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UKRAINE: THE LATEST, The Telegraph Podcast
Quote: “We owe the Ukrainians the time to win.” Mick Ryan
- Looking for more fighting around Izium.
- Russians have not been able to push further west from Popasna (on the southern part of the pincer, the northern part is Izium).
- Pooper parts of the world are dependent on this grain. It is important for those at the very top at the Un to push back on the charges that the US is responsible for the food shortages, which is the Russian narrative.
- Russia now sees dragging this war out as in their advantage. They think they see a losing of interest on the part of the Americans. There is the food crisis, the gas crisis, the cost of living crisis and they think that the US and the Western European countries will start to waver as these problem grow severe. Putin expects them to put pressure on Ukraine for a ceasefire giving up territory.
- Food is just a front in the war. The Russians have no reason to help make the food situation less serious. It is one of the cards Putin has to play.
- Grain could be moved by train, and there are evidently discussions within NATO about moving the train that way or by an escorted naval force. This would run the risk of escalating the war. We risk hyperinflation of food prices. It is talked about as a defensive action. This is being taken seriously.
- This would be an extremely dangerous expedition, trying to get grain out by militarily defended ships. This is a fanciful plan. Trying to get grain out with rail would take a very long time.
- It benefits Russia for the food situation not to be resolved. Any resolution would involve demands on Russia’s part that sanctions be lifted or other things.
- There are a lot of very complicated arrangements being proposed to transfer weapons from one country to another and the weapons are outdated.
- Almost everybody is critical of Germany’s role in the providing of weapons to Ukraine. They are talking tough but doing very little. Germany is learning the wrong lessons from its history. They are so afraid of “humiliating” Putin.
- The German population is not happy about the government’s performance on Ukraine.
- Medvedev issued an outburst overnight. It is uncharacteristic of him. Undiplomatic language. There is a suggestion that his statement was intended for domestic consumption in Russia.
- The man behind the assassination of Litvinenko died suddenly, supposedly of COVID. In future negotiations it might be inconvenient to have people like this hanging around who might be able to talk. It might be demanded that he face trial in the UK. Even if this case is not one of assassination, the Kremlin could be thinking in this direction about problematic people.
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TUESDAY 7 JUNE 2022
Quote of the Day: At the UN, after the Russian Ambassador walked out of a meeting: “Maybe it’s easier not to listen to the truth.”
UKRAINE UPDATE
UKRAINECAST 6/7/22 BBC
- After the USA and the UK promised to send Ukraine longer range and more precise weapons, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference: ‘You don’t wont to even listen to our arguments.” “The longer the range of the systems that will be delivered, the further we will move back the Natis from that line from which threats to Russian’speakers and the Russian Federation may come.”
- At the UN Security Council, The Russian UN Ambassador stormed out of a meeting after Russia was accused of purposefully generating a food crisis, driving up food prices and destabilizing entire regions. “Russia is solely responsible for this food crisis.” Charles Michel, European Council president said directly to the Russian Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia. When Nebenzia got up and walked out, Machel continued. “You may leave the room. Maybe it’s easier not to listen to the truth.”
- It is difficult to know what is happening in Donetsk at the moment.
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FRIDAY 3 MAY 2022
It is day 100 in the war against Ukraine. People are dying every day for the right to determine their own futures. In the United States, we are killing each other at an alarming rate because we refuse to stop an electoral system that is bought off by big money interests.
The corporate media has bored of the war against Ukraine even as it descends into an even more gruesome phase. While the corporate media spends time covering a car race and two movie stars who seem equally loathsome, more and more people die in Ukraine partly because we are too afraid to send them adequate weapons to defend themselves. American worry about split ends while other people fight for their every existence. What kind of people have we become?
Tonight the latest update on the never-ending and futile process of indicting and investigating former Trump era low levels continues. The Jan. 6 Committee plans to tell us the story of the Trump coup which we already know by heart. More investigations, more committees, more showboating and no action.
The Justice Department has launched an effort to tell us what went wrong in Uvalde and what processes can be implemented to prevent another shooting. Everybody knows it’s bullshit and nobody says so. All the training, all the categories of shooting (active shooter, barricaded hostage situation) did nothing but enrich trainers and companies who write protocols. And, nothing changes.
I am tired. I am disgusted.
UKRAINE UPDATE
UKRAINE WORLD
- Russians steal metal supplies from Mariupol and plan to restore grain loading terminal to steal grain from Ukraine.
- In occupied Mariupol, Russians excluded the Ukrainian language from schools. Brought in teacher from St. Petersburg to teach Russian.
