Comments seem to self close after a month. So I need a new post. 🙂
Putin hasn’t invaded yet. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.
Open thread.
420 thoughts on “No invasion yet…”
Comments are closed.
Comments seem to self close after a month. So I need a new post. 🙂
Putin hasn’t invaded yet. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.
Open thread.
Comments are closed.
Putin will invade in a day starting now.. starting now .. starting now ..starting now…..
Putin has, yet again, publicly stated his primary demand: the Ukraine must not joint NATO. If the West will not give him that, then he will take whatever steps he thinks are needed to ensure NATO forces are not stationed in the Ukraine. He could not be more clear.
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This is not complicated. 1) The Ukraine doesn’t become part of NATO, and 2) Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine. An Alzheimer’s addled president and his idiotic puppet masters are what makes it complicated.
Russell Klier (Comment #209512)
My experience at the beginning of the pandemic was a bit different than yours. I was quite sure that I would be on my own and starting planning on that basis.
One of my first efforts was to pickup my groceries that were shopped by the store. I noticed the lady in front of me get out of the car and inspect what was put in her trunk. I thought that might be overdoing it a bit and holding up traffic and thus when my turn came I waved and went home. I found five items were missing.
It took me awhile to figure out how to get those items from the store and went back to pick them up. There was still one item missing and the quality of the produce was not near my standards.
I know it was a learning curve for these stores, but it helped me make up my mind that I would take my chances with Covid-19 instead of becoming isolated. The odds at that time for someone my age of getting Covid-19 and dying were about 1 in 7. However, on looking further it was not so much my age but having conditions that are often related to age. I figured my odds were much better than 1 in 7 and therefore did not forego any family gatherings or shopping opportunities.
When I explain all this to my sons they say: yeah, but you are still old. And I reply: yeah and I am not you.
A covid update. My mother-in-law (75) continues to be symptomless. PCR came back at 17 cycles, which they judge to be high viral load. If all goes well, she was booked onto a flight for two weeks later and should still make my son’s birthday!
I don’t think the CDC’s bad behavior is partisan. The CDC seems to be tempted by the noble lie in order to push vaccines. It’s hard to do that when you are preaching from on high about science. I suppose they are attempting to thread the moral needle by collecting the data, analyzing it, and using the noble lie by omission and not publishing.
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It’s all the same to me, message manipulation that undermines trust in institutions. Somebody ought to be exposing this behavior, and my guess is somebody did and that’s why the NYT knows about it.
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How does a science institution say out loud they aren’t releasing data because of fear it might be misinterpreted? Can’t anyone ask what data is it that you think might be misinterpreted and why?
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The usual game plan here is to keep it quiet until it doesn’t matter anymore, then release it. For example, why the radio silence on the omicron specific vaccine boosters? It’s clear the vaccine efficacy has dropped for both delta and omicron. Protection from serious illness is now ~5X instead of ~20X. So what? It’s just insulting that these institutions treat the public like simpletons.
This might be a clue to what’s going on:
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Public Health Scotland pulls Covid case rate data over claims it ‘demonstrates conclusively’ that vaccines are not working
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19932323.public-health-scotland-pulls-covid-case-rate-data-claims-demonstrates-conclusively-vaccines-not-working/
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.. ahem …
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“beginning January 22, the age-standardised Covid case rate per 100,000 in Scotland was 381.5 among the unvaccinated compared to 570 in the double-vaccinated and 447 per 100,000 in the boosted.”
“A major part of the problem in Scotland is that the size of the unvaccinated population in particular is being overestimated”
“Officials accept that this will fuel claims of a “cover-up” by vaccine sceptics, but have grown increasingly concerned by the way Scotland’s data was being promoted – particularly following the Senate hearing.”
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Science! To turn a phrase, there is “no evidence” they are over counting the unvaccinated, ha ha. Those numbers are going to be exploited by skeptics, but the answer most certainly is not to hide the data. Duh. Double duh.
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What I surmise might be happening here is there are a lot of unvaccinated AND previously infected and their natural immunity is working better than the vaccines and possibly warping the numbers. I cannot tell if they are discriminating by infection status but we have all seen they have been pretending infected status is irrelevant for two years.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209519)
Vaccination might not work well in avoiding the infection with the latest variants, but if infected it certainly increases the odds of staying alive.
Some people, agencies, politicians, journalists and, yes, even scientists get so used to spinning and selecting data that they forget what good the cold hard and straight facts can do.
Tom Scharf,
“What I surmise might be happening here is there are a lot of unvaccinated AND previously infected and their natural immunity is working better than the vaccines and possibly warping the numbers.”
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Could well be the explanation.
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But just telling lies to the public is SO much easier than finding an explanation for troubling data and verifying it is correct! The vaccines do reduce the probability of serious illness and death, and there is no real doubt about that. But we also know from multiple published studies that a previous infection is ~4-5 times more protective than vaccination, at least against the delta variant. Why lie about that? It is stupid and destructive, as well as dishonest.
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That this information has remained essentially hidden from the public is a scandal of enormous proportion, and all involved should be out of a job. This is for sure *NOT* how the CDC should be operating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMzd40i8TfA
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Come January 2025, I expect many at the CDC will be fired, but not nearly enough; only congress (with a filibuster proof Republican majority in the Senate) can do that.
SteveF,
But it’s an bizarre demand because (a) they haven’t joined NATO, and (b) as a sovereign nation, Ukraine should have every right to request to join and (c) NATO should have every right to accept it.
So Putin is basically saying that “I won’t invade if I get to make major decisions about Ukraine”.
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If my neighbor were massing forces on at the end of my yard and saying “I won’t send them over as long as you don’t grill meat”, I’d consider that an act of aggression.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209518): “I don’t think the CDC’s bad behavior is partisan.”
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It is not Right-Left or Republican-Democrat partisanship per se. It is experts vs the people. The experts (and others in power) have disdain for the common people and think that lesser beings should just shut up and do as they are told. Hence it is OK to use science as a cudgel, to tell noble lies, and to manipulate data. Otherwise, the hoi polloi might get confused.
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Of course, post-Trump there is not all that much difference between Right/Left, Republican/Democrat, and authorities/public.
lucia (Comment #209523): “But it’s an bizarre demand because (a) they haven’t joined NATO, and (b) as a sovereign nation, Ukraine should have every right to request to join and (c) NATO should have every right to accept it.”
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Right, except that Putin is not actually making any demand. So we should not give in to the bizarre demand that is not even being made.
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lucia: “So Putin is basically saying that “I won’t invade if I get to make major decisions about Ukraine”.”
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But what Putin is actually saying is “I won’t invade.” Full stop.
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lucia: “If my neighbor were massing forces on at the end of my yard and saying “I won’t send them over as long as you don’t grill meat”, I’d consider that an act of aggression.”
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How does a neighbor “mass forces”? By inviting all his football player buddies over for practice? By laying out all his guns on his backyard picnic table and systematically cleaning them while making sure you see what he is doing? Would those be threats in themselves?
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Nations often use war games to send a message to an adversary. That is what Putin is doing. He is being especially obnoxious about it in the hope of getting a reaction. At a minimum, that gives him information to go in the data bank, at best he gets major concessions for almost no effort. Biden, the senile dolt that he is, has been tottering right into the trap.
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There is no reason to give Putin anything.
Lucia,
“(a) they haven’t joined NATO, and (b) as a sovereign nation, Ukraine should have every right to request to join and (c) NATO should have every right to accept it.”
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Sure, and in exactly the same sense that Cuba should be able to station Russian intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuban. Didn’t pass muster in the early 1960’s and wouldn’t pass muster now either. I think Russia is being just about as reasonable as the USA was with Cuba and Russian missiles. Yes, in theory, any sovereign country can form a military alliance with any other sovereign country. Practice is not the same as theory in this case.
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Putin is an evil, murderous thug. There are, sadly, lots of evil, murderous thug leaders in the world. That doesn’t mean Russia doesn’t have legitimate security needs in the Ukraine that the West doesn’t share. Putin is not going to back off on this one.
Mike M,
“Putin is not actually making any demand.”
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Actually, he is. He has been perfectly clear in his public statements that the Ukraine must not joint NATO. See: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/extracts-putins-speech-ukraine-2022-02-21/
“If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”
Putin is recognizing the “independence” of parts of Ukraine. What a howler. In other news the US has recognized the independence of all the Russian states.
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I think Putin is doing a slow motion invasion at 1/2 the Twitter outrage rate. All the very serious people in the US will never notice it happened.
Schneider summed up the policy/science interface back in 1988. Treading the line between being effective and honest. It seems honesty only wins when it coincides with effectiveness.
If your neighbor does, let us know. I’ll organize a Trucker protest; we’ll drive up from Alabama and grill meat and honk horns and raise all sorts of cain. Your southern allies got your back Lucia.
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uhm..
.. I don’t actually have a truck. But I can still come grill and honk in defense of ‘Murica.
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[Edit: A bouncy castle. We’ll get an inflatable bouncy castle for the protest!]
SteveF (Comment #209527): “If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”
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Is that actually a “demand”? I suppose it depends on just how you use the word. It is certainly a position that might lead to a demand. But it is not a demand in the sense of “do such and such now or else”.
SteveF,
Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is not in the slightest the same as Khruschev shipping nuclear armed missiles to their ally Cuba. NATO was organized for defense, not offense. I don’t remember NATO troops ever invading a non-NATO country. Foreign operations have always been at the request of the foreign country or under the auspices of the UN.
Now if Ukraine did join NATO and offensive missiles were deployed in the Ukraine under the auspices of NATO, that would be like Cuba. But that isn’t going to happen. If Putin can ban Ukraine from joining NATO, then Ukraine is no longer a sovereign nation. And that’s what Putin wants.
Russian Troops ordered in as peacemakers. I think Putin pushes until he gets all the way to Crimea.
Putin already has Crimea.
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It is not at all clear why he would particularly want the Donbas. That will just push Ukraine even further toward the West. And trying to gobble up all of Ukraine would leave him with a very bad case of indigestion.
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I suspect that the “peacekeeper” business is to let him test how firm the West is while having a way to back out.
MikeM
and here’s Aljezerra 3 minutes ago:
It seems there are now troops ordered into the Ukraine.
I know they are called “break away regions”, but they are Ukraine.
>Putin already has Crimea
He wants the land on both sides of it and the Ukraine shoreline of the black sea or at least up to the river. I don’t see how this doesn’t end up with a shooting war. There’s no point in sending in troops just to hold what they have. As soon as the Russian troops try to push forward, Ukraine will be forced to engage.
DeWitt,
I think you are nit-picking a bit. NATO has (as last count) about 200 nuclear weapons available. I don’t think Russia is going to exactly know where those weapons are at all times. With regard to “offensive” versus “defensive”: please tell me what exactly makes a nuclear weapon ‘defensive’. Is a nuclear weapon a deterrent? Sure it is. Defensive? I don’t think so.
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As I said before, Putin is a murderous thug, and the world would be better off without him. That is not going to change. But in this case, I don’t think Russian security concerns are without basis. It is under 500 miles from Kiev to Moscow; a few minutes of missile flight time, or 50 minutes for a ground-hugging cruise missile, which might not even be detected until it detonated in Putin’s private bathroom. Russia wants Ukraine to be more like Canada, not more like Cuba.
Mike M,
“It is not at all clear why he would particularly want the Donbas.”
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The region is majority enthic Russians who speak Russian as their first language. I suspect he doesn’t really ‘want’ the Donbas, save for that it gives him a land route to support the Crimea… which he most definitely does want.
I know they are called “break away regions”, but they are Ukraine.
MikeM
That’s how he could do it. My neighbor has guns. We get a long, but he’s a member of the NRA. If he was aiming his gun at me and saying “Promise not to shoot as long as you don’t grill meat.” I’d take that as an aggression.
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(My neighbor actually loves grilled meat and has no objection to the smell. Also, he calls our cat “Not my Cat”. “Not my Cat” goes for walks with the neighbor and his dog.)
SteveF (Comment #209538): “Russia wants Ukraine to be more like Canada”.
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Indeed. But to do that he needs to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the West, not to drive Ukraine towards the West.
SteveF,
Those weapons are owned by the US, not NATO. They are all tactical, bombs or air-launched missiles, not surface-to-surface ballistic missiles with strategic warheads. And everyone knows where they are, although the exact count is secret.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-u-s-nuclear-weapons-in-europe/
This is, as I said, nothing like the Soviet missiles in Cuba. And the possibility of storing any of these weapons in Ukraine if it were a member of NATO is precisely zero.
DeWitt,
The ~100 nuclear bombs in the NATO strategic deterrent arsenal are the B61 type, which Wikipedia describes as:
“The B61 is of the variable yield (“dial-a-yield” in informal military jargon) design with a yield of 0.3 to 340 kilotons in its various mods.”
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I don’t think 340 KT yield is very reassuring to the Russians. These bombs can be delivered by many different aircraft, including the most recent stealth fighters the USA deploys….. essentially unstoppable when going on a ground-hugging flight path. I am not suggesting NATO or the Ukraine want to attack Russia. I am suggesting that having a geographically large NATO alliance country on their boarder is a less than comfortable development for Russia, and I very much doubt Putin is going to let the Ukraine become part of NATO. Nobody is really going to try to stop him….. except maybe ethnic Ukrainians in a guerrilla war. And Putin, being a thug, is not likely to tolerate guerrilla tactics without inflicting extreme civilian retaliation.
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For the sake of the Ukranians, I sure hope cooler heads lead to a negotiated settlement.
Archive find confirms NATO’s promise of never expanding eastward
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In March 1991, the US had promised not to expand NATO eastward. “We have made it clear that we will not expand NATO beyond the Elbe,” German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog said at a meeting of the United States, Britain, France and Germany. This protocol meeting record confirms Russia’s view of limited eastward enlargement of the alliance.
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https://freewestmedia.com/2022/02/21/archive-find-confirms-natos-promise-of-never-expanding-eastward/
NATO has conducted offensive wars
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombings continued until an agreement was reached that led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo, and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force whereas the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil;[26] in Yugoslavia the operation was incorrectly called Merciful Angel (Serbian: ????????? ????? / Milosrdni an?eo) as a result of a misunderstanding or mistranslation.[27]
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NATO’s intervention was prompted by Yugoslavia’s bloodshed and ethnic cleansing of Albanians, which drove the Albanians into neighbouring countries and had the potential to destabilize the region. Yugoslavia’s actions had already provoked condemnation by international organisations and agencies such as the UN, NATO, and various INGOs.[28][29] Yugoslavia refused to sign the Rambouillet Accords which was offered as an initial justification for NATO’s use of force.[30] NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN’s approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention.
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The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.[31]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
Ed Forbes,
So only NATO is required to keep its promises, which in this case was not public information much less a formal memorandum or treaty, to a country that no longer exists? Russia, not the Soviet Union, signed the Budapest Memorandum promising to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. That’s now a dead letter too. Btw, did you read the whole article you link? The source is, to put it mildly, not exactly what you could call neutral.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea also violated the UN Charter.
Ed,
That article doesn’t say NATO would never expand. No time is given for the “promise”. So all we know is they said the told the (now defunct) USSR they wouldn’t expand at that time. They didn’t. It’s now 30 years later. The USSR doesn’t exist.
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Sure, Putin may want to interpret it as “forever and ever amen”. But we’d have to see more to know if what they said had that sort of implication.
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“Promises” like that don’t mean much unless they become treaties. If there was a treaty promising that, we wouldn’t be hearing of some secret internal letter!
Here’s the quote they escallated to “never” in the title
It doesn’t say “never”. The discussion might very well have been about the immediate future.
I think NATO has a distinct possibility of breaking up in the near future and it is not a very strong military deterrent anyway. The sticking point would have to be the agreement that an attack on one member is an attack on all members. I am not that sure that that agreement would hold up since it has not been truly tested lately.
Is it really with NATO that Putin is concerned or simply that Ukraine is getting too close to the west? There is recent talk of Putin starting with the whole of Ukraine and going from there to regain what the USSR lost. Is Putin in touch with reality?
Kenneth,
I suspect Putin is concerned Ukraine is getting too close to the west.
DeWitt, by your logic that the promises were made to a country that no longer exists, the Soviet Union, all agreements with the Soviet Union are then void.
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Strange then that Russia is still a permanent UN Security Council member with veto power when it was the Soviet Union that signed the original UN charter.
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“Following the 1943 Moscow Conference and Tehran Conference, in mid-1944, the delegations from the Allied “Big Four”, the Soviet Union, the UK, the US and the Republic of China, met for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, D.C. to negotiate the UN’s structure,[17] and the composition of the UN Security Council quickly became the dominant issue.”
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Russia is acknowledged as the rightful successor to the Soviet Union and all prior agreements are recognized as in force, such as membership on the UN Security Council.
Lucia “.. Promises” like that don’t mean much unless they become treaties. If there was a treaty promising that, we wouldn’t be hearing of some secret internal letter..”
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Off the books agreements between nations are common. For diplomatic relations, keeping ones word, and having a history of doing so, is the common currency between states.
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As for major agreements needing a official treaty, I point you to the US / Iran nuclear agreements, none of which have been submitted to the Senate for approval as a treaty. Another such agreement is the Paris Agreement on global warming, which also was not submitted to the Senate for approval as a treaty.
Iran / Paris are examples of what happens when you don’t get the actual entire government to agree to something. They lack long term viability.
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The real question is what happens next. Is Putin going to stop, or keep expanding until he is forced to stop?
Ed Forbes
Yes. That’s pretty much right.
Passive voice is doing a lot of work here.
The UN Security Council can make decisions and agreements about who assume the seat of a country that dissolves withouth that magically meaning every single agreement by every single party is magically transferred to whoever the UN Security Council transfers a seat to.
We don’t know what “the words” were, who spoke them or what other off book words were exchanged. That’s why written treaties actually matter.
I should think an agreement to never, ever, ever extend NATO past the Elbe would be “major”.
This hypothetical agreement was not only never submitted to the Senate, it appears to have never been written down by anyone. It appears to have never passed by the US president nor any elected US official. And we don’t know what the terms were. There seems to be no record.
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It’s all well and good to say off-book agreements matter. But one needs to know what the agreement actually was who actually made it, what the other terms were and so on. Having pretty much zero documents made even at the time is not really a binding agreement because no one knows what was agreed on.
Tom Scharf,
“Is Putin going to stop, or keep expanding until he is forced to stop?”
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I don’t see the Putin is “expanding”. Nothing on the ground has changed since 2014, save for building a bridge for rail and road traffic between the Crimea and Russia to avoid having to travel through Ukraine. Russia has controlled the two break-away regions since 2014, and continues to. If there has been any change, it is that Putin seems to be setting up a stronger negotiating posture: ‘I will withdraw my troops from the eastern regions if the west and Ukraine formally pledge to not have Ukraine become a NATO member and formally agree the Crimea is part of Russia, as it has been most of the time since the 1700’s.’
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I don’t know if Putin will get what he wants, but he has been very clear about what he wants. I suspect the Europeans would be happy to negotiate terms Putin will accept, and even the Ukraine might trade claims on the Crimea and future NATO membership for returned control of their eastern region, but President Alzheimer’s administration seems unwilling to negotiate at all.
This comment got sent to moderation, so here it is again:
Tom Scharf,
“Is Putin going to stop, or keep expanding until he is forced to stop?”
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I don’t see that Putin is “expanding”. Nothing on the ground has changed since 2014, save for building a bridge for rail and road traffic between the Crimea and Russia to avoid having to travel through Ukraine. Russia has controlled the two break-away regions since 2014, and continues to. If there has been any change, it is that Putin seems to be setting up a stronger negotiating posture: ‘I will withdraw my troops from the eastern regions if the west and Ukraine formally pledge to not have Ukraine become a NATO member and formally agree the Crimea is part of Russia, as it has been most of the time since the 1700’s.’
