Law, Power, and Justice

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  • Sergey Beseda: Putin’s Purge

    BLOG ENTRY Sunday 13 Marcy 2022

    Putin Arrests Head of FSB’s Fifth Service

    The leadership of the Fifth Service of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence service, have reportedly been placed under house arrest. 

    The Fifth Service has been in charge of providing Putin with intelligence on political developments in Ukraine up to and on the eve of the invasion. 

    Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, has been arrested along with his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh.  Both of these men were heavily involved in the planning for the invasion. 

    Putin is conducting what the Times of Israel (3/11/22) has termed a “purge” of military officials over failures in Ukraine.  He has replaced over eight generals, and he has blamed his security services for faulty information about, for example, the amount of resistance that might be met in Ukraine.

    Beseda is also charged with being responsible for embezzling $5 billion over an eight year time period.  This money was to be directed at paying for subversion inside Ukraine.  As Galeotti has noted, the Kremlin now wants to know what they got for all that money.

    Several days ago, Putin appointed a commission to look into that very question.    As Galeotti notes, when you want to know whether somebody will be found guilty at a high level in Russia, just look at the people appointed to the commission investigating the crime.  In this case, all the major players on the investigative commission are people who would personally benefit if Beresda was ousted.

    Galotti argues that the charges are not about embezzlement at all. They are instead a method of establishing a scapegoat for the failures in Ukraine.   He also notes that commissions like this can be “mutual firing squads” that can be very disruptive for a security state.

    Sources:

    In Moscow’s Shadow.  Podcast.  Mark Galeotti.

    CEPA (3/11/22)

  • Hitler or Stalin? Mark Galeotti

    BLOG POST 3/13/22

    The following points are from Mark Galeotti’s podcast “In Moscow’s Shadow.”

    IN MOSCOW’S SHADOWS (Podcast and blog)

    Mark Galeotti (A Short History of Russia, 2021; We Need to Talk about Putin, 2019; Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid, 2019; The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia, 2018).

    Hitler or Stalin?

    Hitler and Stalin clearly thought they could impose their political views on the fighting of a war.  Stalin was convinced he had won before Germany invaded and did so much damage to the Russian forces, they almost didn’t recover.  Spies, generals, analysts and even men deserting from the front lines, told Stalin, but he refused to believe them. 

    After Barbaroso, Stalin learned his lesson.  He retained overall command of the armed forces but listened to his generals and allowed them to fight the war.    

    Hitler, however, seemed never to learn this lesson.  He insisted up till the very end in intervening and micro-managing the war.

    The question is whether Putin will be a Stalin or a Hitler.

    Col. General Beseda

    Rumors are that Col. Gen. Beseda, of the FSB, has been put under house arrest.  It is unclear whether this includes his deputies and others.  The FSB is the primary foreign intelligence arm of the Russian government. 

    Beseda was one of the primary leaders involved with Ukraine.  In 2014, he managed to convince Putin that Yanukovych (then president of Ukraine) was handling the Maidan revolution successfully.  Obviously, this proved to be disastrously wrong.  But, Beseda managed to avoid being sacked.  A smooth manipulator and political game figure, he blamed his faulty analysis on the information he got. 

    It seems that this time he hasn’t been so successful. 

    Galeotti maintains that Beseda will be convicted of the charges brought against him because of the people given charge of the investigation.  They are all people who have something to gain from Beseda’s ouster.

  • Ukraine: A great Podcast

    SATURDAY 12 MARCH 2022

    IN MOSCOW’S SHADOWS (Podcast and blog)

    Mark Galeotti (A Short History of Russia, 2021; We Need to Talk about Putin, 2019; Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid, 2019; The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia, 2018).

    Information War

    •          Galeotti argues that the support rate in the polls for the war inside Russia is actually support for a limited war, perhaps the seizing of the Donbas, not the take over of the entire country of Ukraine.  That support rate will fall rapidly as this goes on.

