Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

[Dave_LF]

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(I have no clue what reports are real and what's psyops)

[N.E. Brigand]

1. As noted by Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins, some worse than unsavory characters seem to have be involved in this Ukrainian-allied incursion into Russia's Belgorod region. While it's probably not as bad as it is in the U.S., Ukraine does seem to have a fascist / white supremacist problem.

2. That part of Russia has strong Ukrainian roots, but as noted here, we haven't seen Ukraine over the past decade agitating for Belgorod to become part of Ukraine in the way that Russia has agitated for the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea regions of Ukraine to become part of Russia.

[Frelga]

Better have them on the inside pissing out.

Michael Weiss has a somewhat cynical take.

I also wouldn't discount the implicit f*-you in this (obvious) HUR operation. "You came to de-Nazify us? Here are your own Nazis now invading your country. Have fun." RDK are also very expendable proxies

The fact that these are ethnic Russians is of obvious importance (although ethnicity in the post-imperial times is murky at best).

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Twitter is gleefully repeating everything Russia said when it took over Crimea and Donbass).

"Ukraine has nothing to do with this internal affair. These are Russian people liberating Belgorod after years of Russian bombings*. Those tanks and weapons can be bought in any store**. It's time for Russia to negotiate for peace through returning Belgorod to Ukraine." etc.

* yes, Russian bombers dropped a few bombs on Belgorod accidentally while flying out to bomb Ukrainian cities, and also some of the rockets they were shooting into Ukraine boomeranged back into Belgorod.

** yes, Kremlin said that about its soldiers in Crimea.

[N.E. Brigand]

John McCain in 2015 quite accurately saw the events of 2022 coming. He never mentions Barack Obama in that clip, but he's clearly criticizing the then-president for U.S. timidity in arming Ukraine, and he was probably right about that. (It's interesting that three years later, he requested that then former-president Obama be one of the orators at his funeral -- at which one of the attendees was Ukraine's then-president Petro Poroshenko.)

[Jude]

[Sunsilver]

Shared that with my step-daughter-in-law, whose family is Ukrainian!

[N.E. Brigand]

"Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes surprise commencement address at Johns Hopkins" (Baltimore Sun). He spoke via video link.

[Dave_LF]

Lindsey Graham is such an odd duck. No spine whatsoever when it comes to Trump, but will make a surprise visit to Kiev and say things that are all but guaranteed to get him on Russia's assassination list. Twice in fact, if memory serves. I've heard several people claim he's being blackmailed, but it's hard to imagine Trump would have any kompromat the Kremlin doesn't.

[Frelga]

Support for Ukraine is just about the only bi-partisan issue these days, and also one of the few where the horseshoe theory really holds.

Meanwhile.

World media: So, Ukrainian offensive when?

Zelensky: oh, yes, coming right up, any minute now, just wait

Ukrainian army with Western weapons: bombs the bleep out of airports, fuel, and ammo stores deep in occupied Ukraine and Russia

Anti-Putin Russian volunteer troops, which are totally unconnected to Ukraine, honest: cross the undefended border, take multiple Russian towns. Which are immediately shelled by Russian artillery, causing destruction and collapse of civil order, with looting. (someone suggested that they can just keep repeating until Moscow)

I don't know why everyone assumed that the Ukrainian offensive was going to be storming Russian fortified lines, WWII style.

[River]

I thought the big counter-offensive already started with chewing up Wagner in Bakhmut and Zelensky was just f*cking with people. But I probably missed something.

[Frelga]

I honestly thought the same thing, but I guess the pundits are expecting a charge with banners and shouts of hurray.

Meanwhile, Russian artillery is bombing a Russian town which was taken over by Russian soldiers fighting the Russian army completely independently from Ukraine.

And on the Prigozhin show, the latest video claims that when Wagner began to retreat from Bakhmut, they found the way mined by Russian MOD. When the Wagner snappers began to remove the mines, they got shot at by Russian soldiers. The pissed off Wagnerites stormed the position, captured and beat up the (allegedly drunk) Lt. Colonel, and posted a video of his confession.