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I don’t know if Putin will get what he wants, but he has been very clear about what he wants. I suspect the Europeans would be happy to negotiate terms Putin will accept, and even the Ukraine might trade claims on the Crimea and future NATO membership for returned control of their eastern region, but President Alzheimer’s administration seems unwilling to negotiate at all.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209549): “I think NATO has a distinct possibility of breaking up in the near future and it is not a very strong military deterrent anyway.”
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Quite possible. The NATO members in eastern Europe are probably wondering if NATO would really come to their aide when push comes to shove.
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Kenneth Fritsch: “Is it really with NATO that Putin is concerned or simply that Ukraine is getting too close to the west?”
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Not sure there is much difference in practrice.
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Kenneth Fritsch: “There is recent talk of Putin starting with the whole of Ukraine and going from there to regain what the USSR lost. Is Putin in touch with reality?”
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Since it is not Putin saying that, I think the question is whether the people talking are in touch with reality.
SteveF (Comment #209557): “Putin seems to be setting up a stronger negotiating posture: ‘I will withdraw my troops from the eastern regions if the west and Ukraine formally pledge to not have Ukraine become a NATO member and formally agree the Crimea is part of Russia”.
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The US and EU might agree to that as a way to obtain peace in our time. But why would Ukraine agree? What do they gain by recognizing the annexation of Crimea? What do they gain by the withdrawing of Russian troops from the Donbas? Arguably, the occupation of the Donbas takes a problem off Ukraine’s hands.
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Of course, the West might force Ukraine to go along. If so, then Putin will have succeeded in driving a wedge between Ukraine and the West. Which I think is his real short term goal on the way to turning Ukraine into a client state.
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Biden’s overreaction with nothing to back it up is playing into Putin’s hands.
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On the other hand, we are learning that Biden’s comment about a “minor incursion” was a slip only in that he wasn’t supposed to actually say that out loud.
Mike M,
“What do they gain by recognizing the annexation of Crimea?”
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At a minimum, that would bring their political position into congruence with reality on the ground: the Crimea has been part of Russia nearly all of the time since the 1700’s, the Russians have an important military port there, the region is heavily ethnic Russian, and most of all, neither Putin nor any other Russian leader is likely going to give up the Crimea. Remember that a plebiscite in the Crimea was overwhelmingly in favor of becoming part of Russia. Post plebiscite surveys by independent organizations confirmed between 80% and 90% of Crimeans want union with Russia.
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Of course that doesn’t completely preclude negotiation on the region. Perhaps some combination of guaranteed permanent access to their port, guarantee of regional autonomy, etc. would be enough for the Russians, especially if combined with other issues. But the prospects for serious negotiations look dim.
SteveF,
So the Union should have let the South secede because likely a majority of the people living there wanted to (not counting the slaves, of course)? I don’t think so. And how do you negotiate with Putin when he has demonstrated that Russia won’t keep to agreements like the Budapest Memorandum when they become inconvenient. That at least was public. Ukraine would have been better off keeping the nuclear weapons even if they didn’t have the codes to actually use them.
Not that we’re much better, see the JCPOA, for example. But in the US, if a simple agreement signed by one President doesn’t really bind the next President. Just like that one session of Congress cannot pass a law that the another session of Congress can’t repeal. An agreement must be in the form of a treaty approved by the Senate to be the law of the land and only amending the Constitution binds future administrations.
But Obama knew that he couldn’t get the JCPOA or the Paris accords through the Senate, so he didn’t even try.
SteveF (Comment #209560): “At a minimum, that would bring their political position into congruence with reality on the ground”.
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But I don’t see how that benefits Ukraine. It is not uncommon for a political position to be at odds with reality. Such positions get maintained because there a political cost to abandoning them but nothing to be gained by doing so.
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The reality on the ground is that the annexation of Crimea will not be reversed. The political reality is that Ukraine can’t agree to that without something tangible in return.
The chance of NATO dissolving in the near future is zero. This action from Russia is reminder of why it exists in the first place. The EU wants their nearly free protection from the US. Now would be a good time for the US to demand the EU share the load more equally.
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It’s an open question on whether Putin will take over the rest of Ukraine. Germany “halting Nordstream 2” is pointless, it hasn’t even opened up yet, ha ha. Watching the EU and US politicians speak is like fingernails on chalkboards.
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Biden is about to make another speech, I think I will actually watch this one for a change. I’m expecting a blubbering carefully chosen word salad saying very seriously that “we aren’t going to really do anything”.
DeWitt, JCPOA passed Congress, with typical failure theater orchestrated by McConnell.
Russia had a deal with Bill Clinton that she would get a veto over NATO expansion and military actions. This deal was broken immediately.
This is what led to Putin speaking in favor of Bush vs Kerry, complaining that Democrats were hypocrites for talking about illegal war in Iraq.
MikeN (Comment #209564): “JCPOA passed Congress, with typical failure theater orchestrated by McConnell.”
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Congress neither approved or disapproved of the deal. The latter would have needed a 2/3 vote in both houses to have force. As DeWitt says, Obama did not even try yo get it approved as a treaty.
NATO, has become more like the UN, whereby it exists mainly for those who need a virtue signaling entity. Let us see how the UN and NATO nations react to the current crisis. If the combatants were Liechtenstein and Andorra they might be more disposed for involvement.
I am not pushing here for military involvement but simply pointing to the uselessness of these organization’s missions.
Biden: blah blah sanctions … blah blah gas prices “at the pump” (he talked about this twice?!) … blah blah … fell asleep.
DeWitt,
“So the Union should have let the South secede because likely a majority of the people living there wanted to (not counting the slaves, of course)?”
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Is there a slave trade going on in Eastern Europe that hasn’t been publicized? I doubt it. The Civil War took place mainly because of a combination of slavery and no mention in the Constitution of states withdrawing from the Union. There are zero real parallels with the Ukraine. The ethnic Russians in Crimea (and probably in the Donbas) would prefer union with Russia by large majorities.
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Mike M,
Yes, politicians often adopt formal policies which are disconnected from reality (as covid so painfully shows). But they don’t usually maintain those policies in the face of insistent reality, especially when that reality has increasing costs (Democrats are abandoning crazy covid policies as they face rising political costs).
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I don’t see that the Ukraine has anything to lose by abandoning Crimea, no matter how meager what they get in return…. it was never really Ukrainian in the first place.
This fellow explains it better than I can:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/04/in-russia-crisis-ukraine-should-trade-land-for-independence/
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If people listen to President Alzheimer’s, there is real risk of bloodshed which can easily be avoided.
SteveF,
Ukraine should trade land for independence. Yeah, that will work about as well as when they traded nuclear weapons for independence and territorial integrity. Can you say Sudetenland and peace in our time?
DeWitt,
Can you say “history doesn’t repeat itself but sometimes rhymes”?
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Sadly, there isn’t even a rhyme here. Putin does not want and will not take over the Ukraine. Hitler wanted to take over all of Europe, if only to exterminate Jews and other minorities. Putin is a murderous thug; but he is not Hitler.
SteveF (Comment #209569): “Yes, politicians often adopt formal policies which are disconnected from reality (as covid so painfully shows). But they don’t usually maintain those policies in the face of insistent reality, especially when that reality has increasing costs”
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Ukraine’s position re Crimea is not a policy since they are doing nothing about it, since there is nothing to be done. It does not really cost them anything to claim that Crimea is part of Ukraine.
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If NATO membership should ever be on the table, then there will be a cost to their claim to Crimea. That claim is incompatible with NATO membership, because Sevastopol.
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Trying to maintain actual control of the Donbas has real costs for Ukraine, which is why I said that letting de facto control pass to Russia might actually benefit Ukraine.
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SteveF: “I don’t see that the Ukraine has anything to lose by abandoning Crimea”.
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Surrendering those claims with nothing in return would likely have a massive political cost for any Ukraine politician foolish enough to do it. Otherwise, the only cost would be to surrender bargaining chips that might come in handy when it is possible to trade land for peace. That is not presently an option, as DeWitt has said.
I will add that Putin is not Hitler and Crimea is not Sudetenland. Hitler could not be appeased since he *wanted* a war. And giving up the Sudetenland was a disaster for Czechoslovakia in large part because it cost them all of their frontier defenses.
Mike M,
“Surrendering those claims with nothing in return would likely have a massive political cost for any Ukraine politician foolish enough to do it.”
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You are talking about unilateral surrender, while I am talking about negotiated final terms. Of course the Ukraine should enter negotiations with Russia (and Europe, and the USA) saying they want Crimea. But the reality (as the Ukrainians clearly know) is that they will have to abandon that position in return for other things. I guess that what I am saying is: I can see there is a negotiated resolution possible, but that negotiation is being screwed up by President Alzheimer’s administration.
SteveF (Comment #209575): “But the reality (as the Ukrainians clearly know) is that they will have to abandon that position in return for other things.”
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So what other things can they expect to get? That is what I don’t understand.
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It would be nice to say that they could get a guarantee of security in return. They already got that when they gave up their nukes. Why would this be different?
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Right now, any negotiation would be one in which one guy has a fun and the other does not. Fat chance of getting a fair trade.
Mike M “So what other things can they expect to get? That is what I don’t understand.”
Natural gas supplies for one. Once Nordstream 2 is operational, Ukraine is screwed if Russia plays hard ball.
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Ukraine is then not able to divert gas that is transferred to Europe through them, but they also lose about $3B a year in transit payments for gas going to Europe.
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The loss of transfer fees alone will severely affect their budget.
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Russia holds the hammer and will swing it hard if Ukraine doesn’t play nice to Russia. This is why I believe Ukraine is telling the US to lay off the invasion fear mongering.
SteveF,
And you know this how? Can you read Putin’s mind? I’ll play the same game of mind reading. Putin wants to restore the Russian empire that was called the Soviet Union. He wants control of all the countries that the Soviet Union used to control. One of the reason’s he’s doing it is that it keeps Russian citizens happier about the rotten life most of them have. Annexing Crimea gave a big boost to his approval rating. But that was then. He needs something new. Right now, that’s Ukraine. He won’t be satisfied until Ukraine’s government is, at a minimum, a Russian puppet.
DeWitt,
No mind reading is needed. The Russians have even handed the USA a draft treaty with specific terms. But if you think I am mind reading, then I am clearly not alone.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2021-12-28/what-putin-really-wants-ukraine
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Russia does not want a large, potentially hostile, NATO country on its border. The draft Russian treaty is an opening position, and details would need to be negotiated, of course.
I plead ignorance but my money would be on Putin invading all of Ukraine. He already had Crimea and his previous actions in Georgia and so forth show that he isn’t much of a bluffer IMO. He has Ukraine surrounded, he wants to rebuild Russia’s respect (the Olympics didn’t help…). It’s his for the taking.
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On an unrelated subject anyone with a huge weapons program like the US and Russia needs to do weapons testing in a combat environment. This is a minor point but it would be silly for Russia to have a large miltary cost economically and to not make use of it. Nobody is going to invade Russia after all.
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Any real military engagement between Russia and the west is going to be very messy. The US may very well prevail but not without taking some heavy losses along the way. This would not be an Iraq style engagement. The calculus here is there will not be a real miltary engagement. If the US was lining up 1000’s of tanks on the border Putin wouldn’t invade. He has a green light and realistically the sanctions are unlikely to mean much.
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Putin should be thinking not about the invasion but how ugly the occupation will get if the population has a will to fight, because they will get clandestine weapons from the west. All that fancy IED tech that was used in Iraq against the US (shaped charges, etc.) was imported from Iran, and my guess is the ultimate source was Russia. It’s really hard to tell how that will play out.
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However even ugly occupations are useful for testing and training the military. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria were all useful for combat hardening the military. The enemy will find your weaknesses, if they have to dig tunnels and hide in hospitals because you have total air superiority then they will.
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But Tom’s rules still applies: No matter what happens the same population will still live there when you enter and when you finally leave and likely not much will change except for passivizing some crazy dictators. The Taliban were always going to retain power in Afghanistan because they live there and the population tolerates them, they do actually try to govern in their own wicked way.
I do not think that knowing what is on Putin’s mind will help much in predicting how the latest Russian/Ukraine crisis will play out. No national leader, no matter how authoritarian, has full, and oft times much less than the public is led to believe, control over these situations. Their plans can change as the situation might require – at least in their minds.
Having said that I find it of interest that Putin as a politician and as such more interested in pragmatic than principled actions, would appear to have reverted to the Cold War mentality of the USSR and even use references czarist Russia when he talks about the Russian sphere of influence. As a practical matter Putin could have engaged with the West more as a free trader with a more open, capitalistic, and less authoritarian government. Free enterprise could have been his friend. For awhile it might have appeared that Russia could at least be heading or pulled in that direction.
Based on the current responses of the world’s most powerful nations to the current crisis why would Putin think that Russia would be in any danger from any of these nations. If the Ukraine and Russia were linked by trade and private affairs interactions, they would become closer and either’s interaction with the West would not affect that relationship.
From the West’s actions, I think the holdover NATO from the Cold War is a major impediment to better trade and relationships with Russia and not because it is a military threat but that it signals that the Cold War is not over. NATO is a waste of resources and in the end its mission appears to be only that of signaling that the Cold War continues. The West would do better (and the US is best positioned) to set an example for the world and Russia and show what relatively freer trade and enterprise can do for their nation’s people and in the end avoid military conflicts.
Some of my libertarian colleagues tend to think that by rationalizing a potential military opponent’s view that it helps their case for the peaceful pursuits of capitalism. I am of the judgment that in truly avoiding military engagements that one has to be able to look honestly at a potential enemy and point out all the faults of that enemy and its government and still avoid going to war. It is like having unalienable individual rights that often lead to good outcomes but sometimes bad ones and thinking that we are making a case for those rights by minimizing the bad ones.
Even libertarians can be forced into a military conflict that is beyond their ideological control. Liberty is the enemy of power hungry charmless authoritarians. It’s a constant struggle between the human impulse to form tribes and the impulse to force obedience from others at the point of a sword.
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Putin knows he isn’t going to live forever and he doesn’t want to leave a semi-failed corrupt state as his lasting legacy. Russia has tried to compete in the capitalist world and the effort was lackluster and the results were poor. They do build pretty reliable rockets and their space efforts were very competitive until recently.
Russia has not been serious about trying capitalism for itself. Putin is a believer in authoritarianism and like his colleagues in China loosens the reigns of free enterprise only sufficiently to avoid the economic collapse of the authoritarian state. Those authoritarians will go to their graves believing in it.
Their systems will eventually fail and being left to their own devices to get there seems like a reasonable strategy. The US is not going to attack Russia and Russia is not going to attack the US. The authoritarian needs an enemy to give its downtrodden populace something the rally around.
I don’t often agree with the Daily Mail, but they have a pretty good take on the history
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10540829/PETER-HITCHENS-blame-arrogant-foolish-West-Ukraine-crisis.html
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“ We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner.
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Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust.”
“ Putin is a believer in authoritarianism and like his colleagues in China”
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My bad…I thought you were talking about Canada for a moment
Ed Forbes, there are some truths in that link you posted, but it is so overdone and hysterical that it appears to put the entire blame on the West for the current situation. I guess using his reasoning we could blame Putin for the West’s overreaction to the current situation that he points to. In my mind these arguements are almost circular.
Seems the Ukraine ‘crisis’ has moved to the kabuki-theater stage. Everything is exaggerated and most every pronouncement is false. The invasion is, and will remain, happening at any moment, as far as the eye can see.
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Russia does not want to invade the Ukraine. Putin *does* want security assurances from the USA and Europe (no NATO in the Ukraine!) and wants the Crimea to remain permanently part of Russia. This is not complicated. But more important for USA policy: whatever happens in the Ukraine, it is mostly irrelevant for the USA in terms of national security.
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President Alzheimer’s is not up to the task of figuring this situation out. That makes him dangerous… for the Ukraine and everyone else.
SteveF,
You and I were wrong.
Let’s go Brandon.
Well, it’s on. Russia has invaded from the North, East and South by air, land and sea. Columns of Russian heavy armor are operating on Ukrainian soil. Large explosions are on the news in Kiev, located hundreds of miles from the provinces where the ethnic Russians live. I just saw Bret Baier tell Shannon Bream on Fox News that “This is the darkest hour in Europe since World War Two.” I am not sure I agree with that but this is starting to have the same feel as other ominous events that I remember: the Hungarian Revolution [a refugee family lived on my street in Pittsburgh], the time when Sputnik went up and the time when the Berlin wall was started. It’s still too early to tell, but it is the same eerie feeling.
I’d have to disagree with the blame America first crowd. The alternate argument is that this is exactly why NATO exists. The USSR/Russia has been expansionist for the last 70 years with only the threat of force and their own lackluster economy stopping them, and of course their conquests are no fans of their rule. You don’t want to be a neighbor of Russia.
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This could go sideways pretty easily. The USSR had some seriously nasty chemical and bioweapons. I don’t know where they all were but Ukraine definitely held some of the USSR nukes. In the collapse of the USSR it wasn’t clear where all that stuff really went. If the Ukraine held on to some of that … Ugh.
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I also doubt that Russia has quite the “protect the civilians” mindset the US does, not that the US does it all that well.
This is my first Twitter war. The videos are astounding and are posting in real time. Of course there is no way to verify their veracity, but most of them sure as hell look real. https://twitter.com/search?q=Ukraine&src=trend_click&vertical=trends
It’s likely the military conquering of Ukraine will be swift, probably a few weeks, and then we will see what happens. It is lunacy to attack those kind of conventional forces head on. The worst times of the Iraq occupation were over a year after the invasion.
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Looks like Biden and the IC got this one right. Still not sure what purpose broadcasting it publicly served.
All my Ukrainian friends are posting on facebook. Naturally.
Tom,
I also disagree with the blame America crowd. Putin invaded because he wanted to.
Coincidence?… I don’t think so.
The same people who posted so many Covid predictions that turned out dead wrong also predicted Putin had no intentions of invading Ukraine.
Wow. I’ve just started reading reports on the action. Sketchy, but it sounds like Russia overwhelmed Ukraine efficiently. If air defenses are taken out and Russia has established air superiority or supremacy, I think Ukraine has already effectively lost. I read reports of a few Russian aircraft being shot down, but just a few.
Good thing we had a man in office who could stand toe to toe with Putin. :/
[Edit: Sorry I forgot to link. I’m reading at the War Zone right now.]
Of course, it was inevitable that Ukraine couldn’t stand against Russia, nobody expected it to, without significant support from NATO or the US. But wow. It looks like Russia was as well organized and prepared to take Ukraine as the US was not in exiting Afghanistan. Striking contrast in competence there.
hmm. I can’t quite get it straight if airbases and defenses in Lviv in the west [were] also attacked. I don’t think so. Ukraine might not be utterly wiped out yet. Just a matter of time and Putin’s preferences though I suspect.
[Edit: Maybe not. “Shelling reported nearby”. Unknown.]
Yeah. Mike Tobin from Fox is in Lviv. Russia hit the air defenses and air strips there too. I’ll quit spamming now, sorry. :/
A lot of information is coming out first on Twitter…. I just read that France has surrendered.
One of these three items is not satire, can you guess which!
1) John Kerry complained that Ukraine is distracting from climate change and the military conflict there might contribute ‘massive emissions’
2) President Biden has ‘unfollowed’ Putin on Twitter
3) President Biden warns Putin that he will unleash the trans admiral on him if he doesn’t stop.
Russell,
There’s no point in the people were wrong comments. It is perfectly OK to speculate on the future and to hear conflicting sides. A great philosopher once said “The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”.
What is the general mood of your Ukrainian friends? Angry? Resigned? Worried? I wonder if the Ukrainians have a will to fight the Russians. I have no idea.
Russia is going to have air supremacy and any fixed air defense or air defense radars that are foolishly left one will get taken out by radar seeking missiles. That’s very easy and the first thing you do. However there are mobile air missile systems and you move them around, turn them on briefly, fire a missile and turn them off and move. These are much harder to deal with if you don’t know where they are.