- 100 days of the war against Ukraine.
- In February and March, Russian troops ransacked labs near Chornobyl and stole equipment worth $135 million.
- The Russians have destroyed Mariupol, Volnovakha, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Popasna, Lyman. The people who lived there have nothing to return to.
- Russian Propaganda narratives:
- Russian propaganda: New weapons supplied by the U.S. are intended to be used to strike inside Russia.
- Russian propaganda: Ukraine plans to use weapons to strike inside Ukraine and blame it on the Russians.
- Russian propaganda: Zelensky can now “kill thousands of people at once.”
- Russian propaganda; Poland is occupying parts of Ukraine.
- Russian propaganda? “Nazi ideology is hammered into Ukrainian teenagers through school textbooks.”
NEWSWEEK
- Putin was treated for “advanced cancer” in April.
- There was an attempt on Putin’s life in March.
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From a conversation intercepted by the Security Service of Ukraine, it became known that the Armed Forces of Ukraine eliminated a large unit of mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group in the east. — Ukrinform.
— Read on www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3496472-large-unit-of-wagner-group-eliminated-in-eastern-ukraine.html -
Republicans want to use the Supreme Court because their goals are massively unpopular.
— Read on www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/1/2101489/-This-week-on-The-Brief-Elie-Mystal-on-the-unaccountability-of-the-Supreme-Court -
Welcome to another recap of The Brief ! This week, host Markos Moulitsas talked to�guest� Elie Mystal , the � justice correspondent for � The Nation , and author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’…
— Read on www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/1/2101489/-This-week-on-The-Brief-Elie-Mystal-on-the-unaccountability-of-the-Supreme-Court -
MONDAY 30 MAY 2022
WAR ON THE ROCKS PODCAST, 5/30/22
What the experts got right and wrong about the Russian military.
Summary of points made during discussion. Participants: Dara Massicot and Michael Kofman, Chris Dougherty and Gian Gentile
- The Pentagon used a number of inputs to come up with a National Defense Strategy.
- 2014 to 2018 there was a huge expansion in knowledge. Russia had moved into Crimea.
- 1990s focus on Russian changed. There was not a lot of interest in it.
- Then, early 2000s focus started to shift.
- 2008 Short war against Georgia. They were successful, but it was embarrassing. This kicked off a reform effort in Russia for the military.
- The Russians wanted to modernize.
- There was no crisis and the US. Government was on focused on it.
- A lot of people at the Pentagon were surprised with the 2014 invasion.
- Ukraine is the major avenue of approach into Europe.
- It was almost impossible to assess how the Russians would perform in a large-scale operation from their operations in the past. This was one of the reasons the incompetence was unexpected.
- We assumed that the basic reforms were more extensive than they turned out to be.
- Making the force a professional enlisted force was thought to have changed things. It is possible they didn’t know this about themselves.
- They discover rot they didn’t know about. They discover where the corruption is in their own system.
- In 1943, the Soviets were pushing the Germans out. In that area of Ukraine they had 1 million German soldiers and perhaps 1.5 million Soviet soldiers. Now, there is something like 180,000 Russians.
- There are things you just cannot tell about a military before you see them in action. For example, the American military performed much worse in the invasion of Granada in 1983 than experts had expected. This was an operation they should have been able to conduct in their sleep. And this was done after substantial reforms.
- Instead, there were problems with friendly fire, there were casualties, significant problems with command and control, joint integration problems.
- This was a failure of the joint forces in Granada.
- The Russian military was full of “gun decking.” You can have a ship that looks great and sails around, but if no one is maintaining the equipment or doing the training exercises, it’s a problem. Corners have been cut. This can explain what we saw.
- If people are skimming, or failing to do equipment maintenance, or taking the money rather than doing training, it create a problem you find out about.
- Coercing conscripts to sign up with a military contract, for example, is a problem that develops domestically and then the effects of it show up when you go to war. (Note: There was another podcast relating the story of a mother who was told that her sons who had been in the Russian military only a few months, had signed long term contracts. She protested and fought this since she knew they had not voluntarily signed up and the sons were returned because of the visibility of the push back.)
- There are stories about military people meeting a quote of contracts by making conscript carry heavy boxes until they sign up, stand out in the cold until they sign up, etc.
- Instead of deciding on limited ambitions as they did in Crimea, they went for the entire country.
- Why did the experts assume that the Russian military was any less corrupt than the rest of Russian society?
