea if the person might have been related.
The Russian ambassador to the USA has not met with Putin in FIVE YEARS. If that isn’t useful for diplomacy, I don’t know what is.
Russia has a very big problem. Technically it has missed a sovereign debt payment. Because of the sanctions against it, they can no longer convert Rubles to U.S. Dollars, and they had two contracted debt payments due April 4 for a cool $650 mil. The amount isn’t a problem as they normally take in a billion dollars U.S. a day in oil and gas revenue, but they can’t convert currency right now and the contracts call for payment in U.S. Dollars! They’ve been given a 30 day extension to try to come up with the dollars, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Putin recently said that the sanctions were having no effect, I wonder what he would have said if asked about sovereign debt payments. The last time Russia defaulted on foreign debt was in 1918, something was going on inside their country, I don’t recall what. They had an internal default in ‘98, but purely internal. And keep in mind they have the Moskva to replace - certainly several billion dollars, that transport ship to overhaul, all those tanks and other pieces that they’ve donated to the Ukrainian Army that have been moved by the Ukrainian Tractor Corps. The list goes on. Putin is pouring out money and after almost two months has nothing to show for it except lots of dead bodies, broken things, and spent capitol.
They had a great joke on the Reddit page about Tractors Stealing Tanks, talking about the sinking of the Moskva. "Let me get this straight. You lost your fleet flag ship. In a land war. Against a country that has no navy?"
The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and the Committee of Management of The Championships have announced that Russian and Belarusian tennis players will not be invited to this years Wimbledon tournament. This includes the men's number 2 seed, Daniil Medvedev of Russia and women's world No. 4 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus. Medvedev has denounced the war, surprisingly the war yet continues.
It has been reported that Ukraine now has more tanks than it had at the start of the war! This comes from crews abandoning them when they got stuck or ran out of fuel, then Ukrainian farmers with tractors who know how to tow things out of mud recovering them. They get towed to depots, undergo a bit of refurbishment and refueling, and probably some new paint, and go back into service! Gotta love it. But I've mentioned this before. I still laugh when I read it.
One thing that is sad is the Ukrainian Air Force situation. The bomber squadrons stopped flying as they were suffering too many losses from the far superior Russian jets and they gave up after the first couple of days after the invasion. The Ukrainian Mig-29s have a similar story. Recently there was news that more -29s had come into Ukraine and this was supposedly good. The reality is that it is a mixed bag. First, a newer news story said that they weren't aircraft, they were "air frames", so they may have just been spares or spare parts, not complete aircraft, or aircraft not in a fully flyable state. Second, there's always the pilot problem. With such a disparity in aircraft quality between Ukraine's Mig-29s and the infinitely newer aircraft that the Russian's are flying, it is absolutely no contest if they get into a fight in the sky. The Migs turn tail and run and hope to get away and home in one piece. That is all they hope for. If there are no Russian jet fighters, they'll look for helicopters and transport planes to shoot at. But if a Mig goes down, they will usually lose the pilot unless they're lucky enough to be able to eject, then it's a crap shoot if he's able to fly again any time soon. Retraining a retired pilot is a weeks to months proposition. Training a new pilot from scratch takes YEARS. And unless you were a pilot who was part of squadron who flew with, say, an American F-16 squadron, your ability to jump into a Falcon and going zooming off to engage Russians are very slim. So giving the Ukrainian Air Force newer jets isn't a solution, and giving them more Mig-29s doesn't help much either because of the lack of pilots. Modern air defense is good, but so much of it is mostly only useful against low-level attackers. Not so useful against high-altitude bombers. Mig-29s are most useful for fighting against Mig-29s and older aircraft, largely useless against anything newer.