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Also shoulder fired missiles force aircraft to stay above 10K feet for the most part. Modern mobile launchers can take out aircraft much higher, such as happened when the Russians shot down an airliner recently in the same area. Russia has very good ground to air capability, but I don’t know how much of that Ukraine ended up with.
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Helicopter aren’t very useful in modern combat against a competent foe. Too vulnerable to ground fire.
Tom,
Yeah. Here are some monday morning quarterbacks bemoaning the fact that we never really set Ukraine up with much in the way of good, modern air defense.
I don’t doubt there will be resistance fighters fighting Russia in the Ukraine for some time to come. But I suspect Ukraine has effectively already fallen.
Helicopters are great for ground attack. Don’t want to face a pair of soldier who’ve strapped on an Apache! But they aren’t much use against aircraft (AFAIK), no.
It remains to be seen how long Ukraine can hold out and how much damage they can inflict on Russia. Russia has control of the air, which is an enormous advantage. But they can not operate with complete impunity since Ukraine has a supply of portable surface to air missiles.
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Ukraine also has some advantages. They are fighting on their own territory, they can put 100% of their military effort into the fight, and they can threaten the rear of the invading forces via guerilla action. If they have made good preparations to fight such a war (by no means certain) and if they fight with determination and spirit (also by no means certain) they could make the Russians pay a heavy price, like the Chechens did.
The outcome is not in doubt, it is only how much pain will Russia suffer for this militarily and whether they have planned for the much harder occupation phase. All armchair generals such as myself like to think about military strategy and battle plans when the real work is long term strategy.
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The battle will be won by superior force, but once you start sending squads of lightly defended soldiers into population centers to try to pacify the population it can get very deadly. I guarantee there isn’t a single Russian soldier looking forward to that job.
Parts of Iraq were just no go zones, Ramadi for example, those guys weren’t interested in a US occupation of their area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcXqc7ji5Ck
Here is a link to a joint army / airforce experiment that suggests helicopters can actually fight fixed wing aircraft well under at least some circumstances. So I take back what I said earlier about helicopters not being useful for that. I don’t think it’s a conventional or common use at least.
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[Edit: Tom, Mike, I basically agree with both of you.]
In other news, we bring you the sweet sound of Vox wringing their hands about Joe Rogan.
The US tried a major attack helicopter assault in Iraq early on, it was a disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala
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“Of the 29 returning Apaches (out of 31), all but one suffered serious damage. On average, each Apache had 15-20 bullet holes. One Apache took 29 hits. Sixteen main rotor blades, six tail blades, six engines, and five drive shafts were damaged beyond repair. In one squadron only a single helicopter was fit to fly. It took a month until the 11th Regiment was ready to fight again. The casualties sustained by the Apaches induced a change of tactics by placing significant restrictions on their use.[11] Attack helicopters would henceforth be used to reveal the location of enemy troops, allowing them to be destroyed by artillery and air strikes.”
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You can use helicopters after you have complete and absolute air superiority but I think the age of attack helicopters is over.
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The US through its extensive drones, JSTAR, and rumored(?) real time satellite video feeds with DVR capability can follow a mobile launch vehicle after it has been fired and take it out. Nowhere to hide. Russians might have similar capability.
Thanks Tom. Interesting link.
Well… Yeah. Getting organized to take over was what he was doing all last week. He was getting all his ducks in a row while claiming he had no intention of using all those ducks.
Mostly I’ve just seen Ukraine flags and shows of support for Ukraine. I’ll see Vlad tomorrow. We were watching Vlad and Brianna competing on a live stream. The TV was used as a monitor. My mac ran out of battery during Vlad’s competition. The live stream turned off… the real tv came on just before their Waltz. Jim and I were horrified to learn Russia had just attacked. (We’d been watching the Pro show!)
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Jim went upstairs to watch the news. We got the mac plugged into the outlet and I watched the rest of the pro-show.
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I’m pretty sure Vlad would have had the news OFF during his competition and certainly wasn’t watching it while on the floor competing. But all the competitors would have gotten the news the second they left the floor. There are soooooo many Eastern Europeans (and Ukranians) in ballroom dance that someone would have had it on.
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Vlad and Brianna had flags on their facebook. I hope to heaven’s Vlad’s Dad left Ukraine. He was there last week. Yikes!!
Taiwan may be toast too:
https://thehill.com/policy/international/china/595661-taiwan-reports-nine-chinese-aircraft-in-defense-zone
Lucia,
Yeah, I read that too. I’d like to believe we would intervene in Taiwan, like to think that all of that naval power we have sitting there in the South China Sea wouldn’t just watch China attack and do nothing. But.
Who can say.
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[Edit: Or the East China Sea, or the Philippine Sea. Thereabouts anyway.]
Vox: “What we have, then, is a problem that is both unique to the internet and reflective of the giant problem of the internet as a whole: Like the internet itself, Rogan and whatever dangerous misinformation, conspiracy theories, jerky bigotry, or offensive views he wants to serve up today are all unstoppable and essentially answerable to no one.”
“The public’s growing lack of trust in traditional journalism and legacy media outlets — a wariness evinced by media throne usurpers like Rogan himself — has made it even less likely for him to be effectively held accountable or face real consequences for repeated mistakes.”
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Usurpers, heh: “a person who takes a position of power or importance illegally or by force”
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Perhaps Vox should look up the definition of elitist entitlement. Who’s holding you accountable, Vox? Nobody, and I would guess those who deem themselves fit to judge others would take umbrage with anyone who pointed that same microscope at Vox.
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“The only problem is one of attrition: The more we let Rogan get away with it, the more we set ourselves up for something worse down the line — for something even more unacceptable to slowly become acceptable.
What’s more unacceptable than 24 n-words? We can barely imagine.”
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“We” “let” him get away with it. What a dumpster fire this article is, laughably out of touch, how unlikable can people possibly be? Personally I can imagine things worse than 24 n-words, but I guess I just have a really expansive imagination.
Tom,
Yeah. :> The wailing and the gnashing of the teeth fills me with serene joy.
Just as well spring is coming to NH. Don’t fancy chances of much Russian gas getting into Western Europe for a while.
In terms of guerilla warfare in Ukraine post-invasion, I suspect Russia would have no compunction taking action against civilians in ways that US wouldn’t do in Iraq, Afghanistan.
And Regressive twitter jumps off the cliff again:
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Cenk Uygur – “Ring-wing doesn’t love Putin just because he is an authoritarian, tyrannical leader, the love him because he’s a WHITE authoritarian leader. Race has become more important than even nationality. They’ve turned on democracy and now even America, in favor of a white warlord.”
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Maddow – “Why didn’t Russia invade Ukraine during Trump’s term? Perhaps because Putin was so pleased to see Trump pursuing goals in line with Moscow’s agenda.”
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“We watch Putin’s horrific attack on the people of Ukraine in horror. Trump and much of his GOP view this as a playbook to wage more Jan 6th attacks in the US and to end our democracy.”
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“Fox news hosts haven’t lost their minds. They knows exactly what they’re doing. They want for America what Putin has: a murderous authoritarian regime. They don’t mind the killing, they envy it. They don’t mind the economic ruin if it comes with unchecked white supremacist rule.”
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“This isn’t discussed much, but Putin very much benefits from white privilege. I just can’t see a scenario in which a black or brown man running Russia would be allowed to invade Ukraine with no devastating consequences (see Crimea in 2014). White supremacy will destroy us all.”
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Makes you wonder what the future has in store :/.
The White Warlord. Heh.
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Trump and much of his GOP views this as a playbook?!? What, launching standoff missiles from the numerous sea going assets the party has at its disposal and then a three pronged invasion with tanks? [I know, I know. The rhetorical questions. It’s all part of my playbook to end Democracy.]
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But yeah. That last commenter nailed it. Putin would never have gotten away with it if he had more melanin. Biden would have mistaken him for Corn Pop and gone in, guns blazing.
[SARC]
Tom Scharf (Comment #209606)
”It is perfectly OK to speculate on the future and to hear conflicting sides.”
Yes I agree …but these were the same individuals who made ad hominem attacks on me because of my covid views. They also made speculations during covid that proved to be wildly in error. I intend to rub their noses in it. “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Klier”
Huh.
I thought that was me, chiefly.
But that doesn’t sound like me. I don’t like talking about COVID. I don’t think I did many covid speculations or predictions.
Oh well.
mm. Perhaps I should add – I don’t bear you any ill will Russell. You seem to have ceased whatever exactly it was you were doing that I found so annoying. Or maybe it just ceased annoying me. Either way, I shrug in your general direction; not a superficial shrug just for show, but a shrug of true and sincere indifference. I hope that’s OK.
Tom
So there is a media throne. And that media has a rightful occupant. Who’d a thunk? Perhaps Vox can tell us who the rightful occupant is.
Yeah. Who is “we”? I guess Vox must think it’s Vox? Or the twitter mob? Or something?
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I think Vox is going to find they can’t exclude people from speaking and being listened to.
Russel
No one made ad hominem attacks on you. You were criticized for saying things like those who didn’t do what you wanted deserved to die, and for suggesting people should all sacrifice their lives for you specifically.
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People disagreeing with you is not an “attack”. And the disagreements weren’t ad hominem.
Russel
Hate to break it to you, but I don’t remember you being right about much of anything about Covid. Among other things, I don’t remember you making any specific testable predictions.
To be fair to Russell, some of the disagreement was quite robust and might well have contained a few choice adjectives!
Dave,
Yeah.
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Russell, if I ad hom’d you, I apologize for it now, if that helps at all (I don’t see why it would, but on the off chance). I don’t remember if I in fact did.
I can say with certainty that I thought you were trolling us here, and did my level best to discourage you. I do not believe you have been trolling us since, and of course it’s completely possible that I was wrong about it at the time as well. I do not apologize for that.
I had a grandchild born today….. my third. Right around the time rockets started falling in the Ukraine. Probably a coincidence. Mother and son doing well.
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It will be interesting to see what happens in the next week in the Ukraine. So far, no attacks on infrastructure that have been reported (power still on, cell phones and internet still operating). Different reports out of the Ukraine conflict on where most ground fighting is happening; some say mostly in the region near the Donbas, others say mostly elsewhere.
Congratulations! I hope my daughter has children at some point.
Congratulations on the new grandbaby!!
I hope Vlad’s Dad was out of Ukraine when the hot war started.
Tonight I have been tracking two aircraft:
LAGR135 Boeing KC-135R/T Stratotanker, It departed USAF Ramstein [Germany] at 5:05 ZULU and has been on station at 25,000 feet over Southwestern Poland.
Also:
NCH0222 McDonnell Douglas KC10-A Tanker It departed of Royal Air Force Mildenhall [UK] at 2:37 ZULU and has been on station at 25,000 feet over Northern Romania
I assume they are refueling US spy aircraft, but I haven’t been able to locate any. I assume the spy birds went dark when the Ukrainian airspace was closed on Wednesday.
Before that I had tracked both US Air Force’s Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint electronic surveillance aircraft and remotely piloted U.S. military vehicle RQ-4 Global Hawk flying in Ukrainian airspace. I suppose we are flying something else now.
https://www.flightradar24.com/LAGR135/2aeee5ec
Update: I did find a spy plane mission [I think]: BRIO68 a 2019 Bombardier CL-600 Challenger, N488CR. It just appeared on radar and seemed to come in off the Mediterranean Sea. It flew a path over Romania and then close to and parallel with the Ukrainian border. It’s flight path intersected the path of the US tanker. I don’t know if it was refueled or not.
It is operated by Lasai Aviation LLC which is a contractor for the US Army. It is assigned to an experimental spy plane program, called ARTEMIS.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a60693
Update 2: Another spy plane mission: Forte12 USAF RQ-4A Global Hawk, a drone. It is flying a pattern just offshore from the Crimea in the Black Sea. It’s flying at 55,00 feet and has been on station for many hours. It’s flight originated in the Mediterranean sea just off the coast of Sicily. https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE12/2aece0bb
Congrats, Steve!
Steve, congratulations to your daughter and her husband. Grandkids are great. They keep life in perspective.
SteveF, congratulations!! (I’m still without grandissue, so I can’t say if they’re great, just that everyone tells me so.)
Russell, I commend you for your digging up those aircraft. It raises the question, if those tracks are available even to civilians, does that reduce the value of the aircraft? That is, if an enemy can discover the (at least general) whereabouts of military aircraft, doesn’t that give them a terrific advantage in using their anti-aircraft weapons? Or are those tracks delayed enough in time that they’re not very useful as real-time target locators?
SteveF
Congratulations. When my daughter became pregnant, they decided they did not want to raise children in Montréal. They moved to the South Shore, 15 minutes from my home. I insisted I wanted to be the first one to call for babysitting!
Snake Island might be a good fractal snapshot of the situation. The Ukrainian military has to know the situation is hopeless and they’re fighting and dying regardless. Makes me wish we’d help them. There’s something ghoulish about sitting around watching and waiting for them to fall.
|Or are those tracks delayed enough in time that they’re not very useful as real-time target locators?
If we wanted them not to be tracked we wouldn’t be flying them with their transponders on. That wouldn’t make a difference for Russia as they should know exactly what aircraft is the region without transponders. They won’t take down one of our aircraft for the same reason we are unlikely to step in and assist directly. Hopefully we don’t end up with another airliner downed but I suspect that airlines are giving the region a very wide berth.
Andrew P,
Thanks. That makes sense; at this point in time, it’s more important to us that Russia *does* know where our aircraft are, as they [Russia] presumably don’t wish to engage such aircraft. At a point in time when conflict is more probable, we can ensure that such information is not available.
HaroldW (Comment #209643)
“That is, if an enemy can discover the (at least general) whereabouts of military aircraft, doesn’t that give them a terrific advantage in using their anti-aircraft weapons?”
Those are real time locations and altitudes. The aircraft itself determines weather or no it shows up. Sometimes aircraft will “GO Dark” when they approach the Ukraine border and just disappear from the screen, only to show up later in a different location.
Of course, Snake Island could just be propaganda, but more likely to be true than the fighter ace story.
Many allies supplying air assets… here is a spy plane on station flying over Poland just outside the Ukraine border: Luxembourg E-3 Sentry, airborne warning and control system, or AWACS
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=4d03cc
US Blackhawk helicopters appear for a while and then go dark for a while. I have seen two explanations: They are ferrying evacuees out or supplies in, but I have no evidence of either. They seem to be interacting with the “Flying Gas Stations”. British RC-135. https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c39c
I’m sure the US is keeping track of how the Russians attack by air, how stealthy their planes are, how vulnerable they are to certain missiles, how accurate their bombs are, how vulnerable their tanks are to anti-tank weapons, etc. It should be a feeding frenzy of information.
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There was one photo of a T-80 tank with it’s turret blown off. In Iraq it was no contest with older Soviet era technology. Most of the tanks here have reactive armor bolted on which should help them against anti-tank weapons. How much is unknown. The US hasn’t really been focusing much on tanks lately, apparently they see them as too vulnerable to air attack and anti-tank missiles. The economics don’t work. We still have good tech but it would be a shoot out against top of the line Russian tanks, but Russia has a lot of old stuff in inventory.
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You would not parade a line of tanks and armor down a road when the US has air superiority. Things really changed in the 1990’s, see the “highway of death”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
Tanks are the battleships of the modern world. Javelin do to tanks what stingers and other manpads did to helicopters or aircraft carriers did to the battleships. Add in hellfires on drones and you can decimate at armored division with much lower cost arms. The plains of Eastern Ukraine doesn’t really give the best cover for optimal javelin usage, but that could be a different story in urban warfare
The US is provoking the Russians in the air over the Black Sea. We are flying a Global Hawk spy plane [unmanned] at 53,000 feet, in direct violation of their No Fly Zone. It’s the only aircraft for hundreds of miles. Stay tuned. https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE11/2aefd3a1
Russel,
Thanks for the links to the flights. That’s pretty amazing to see.
NYT:
“Yes, absolutely. And I’m struck, listening to both Farah and Ross, at this sense of disbelief that all of us seem to feel. And I feel it. I see it all around me. Farah said Americans aren’t ready for this. I think she’s absolutely right. Ross called this “astonishing.” I think that’s absolutely right. This feels like a page from the 20th century. And here we are in the 21st century. And I’m struck by this sense I pick up in everyone around me that the world, we were somehow past this, that war in Europe was something that we wouldn’t see.”
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I’m not surprised at all, us oldsters grew up with a very serious Soviet menace 24/7 and the outcome of the Cold War was always in doubt until the USSR finally collapsed. Those crazy young people take it for granted that the US will always be the world’s only superpower and haven’t a clue the dirty ugly work it took to get there and how hard it is to stay there. They apparently can’t imagine anything worse than the n-word, ha ha.
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The Russians should be feared and respected, you will not beat them by Twitter shaming them for the lack of diversity in their tank crews. We have a better economy and a better military, but the Russians under Putin will only be held back by a legitimate threat of force. That’s the real world, the 1970’s called and gave us our foreign policy priorities back.
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I’m guessing this will be a major wakeup call for Europe. I think Putin is overplaying his cards here and underestimates the long term damage. This will hit people hard as shown in the comment above and Russia will be isolated from the world like never before and the conquering of Ukraine just isn’t worth it.
>I think Putin is overplaying his cards here and underestimates the long term damage. This will hit people hard as shown in the comment above and Russia will be isolated from the world like never before and the conquering of Ukraine just isn’t worth it.
I think Putin believed he will get away with this as he did Crimea or Georgia and that he only needs to withstand the sanctions. His barely disguised threat to utilize nuclear weapons is unprecedented in the modern era. The west isn’t going to go back to anywhere close to normal relations again with Russia while he is in power. That’s going to be ugly for Russia and his cronies.
Russell, adding my thanks to Lucia’s. I hadn’t seen that site before. Good stuff.
I would also point out that the US’s near energy independence / diversification over the past decades makes things much better than in the 1970’s. Back then a potential naval blockade of the Persian Gulf was an extremely serious problem. It’s even worse for Europe now since Russia directly supplies 50% of their natural gas. Europe needs to do the same. France has wisely recommitted to building nuclear power plants again.
I don’t think the long term damage is yet definable, and it’s in no way clear that it will not be in Russia’s favor overall. Plenty of actors looking to overthrow US dominance, and this might just be the opportunity they’re looking for. If it’s just Russia, then fine, but I don’t think it will be.
Tom,
Yes. A big after I posted the “this isn’t good” post, I saw France was planning more reactors. I thought “GOOOOO France!!!”
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The degree to which countries in Europe allowed themselves to become dependent on Russia for energy has been shameful. When Merkle shut down her nuclear power generation, I thought that was insane.
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People need energy. Lots of it. And dreaming that some day, in the future we’ll get it all from solar and wind might be fine and dandy. Letting yourself be on the edge of rolling brownouts and getting what fuel you can from a country led by a murderous thug is nutty.
Ukraine hadn’t been allowed to join NATO, ostensibly because of their political corruption, despite observations that maybe they were on the road to correcting that. So much for that — Putin will install a puppet government. Whatever political reform NATO hoped to accomplish by preventing Ukraine from joining gets thrown out the window. I’ve also read speculation that the West wanted to avoid provoking Russia. Again, so much for that. Putin doesn’t require provocation to pursue his objectives aggressively with military force, as he again demonstrates. Finally, I read that the unspoken reason is that some NATO countries wanted to develop a closer relationship with Moscow. So, effectively Ukraine is the sacrifice the West has offered Putin. Yet now the West will sanction Russia. We will not admit Ukraine to NATO. We will not fight on Ukraine’s behalf. I’m not clear what we got out of the deal though. It looks to me like we got nothing, essentially.
Sad.
mark bofill,
“Ukraine hadn’t been allowed to join NATO, ostensibly because of their political corruption, despite observations that maybe they were on the road to correcting that.”