- They changed their whole system to try to root out the corruption. They, for example, started paying people electronically rather than in cash because cash encouraged people to steal.
- In 2013, they went back to their old system.
- There is push back on the notion that you can predict battle field outcomes from the state of the society ,for example, the degree of corruption.
- In the first phase of the war, there was no unified command and launching five avenues of attack was absurd.
- The Russians didn’t even let the military know that they were going to invade Ukraine.
- A good military should recover from a bad plan and they didn’t.
- They have limited the Kyiv objective, then the Kharkiv objective, so they did make some changes based on what happened on the ground.
- Western governments published the Russian plans and then they just went ahead with the same plan.
- No one appreciated how incompetent the Russians would be or how good the Ukrainians would be.
- The Russians saw 2014, not only did the West not intervene, but Ukraine did not resist their take-over of Crimea. (Note: This further confirms the argument that the Zelensky government was something fundamentally different. There was surely still corruption, but the election of Zelensky was an enormous step by the regular people of Ukraine, a decision to push for a more democratic government.)
- It is “pure hubris” that the Russians went ahead and invaded. They truly believed that the Ukrainians were inferior people who were going to just give up and surrender their government.
- Many armies underestimate the opposition out of sheer racism. Before WWII, for example, there were people advising the military who were arguing thar the Japanese were just in capable of pulling off a sophisticated air attack. There were even arguments that the Japanese were incapable of doing this because of the shape of their eyes.
- The Russians also underestimated the US support.
- They didn’t tell the troops they were invading until the day before the war.
- The Ukrainian military was a young one and we didn’t know how they would perform. We had dumped a similar amount of weapons on the Afghans.
- Argument: The Ukrainians had the morale advantage in 2014 as well but they didn’t fight. (Note: This is another refusal to acknowledge the difference between the government in 2014 and the government in 2022).
- Worried that the American lesson from this war will be to underestimate the Russians.
- The Russians would fight differently if they were confronting the US or NATO.
- When Shoigu and Gerasimov took over in 2013, everything with downhill with the military. The Russian military reforms were eliminated.
- 2008-2012 Ministry of Defense was run by somebody they brought in from the Tax Department. There was an effort to modernize the military. Let’s have a professional NCO corps. Russians were not comfortable with this. They downsized in a short span of time. About 30% of Russian officers were let go. If you weren’t “with the program” you were let go. They made a lot of enemies letting these people go.
- Sergikov was trying to make reforms.
- Around 2012 Sergikov was caught in a sex scandal. He was ousted.
- They within a year got rid of the professional NCO program. Brought back the fired officers.
- Shoigu is a close friend of Putin’s. Unwanted narratives about the military were criminalized. It was a culture of silence.
-
MONDAY 30 MAY 2022
WAR ON THE ROCKS PODCAST, 5/30/22
What the experts got right and wrong about the Russian military.
Summary of points made during discussion. Participants: Dara Massicot and Michael Kofman, Chris Dougherty and Gian Gentile
- The Pentagon used a number of inputs to come up with a National Defense Strategy.
- 2014 to 2018 there was a huge expansion in knowledge. Russia had moved into Crimea.
- 1990s focus on Russian changed. There was not a lot of interest in it.
- Then, early 2000s focus started to shift.
- 2008 Short war against Georgia. They were successful, but it was embarrassing. This kicked off a reform effort in Russia for the military.
- The Russians wanted to modernize.
- There was no crisis and the US. Government was on focused on it.
- A lot of people at the Pentagon were surprised with the 2014 invasion.
- Ukraine is the major avenue of approach into Europe.
- It was almost impossible to assess how the Russians would perform in a large-scale operation from their operations in the past. This was one of the reasons the incompetence was unexpected.
- We assumed that the basic reforms were more extensive than they turned out to be.
- Making the force a professional enlisted force was thought to have changed things. It is possible they didn’t know this about themselves.
- They discover rot they didn’t know about. They discover where the corruption is in their own system.
- In 1943, the Soviets were pushing the Germans out. In that area of Ukraine they had 1 million German soldiers and perhaps 1.5 million Soviet soldiers. Now, there is something like 180,000 Russians.
- There are things you just cannot tell about a military before you see them in action. For example, the American military performed much worse in the invasion of Granada in 1983 than experts had expected. This was an operation they should have been able to conduct in their sleep. And this was done after substantial reforms.
- Instead, there were problems with friendly fire, there were casualties, significant problems with command and control, joint integration problems.
- This was a failure of the joint forces in Granada.