I'm beginning to wonder if Ukraine did not make up the story about Prigozhin making overtures to them with offers to give up the MOD positions in exchange for being allowed to advance in Bakhmut.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ben Smith has a new article at Semafor about tensions between western media outlets and the Ukrainian government. In Smith's concluding paragraph, he writes that the "Western media’s skirmishes with Ukrainian handlers reflect the underlying reality that most Western news outlets treat Ukrainian soldiers as, at some level, 'our boys.' The fights over access are familiar to U.S. reporters from American wars. And Ukraine’s restrictions do not approach those imposed on the US press in the 20th Century by its own government".

[Frelga]

Russia blew up the Nova Kakhovka dam, in an attempt to slow down Ukrainian offensive. This is an environmental disaster that's being compared to Chernobyl in its impact.

Meanwhile, the UN is celebrating Russian language day.

Very important on #Kakhovka. The chronology of the terrorist attack by Russian terrorists. Or how Russians screwed in their excuses.

At two o'clock in the morning, the Russians blow up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, but they don't see how much. It's not very visible, but it can still hit.

1. The Russians still think that they have neatly blown up a small part of the HPP and are flooding our military on the islands. At 6:06 a.m., the head of Nova Kakhovka, Leontyev, said that the explosion of the GES was nonsense. Like, we don't know why the water rose there. Here is the link to Ria Novosti's archive.is/aTyK8

2. Russian OSINT intelligence community Rybar picks up the thesis and says a small area was blown up at 6:51 a.m. Link archive.ph/flapa

3. At 6:51 in Nova Kakhovka, they see that the dam is a complete ass, and the mom's stratagems start to realize that they are in trouble. The mayor of Nova Kakhovka abruptly changes his rhetoric and says there was no explosion, it was a shelling by the Ukrainian army. Link archive.ph/LFFKF

4. But the propagandists, who do not know what the fuck has happened, continue to work according to the methodology and continue to throw into the information space that the dam was previously shelled, and then it got a little tired and broke a little. Here is a post by Podolyaki's propagandist archive.ph/DgQIV. And the propaganda channel War on Fakes archive.ph/GRN55

5. Other telegram channels that cooperate with the military are happily hopping on one leg, cheering, because of the undermining of the Kakhovka dam, the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the islands are flooded, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to evacuate and escape, and then they publish joyful reports of how they are hitting the positions of our guys on the islands. 08:25 Link archive.ph/c0iHL

6. Here, the Russians are slowly realizing that they have created a large-scale man-made environmental disaster, almost as large as Chernobyl. And they are starting to reverse. Russian influence on the information space is changing its tone dramatically. They instantly change their tune and start accusing the Ukrainian side of provocations. Like it's a Bankova operation A reference to the same "war on fakes" that said the dam had somehow collapsed on its own.... archive.ph/x8uwT
But even in their excuses, the racists still screwed up. Either the dam was blown up, or Olha was shelled with MLRS.... archive.ph/uF0Xm Although any sapper will give a hundred percent guarantee that it is impossible to make such destruction from the outside, the damage here was done by planting explosives

And then they are already beginning to adhere to this thesis, because what they have done is a huge international tragedy, especially in the environmental sense.

I have translated this text from t.me/jurnko Telegram channel

Source here.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times and Die Zeit -- American and German publications, respectively -- today each published stories about the September 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines that transmit natural gas from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. The Times says that U.S. intelligence agencies believe the attack was carried out by pro-Ukrainian forces (but possibly from Russia?), and the Zeit says that these operatives used a Polish-Ukrainian boat based in Germany, whose law enforcement services are said to be investigating. (An American reporter, Seymour Hersh, had claimed a week or two ago that the pipeline was destroyed on orders from the U.S.)

Since March, there had been other reporting about Russian ships having been observed very near to where the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline was blown up, which seemed to undermine the claims that Ukraine was behind it. However, today the Washington Post has new reporting that "three months before saboteurs bombed" the pipeline, "the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces." That doesn't prove that Ukraine was behind the bombing, but the general outline of the plans does accord with what Germany's investigation had uncovered.

And here's a further twist: the Post's story, based on "European intelligence reporting," was previously "shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira," who has, of course, been arrested for disseminating classified information.