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I’m not sure corruption was really much reduced, but we can thank Hunter and Joe for whatever reduction in corruption there was. 😉
Well, western puppet or russian puppet, there probably isn’t much difference as far as corruption goes, just who it profits. I mean we can see how this works when Biden withholds a billion to get a prosecutor fired investigating corruption at an energy company his deadbeat son, and other connected individuals IIRC, just happens to receive $80k per month for “sitting on the board”. This isn’t the corruption you’re looking for. Move along. Burisma seemed to have got their money’s worth. I don’t think Ukraine was an overall winner though.
Steve,
I know right. There is something deeply perverse about that excuse when the U.S. President and his son participated and profited more or less openly from said corruption.
I think Biden should unilaterally extend a NATO provisional membership to Ukraine and have the aircraft carrier Truman start blasting the holy hell out of the invading Russian forces. There. I said it.
mark
Can he?
That’s what Jim would support too!!!
Biden spent weeks saying how we would hit Russia with the mother of all sanctions. It is now obvious that he was lying.
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Biden spent weeks claiming that the threat of sanctions would act as a deterrent. Now he claims that they were never meant as a deterrent.
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Let’s go Brandon.
Lucia,
Not by the rules, no. But he should do it anyway. What is NATO without the US military? My answer is ‘nothing’ essentially.
marck bofill,
“I think Biden should unilaterally extend a NATO provisional membership to Ukraine and have the aircraft carrier Truman start blasting the holy hell out of the invading Russian forces. There. I said it.”
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Let me know when that is going to happen. I need a week or so to relocate to Brazil. I would never recommend escalating a conflict where the other side 1) has thousands of strategic nuclear weapons, and 2) obviously cares a lot less about civilians than your side does.
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More likely is the existing government in Ukraine meets with Russia and agrees to the minimum terms Putin was asking for: forfeits Crimea, the Donbas becomes pseudo-independent, and no NATO membership ever. What else Putin might extract from the Ukraine is difficult to know, but exile of the existing political leadership (or execution) seems likely.
SteveF,
I don’t think Putin will stick to his minimum demands. Ever. At all
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I don’t think he ever intended to stick to those minimum demands under any circumstances. He was going to invade whether or not anyone conceded those in advance. He just wanted to be allowed more easily. But he was planning to come in all along.
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And he wants Ukraine. He’s always been 100% willing to lie strategically and tactically. Yeah, he says things “clearly”. They. Are. Lies.
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I may turn out wrong. But he’s seizing Ukraine if he possibly can. He’s not going to agree to not take over Ukraine unless he fails.
Both sides have nukes. If we’re cowed by that we might as well quit spending 700 billion a year on defense and give it up.
When the day comes Russia decides its ambitions are worth large scale nuclear war, there will be large scale nuclear war. Either that or everybody surrenders to Putin.
Lucia,
“He was going to invade whether or not anyone conceded those in advance. He just wanted to be allowed more easily. But he was planning to come in all along.”
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Maybe, maybe not. In any case, he was *NEVER* going to accept the status quo, and on that everyone (I think) agrees. Yet the status quo was the official position of the USA and NATO: no compromise on any of Putin’s demands.
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“But he’s seizing Ukraine if he possibly can.”
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But that is a bit like the dog that actually catches the car: Putin has to be careful what he hopes for. As Russia’s experience in Afghanistan shows, taking over a hostile country has it’s downsides, especially when a local insurgency is supplied with Stinger missiles, explosives and small arms from the West. The Ukrainians I met were adamantly opposed to Russia, and a long term insurgency seems to me more likely than not. Even murderous thugs like Putin suffer unpleasant consequences from a popular insurgency, and it would be popular in the Western Ukraine.
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I will officially wager: Putin will get the minimum items from the Ukraine he has repeatedly listed. Doesn’t matter what the USA or NATO does. Europe is utterly dependent on Russia’s natural gas. Europe can not go forward if Putin withholds his gas. Putin has 4 years worth of foreign reserves in hand, and can forgo natural gas sales as needed. He is not going to blink over sanctions.
mark bofill,
“Both sides have nukes. If we’re cowed by that we might as well quit spending 700 billion a year on defense and give it up.”
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I am old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis very clearly. The USA was in fact willing to risk nuclear war in that instance, since the alternative was accepting Russian military dominance in the Western hemisphere. Russia was not willing to take that risk in 1962. Draw whatever conclusions you want, but this I can guarantee: Russian leaders care a lot more about the Ukraine than the USA and the NATO allies do, and that is a very important factor in how the war in the Ukraine will be resolved.
Thanks Steve. You make cogent points.
It’s all academic. B.S. Biden is going to sit on his senile butt and watch Ukraine burn, I think we agree about that.
Putin can’t fail. He survives on being seen as being the strongman. Saying oops makes him appear to weak. If Zelinskky survives the night he should flip Putin’s speavh back at him and tell the Russian army to stop killing their friends and sacrificing themselves to Putin’s whims and remove him from office.
Mark wrote: “What is NATO without the US military? My answer is ‘nothing’ essentially.”
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And that is wrong. One of the reasons the EU formed was to face off against American might. Happy to act all smug and superior but unwilling to put effort into defending themselves. The US asking for border agents to send to Ukraine? WTF for? The EU is plenty capable of carrying out such a task while our southern border is a mess, but of course, that’s intentional. A shitstorm is coming. Russia may just be the first domino in the line.
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When I first heard of the “new world order” stuff on the internet back in the early 2000s, I dismissed it as silly conspuracy theory, which is what it sounded like. However, it now has its own website and is quite openly espousing the ideas these “conspiracy theories” warned of. The globalists view freedom as an impediment to their superior moral guidance and they want it gone. Bill Gates said if the world had gone the Australian route, covid could have been defeated. An example of how they know they can do better.
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The moral tyrants are rising and they have no allegiance to any country for they have the means and social circle to live anywhere.
Dave,
That’s quite interesting. I’ve never bumped into that. Can you link to support that?
DaveJR,
“Bill Gates said if the world had gone the Australian route, covid could have been defeated.”
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And if pigs could fly we would all be walking around with heavy-duty umbrellas. Gates is nuts. Highly infectious airborne viruses can’t be ‘defeated’. But factual arguments aside, the USA is NOT Australia. Nor are lots of other countries. Yup, Gates is nuts.
Mark, I believe the rationale for having nuclear weapons is that you do not need a large military for defending your nation. We have a huge military expenditure because we continue to think we need to be the world’s policeman. A nation that started a nuclear war would be committing suicide.
I think we are misguided in maintaining a large military presence in the world. That is really not why we have super power influence. It has much more to do with our relative-to-the-rest-of-the-world free economy and society.
While I feel free to criticize the US, I have no compunction in criticizing what I see going on in the rest of the world. I agree with Lucia about Putin. His rationales make little sense to me. He knows, I believe, that his authoritarian regime will not succeed or win favor in the long term with his former USSR nations, but he is obsessed with the break up of the USSR. I also do not believe that he is as tough as some people think he is. He physically looks soft these days and his pronouncements are certainly not that of calm and reasoning person.
He might not mind being isolated in the world, but I doubt that the Russian people and opposition politicians want that to happen.
mark bofill,
If you add the qualifier ‘economic’ between American and might, then I agree with DaveJR’s statement. The EU initially was 100% about the economy, not the military. There was some thought about it eventually becoming more than that, but so far, that hasn’t worked out all that well or the UK would never have left.
Kenneth,
Thanks. I don’t disagree with much of what you say. My point was merely that when both sides have nukes, if one side is hobbled by fear of escalation because of that and the other is not, then the issue is already decided. I don’t believe that Putin will live long enough and remain in power long enough to conquer the world, but there is always the next guy. And there is always going to be somebody out there looking to conquer the world. We might as well surrender now.
That being said, there’s sense in Steve’s counterarguments. I’m still thinking it though.
Thanks DeWitt. That lines up better with what I recollect about the reasoning behind the EU.
Steve,
Is it a slippery slope thing? I mean, I don’t care where the line is exactly or whether or not we can find it. Finland, Poland, divide Germany again. [Taiwan? Israel?] At some point I presume enough is enough and we say this far, no farther in your view.
What if it’s really really important to the aggressor that he conquer the world?
Or am I making some mistake?
I rhetorical question a lot. These are not rhetorical. I’d really like to know[.]
Mark wrote: “Can you link to support that?”
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I doubt it. I’d class it as an unofficial aim, but you think they weren’t/aren’t envious of American global power? They wanted a stronger position on the world stage. I’d agree with DeWitt and say that started with economics, but they have tried to create an EU military, without success. I’m sure you must have come across the smug disdain the European leftist elites, in particular, have for the US? I lived in the UK until around 2011, so I’ve heard a lot more from that side of the pond.
Thanks Dave. Actually I hadn’t, but I haven’t really spent any time interacting with Europeans over the past 10-15 years. Working in aerospace and defense these days, it seems I never have occasion to leave home. I get what you’re saying though.
Negotiations ended when the tanks rolled across the border.
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It would be foolish to pause operations before the takeover was complete. It is likely they will take the capital as quickly as possible. If it bogs down even just a little then Ukraine gains confidence and the game changes. I think Putin is basically doing a “me too” operation similar to our takeover of Iraq. Roll tanks through the capital ASAP to signal it is over. Thunder Run. Who can forget Baghdad Bob?
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A shooting war between the US and the Russians will result in a very large pile of dead people. This is not something you would wish for. Maybe their pile would be bigger, but our pile would be pretty big.
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I would not want to be in a US warship during a shooting war in the Black Sea where large numbers of land and air based anti-ship missiles are minutes away. I don’t think I would sleep well.
Anyways, a last comment and I’ll try to shut up for awhile. I don’t think Putin will back down from taking the whole of Ukraine, unless Russia really is overextended somehow or is having difficulties beyond what is publicly known. Why would he; it’s his for the taking and he’s payed the price already in sanctions. That he struck in the far west of Ukraine (Lviv) implies to me that he means to take it all. I don’t think we are going to see any sort of diplomatic solution in the end, but of course I’m not sure about any of it.
I expect there will be resistance fighters fighting in Ukraine for quite some time to come.
We’ve been a super power too long. As a people we aren’t used to our warfighters being in situations where they are as [more or less] as vulnerable as the enemy. It’s a shame in a way.
Thanks Tom.
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[Edit: I’m not wishing for a war with Russia. It’s just that I believe being ready willing and able to fight when necessary actually promotes peace in the final analysis.]
[Edit2: That and I’m predisposed to want to help Ukraine.
They’re an underdog that have been shoddily used in my view by NATO and the U.S. in the past. I don’t like sitting on my hands watching Russia wipe them out. It’s wrong.]
Does anyone know how the whole ‘the Ukrainian government is full of neo-Nazis’ came from, besides Putin? I don’t remember hearing anything of the sort until just before the invasion. Yet there were several Russian apologists commenting at the WSJ site that echoed that line.
The line in the sand is the NATO border. If Putin is crazy he will select the least liked NATO member and invade there with overwhelming force. That’s just crazy though, Russia just doesn’t have the means to support a large European wide conflict. Nobody wants Russia to be their Daddy, nobody. They have been there, done that. Life under the Russian thumb has no credible story to tell.
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If NATO crossed the Russian border then it goes nuclear, if Russia invades western Europe or the US then it goes nuclear. Otherwise this is just a hobby of conventional warfare for everyone and Ukraine et. al. are pawns.
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Putin is now committed, there is no way out of completing the military action without looking weak. Once that is done then a messy occupation likely awaits. I think Putin went too far this time.
mark bofill,
An attack on a nato country would for sure trigger a NATO military response. There is no slippery slope.
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WRT Taiwan: More complicated, but the USA, not to mention Japan and other countries, has infinitely more strategic interest in Taiwan than in Ukraine. I believe the USA would actively oppose China trying to take over Taiwan. In the long run, the USA and the rest of the world would be very foolish to remain dependent on Taiwan for critical computer chips; a sensible path would be to build lots of world class chip fabs outside China’s area of influence/interest. I am sure TSMC would be happy to help with design, construction and operation.
Thanks Steve, thanks all. I very much appreciate you sharing your views.
SteveF,
Unfortunately it takes billions of dollars and several years to build a world class chip fab like TSMC has in Taiwan. I don’t think we have that long.
The incoherent message of the day:
“Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden on Friday if they attempted to join NATO.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.”
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Babylon Bee? Nope, reality. I just don’t understand why Finland and Sweden might want to join NATO, now of all times. Maybe they want to be protected against tyrants with big armies who have demonstrated they will invade their neighbors without provocation. I’m not sure why Russia thinks they get veto power with this.
SteveF (Comment #209670): “the minimum terms Putin was asking for: forfeits Crimea, the Donbas becomes pseudo-independent, and no NATO membership ever”
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He wants way more than that. He already had Crimea. Donbas was not under Ukrainian control. There is no way that Putin is doing this to head off a theoretical possibility that Ukraine might someday join NATO.
There has been a lot of talk comparing Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan I think we need to remember that every country (except maybe Russia) has recognised Ukraine as an independent country but almost every country doesn’t recoginize Taiwan as independent — so if China decides to move on Taiwan why would countries, like the USA which doesn’t recognize Taiwan as independent, act to stop China?
Re DeWitt Payne (Comment #209693)
February 25th, 2022 at 8:09 pm
“Does anyone know how the whole ‘the Ukrainian government is full of neo-Nazis’ came from, besides Putin?”
Putin exaggerates. The Ukrain’s elected leader is Jewish. The Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian National Guard is accused of being neo-Nazi, but I doubt it’s members make up much of the resistance against the Russian invasion.
DeWitt,
Yes, time to reduce dependence on TSMC in Taiwan (and in mainland China!) grows short. It does take a couple of years to build a fab from scratch, but governments might choose to help rather than hinder construction. That this has not been actively pursued by our international affairs ‘experts’ over the past two decades is as damning a commentary about their competence as exists.
Mike M,
“He wants way more than that.”
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Hard to say what he wants. For sure he wants a cooperative government in the Ukraine, but puppet regimes are unpopular, expensive to maintain, and armed civil unrest is a real possibility. Without a permanently closed, guarded, ‘iron curtain’ type border with all the countries to Ukraine’s east, maintaining a puppet regime may not be possible. The dog has caught the car, now things get complicated.
Today there are F16 Fighting Falcons [VIPER41 and VIPER 31] Flying with the Stratotanker [LAGR250]
https://www.flightradar24.com/VIPER41/2af2c2cb
https://www.flightradar24.com/VIPER31/2af2301b
https://www.flightradar24.com/LAGR250/2af22a20
Here’s a WAG… next NATO orders a No Fly Zone over Western Ukraine [and I hate WAGs]
US still violating Russian No Fly Zone over the Black Sea with a spy drone [FORTE11]. https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE11/2af2300b
https://www.axios.com/russian-troops-invade-ukraine-encircle-kyiv-9b4acc6a-1bb1-4862-8280-11b09471608e.html
Zelensky rejects U.S. offer to evacuate:
That’s a quote for the ages.
SteveF
He may fail. But I think it’s what Putin wants. I think he’s been building for this since at least the Obama years.
“You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done”. …Kenny Rodgers
You never count your land
When you’re fighin’ the war
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the shootin’s done. ….. Russell Klier
Predicting where this will end is even more foolish than predicting covid and remember how wrong you all were on predicting covid. This could end very well… the collapse of the Putin government. It could end very badly…. Thermonuclear war. And everything in between is possible.
Russell,
I disagree. Speculating about this is fun. It costs essentially nothing. It’s entertaining. It hurts nobody to speculate. So we make wrong predictions, what of it. It’s something interesting to think and talk about.
Russell,
I agree I can’t predict how it will end.
I was worried Ukraine would have fallen by now. Volodomyr Zelensky having balls of steel is not something I knew in advance. He and that soldier who sacrificed himself both deserve the “I am not Justin Trudeau” award for bravery, honor and love of their country.
For example, I get to see where I was wrong, which is always more interesting to me than seeing where I was right. The Russians don’t appear to be doing as well as I expected. I thought Ukrainian air defense and CC systems pretty much went down the first day, but that appears not to be the case. It’s not clear to me why the Russians aren’t doing better. I’m interesting in finding out why.
Luicia,
Yeah. I didn’t either. Morale and balls of steel might have a lot to do with it.
[Edit: LOL. And a ‘I am not Justin Trudeau’ award — now that is one for the books!]
Hopeful sign…For several days I have found Turkish Air Force aircraft supporting the NATO effort. Just now a Turkish Air Force Airbus A400 M-180 is flying in. It departed from Turkey and is designated “Tactical Airlift”. I have no idea what it may be carrying. Turkey has had very close ties to Putin, so this may be significant.
https://www.flightradar24.com/TUAF608/2af2ecd3
lucia (Comment #209710): “He may fail. But I think it’s what Putin wants.”
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Indeed, his goal seems to be a puppet regime. I think that he may have fallen for his own propaganda that Ukrainians are really Russians and want to be part of Russia.
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It seems that Ukraine was caught off guard by the attack from Belarus. Did they ignore our intelligence or was our intelligence wrong?
mark bofill
Ukrainian’s having balls of steel and being willing to die may be a big factor.
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I read somewhere Putin was trying to urge Ukraining soldiers to defect and turn on their officers. That clearly ain’t happening. But… perhaps… it’s a fear of the Russian’s. I think Putin wants Ukraine. That doesn’t mean his people or soldiers want it and certainly not enough to die.
Russel,
Let’s hope the Turks come out clearly on Ukraine’s side. (Earlier reports suggested that would be who they side with.)
Ukraine is launching “Turkish-made TB2 Bayraktars, a medium-sized tactical unmanned aerial vehicle that can carry anti-tank missiles”.
(I’d read in an earlier article Turkey supplied some while the Russian’s were massing. That’s why I say earlier reports suggest Turkey sides with Ukraine.)
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/ukraines-turkish-made-drones-face-off-against-advanced-russian-military/
Russel,
https://www.flightradar24.com/TUAF608/2af2ecd3
Now says that flight has either landed or out of tracking.
Do you know if it landed? And where?
Well… yeah…
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/25/cannot-stop-russian-warships-returning-in-black-sea-turkey
Russell, I am betting that you just nailed the predicted outcome.
Zelensky
This man is eloquent.
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2022/02/the-exemplary-resilience-of-volodymyr-zelensky
Lucia,
“Now says that flight has either landed or out of tracking. Do you know if it landed? And where?”
I stopped tracking when I went out to clean the pool [!] …but it just took of from Rzeszów, in Southeastern Poland.
https://www.flightradar24.com/TUAF608/2af38558
Maybe Putin wants all of Ukraine, but he could declare victory if he only grabs the south east
Lucia,
“This man is eloquent.”
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Yes, but let’s hope he doesn’t end up dead.
P-E Harvey,
A secure land route between Russia and the Crimea may be one of his goals. Depending on a single bridge (rail plus road) to Russia to supply the Crimea has to be uncomfortable.
SteveF,
Yes. I hope he doesn’t end up dead. But it’s nice to see a countries leader not cut and run when faced with a military assault.
Sure. And he’s a thug, so his solution is to bomb threaten and then bomb the bejeezus to try to get his way.
Eastern Ukraine has significant gas reserves… could be another Putin objective. https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-foreign-investment-imports/30165068.html
Also coal reserves
SteveF,
Also, I read somewhere that Russian soldiers were in a hurry to get rid of the dam that cut the water supply to .Crimea.
Cmon man! Trudeau had to declare a national emergency just to get few truckers off his lawn, ha ha.
I keep wondering why Kyiv is still unconquered. But I begin to realize my expectations may be misplaced. Fighters in Grozny withstood the Russians for months before breaking out and fleeing to do guerilla warfare from the mountains.
There are many differences between Gronz and Kyiv. Still, it’s food for thought.
I saw a car today with lots of pro-Ukraine messages written in Russian (well using Cyrillic script anyway). This was very unusual. Most of the world is backing Ukraine here.