- The Russian military was full of “gun decking.” You can have a ship that looks great and sails around, but if no one is maintaining the equipment or doing the training exercises, it’s a problem. Corners have been cut. This can explain what we saw.
- If people are skimming, or failing to do equipment maintenance, or taking the money rather than doing training, it create a problem you find out about.
- Coercing conscripts to sign up with a military contract, for example, is a problem that develops domestically and then the effects of it show up when you go to war. (Note: There was another podcast relating the story of a mother who was told that her sons who had been in the Russian military only a few months, had signed long term contracts. She protested and fought this since she knew they had not voluntarily signed up and the sons were returned because of the visibility of the push back.)
- There are stories about military people meeting a quote of contracts by making conscript carry heavy boxes until they sign up, stand out in the cold until they sign up, etc.
- Instead of deciding on limited ambitions as they did in Crimea, they went for the entire country.
- Why did the experts assume that the Russian military was any less corrupt than the rest of Russian society?
- They changed their whole system to try to root out the corruption. They, for example, started paying people electronically rather than in cash because cash encouraged people to steal.
- In 2013, they went back to their old system.
- There is push back on the notion that you can predict battle field outcomes from the state of the society ,for example, the degree of corruption.
- In the first phase of the war, there was no unified command and launching five avenues of attack was absurd.
- The Russians didn’t even let the military know that they were going to invade Ukraine.
- A good military should recover from a bad plan and they didn’t.
- They have limited the Kyiv objective, then the Kharkiv objective, so they did make some changes based on what happened on the ground.
- Western governments published the Russian plans and then they just went ahead with the same plan.
- No one appreciated how incompetent the Russians would be or how good the Ukrainians would be.
- The Russians saw 2014, not only did the West not intervene, but Ukraine did not resist their take-over of Crimea. (Note: This further confirms the argument that the Zelensky government was something fundamentally different. There was surely still corruption, but the election of Zelensky was an enormous step by the regular people of Ukraine, a decision to push for a more democratic government.)
- It is “pure hubris” that the Russians went ahead and invaded. They truly believed that the Ukrainians were inferior people who were going to just give up and surrender their government.
- Many armies underestimate the opposition out of sheer racism. Before WWII, for example, there were people advising the military who were arguing thar the Japanese were just in capable of pulling off a sophisticated air attack. There were even arguments that the Japanese were incapable of doing this because of the shape of their eyes.
- The Russians also underestimated the US support.
- They didn’t tell the troops they were invading until the day before the war.
- The Ukrainian military was a young one and we didn’t know how they would perform. We had dumped a similar amount of weapons on the Afghans.
- Argument: The Ukrainians had the morale advantage in 2014 as well but they didn’t fight. (Note: This is another refusal to acknowledge the difference between the government in 2014 and the government in 2022).
- Worried that the American lesson from this war will be to underestimate the Russians.
- The Russians would fight differently if they were confronting the US or NATO.
- When Shoigu and Gerasimov took over in 2013, everything with downhill with the military. The Russian military reforms were eliminated.
- 2008-2012 Ministry of Defense was run by somebody they brought in from the Tax Department. There was an effort to modernize the military. Let’s have a professional NCO corps. Russians were not comfortable with this. They downsized in a short span of time. About 30% of Russian officers were let go. If you weren’t “with the program” you were let go. They made a lot of enemies letting these people go.
- Sergikov was trying to make reforms.
- Around 2012 Sergikov was caught in a sex scandal. He was ousted.
- They within a year got rid of the professional NCO program. Brought back the fired officers.
- Shoigu is a close friend of Putin’s. Unwanted narratives about the military were criminalized. It was a culture of silence.
-
Officials are investigating whether a retired federal agent had about 30 minutes advance notice of a white supremacist’s plans to murder Black people at a Buffalo supermarket.
— Read on buffalonews.com/content/tncms/live/ -
SUNDAY 29 MAY 2022
Western corporate media has lost interest in Ukraine where scores of people are dying every day. It is the 94th day of the war against Ukraine.
Kyiv Independent
- Zelensky fires SBU chief in Kharkiv for inaction during war.
- Lavrov: Capturing all of Donbas is “absolute priority” for Russia.
- Russian ship with grain stolen from Ukraine arrives in Syria.
- Ukrainian authorities estimated that Russian troops had stolen more than 400,000 tons of grain in occupied territories.
- Russian forces shell Kharkiv again.
- Russian troops repeatedly block civilian cars evacuating from occupied territories to Zaporizhzhya. Russians sometimes demand money for letting cars pass.
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