[Frelga]

There are thousands, probably tens of thousands of people stranded in the flooded zone. Russia is not only doing nothing to help people on the occupied side, it's hitting rescue efforts with artillery. People go anyway, army and just regular folks.

Red Cross isn't there. UN just celebrated Russian language day and is very much not there. World Central Kitchen *is* there, as they've been since day one.

Uncounted animals, complete ecosystems, Europe's most fertile soils, all destroyed. There is no redemption for Russia.

[Impenitent]

There is no redemption for Russia.

This.

Impossible for me to add anything substantive, but this. On this list of history's worst human-caused disasters - was not accidental, or consequent to neglect, but deliberate.

[N.E. Brigand]

This strikes me as being as dumb as "freedom fries":

"'Eat, Pray, Love' author pulls next book over Ukrainian backlash to Russian setting" (Semafor).

Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote the 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, said Monday that her upcoming novel won't be released as scheduled after she received backlash from Ukrainian fans over the fact that the book is set in Russia. ...

Last week, Gilbert announced that her next book would be The Snow Forest , which is set in the middle of Siberia in the 1900s and follows a group of people who decide to remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and protect nature from industrialization. The book was set to be released in February 2024, around the two-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, through Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Over the weekend, over 500 people gave the book one star on the book review platform Goodreads; many of the reviewers said they were Ukrainian and were worried that the book would romanticize Russia at a time when the country is accused of committing war crimes.

[Frelga]

I don't see where it compares. Freedom fries was a renaming of a dish in some of the Congress cafeteria that serve French fries after the French declined to attack Iraq with us. I don't think the French people noticed.

Meanwhile, this book. First elegizing Russian/Soviet imperial past while Russia is in the middle of committing genocide in Ukraine is insensitive at best. Ms. Gilbert (not her publisher) made an absolutely right call in delaying it.

Second, the quoted description is inaccurate. From a bit of research, the book appears to be inspired by the story of the Lykov family, fictionalized to center "the mystical connection between humans and the natural world." The presumably main character, an "unlikely woman sent to bridge the chasm between modern existence and the family’s ancient, snow forest life" is, as far as I can tell, an invention. There are books and documentaries about the Lykovs, and the story frankly needs no embellishment.

Meanwhile, Russia bombed another apartment building in the middle of the night.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times and Die Zeit -- American and German publications, respectively -- today each published stories about the September 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines that transmit natural gas from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. The Times says that U.S. intelligence agencies believe the attack was carried out by pro-Ukrainian forces (but possibly from Russia?), and the Zeit says that these operatives used a Polish-Ukrainian boat based in Germany, whose law enforcement services are said to be investigating. (An American reporter, Seymour Hersh, had claimed a week or two ago that the pipeline was destroyed on orders from the U.S.)

Since March, there had been other reporting about Russian ships having been observed very near to where the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline was blown up, which seemed to undermine the claims that Ukraine was behind it. However, today the Washington Post has new reporting that "three months before saboteurs bombed" the pipeline, "the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces." That doesn't prove that Ukraine was behind the bombing, but the general outline of the plans does accord with what Germany's investigation had uncovered.

And here's a further twist: the Post's story, based on "European intelligence reporting," was previously "shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira," who has, of course, been arrested for disseminating classified information.

The New York Times reports that the C.I.A. learned from Dutch intelligence in summer 2021 2022 that Ukraine had considered but then scuttled plans to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, that the U.S. warned Ukraine at the time not to do it, and that U.S. intelligence now believes that Ukraine did ultimately destroy the pipeline. Ukraine seems to have decided it was better to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Other European nations have had to pay more for natural gas because of the explosions.

Edited to fix date.

[Frelga]

11 people were killed in last night's attack on Kriviy Rih. The youngest was 17. 7 people worked the night shift at the warehouse handling bottled water.

Some of the was supposed to be sent to Kherson region, where hundreds, possibly thousands, civilians died after Russia blew up the Nova Khakovka dam. In one village, 90 bodies have been found. Meanwhile, Russia continues to use its artillery to prevent rescue attempts, and does nothing to help people in the occupied areas.

And tonight, an attack on civilians on Odessa leaves at least 3 dead.