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I would still say we are in the “Everything is propaganda” phase of this war. The news that Russia might be bogging down is encouraging, if Ukraine stands up and fights then it will be bloody for both sides. Realistically though taking over Ukraine in 10 days instead of 5 days isn’t very meaningful.
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What I have seen of the Ukraine military doesn’t look particularly threatening to a large mechanized force. They can likely go wherever they want. However if you want to go park in the middle of a city where a motivated population has a crapload of AK-47’s then they are going to take losses. If Ukraine has a 1000 anti-tank missiles then that is a big problem for Russia, no idea what they have.
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It will be seen as a failure for Putin if he doesn’t take all of the Ukraine. There will be no spinning a withdrawal of any kind without achieving that objective now. The Russians laying waste to Kyiv, Raqqa style, won’t be taken well.
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It’s really hard to know what the Russian soldiers think about all this, just doing their jobs I would suppose.
Tons of dancers are posting pro Ukraine messages. They’ll often mention their own background (Bulgaria. Moldova. Belarus. . . . Ukraine of course.)
The New York Dance Festival put uo the Ukraine flag the day after the invasion started. Dancing has tons of Ukrainian and Russian participants; it definitely looks like the expats are more pro-Ukraine. If any Russian’s are pro-Russian on this, they are silent.
Lots of proUkraine speech. But they are still on their own in the trenches.
https://twitter.com/defencehq?s=21
Some updates/PR from the British Defense Ministry
This is the very first deployment of the NATO Response Force also this: “NATO Allies decided to enhance the NRF in 2014 by creating a “spearhead force” within it, known as the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).”
I have been impressed at their response so far… have a look at the PR.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vqyIfnsGNRU&feature=share
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CfSGPJZEprc&feature=share
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm
It’s above freezing in Ukraine, getting warmer as time goes on. I wonder if the invaders are enjoying the rasputitsa yet.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/ukraines-turkish-made-drones-face-off-against-advanced-russian-military/
Ukraine’s Turkish-made drones face off against advanced Russian military
We’ll see.
I read Russian tanks are lighter and don’t get stuck in the mud, and the Russian military has vehicles that are well adapted to traversing mud. So that probably isn’t having much impact. [Edit: Apparently there were stories about this a couple of weeks ago in various media I hadn’t read till now. Oh well!]
I was wondering if NATO covertly sent Special Forces “trainers” along with the sophisticated weapons. They normally do. All this weaponry from NATO would explain all the heavy lift aircraft I have been seeing incoming on FlightRadar. [Like that Turkish AF Airbus this AM]
With regard to an earlier discussion, the Babylon Bee nails it again:
https://babylonbee.com/news/mysterious-large-circles-on-russian-radar-turn-out-to-be-president-zelenskys-testicles
Who isn’t a fan of Zelensky at this point? What a guy!
Lucia,
“Who isn’t a fan of Zelensky at this point? What a guy!”
You may want to read his Twitter feed. https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa
Like this gem:
“Informed President of Georgia @Zourabichvili_S and Prime Minister of the Czech Republic @P_Fiala about the current situation. Concrete assistance was discussed. Grateful to our friends ???????? and ???????? for their support.”
Georgia! That’s gotta frost Putin.
Lucia,
I very much hope Zelensky survives the Russian attack; he is a real hero, in an age when heros are hard to find. That does not mean he will be around in a day or two. Whether Zelensky survives or not, I do hope the Ukrainian people are inspired by his courage and defeat Putin’s aggression, whether long or short term.
A second Turkish AF A400 Strategic Airlift aircraft in Eastern Poland TUAF605. First seen near Rzeszów.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=4b820f
https://www.radarbox.com/data/aircraft/A400
Way to go Elon!
Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @FedorovMykhailo
“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”
5:33 PM · Feb 26, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317?s=20&t=VBMxTG5IO024TllsxtIxiA
An incredible twitter thread with claims about the Russian war prep, or lack thereof:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/has-putin-botched-the-war.php
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The gist is that Putin was so sure of quick victory that they don’t have critical supplies for more than about 10 days. But impossible to tell if it is true. Odds are against it.
It’s hard for me to imagine how that could be true. In this modern day and age with all of the military transport at his disposal, after all the extensive preparations we’ve been seeing for weeks if not months, Putin cannot resupply troops less than a thousand kilometers from Moscow.
It’s a lovely fairy tale. I don’t see how it can possibly be so. Unless Russell had it right when he said maybe we are about to witness the collapse of the Putin government.
I’m sure there will be deficiencies, but some of the photos I’ve seen of Ukraine prep look like housewives and civilians wondering which side of the gun the bullet comes out of, ha. Low end Prop-oh-Ghandi. The western media isn’t really even covering the garbage that is being fed to the Russian people as a balance.
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Anyone who has played FPS videogames for more than 10 minutes knows this is a particularly bad idea:
https://www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/ukraine-4.jpg
I’d probably at least take cover behind the guard rail and recommend the group disperse a bit so a single grenade doesn’t eliminate the entire unit.
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All we really know is that Russian tanks aren’t in the center of the capital … yet. Not much else is really known.
WSJ:
“The U-turn (from Germany) was triggered by the Russian invasion, which Mr. Scholz said marked a turning point. “It is our duty to support Ukraine to the best of our ability in defending against Putin’s invading army,” Mr. Scholz said in a statement. “That is why we are delivering 1,000 antitank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to our friends in Ukraine.”
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This is really going to piss off Putin. This may seem like a fine idea at the moment, but I think the US can look forward to reprisals in kind for our future foes.
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Things do look to be boomeranging against Putin though. He has few friends.
.>Did they ignore our intelligence or was our intelligence wrong?
Their military was in a stalemate with the separatists. One of the potential outcomes from the Russian deployments, and probably the preferred one, was for ukraine to pull back from the front line and allow the separatists to secure Russia’s land bridge to Crimea without obvious Russian involvement. I agree Putin has cornered himself. He has to take out Ukraines government at this point. I think the gloves will come off now. Theyve appear to have been trying to avoid attacking infrastructure that impacts civilians. I think the rest of the power grid and telecommunications go down tomorrow. Putin can’t afford for the government to survive till Monday.
Real question: Has anyone come out on Russia’s side?
Belarus let Russians attack from their soil. But other than that, it looks like no one is on Russians side of this. Am I wrong?
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China’s dithering… right?
lucia,
As far as I can tell, you’re not wrong. Here.
There appear to be a smattering of countries that are not world powers that support Russia. Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Myanmar. link here. Nobody of any particular consequence is on Russia’s side, except for Belarus. To the extent Belarus is of consequence.
Yeah. Well. Cuba. They ain’t gonna send any troops.
China is really the only one that matters at this point. They aren’t going to join the fight with Russia, but their reluctance to condemn Putin is easily interpreted as a prelude to their intentions with Taiwan. They don’t want to get caught saying dumb things now that will haunt them later, and they generally don’t get too involved with this kind of stuff.
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There was a poll that incredibly had even 36% of Democrats saying this wouldn’t have happened under Trump (59% of all respondents agree). I think the President is irrelevant in this event, but there is an argument that Trump was crazy and much less predictable. He did bomb the sh** out of Syria as promised. Biden is so predictable he announced his non-actions before anything ever happened.
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The legacy media keeps trying to figure out a way this is Trump’s fault, or say the Republicans want Russia to win the war. Same poll says identical 88% of red and blue want Ukraine to win. It’s all rather incoherent and psychotic. They can’t let TDS go a year later even during a war in Europe that everyone can actually agree on for a change.
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For the record, Trump sent weapons to Ukraine, Obama did not. Obama had Crimea, Biden has Ukraine, nothing happened under Trump. I think this is mostly just lucky/unlucky timing but the entire Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theory just does a faceplant in the real world so the usual suspects just tie themselves in Gordian knots to try to explain it or just ignore it all. I wouldn’t be going out on a limb to suggest if Ukraine happened under Trump that the conspiracy hysteria would be at level 11.
Today [Saturday] I focused on tracking surveillance aircraft and tried to learn a little about them. It was fascinating. Not only do they see everything in the air and on the ground out to 240 KM away, but they coordinate electronically with satellites, drones, other aircraft and ground radar. They present all this info in a package for battlefield commanders. Here’s my daily tally:
RC-135V/W Rivet Joint, JAKE11 [USAF, Originated Britain]
https://www.radarbox.com/data/flights/jake11/1740541954
RC-135V/W Rivet Joint, REDEYE6 [USAF, originated Germany]
https://www.radarbox.com/data/flights/redeye6/1740756726
Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS), NAT009 [NATO, Originated, Turkey]
https://www.radarbox.com/data/registration/lx-n90448/1740916172
[Note: There were at least 3 other surveillance flights that I did not track and who knows how many more that were in dark mode that I did not see.]
Background links on the aircraft:
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104507/e-8c-joint-stars/
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_48904.htm
https://www.military.com/equipment/rc-135v-w-rivet-joint
It seems to me that one possible way out of the dilemma is if Putin loses leadership of the party.
This could happen from a heart attack , stroke or umbrella.
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Shooting one’s own people without provocation is not a very good way to make people want to join your union.-
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I thought pinching Sevastopol was a very good technique under the auspices of the second last President.
Everyone let it go ahead, condoned it by inaction as it made sense for Russia to have a naval port in the South.
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But bidding for more territory and then taking advantage of Biden’s wink wink nod nod sanctions to go for the lot is a massive calculation and possibly an overreach.
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The KGB style set up can easily cope with a moderate uprising but sending people to die shooting their own people must offend all Russians, even those in the armed services.
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I would bet Putin’s security detail has now been purged of all ex Ukrainians but they must exist at multiple levels throughout Russia.
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Will no man rid me of this base priest was said by Henry 8th.
Will no man rid me of this vile leader should be the catch cry of the Russian people.
Putin’s forces have been taking territory near the breakaway areas. Perhaps they will look to keep all this area as well as Donbass and Lunetsk, the eastern coastline.
Biden Administration was sharing intel with China months ago, that included Ukraine would be let into NATO.
Good to see MI6 on top of the situation, making sure everyone knows what’s important.
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@ChiefMI6 With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should should recognize the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022
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Introducing P: “I had to move for the job when I joined #MI6, so I was relieved to find out there was an LGBT÷ network group. Through the group I’ve made some great friends in the office and it’s reassuring to know it’s there for support if I need it.”
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Or in other words “Enough about Ukraine, lets get back to talking about me again.”
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DaveJR,
They can talk about anything they want. Baseball, hotdogs, beer, LGTBHM rights and pronouns. People aren’t going to be paying attention to much other than Ukraine right now.
Mike N,
“Biden Administration was sharing intel with China months ago, that included Ukraine would be let into NATO.”
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Link to this information?
I agree, Lucia, but it’s more than unseemly to be engaging in political advocacy using official resources and titles, never mind brushing aside a nationally important active conflict to do so. It just boggles the mind this behavior is tolerated.
DaveJR,
Yep. Unseemly. In past times, they would at least have been doing it in phone call to each other. Obviously, people who think something is important continue it during wars. But Twitter puts the conversation in public and certainly saying it that way is going to stand as an embarrassment for a long time. And the reaction may be “Why should I care about you when you care about no one else?”
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The same goes for Kerry whining that he hopes this doesn’t interfere with progress on climate change negotiations. You know… you can wait a month before moping about the slow down in climate talks when Russia invades and starts slaughtering people now. People are a hell of a lot more worried that any “dust up” in Chernobyl would spread radio active dust. Or that Putin might start specifically targeting civilians. Or chemical plants. Or what have you.
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Is this going to set back talk about everything other than Ukraine? Hell yeah! No one is talking about truckers in Canada either. Or the exploits of any Hollywood stars.
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The PR guys for any one of these groups should advise them all to say only gracious things in public, and do the rest of their planning and campaiging at private forums for at least two weeks. News cycles being what they are, that’s probably all they need. (Sadly. Or maybe I’m wrong and they need to quite down public campaigns a month.)
Putin places nuclear arsenal on “special alert”. That removes any doubt that he’s willingly threatening their use. Really don’t see a scenario where the western world accepts Russia back in the fold again with him in charge.
MikeN,
At this point, anything less than the complete conquest of Ukraine will be looked at as a defeat for Putin, IMO.
DeWitt, MikeN,
I think Putin wants the whole Ukraine. So DeWitt is right: anything less than all of Ukraine well be seen as a defeat. But honest, I want Ukraine to get back Crimea and all the “break away” regions. (Well, assuming that’s where they want to be. And they very well may. Just because Putin wanted them doesn’t mean they wanted Putin. )
Once again, the UN is shown to be entirely useless. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and cannot be removed. In theory, a country can be removed from the UN, but it requires a recommendation to the General Assembly from the Security Council, which Russia would veto. The mistake was giving the Soviet Union’s permanent seat to Russia. But I don’t see how that could have been blocked at the time.
Interesting comment on CBS this morning. It was postulated that a sovereign democratic Ukraine was a threat to Putin personally.
And Putin’s net worth was estimated at $70-200 billion. Russia is indeed a kleptocracy. It does put the Biden’s in perspective.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209757): “For the record, Trump sent weapons to Ukraine, Obama did not. Obama had Crimea, Biden has Ukraine, nothing happened under Trump. I think this is mostly just lucky/unlucky timing”.
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I don’t think it is an accident that Putin struck now. He saw his chance because of high oil prices, lack of US resolve, and weak leadership of the US and NATO. The first is at least partly on Biden due to his many actions to curb US oil and gas production. The latter is almost all on Biden. Rolling over for Putin on the missile treaty, hacking attacks, and Nord Stream. Obvious lack of NATO unity on sanctions. Military leadership more concerned with being woke than being deadly. The pitiful display in Afghanistan. Etc.
Finally! I couldn’t believe I was seeing Russian civilian aircraft in the air all over Europe yesterday.
12 minutes ago BBC: “Russian planes face near-total airspace ban to west”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60539303
Here’s something I’m definitely not watching: After the SOTU Tuesday, Stephen Colbert, with special guest Bernie Sanders will be on.
MikeM,
When Putin struck is not an accident. But I don’t think it’s all on Biden. A heck of a lot of it is Putin positioning himself to strike. I think Trump’s unpredictability might have resulted in a 1 year delay. But I think Putin would have moved.
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The fact is, not withstanding Biden we aren’t too bad on oil. Sure we could be better but our oil guys are nimble. The main fossil fuel problem has been Germany.
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NATO does lack resolve. NATO was not unified. But Trump wasn’t making that better. Trump was not unifier. He is a divider. WRT to NATO resolve, Biden is a nothing which is less bad than being a divider.
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It’s mistaken to think that if Biden is horrible, Trump would somehow be good or better. Trump was also bad. And this has been coming for a while.
DeWitt,
“Once again, the UN is shown to be entirely useless.”
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Of course. Nearly everything the UN does (and does not do!) is contrary to US interests, both diplomatic and economic. I can see no good reason for the UN to exist, and absolutely no reason at all for it to be headquartered in NY. It is like inviting a neighbor who’s dog craps in your yard every day to permanently reside in your living room…. with the dog. Just crazy.
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The UN should be asked to decamp and move to Canberra, Caracas, Cape Town, or Casablanca….. anywhere but in the USA. I think they would have a hard time finding a new home.
Lucia:
”Biden is a nothing which is less bad than being a divider.”
I don’t disagree, but NATO is in dire need of a strong political leader at this moment… someone to go ‘mano a mano’ with Putin [Margret Thatcher could have done it, or Ronald Reagan]. Putin may have given NATO an opportunity of historic importance. Who is gonna take up the mantle.. Not Biden or Boris or Macron… maybe Trudeau?
Not wanting to be outdone by Turkey, Hellenic Air Force C-130 inbound and landing in Southeastern Poland
https://www.flightradar24.com/HAF356R/2af5b4b8
I agree with Tom that the only deterrent that Trump presented to Russia was his unpredictability and crazy talk. I do not know what current polling would show but a good portion of the people in Europe looked more favorably towards China and Russia than the US not that long ago. Some of this had to do with their dislike of Trump, but there was a holdover of disfavor with the US after Trump left office. Putin’s latest maneuvers will probably have a reverse Trump effect on world opinion.
It would seem from that likely change that world opinion is rather fickle and probably not well informed or long lasting, but I think for what it is worth that opinion of the US is flavored negatively and primarily by what the US government does militarily and by way of economic interventions into the world economy. Where the US gains points in that opinion resides in the ideas, creativity and free associations that comes out of the private sector.
Larry Kudlow pointed out this morning that the latest three Russian incursions occurred when oil prices were at high levels and thus allowing for the financing of these military actions. One hears more the reference to Russia economy being like a gas station. Putin’s regimes were allowed to forego establishing a strong relatively free market economy to keep the Russia people satisfied, but rather could depend on selling its natural resources like gas and oil to the rest of the world. While that dependence is currently a two-way street, Russia probably has more leverage through other nations’ dependence on its natural resources than its military power. Russia’s defense budget is about 1/10 that of the US – as I recall.
Like Xi Jinping in China, I believe that Putin does not want the private sector of his nation to become more important than the power he exerts through his government. Xi in China has seen the private sector rapidly gaining influence (think Jack Ma and Alibaba) and in reaction has put forth policies to strictly regulate that sector and to favor state run enterprises. Unfortunately, these tendencies exist for governments throughout the world with an unwarranted (in my view of things) distrust of the private sector (and here I am referencing enterprises with little or no direct dependence on government). The difference is that, with the more authoritarian regimes in China and Russia, these tendencies become more overt and obvious.
I do not know how reliable polling can be in a nation that is ruled through authoritarianism but recent polls in Russia had Putin’s favorable ratings in the high 60 percentiles. A recent poll of world nations gave China’s people trusting government over private concerns by 90 percent plus. It would take either a huge mistake by a leader of these governments and/or near total condemnation by the people outside these nations to turn these numbers around. Putin might be testing those waters, but the outcome remains uncertain.
I bet that Hellenic Air Force C-130 landing in Southeastern Poland was carrying 300 Spartans each carrying a Kopis.
Russia’s military is not as effective as I thought, and Putin is not as competent as I thought. I think that’s what events are telling me.
All American Division
@82ndABNDiv
Our Paratroopers train alongside our Polish Allies and get to know each other’s equipment, tactics, and capabilities.
https://twitter.com/82ndABNDiv/status/1497226627603959816?s=20&t=_udHIMXht_tacCtCxgKx2w
Kenneth Fritsch,
If oil prices being high was a significant driver of when Putin would invade, then if Trump had been re-elected, none of the Biden administration moves to discourage oil and gas production in the US would likely have happened. Hence, oil at $100/barrel would have been somewhat, and possibly a lot, less likely. But the frackers were never going back to the heyday of fracking when profits went into new drilling.
I’m still not convinced that fracking is really a long term solution to the oil supply. Production from a fracked well drops off pretty rapidly.
Biden apologists commenting at the WSJ insist that Biden hasn’t discouraged oil and gas production. *sigh*
Lithuanian_Armed_Forces
@LTU_Army18h
Logistical operation delivering #Lithuanian military support to #Ukraine has been successfully accomplished.
stingers and javelins going to Ukraine
https://twitter.com/LTU_Army/status/1497701206164078593?s=20&t=EQ1f17SlVQFJFxD204fGTg
Holy Crapola Batman! Tank column blown to smithereens. I can’t even identify most of the remains. I hope this is verified.
https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1497931292247134212?s=20&t=6ZogydJ9yyiB1C9kn7paig
There is video of Trump speaking at the UN, complaining how Germany was becoming dependent on Russia for oil and gas. The German delegation is laughing at him.
I do not want Crimea and these breakaway areas to return to Ukraine. Without Crimea and the breakaway areas, a pro-Russian president of Ukraine will not be happening. With these areas as part of Ukraine, a pro-Russia president was elected. Obama instituted a coup to have him removed. It was tempting to hope that the lease would not be renewed and Russia would be kicked out of its base in 2017. Instead Putin took Crimea.
Similar problem with kicking Russia out of SWIFT. China and Russia could form their own system, and then the dollar collapses. This has been ongoing for years. China-Russia transactions have gone from 85% in dollars to 46%.
Nice video Russell. I should point out that “Russian equipment destroyed on side of road” can easily be from either side. Bringing a mechanized force through a city or constrained space is very dicey. Take out the lead unit and trialing unit and those in the middle are a turkey shoot.
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Things have really changed. Infantry used to use armor personnel carriers for protection, now as soon as there is an engagement the infantry has to exit the vehicles ASAP and form a barrier around the columns to protect from handheld missiles. It’s all backwards now.
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Those Javelins missiles cost $120K each, but if they take out a $1M tank then it is clearly a win. You don’t want to waste a missile on “people” but they will if necessary.
The downside of a cornered Putin with the reputation of Russia on the line combined with a motivated Ukraine fighting force is that the fight could get very long and brutal. This is the type of fight the Russians are more than willing to do.
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Chechnya 1995:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/voyna_grozniy_21.jpg
DeWitt, the market system through investors in fracking enterprises slowed down the frackers pushing the drilling when oil prices were low. There was the added stimulus for fracking drilling with the unnaturally low interest rates by way of the Federal Reserve. Low high yield bond rates were giving an unnatural impetus to drilling by smaller companies.
I invest if high yield bonds but limit it to more conservative investments at lower yields.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209788): “If oil prices being high was a significant driver of when Putin would invade, then if Trump had been re-elected, none of the Biden administration moves to discourage oil and gas production in the US would likely have happened. Hence, oil at $100/barrel would have been somewhat, and possibly a lot, less likely.”
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That is not the only factor. The Saudis, along with other Gulf states, regard Iran as pretty much an existential threat. That is why they are actively opposing Iran’s intervention in Yemen. Biden ended US support for the Saudis and their allies.
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Biden has been trying to get the Saudis to increase oil production. He has been getting the cold shoulder. Methinks those two things are connected.
Trump could repeat what some reasoning advisor gave him to say and an antagonist could get away with laughing at something as right as rain simply because in other situations Trump’s off-the-cuff statements made him appear as a buffoon.
This war was financed by gas and I find it very disappointing that the West hasn’t got the balls to sanction Russian energy. Putin
has correctly guessed that West is more interested in personal comfort than any much lauded “liberty”. Germany needs to swallow hard and restart its nuclear power stations – it was a stupid idea to shut them in the first place. At least there are signs that public opinion in Germany moving towards getting out of Russian gas. Talking to a friend in German army (with quite a few trips to Ukraine and Georgia under his belt) and he said that his countrymen are finally waking up to realisation that another war with Russia is possible. France however (conveniently distant) is still in denial.
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All that Putin got for invading Crimea was a slap with a damp tissue. If this is the best that the West can do for all-out war, then where does Putin stop? Finland? The Baltic states? Poland??? China will figure that West would rather have cheap TVs than worry too much about Taiwan independence. USA seems to be just reflecting on Ukraine situation is terms of it’s own cultural wars – Putin is getting good value for his investment in troll farms.
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I’d rather take a lot more pain from fuel prices short term than face long term consequences of Putin (and China) invading as they please. And yes, all honour to Zalensky – may he inspire more courage in the West.
Phil Scadden,
“Germany needs to swallow hard and restart its nuclear power stations – it was a stupid idea to shut them in the first place.”
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Yes they should, and should build a bunch of new nuclear plants as well. I doubt they will do either. Nor will they spend any money on making their defense forces more capable, and will continue to spend on crazy green energy…. backed by Russian gas. ‘Feckless’ seems to me too kind a word for German voters. Putin has it right: they will return, hat-in-hand, begging for more Russian gas, and they will never allow any sanctions against Russia which might interfere with the flow of gas.
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Which is not to say the other Europeans are much better. The UK has a lot of shale gas (available via fracking) but absolutely prohibits it’s recovery. The green sentiments in Europe have destroyed their collective ability to reason.
Kenneth Fritsch,
It wasn’t so much investors that stopped the frackers as the price of oil dropping below their break even level. It looks like the frackers may have learned their lesson as well as investors not giving them the money to drill without guarantees of a short term return on the investment. At the moment I believe there’s also a shortage of the equipment needed to support the drilling operations. Sand for fracking is apparently in short supply.
DeWitt,
The last I read, the breakeven price needed for a typical fracked oil well was about $50 per barrel. The ROI is very high at $90 to $100 per barrel. Fracked oil production will likely recover soon.
SteveF,
Sure the fracking output will increase. But not to where it drives the price of oil too low. Or at least it shouldn’t if the frackers have indeed learned their lesson.
DeWitt,
If sanctions against Russia actually do anything (and that is far from certain), the price of oil will probably rise. That would only make fracking more attractive. Frackers did over-produce for a while, but their chance of driving the price down significantly again seems much less likely. Production of Canadian tar-sands oil can also increase a lot at $100 per barrel, but the time frame to increase production is longer than fracking.
A while back I wrote:“This could end very well… the collapse of the Putin government. It could end very badly…. Thermonuclear war. And everything in between is possible.” At the time I didn’t think the two extremes were even remotely likely, now I think both extremes are becoming more likely, but still remote.
It’s mistaken to think that if Biden is horrible, Trump would somehow be good or better. Trump was also bad. And this has been coming for a while.
I agree with Tom that the only deterrent that Trump presented to Russia was his unpredictability and crazy talk.
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I would just like to say a few things.
Trump supported the Ukraine.
Trump supported NATO supporting itself.
He was anti war, pro diplomacy and firm on building up a strong defence force.
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Egotistical and vain?
Trash talking people?
Successful?
Nepotism?
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Those are his only faults.
(Hyperbole)
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Relentless media driven and Establishment bias and dirty tricks colour all our perspectives, to our detriment, not his.
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Biden and his son are true horrible people, the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Looking at both families from how they have brought up their children (not fair, I know) it is easy to see who has the better life ethics.
angech,
I think it would be better if you put quotation marks around what other people wrote. Your comments tend to be a bit confusing with no quote marks to distinguish between what you write and what others write.
Russell, you are too wise to be equivocating like this. Just give us a list of possible outcomes and put odds or percent chance of happening next to it. I will not hold it against you get any of wrong and in fact will handout partial credits. I might even be inclined to give to your Old Peoples Party – I would certainly exceed the age limit by a lot.
DeWitt, I thought I read where some large but minority stockholders in some of the smaller fracking companies let the management know that continuing to drill at the low oil prices could cause bankruptcy. Management was continuing to drill because they could get junk bonds that would be normally, and without the Federal Reserve intervention, at high interest rates. They were hoping for an eventual increase in the price of oil. In addition the Federal Reserve by keeping interest rates low had bond investors chasing yield that only junk bonds provided.
I also recall reading somewhere recently that fracking drilling was increasing after a pause but maybe not at a rate that the current price of oil might be thought previously to support. This is all off the top of my head and I need to do a Google search.
angech
Only? Not by a long shot. And successful is not a fault.
I think this link covers what I was attempting to say about fracking activity.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-well-backlog-shrinks-us-shale-may-upset-investors-drill-more-2021-09-14/
The fact that the media gives Biden and his family a free ride does not make Trump a better person in absolute terms.
Trump may be successful on some personal wealth level, but he has used bankruptcy to avoid paying off junk bond debt. I would not consider him a successful business man.
Restarting nuclear power stations is not easy. They go through a very expensive decommissioning process.
MikeN,
True, but my guess would be that it’s probably a lot cheaper than building a new plant from the ground up.
I think this has been a major wakeup call for the Germans.
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WSJ today: Germany to Raise Defense Spending Above 2% of GDP in Response to Ukraine War
“Decision breaks with decades of lower investment in defense than peers and a growing energy partnership with Russia”
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You don’t buildup your military and change your energy infrastructure overnight. This will take a while. Of course I can’t possibly see anything ever going wrong with a big German military expansion.
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This is just another sign Putin has misjudged the situation.
My priors are Russian successfully occupies Ukraine within a month but a well funded and increasingly lethal insurgency takes hold for the next year. Russia becomes isolated internationally. There is some chance if it gets bad enough for Russia that Putin will be removed from office one way or the other. I would say the chance of Putin’s removal is less than 25% in the next 2 years.
I would pick insurgency to target the pipelines and most russian gas to europe goes through Ukraine. Europe might have to learn to live without it. Restarting a fully decommissioned plant might be tricky but germany has a number of stations only starting that process. It also has stations apparently built but never commissioned.
27% of german total energy is from natural gas, 32% of that is russian. Loss of that would be tough but I doubt it would be crippling.
Anastasia Lenna, Beauty queen, Internet sensation, Ukrainian combatant… Who knew the Ukrainians would be so adept at using social media for war. This page of photos is slick, Madison avenue slick! [Caution- also habit forming]. She keeps posting professional photos of herself on Instagram wearing combat gear with catchy captions like “Everyone who crosses the Ukrainian border with the intent to invade will be killed!”
https://www.instagram.com/anastasiia.lenna/
SteveF
“Angech,I think it would be better if you put quotation marks around what other people wrote.”
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Sorry, lazy of me.will try to do better.
Lucia, I agree successful is not usually a fault but in Australia we have the “tall poppy” syndrome, probably in USA as well where being too successful is seen as a fault.
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Kenneth, not sure where but there is a saying that you cannot be a successful business man without having gone bankrupt at least twice.
Cheers all,
I hope someone , somewhere, has the ability to take on Putin.
The next shoe to drop on Russian aviation is the leases on their aircraft. Irish companies who lease aircraft are being required to terminate the leases on 150 -180 aircraft in the next 30 days. Over 500 or more than half of aircraft being flown by Russian airlines are leased by foreign countries.That and the restricted airspace is going to seriously hurt those companies survival chances. Have to think Putin didn’t expect the scale of sanctions he’s facing. The ones from his previous misadventures were much milder .
angech,
You can also, with just a little more effort, use HTML to delineate a quote. The format is:
<blockquote> quote </blockquote>
I used HTML to produce the less than and greater than symbols. Otherwise you wouldn’t see the HTML commands. Here’s what it looks like:
Alright, now we’re talking.
I read the EU will send warplanes as aid to Ukraine for Ukrainian pilots to fly.
Defense One quotes a retired air force head as saying Yup, the Ukrainian pilots ought to be able to operate them. A Polish MIG-29 isn’t all that different from a Ukrainian MIG-29 apparently.
Maybe Putin is facing a looong and painful grind if he really wants Ukraine.
Hmm. Here.
https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1010680/eu-nations-intend-to-supply-ukraine-with-fighter-jets-foreign-policy
The Business Insider link didn’t actually talk about the jets, my mistake.
mark bofill,
A NATO country that gives Mig-29’s to Ukraine is tempting Russian retaliation. I hope all involved have thought this through very carefully.
If Biden and NATO really believed that Russia was going to invade, then why did they not have sanctions agreed upon and ready to go? Why did they wait to get serious about military aid? The only answer I can come up with is that they did not really believe that Putin would invade. Perhaps because the intelligence was not that strong, perhaps because they really thought the threats would work, perhaps because of wishful thinking. Possibly all three.
SteveF (Comment #209828): “A NATO country that gives Mig-29’s to Ukraine is tempting Russian retaliation.”
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I don’t see how that is different from other forms of lethal aid.
Hah! Aeroflot236 commercial flight from Moscow to Verona Italy is in a pickle. I guess Italy has denied it entry. It first circled over Turkey/ Aegean Sea for a good while, then over the sea of Marma and just now seems to be heading back home. Also it took the great circle route to get there… over Kazakhstan!
https://www.flightradar24.com/AFL7236/2af85b5a
Another possible answer to my questions in (Comment #209830): They thought that if Russia did invade, Ukraine would fold so quickly that nothing the West did would matter.
Supplying stinger missiles is probably more effective than supplying Mig-29’s, and less provocative. Stinger’s a re essentially a defensive weapon; Mig-29’s? Not so much.
MikeM,
No one knows anything for sure in the future.
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Also, Biden may have believed they would invade. But some other key people might have believed Putin’s claim he was not going to do it. Specifically: The Germans really didn’t want to believe Putin was going to invade.
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It’s hard to make someone believe what is in their self interest to not believe.
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Also: people would certainly be debating what steps minimize the chance of this going nuclear. (It still might go nuclear. )
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The PR aspects have mattered a lot here. As horrible as it is for Ukraine to be on the ground a lone, NATO not having been the first beligerent is oneof the reason virtually everyone has Ukraine in their heart.
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There are lots of “what ifs” we could discuss. I don’t know the answer to most of them.
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And yes: I do think most thought Ukraine would fold quickly. No one (other than possibly Ukrainian voters) knew what an absolutely amazing leader he is. On Feb 21, the New York Times wrote “The Comedian-Turned-President Is Seriously in Over His Head”. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/ukraine-russia-zelensky-putin.html ) That might rival “Dewey Defeats Truman” as headlines go!
Here are the money quotes:
Hah!
Oh?
They end with this
Written by Olga Rudenko. Who everyone is now probabably laughing at!
[Steve,]
It’s not clear to me what Putin [could] do about it. Nuke Poland? I don’t think so. I question whether he’d even remain in power after trying an order like that. A nuclear first strike over some MIGs? His commanders would depose him.
Things could still get out of hand, but. Short of a situation that looks something plausibly like ‘NATO is going to war in a serious way with Russia’ I think he’ll find it more profitable to ignore it.
He could escalate in Ukraine. Maybe Kyiv is still unconquered because he’s trying to minimize antagonizing the population more than necessary (too late, but his rhetoric a few days ago implies he might not quite get this). He could try to take off the gloves and level the place.
Or he could pack it up.
I don’t know. But attack NATO is not on my list of expectations.
Putin could conduct conventional strikes against Poland (or whomever) [Edit: in retaliation for the MIGs]. Yet that’s not working out all that well against Ukraine; I don’t think NATO countries fear that right now.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-016cc6cbc65ae95286d825a4ebebd1c5
In othernews: they are discussing a ceasefire.
mark bofill,
“He could try to take off the gloves and level the place.”
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That is a possibility, but I think Putin understands that “war criminal” is a difficult label to get rid of. Attacking a neighbor and targeting civilian infrastructure is almost the definition of war criminal. He would never shake that label.
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Which is not to say he won’t conclude that leveling the place is his best option. I doubt it will happen, but who knows? Leveling the place means Russia will have a large hostile population on its border forever… but he still might do it.
Steve,
I agree, probably not. Maybe he just grinds on. If Russian troops encircle Kyiv it ought to fall eventually. Maybe the talks provide him with an off ramp that gives him some consolation prizes for playing and some cover for the debacle back home in Russia and he takes that off ramp.
I’ve wondered why the Russian forces seem to be doing so poorly. National Review has an interesting article. I don’t know where they get their info and if any of it is correct (could be, for all I know), but it’s still interesting.
Lucia,
“Who everyone is now probably laughing at!”
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The great thing about the NYT is the utter shamelessness. No matter how horribly wrong they are, they almost never admit grotesque mistakes, and carry on like they never made a mistake at all (eg the pee tape dossier). Has a lot to do with being run by a bunch of ‘progressive’ nincompoops. The fools who write for the NYT don’t have to be smart, insightful, nor even accurate in their reporting. They do, however, have to hold certain progressive political views; any other views lead to immediate dismissal. The NYT is, IMHO, pure crap.
The amount of lethal aid and the type of advanced weapons to be delivered is a line being crossed by the EU. It is much better to come from the EU than the US, but Putin probably isn’t going to split hairs here.
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A week ago Germany was only going to send helmets. More commonly lethal aid is smuggled in that cannot be differentiated between what Ukraine already had on hand or could be bought on the open market.
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This thing has really turned into a pile on. The Russian stock market is in a collapse. I have little doubt this was not anticipated by Putin, or at least he thought it was unlikely. Putin will not take this lightly. It would be wise to give Putin an off ramp so he doesn’t turn Kyiv into Raqqa for spite. I’m not sure how Putin can withdrawal and save face now since Putin committed himself. It looks like if he occupies Ukraine he will be in for a high tech insurgency.
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If Ukraine gets these weapons this could turn into a real ugly slog. 1000 missiles hitting vehicles is not Nintendo, it is blood and guts. The Russians will run out of precision weapons fairly quickly (weeks? months?) and then it will be old school artillery into cities if they fail to take them early. High tech precision weapons get all the attention but 50 pieces of artillery can go boom-boom-boom-boom all day long and the ammo is way cheaper. ~65% of combat casualties in WWII were from artillery. Things may have changed since then.
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If I’m Russia I would go for a full scale assault sooner rather than later. Really the right thing to do it withdrawal as it doesn’t look promising in the long term, but human emotion will no doubt drive decision making.
Yeah. Turkey has changed its mind about limiting Russ[ia]n warship access to the Black Sea. I don’t know if it’s the perception that Russia is flailing, or sympathy for the courageous resistance of the Ukrainians, or what. But I agree. Pile on.
Stingers have altitude limits (~10K feet) that prevents them from being used against most advanced jet fighters. There’s a reason you rarely actually see US warplanes in the sky in combat zones recently. They have to fly above the limits of these type of systems. They are useful against helicopters and some ground support warplanes.
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The US would never give anyone but its very best friends a missile capable of shooting down its own planes. The Russians have plenty of large ground to air missile systems, example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system
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They shot down Francis Gary Powers at 70K feet in the 1960’s so they have capability. These guys know rockets.
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The US has been doing lots of work in anti ballistic missile defense so its capabilities to shoot down planes is pretty advanced. If we gave those to Ukraine it would clear the skies. I very much doubt that is going to happen.
mark bofill,
The Bosporus (on the side of which I have dinned several times… tasty fresh baked bluefish) is very narrow and easily blocked by multiple means… no high tech or even military efforts are required. Much like Russian warships trying to pass under the George Washington Bridge. Russia warships simply can’t make that passage through Turkey if the Turks don’t want them to.
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That has to make Russia nervous about access to its single warm-water port in the Crimea. I am not convinced the Turks will follow through, but I certainly hope they do.
Tom Scharf,
Unless a fighter is flying so low that nobody can react to their overhead passage, the Stinger (and similar) is a real danger. Nitpick: according to Wikipedia (referencing weapon specifications) Stingers are capable to 12,000+ feet. They make mach 2.75 shortly after launch… so no low flying aircraft can possibly outrun them.
I don’t think you can do close air support from 10,000+ feet. That’s why helicopter gunships were so valuable in Vietnam as well as the A-10 Warthog. But you need air superiority for that.
mark bofill
Thanks for the national review link.
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I like this:
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I’m not surprised to read this:
I bet the conscripts don’t want to fight. I didn’t know what a large fraction they were. But they are just young guys who wanted their time over. And there’s nothing about this that would make them want to fight.
There’s a link to a twitte storm
https://twitter.com/RealCynicalFox/status/1497144257219641346
Yeah. That’s Putin’s lie. Maybe Putin convinced himself of the lie. Some kids may have been convinced also. But sorry guys, you aren’t the Allies marching in to liberate Paris!
“If Biden and NATO really believed that Russia was going to invade, then why did they not have sanctions agreed upon and ready to go?”
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All the hoopla beforehand was merely show for Germany, USA, EU etc to let Putin take over 2 pro Russian bits of Ukraine and end a stalemate.
They all knew what was going on and still do.
In this internet and espionage age the CIA etc would be incompetent not to know.
It is all a big game that went wrong for Biden when he gave knowing tacit support for Russia .
Mind you it may have gone wrong for Putin in over reaching.
Wish it would
Lucia,
Yep. I thought the part about the lack of an equivalent for a western non-commissioned officer was interesting too, I didn’t realize Russia didn’t have that. I haven’t served in the military, so I really don’t know, but I always had the impression that the NCO’s (sergeants and so on, the career grunts on the operational level) were the real experts. It’s a cliché in movies and pop culture that the new young lieutenant is well advised to pay attention to the experienced NCO guys even though he technically outranks them. Maybe this is actually true.
angech,
““If Biden and NATO really believed that Russia was going to invade, then why did they not have sanctions agreed upon and ready to go?””
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The guy has obvious dementia. He is lucky he can handle his daily toilette obligations without making a mess (…and that won’t likely be for too much longer). Looking ahead at potential sanctions against Russia is a little beyond his capability. He has surrounded himself with a gaggle of incompetent, woke nincompoops who know nothing about on-the-ground reality. So now the world suffers the consequences of his incompetence.
mark bofill,
Oh, it’s true. The life expectancy of a new second lieutenant in combat is reputed to be the lowest of the platoon he commands. Or at least that’s what we were told in ROTC in my high school.
DeWitt,
~grins~ Well, that ought to get the ROTC kids attention!
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[Edit: What you said about close air support makes sense to me. I wonder if this isn’t part of the resistance to the idea of F-35’s providing close air support. It’s hard to feel connected to a pilot miles away in a plane you can’t see or even track by radar.]
Precision guided weapons work OK from 15K feet. Mostly strap on GPS kits, laser designators, etc. They were calling strikes in a block away in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. The US has gotten much better at it, allowing ground forces to effectively talk to roaming pilots directly and transferring GPS coordinates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeqZPjuLtlw
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There is lots of combat footage out there. See the “US street fighting Iraq” on YouTube. The Kurds got some Javelins. See it take a suicide bomber out at 1:00 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4YRiJM-BLw
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Special Forces in Syria, same thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_1qqNj0bNw
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The Russians have GPS jammers, it’s a literal arms race.
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The targets adapt though, it doesn’t take a genius to try to hide somewhere a bomb can’t hit easily and they quickly learn who gets bombed and who doesn’t.
SteveF (Comment #209835): “Stinger’s a re essentially a defensive weapon; Mig-29’s? Not so much.”
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So what is the difference between offensive and defensive weapons? I think it is just whether they are used by an offensive force or one on defense.
The SC heard arguments today on the EPA’s ability to limit carbon emissions.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2021/20-1530
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The liberals are nervous but the outcome is anything but certain. Probably a tossup. It’s similar to vaccine mandates, how much authority does the regulatory agency really have in this case? Major questions etc.
mark bofill (Comment #209841): “Maybe the talks provide him with an off ramp that gives him some consolation prizes for playing and some cover for the debacle back home in Russia and he takes that off ramp.”
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But wouldn’t Ukraine then promptly join NATO? I find it hard to see an off ramp.
Maybe that’s part of the deal. I don’t know!
I do know that Ukraine has wanted to join for awhile, but so far their democracy hasn’t been deemed pure enough (in other words they are too corrupt). I read that an unspoken but prevalent factor too is that lots of NATO countries try to negotiate favorably with Moscow, and denying Ukraine NATO admittance is believed to be part of that.
Shrug. Don’t know.
Russia should seek NATO membership along with Ukraine. Why not? Theoretically NATO welcomes all comers. It can be an alliance against China!
I’m joking. Mostly.
Maybe he gets eastern Ukraine and better Black Sea access.
mark bofill,
Join NATO? If Putin were gone and Russia were well behaved?? Why not? The issue is what the Russians really want: military control of their region or economic growth. The Russians have a long history of excellent education and substantial scientific contribution. No reason they could not excel in a free market economy. I am not certain that is what they want.
Yes. But the Russians always claim NATO is a threat. Well, it’s a way of neutralizing the threat.
I’m kidding of course. Russia isn’t going to join NATO. It was just an off the wall idea that popped into my head.
I agree with your assessment. Putin’s government keeps Russia’s economy and overall advancement tightly bridled. Strangled a bit maybe.
mark bofill,
Channeling Kenneth, the Russians need only embrace a free market and less government to enjoy the free market’s many benefits. But based on their history, I am not sure that is a realistic possibility. We will see, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
Artile 2 section 1:
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
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amended to read:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States, nor any person who has exceeded the Age of seventy five years at the time of taking office.
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Solves a lot of problems, both on the left and the right.
Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Stormlight Archives’ series features a king cursed such that his intelligence and compassion vary inversely and apparently randomly day to day. He has to take a test every day to determine if he’ll be allowed to govern, and to what extent he can make decisions. If I’m remembering right he’s also restricted when he’s too intelligent, because at that point he lacks empathy to the point of psychopathy.
Steve, your idea is more practical. At least it’d weed out the dementia people. [Mostly]
I’m not watching. I’ll read about it tomorrow.
[Edit: oopps! He doesn’t deliver it till tomorrow. Well, still not watching.]
This is kind of humorous in a dark way. The BBC interviews an international relations expert from Moscow. Starts at 3:30. Yelling ensues later. Not very helpful for the cause, but realistically the BBC is doing their job here.
https://youtu.be/Cp3YqSRSSLU
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“The civilians are killed by the Ukrainians”. “Ukrainian troops must stop resisting”. He lands a couple blows on the US.
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My overall impression is that Russia just isn’t trying very hard so far. They don’t need to execute wars on Twitter time. Russia is trying to minimize casualties so far I think, but it’s not looking like that plan will be successful. They seem to be gradually ramping up pressure and hoping for a collapse.
Russia moving slow makes sense. Push forward until you meet resistance, pull back, and envelope from the flanks. Keeps casualties down on both sides and allows capture, not kills, of the Ukraine army personnel. It keeps the damage to infrastructure to a minimum.
A city can’t survive long in a modern European environment when all supply is cut off. Once food becomes short, surrenders follow shortly if it’s seen that it’s not a death sentence and captives are treated reasonably.
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Russia is playing it smart. Does not want to entirely piss off the locals as they will continue to be neighbors after all is said and done.
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Russia is not conducting war like the US. The US kills and levels everything from the air, then moves in to mop up.
Putin is doing it again, it’s so weird. Nobody is explaining this move to my satisfaction. Russian thing? An old school royalty thing?
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/02/28/gettyimages-1238829553_wide-40c7227bd8448a17661cf165300bea22d4046acb-s1600-c85.webp
I’ve read in passing he’s paranoid about Covid. Maybe that’s it.
Russia going slow on purpose huh.
So, the accounts of Putin raging about the lack of progress are false? Could be.
Shrug.
They had video on the news tonight of the Russians using cluster bombs against civilian targets. But then again, pretty much all the civilians are resisting the invasion so off with their heads.
If the Ukraine government is too corrupt to join NATO, then the orders of magnitude more corrupt Russian government would keep Russia from joining. If the rule of law actually existed in Russia, all the kleptocrat billionaires would be in jail.
I saw that picture of Putin at the conference table and thought “that man is not right in the head”. There has been much discussion of his strange behavior and the fact that he has been almost completely isolated for the last two years. The implication is that he is losing his grip on reality. But it could be just disinformation helped along by group think.
Tom,
Yeah I think COVID is the official explanation for the extreme distancing in Putin meetings. link here to a story on meeting Macron.
Cluster bombs? I’m sure you mean “submunition weapon systems optimized for soft targets”! One of the US’s versions intentionally left unexploded bomblets laying around that would go off if touched, or as I recall randomly exploded later on a timer. Made cleaning up the mess much harder. Allegedly used for runways. It’s kind of silly to outlaw weapons like this. Everyone follows those rules right up until the moment they start losing, or agrees to them because they now have a superior alternate system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M270_Multiple_Launch_Rocket_System
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If there is a 17 mile long Russian convoy (as reported by CNN) just going down the road without being beat up then the outlook is grim for Ukraine. I would expect there would be boatloads of “watch this Russian tank explode” videos for propaganda purposes if they were available so my conclusion is they just aren’t really fighting that hard yet. There is some stuff, but nothing to suggest 1000’s or even 100’s of dead soldiers. Burned out vehicles can be from either side. The US wasn’t shy about their daily bomb video briefings. Every soldier has a camera in this war, perhaps they don’t allow them to be carried.
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I’m all for the Rebel Alliance winning this thing, it’s just that The Empire usually does everywhere but Hollywood. The Russians may be going slow, hoping for engagement outside the cities where it is much more to their advantage, Ukraine may be waiting for them to enter the cities where life gets tough for an occupying force.
mark bofill,
Thanks for that. Bizarre. Can’t Putin hold his breath for a photo like LA’s mayor? I’m not sure I’d want a Kremlin doctor touching me either unless my swimming lap times were insufficient.
Hmm. I wonder if this is right. I read here that the EU has accepted Ukraine’s application to join. It’s not clear to me how the implications of this differ from the implications of joining NATO. The EU does have a mutual defense clause, but the nature of the assistance covered by this seems more ambiguous than NATO’s.
Maybe this is just posturing, maybe by the time Ukraine gets admitted the matter will be over. Maybe not.
Yep. We’ll see.
Of course, one difference in implication is we aren’t required to defend Ukraine merely because they are in the EU…… right? ( I don’t know all the obligations of NATO. But I think the mutual defense pact is for NATO countries only and being in the EU doesn’t automatically get you in NATO, right?)
I think the assumption that Ukraine will continue to exist is premature. If Russia does a lot of damage to cities, it will be remembered for a generation. I’m more and more of the opinion that this is a big mistake geopolitically and that the damage will be long lasting.
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Germany has had a wakeup call. WSJ:
“German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday made energy a central plank in his overhaul of his country’s foreign policy.”
” … he also promised to stockpile coal and gas reserves and build two new terminals to import liquefied natural gas from countries other than Russia.”
“Since Mr. Scholz’s speech, Mr. Habeck and his Green colleagues have gone further. Mr. Habeck said Sunday there are “no taboos” in the effort to wean Germany off Russia. That includes extending coal-fired power past the desired 2030 cutoff, and perhaps extending the lives of Germany’s three remaining nuclear power plants, which are due to shut down this year.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green former co-leader, put it starkly Sunday when asked if her party really would accept extended use of coal: “Yes, that is the price we’ll pay.” She went on to describe Mr. Putin’s violence toward Ukraine to explain this policy change.”
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If I was Finland or Sweden, I would go ahead and spare the expense of using FedEx overnight for the NATO application.
Tom,
Which do you think is the mistake? Admitting Ukraine in the UE? Russia invading Ukraine? Both?
Heh.
Lucia, I believe you’re correct, yeah. We could get tangled up pretty quick though. Ukraine goes EU. Poland assists UK. Russia attacks Poland. BOOM, NATO is in the game.
Let me just add this – I don’t buy that the WW III nuclear Armageddon scenario is likely. I think Putin bluffs and blusters and intimidates and it works because Russia has nuclear weapons and a military reputation that maybe it doesn’t quite deserve. I think if NATO gets involved he backs down.
He could start nuclear war. He could do that anytime anyway. If he thinks Ukraine is worth it, you gotta ask yourself why he thinks it’s worth it. If we listen to his rhetoric (which I haven’t done and need to, I’m relying on second hand reports of people who write about what he’s purported to have said) it sounds like he wants a Tzarist empire. If he’s going to go nuclear the first time he gets balked in that — we’re gonna see Russia go nuclear sooner or later.
Screw it. Let’s stop the game right now. CALL, show your cards.
A major screw up by the German government. In their haste, the politicians, and the German people in their acquiescence, to get to carbon neutral have significantly increased the time to get there. This should be a preview for other nations contemplating hurry ups, but that will only happen if the German politicians pay a price and unfortunately that does not happen very often when governments are involved. The media will certainly be complicit in helping the politicians cover their collective arses.
Politicians, being what they are, when saying things about the Russian Ukraine conflict that sound great in the moment will not in most cases have any lasting consequences. When a Green says “Yes, that is the price we’ll pay”, about burning more coal, I have to believe that it is merely momentary posturing.
I think it was a mistake by Russia to think that conquering Ukraine would only have moderate repercussions. I think this has shocked the conscience of Europe in a major way, especially those who grew up after the end of the Cold War. Leveling Grozny or Raqqa is one thing, doing it in Europe is another. Putin and Russia will not be trusted for decades and their economy will suffer direct and long term indirect effects. A risk, and a miscalculation.
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The only option in Russia is to get rid of Putin. I really don’t think people are going to forget this like Crimea.
Good to see German politicians facing up to realities. Maybe will get energy sanctions after all which I think are the only thing that really hurt Russia. They need to borrow ones of Zalenskiy’s balls.
I am not sure whether Finland would risk joining NATO. They have existed by carefully managing their relationship with Russia rather than kicking the bear. It hasnt been really within Soviet sphere so not likely something Putin thinks should belong back.
mark bofill (Comment #209887)
Why not let Putin continue to screw up in whatever his quest may be. I agree that his current aim has little to do with NATO and he has indicated that in his recent ramblings. It is hard for me to believe that most of his regimes associates have the same obsessions as he does. The long table and positioning of people at it remind of a Napoleon complex of sorts and something that must be very obvious to his associates. At some point those associates could react defiantly but I do not know when that threshold might be crossed. Serious nuclear talk could do it.
During parts of WWII, Stalin spent a lot of time depressed and in bed. Lots of political leaders images come unhinged during times of stress and especially when those images are counterfeit from the beginning.
Kenneth,
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That’s the right question to ask me, because it forces me to admit this: I don’t have a good reason from the cold statecraft perspective. It probably remains outside of our national interests to get involved. It just offends me to watch Russia snap up a weaker sovereign nation, particularly when they are giving a good accounting of themselves in the fight.
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I try to remind myself that the Ukrainians are not saints. They probably do have a system that is only a smidge less corrupt than the Russian one. They are not our close friends and allies. If the shoe was on the other foot probably they’d tell us to go F ourselves. I get all that. It only helps me to a limited extent.
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What you suggest is probably wiser from a policy standpoint.
It’s a side show, but the long table thing is a bit concerning. It’s both that he does this and that he allows publicity photos to be released of this behavior which seems mentally detached. Perhaps it’s 4-D chess again, but I doubt it.
Tom Scharf,
Putin is approaching 70. Putin has dispatched opponents by devious means (poisoning, radiation sickness, etc.). They guy probably figures anyone who doesn’t test negative for covid is a potential assassin trying to get close to him.
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Still, it is more than a little weird, since at his age (69), vaccinated, and in apparent good health, his risk of death from a covid case is very low (a percent or or so at most). Putin’s covid paranoia is not re-assuring behavior. Of course, there are lots of people who suffer covid paranoia…. they just don’t command an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.
mark bofill,
If by a smidge you actually mean at least an order of magnitude then you are correct. How many Ukrainian billionaires are there? According to Wikipedia there are eight Ukrainians with a net worth north of $1 billion. The highest net worth Ukrainian, Rinat Akhmetov at $7.6 billion would only be 14th on the list of Russian billionaires. The second highest net worth Ukrainian, Victor Pinchuk and $2.5 billion, wouldn’t make the top 25 in Russia. Pinchuk’s net worth is about half that of number 25 in Russia, Andrey Kozitsyn at $4.8 billion. The list of the top 25 in Russia doesn’t include Putin who is supposed to have the highest net worth of any Russian with more than the $19.6 billion of Aleksey Mordashov, number 1 on the Business Insider list.
Aleksey Mordashov has a higher net worth than all eight Ukrainian billionaires combined. There is also no way that someone like Zelensky could be elected President of Russia. He would either be in prison or dead.
https://www.businessinsider.com/richest-russian-oligarchs-putin-list-2018-1#1-aleksey-mordashov-196-billion-25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_oligarchs
DeWitt,
I don’t love the idea of measuring corruption by counting billionaires and wealth. But I take your point I think.
Apple stopped selling iPhones in Russia. The apocalypse is upon Russia. I expect the palace to be stormed at any moment.
Phil,
WSJ: Finland’s Drift Toward NATO Membership Accelerated by Russia’s Ukraine Invasion
Poll shows majority of Finns favor joining the Western defense alliance, preferably in lockstep with Sweden
https://www.wsj.com/articles/finlands-drift-toward-nato-membership-accelerated-by-russias-ukraine-invasion-11646163699
“Finnish political parties gathered Tuesday to discuss joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a first step to possibly ending the Nordic nation’s decadeslong nonaligned status and another sign of the tectonic shifts in Europe’s security landscape prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The parliamentary debate followed a decision Monday to send military aid to Ukraine, breaking with a longstanding Finnish policy of not sending weapons to war zones. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin at a news conference Monday called the decision historic.
Watching 200,000 Russian troops amass on the border with Ukraine, a country with eight times the population of Finland, unsettled many in the Nordic country, which was a part of Russia until 1917 and was invaded by half a million Soviet troops in 1939.”
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Europe is having a moment. We shall see how it turns out.
Tom Scharf,
“Europe is having a moment. We shall see how it turns out.”
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I am far from sanguine. Every time I have talked with Europeans, they have disappointed, spouting feckless, mealy-mouthed ‘support’ for NATO, and endless complaints about the danger of climate change and the evil of the USA for not going whole-hog green.
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Words are cheap. Actions are what counts. Lets’s see actions.
Phil
Given the series of surprises, it may turn out Zelenky has a third one to spare!!!
Tom,
I’m sure the Russian’s don’t want the Finn’s to join NATO. “Officially” the Russian’s “won” since Finland ceded some land after the winter war. But Finland stayed sovereign and Russian casualties were high.
Here is some common sense:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-wests-green-delusions-empowered?utm_source=url&s=r
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Don’t worry, President Alzheimer’s is not going to ever acknowledge, never mind embrace, common sense. Biden continues to try to reduce US gas and oil production, but will keep buying oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia. Great idea.
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And NOBODY, and certainly nobody it Europe, is really serious about punishing Russia for invading the Ukraine: all economic and banking sanctions have been carefully designed to ensure Europe continues buying Russian gas and oil, and paying for it via the SWIFT bank wire system, as if the invasion never happened. The European dishonesty is just appalling.
lucia,
The Winter War against Finland could probably be described as a Pyrrhic victory. It cost Stalin a lot with a minimal return on investment.
CDC says 43% of the USA has contracted covid, they are using a multiplier of ~2X. 95% of people over 16 in the USA have covid antibodies from vaccine and/or infection (from December).
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https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/cdc-estimates-140-million-americans-have-had-covid-about-double-case-reports/
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“The infection estimates stem from a nationwide seroprevalence surveillance program, which tested nearly 72,000 blood samples from late December to late January. The program uses blood samples sent to commercial labs for non-COVID-19 related testing, such as routine medical screens. The samples were surveyed for antibodies specifically from a SARS-CoV-2 infection—not vaccination.”
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I didn’t know they can tell the difference between infection antibodies and vaccine antibodies.
SteveF,
There’s a link in the article you linked to Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet which I like because it pretty much confirms everything I believe. I should probably, therefore be more skeptical, but it’s hard. Also, the author came to his opinions after being a true believer in everything green. And he also refers to environmentalists as being misanthropes.
Tom Scharf,
Yep. I don’t think that test capability is widely available, although it should be. A positive antibody test should be equivalent to vaccination, rather than having to do frequent infection tests. It has to do with the mucosal immune system. It produces some antibodies that are different from those produced by an injected vaccine.
That’s also why the oral Sabin polio vaccine was more effective than the injected Salk vaccine. It turns out that polio is an upper GI infection that can cause paralysis if it gets into the blood.
Wasn’t 90 some odd percent the target value of the vaccination campaign? It would seem that we have hit it and life should go back to pre-COVID conditions. People can still wear masks in public if they want to, but shouldn’t be required to shouldn’t try to shame those who don’t wear them and vice versa.
DeWitt,
Ya, I read that article when it was first published. Apostates rarely have much influence, unfortunately.
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“environmentalists as being misanthropes”
That has been obvious for decades. They want humanity an order of magnitude smaller (or MORE!), and those alive an order of magnitude poorer that today. Pure evil.
SteveF,
Misanthropic environmentalists were the villains in the 1995 movie 12 Monkeys. So yes, it’s been known, but most people don’t seem to have internalized that knowledge.
Yes, but some do. Orwell, for example, was an apostate leftie.
So far, a totally partisan campaign speech. After a few minutes of stuff on Ukraine at the beginning.
> the EU has accepted Ukraine’s application to join.
That would explain why Green parties are OK with boosting coal and gas.
Getting Ukraine into the socialist enterprise is worth the price.
The New Joe Biden: Same as the old. Just doubled down on everything that is not working.
He did sound more cogent than I expected. Yeah… some verbal blunders. (Called Ukrainians Iranians. But I think it’s a verbal problem. He still knows the difference.)
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Anyway, there’s that.
He has a regimen of pills(was it a Freudian slip for Biden to say pills)
and perhaps even an adjustment of sleep schedule in the prior week to stay alert a little longer. Causes his squinting. Looks like he was talking fast and skipping syllables and letters. ‘foo’
Yes, except for some slurred and stumbled over words, the delivery was competent. But in addition to the terrible content, the speech was badly written. Very disjointed. Dana Perino commented that you would have had much the same speech if you dropped it on the floor, picked up the pages at random, and didn’t bother to sort them. An exaggeration, but an apt one.
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Addition: As MikeN says, there were times when Biden’s delivery was very rushed. Like he needed to go to the bathroom.
Mike M.,
Maybe whoever was in charge of the teleprompter pushed the 1.5x speed button.
Well… all this is new for this administration:
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* He does say we need to deal with immigration at the border.
* He is distancing from “Defund the police”.
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I do think some of the picking up pages at random may be on purpose. After all: we’re sending oil to Europe (because… uhmmm). But then he wants to talk about climate and EV’s. So there is no discussion of getting more oil or gas out of the ground. No connection between the fuel vulnerability and Putin’s boldness.
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There’s the politically usual disconnect between big programs and how much they cost. Like it or not, if you want child care for small children, you generally want fewer than 4 kids per adult carer. If they are going f you want to pay those carers a decent wage — say more than $15/hour, their base income needs to be $31,200 a year before benefits of any sort. (15*40*52). That’s already $7800 /child. But really it’s more, because if a parent works 8 hour/day, the child care is 8 hour plus the parents commute time. (For low income people, commute time could mean taking a bus– which usually takes longer than driving.)
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So, actually, you probably need to supply (15*40*52)*(10hours/8 hours) to cover carers time. (Some carers might be in an earlier shift and some later, but the time needs to be covered. ) So of course the rock-bottom supply cost for this sort of service is going to be $9750. Add the employers portion of FICA and we are at > 9750*1.062= 10354.5
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And that cost doesn’t count the costs for a building, heat, janitorial services, to house the facility. It doesn’t include any administration, monitoring, or any extra supplies the daycare might stock (band aids? books? Toys? ) I’d be surprised if those costs don’t bump things up to $13000.
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I think Biden suggested day care costs be no more than 7% someone’s income. The idea that low priced daycare is feasible without raising taxes to cover the huge subsidies required to close the gap between the 7% of $31,200 a year a $15/hr worker could afford ($2184) and the at least $13,000 it has to cost if workers make at least $15 year likely unrealistic.
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People who want to “solve” the child care problem always seem to find the costs outrageous. But child care costs a lot because child care is labor intensive. You can’t just put all the kids in little pens or cages and go about other things, only check in a couple hours a day until their parents return.
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The exact same thing can be said of elder care and so on. (And, not surprisingly, there ends up being good reasons why a lot of this labor is done by family members who love their kids and grand kids. For them, the time spent is a mix of work and a mix of “play” because they love their grand kids! It’s not dissimilar to the “labor” people expend on their pets. People love walking their own dogs. But you have to pay someone to walk your dog if you go on vacation. )
lucia (Comment #209916): “Well… all this is new for this administration:
* He does say we need to deal with immigration at the border.
* He is distancing from “Defund the police”.”
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Not new. The administration has been blaming the border problems on an immigration system that was “broken” when Biden took office. They ignore all the ways in which Traitor Joe has made it far, far worse. No change there.
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“Defund the police” is not mainly about money. It is about undermining the police. Funding is just one part of that. It also involves tying the cops hands, the revolving door in the criminal justice system, and attacking cops at every opportunity. Both Biden and Harris have been active participants in that. He gave no sign that will change, only that he now wants to throw some money at the problem. And he will no doubt tie strings to the money so that it can be used to further undermine the police.
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Lets go Brandon.
Biden’s inner circle of puppet masters are all loony left. His speech is just a reflection of the extreme politics of those who wrote it for him. They will never ‘pivot’ their policies to anything even remotely rational, as shown by constant suppression of domestic oil and gas production, while importing oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia and simultaneously selling oil from the strategic reserve to lower domestic fuel prices. Yes, they are profoundly craven and stupid, but even worse, they are willfully harming the country’s strategic position to hide the true cost of their foolish policies from the public.
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Biden goes along with it all because he is mentally incompetent and so 100% dependent on his puppet masters. January 2023 and January 2025 can’t come fast enough.
Lucia,
Your numbers on childcare are certainly true for vey young kids, but older kids (say 3-6 YO) can be in somewhat bigger groups, maybe 7 to 9 per caregiver. Child care *is* very costly, and that is not going to change. The suggestion that things can be made “free” (child care, health care, higher education, etc) without crushing tax burdens is preposterous on its face. But politicians lie whenever their lips move.
True. Older kids can be in bigger groups. But older kids also go to school or pre-school. Kindergarten starts around 5 years old. Teachers complain when school is likened to childcare, but it does replace one of the functions of childcare: to have kids supervised and ideally given some guidance. (So do, to some extent, girl scouts, organized sports and activities.)
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Childcare costs are greatly reduced when kids go to school and pre-school. And I suspect the number for average parents pay for childcare quoted in Biden’s speech are for pre-school age–so less than 5, not 5 or older.
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Some things are simply expensive because to do reasonably well requires lots of “FTEs”. We don’t have good methods of cutting out the need for labor in child care, elder care and so on. Interaction with other people is simply part of the service.
Lucia,
I take back one part of what I wrote above: Higher education could be made much lower in cost, so if not “free”, much closer to free than to current cost. The college/university model (with a huge and very costly on-site structure to educate a relative handful of students) strikes me as insanely antiquated and inefficient. Technology allows 10 times as many students with minimally more effort by educators. Of course, that doesn’t address the very serious problem of granting nonsense degrees in “trans-gender studies” and “intersectionality studies”, but that is a completely separate subject.
For SteveF regarding USA oil:
https://twitter.com/WHUT/status/1499030440233086978
SteveF,
IMO, a major problem with higher education is that the funding is much like health care, except it’s a lot more transparent. Only a minority of people pay list price. Around 70%, last I checked, receive some sort of financial aid from the university. Maybe that’s dropped some and been replaced by loans. But financial aid provided by the university is a lever that makes tuition increase faster than inflation.
Of course tuition also increases faster than inflation because colleges and universities have vastly increased administration employment compared to faculty. That’s also true for K-12.
Loans for higher education should be based on future ability to pay. Of course that would mean that you won’t get a loan if you’re majoring in underwater basket weaving or one of the trendy new ‘studies’ majors. I’m pretty sure the data already exists on median income for graduates in different majors.
DeWitt,
Sure, the cost structure is a pure socialist construct…. set the sticker price absurdly high and cut the price to those “less able to pay”. Calls for public funding (and loan forgiveness, etc) are just more of the same socialist nonsense, but on a grander scale.
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“Loans for higher education should be based on future ability to pay.”
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Good luck getting that trough Congress. The simpler approach is to have Universities be on the hook for the loan when their “educated graduates” fail to pay….. which is much too often.
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But put aside all the woke nonsense studies, the crazy and ever rising administrative burden, and the endless socialist indoctrination. My point is that it is simply not very efficient to have a lecture series heard by a hundred or two, when it could be heard by 10,000 for only slightly higher cost.
It’s 1 to 6 in my state up to age 3 and 1 to 12 from 3-5. For the youngest the typical set up is classes of 12 with a lead and aide teacher. Doesn’t change the math much but is also a sign that one size fits all from the federal government isn’t going to work. Each state has their own regulations.
He ended the speech with ‘go get him’.
People are surmising that this was instructions to his handlers to get him off the podium.
SteveF (Comment #209902)
SteveF that link in your post caused me to think of an adjective that would best summarize how those hurry up policies come about. I came up with whimsical and in some cases capricious. There are triggers that give rise to these behaviors that usually involve world or national crises and emergencies that can be real or imagined. The current Ukraine crisis and the political reactions to it remind me that these behaviors are ever present but not forever lasting. Call me an apostate when it comes to believing in the seriousness of political pronouncements when it comes to emergencies whether imaged or real.
Andrew P,
“Each state has their own regulations.”
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No, no , no! States must never be allowed to have their own regulations. California….. err….. the Federal government must set all regulations for all states. Ask President Alzheimer’s if you doubt it.
AndrewP
Ok. That’s 1 adult per 6 kids.
It looks like 1:4 is the minimum provider:child ratio for infants in Illinois. 1:5 for toddlers. 1:8 for 2 year olds. (https://www.daycare.com/illinois/)
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I guess that’s the law. But I just don’t believe the 1:8 ratio is really ok for toddlers from a child development point of view if it exists day in day out for 8 hours. Occasional get togethers? Play dates? Less than 2 hours a day? I don’t see a problem with 1:8. But kids need socializing both with other kids and with some older people around.
I wouldn’t at all mind the mix of care givers to include adults and kids over 14 years old to do supervised play.
Kenneth,
“Call me an apostate when it comes to believing in the seriousness of political pronouncements when it comes to emergencies whether imaged or real.”
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I would never limit it to emergencies, real or imagined. Most political announcements are very far from serious.
The real bottleneck is assessment. The larger the classes are the harder it is to make sure each student is participating and meeting the designated learning outcomes. Universities are not just selling the disseminating of knowledge, that is easy, they are certifying that those that who graduate have obtained a certain level of competence.
That’s not to say that there are not significant inefficiencies that can and should be addressed. There is a tendency for each professor to create, own, and control their material as long as it meets the learning outcomes. Academic freedom and all. This leads to a lot of duplicated effort especially in the 100/200 level. It’d be better if designated professionals handled creating and maintaining the course materials used by multiple professors who handled the delivery and interactions with the students.
SteveF,
Remote learning might work for humanities, but not for science courses where lab hours far exceed lecture hours. You’re also not going to get any networking from remote learning either. And you’re still going to need much smaller, no more than about 20 students, Q&A sessions with the equivalent of TA’s.
And in other news, the US daily case rate is no longer number one in the world. For Tuesday, we were ninth and all the countries above us had less than half our population. We’re still leading in the absolute number of deaths/day, but that will likely change in a few weeks. I’m going to sort on population corrected data, but I need to replace the data for yesterday with the seven day moving average as some countries only report weekly totals.
I might have known. no fighter planes for Ukraine. Just a lot of unserious talk apparently.
They’d be better off with drones then jets. Less infrastructure and you don’t lose the pilot when they are shot down.
Andrew, nobody operates drones that help with air superiority as far as I know. Drones are mostly recon and sometimes antipersonnel. (I should have said, air to ground, not antipersonnel. Think hellfire missiles).
DeWitt,
“Remote learning might work for humanities, but not for science courses where lab hours far exceed lecture hours.”
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Depends a bit on the details. Yes, pot-boiling organic chemistry requires lots of lab work, but physics? Physical chemistry? Math? Much less, if any. I can’t say the amount of hands-on lab time would be required, but it is for sure much less than 100%. WRT networking: Never got a bit of networking out of my education.
So SOTU. I didn’t watch, I read. Nothing unexpected and in my view nothing of much substance.
What are covid case rates and death rates compared to a year ago?
Is it fair to say they eliminated the rules because the situation has improved?
Andrew,
Let me take back or qualify what I said before. I give you loyal wingman Boeing manufactured, Australia operated.
That was back in 2020. I wonder how that program is doing.
mark,
I wanted to watch to see demeanor in real time with a large audience for a fairly long speech. Biden did not look as bad as I feared. Sure there was the “Iranian” glitch and some stuttering. But i’d expected much more bumbling.
lucia,
That’s good to hear. I hope the President holds on to his faculties (such as they are) for the rest of his term. I don’t think he was ever particularly sharp, and so long as he’s not declining too rapidly it shouldn’t make much difference.
lucia (Comment #209940): “But i’d expected much more bumbling.”
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I suspect that on most days Biden has a few good hours. It does not give him enough bandwidth to actually handle the job. So when a public appearance is not *the* top priority, we get to see what he is like when not at his best. But when an appearance is important enough, they can adjust his schedule (work, sleep, meds) so that we see him at his absolute best. That is what we saw last night.
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Scary, when you think about it.
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Mark’s hope that he won’t decline too much is not consistent with anything I have heard or seen regarding senility.
It’s hard to say Mike. Here’s a link. If one thinks he’s in mild cognitive decline, he might last quite a ways yet (7ish years). If one thinks he’s further along, well..
There’s also rapidly progressing dementia.
I think it depends on the specifics of the individual case to a large extent.
Mike M,
There is a wide range of rate of decline for Alzheimer’s dementia. Death is normally within about 8-10 years of initial diagnosis but can be shorter or longer. Ronald Reagan was officially diagnosed in 1994 but did not die until 2004 (age 93). IIRC, late onset cases generally have a slower rate of decline. Biden probably has ~5-7+ years until he is in diapers, but his mental decline will be obvious long before then. I expect his praetorian guard will keep him in office until January 2025, even if he is incapable of making decisions. Yes, it is frightening.
mark bofill,
Cross posted.
The speech was likely more significant for what it left out, Defund the police (he said the opposite), Jan 6th, BLM, CRT, and other racial equity pandering. You can tell its an election year and they know what their focus groups are telling them. The far left is likely not too happy, but these speeches have little real meaning IMO.
My guess is Biden chugs a gallon of 5 hour energy about 15 minutes before these type of events.
The Ruskies announced they have ~500 deaths and 1500 wounded. Ukraine isn’t giving any numbers on their military but they are likely higher than Russia. So there is some real fighting going on somewhere and this thing will not be a walk in the park.
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You can tell Russia intends to occupy because they have been hesitant to take out expensive infrastructure that they would need to pay to replace. If you want to take out power there are different ways to do that depending on the objective and who is paying the ultimate bill (e.g. cut a power line or destroy a power station).
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This is probably one of the few times where it can be justified for the media to knowingly parrot propaganda, and that is happening. For example destroyed vehicles are called “Russian vehicles” or simply “vehicles”. You can guess what the 2nd one is.
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The Russian destruction of civilian areas in Europe makes them look very bad. Very bad. No propaganda necessary for this, and no defense even if they are government buildings. But as I have said before Putin painted himself into this corner and the only likely outcomes are an occupation or Russia humiliation. It’s going to get ugly IMO because I don’t see a realistic option for anything else.
Tom Scharf,
Russia is currently losing 770+/day to COVID right now. A total of 500 is a drop in the bucket. Probably more important is the expenditure of munitions and the destruction of Russian military equipment.
Putin got a big boost in his approval rating from taking back Crimea in 2014, which Khruschev gave to Ukraine in 1954. We’ll have to see whether the violent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 will work out the same way in Russia, which is probably the only thing Putin cares about.
A review of all the expert prognosticators on Russia/Ukraine
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Ukraine Warcasting
Predictions, market accountability, pundit accountability
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ukraine-warcasting
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Almost nobody correctly predicted both an invasion and a better than expected resistance. The majority made predictions that were very … predictable.
“One important thing I’ve learned again and again about prediction is that successes are usually less about being smart, and more about having a bias which luckily corresponds to whatever ends up happening. Lots of people failed based on their political precommittments, but I suspect the successes were also based on political precommitments.”
Kherson has reportedly fallen.
This guys seems to have the inside scoop on the situation on the ground…. https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1499068590934343680?s=21
Tom,
I expected the invasion. I think I said I thought Putin was planned to invade in comments. But I certainly never felt certain about that. No way in the world did I expect the Ukrainians to hold them off this long. I had read that lots of people in Kahrviv were joining the militia during the run up. I talked to Vlad about that. Vlad said the Ukrainians would fight to the death. And they are. But I still didn’t anticipate how well they have been doing.
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I continue to have no firm predictions. I am constantly surprised by things that happen. Who’d have expected a tweet to Musk would result in an individual ensuring internet connections for Ukraine? I image no one would have predicted that. Ukrainians may have known the stuff Zelensky is made of, but I didn’t.
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Because of the unified front on economic sanctions, those are biting.
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So taking the top 100 countries ranked on yesterday’s new deaths reports, the US ranks 64 on new cases/day/million. We don’t look quite so well on new deaths/day/million. The largest country with a higher death rate is Russia and there are only five countries, including Russia, with populations over 10,000,000 that have higher daily new deaths/million.
But then I’m not at all sure whether either of these measures are reliable.
I didn’t actually expect the invasion. Once the invasion occurred, I expected Russia to win quickly. My current expectation is that Russia will grind on until they win. I do not know how to estimate how long Kyiv will hold.
Based on Grozny, I imagine Kyiv might last weeks. Then again, look at Kherson. Kyiv might fall tonight for all I know.
Last week I made my prediction: “ This could end very well… the collapse of the Putin government. It could end very badly…. Thermonuclear war. And everything in between is possible.” … and I’m sticking with it.
Russel,
The future certainly lies somewhere inside your prediction envelope!
Expected the invasion. You don’t go through the hassle of moving 200k troops from armored divisions to the edge of your country for months on end to not use them. Russia’s conditions before the invasion reminded me of the gulf war where we were offering terms we knew Saddam couldn’t agree with and stay in power.
War games wouldn’t have needed the logistic trains they sent along. There would have been movement there right before the maneuvers and then right back. Ever division out of place means a down rotation or area of operation not covered.
Didn’t realize that Russia had as high of percentage of 1 year conscripts as they do. Doesn’t surprise me that they aren’t living up to western performance expectations now that I know that.
Ukraine so far has seemed to be playing this well. Not overextending themselves or risking their forces for lost causes. Holding back and operating their scarce air assets only when they have a direct advantage. The only thing I think they could have done better was lay more small unit traps along the routes to pin the convoy from Belarus down. I’m not sure if that was worth the risk though as those would have been suicide missions.
Hate to say it but I think Biden played this well. I think Putin was expecting more threatening behavior in response to the buildup. Biden’s choice to point blank just publicize what our intelligence was turning up meant that Putin’s rationale fell flat as the lie it was to the rest of the world.
Even China who had every reason to go along with Russia’s logic to work for their Taiwan problem has to distance themselves from Russia externally. It is concerning that they are sticking to the Putin is great line internally, but I think that is they need to keep the US as their bogeyman to keep the populace from looking too closely behind the curtains.
Not all western news have drank the cool aid it seems.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10569141/Putin-NOT-crazy-Russian-invasion-NOT-failing-writes-military-analyst-BILL-ROGGIO.html
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First off, with the number of out and out lies coming out of Ukraine news, nothing they say can be taken as truth without hard evidence Same for the US news, both main stream and official. After 5 years of RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and non stop clim porn, my tolerance levels were exceeded some time ago.
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Consider this also, the same experts that f..ked up the withdrawal from Afghanistan are the same yahoo’s telling us Russia has failed.
So far so good for Biden. The charitable view is that he told the world of his valid intelligence to build up some much needed credibility and transparency for the IC, and also to get in Putin’s head a bit.
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It could all go badly pretty easily from here of course. He needs to not get sucked in to committing forces and let Putin’s bad moves and miscalculations do their own work.
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Russia will still likely prevail in battle, but perhaps they will only win a pyrrhic victory. We shall see. The biggest deal still seems to be whether Ukraine will commit to a harsh insurgency. It seems more likely than last week.
Just now… PGS123 Russian Warships on the move from Crimea https://www.shiplocation.com/military/tracker