    •          Sanctions while initially provoking a “rally round the flag” reaction, will eventually began to hurt regular Russians and therefore erode the support.

    •          Putin is calling for an investigation about why conscripts were in Ukraine. These conscripts are supposed to be coming back just in time for the call up of new recruits.  Their stories about what they experienced in Ukraine will have an effect on regular Russians.

    Russian Military

    •          The Russian military can operate quite effectively.  We know this from other conflicts.  They also know about their flaws, these flaws are discussed in the press.  They know about the corruption within the miitary and the problems corruption causes.  They have implemented measures to try to deal with that. 

    •          Initially, there was a huge buildup of  troops who were not doing any fighting.  They were intimidating Ukraine and the West but were not suffering the military casualties of direct fighting.  As a Political war, what Putin was doing by mobilizing forces around Ukraine, was very successful.  The Russians weren’t spending a great deal of resources.  In addition the economy of the Ukrainians was tanking.  International investors, looking to invest in Ukraine, were getting cold feet. Ukraine lost access to international financial markets.

    •          In addition, western politicians were putting serious pressure on Zelensky to make a deal with the Russians, to make concesstions.  So, there was the prospect that the Russians could get political concessions they wanted without having to fire a shot.

    •          The economic problems being caused in Ukraine caused the Ukrainians to question the democracy model and its ability to provide them with economic well being. 

    •          So, the big question is: Why change?  When dates passed, and the Russians didn’t invade, they could say that the Americans were lying to Europe.  If so, what else were they lying about?  The question the Russians could raise was: Why are they trying to scare you?

    •          So why did Putin invade?  Intelligence suggests that perhaps the invasion was Putin’s plan all along, but there was wobbling by Putin even up to the last minute about whether to just try to take back Donbas or invade the whole of Ukraine.

    •          It is probable that only a small group of people in Moscow knows the answer to this question. 

    •          But, why did Putin abandon a successful political strategy in favor of a risky military one?

    •          And, why when they started the invasion was the tactic not the conventional set of tactics that the Russian military is trained for?  There was relatively little preparation.  There was no massive bombardment by air or by long-range artillery.  They did not crater runways or destroy infrastructure.  They did not destroy radar and communications hubs.   

    •          They made some attacks, but these attacks were nothing like the ones they could have made. 

    •          The Russians made “Bizarre”  “little glory runs.” Small fast-moving raids.  They wasted paratroopers trying to move into major cities.  They operated as if they could just “motor into” the city centers and grab the government. 

    •          The only conclusion is that there was massive political interference in the military process.  Putin limited an undermined the military process.  Possibly as early as January, the military was not told that they were moving ahead with the invasion.  It is striking how little psychological preparation there was done with the soldiers.  They thought they were going on exercises.  They were told they would be welcomed by the Ukrainians.  (Note: As were the Americans when they went into Iraq).

    •          This method of operation was bypassing the typical way the Russian military prepares for a conflict.

    •          Since 2014, the Russians have had a National Defense Management Center.  This is a fancy war management center, a situation room where there are banks of computers and operators.  A collection of all the relevant experts are assembled.

    This is not just a way of waging war, it is a philosophy of war.

    It represents a philosophy of war management.  It involves a recognition that in the modern world, war is not just about soldiers.  It is about intelligence and the economy.  All these sources of information are part of waging war.

    •          If there is a prospect of conflict, a ombat management group is set up.  This is a hub that won’t actually try to run the war on the ground, but make sure that there are the forces needed, resources needed.  The identify an objective.     

    •          If the sources are correct, GBU was only set up the day after security council meeting where Putin confronted his security council.  If so, this is a phenomenal indictment of the process.  This war room should have been running for months.

    •          If the central war room was not set up until late in the process, it explains why there was such a lack of preparation, why there was little coordination of  ground and air forces, why there was a lack of resources, fuel, food.  If such a war room was operational, they would have prepared for the invasion not happening quickly, and therefore provided food for a longer operation. 

    •          We have no idea whether Putin’s own paranoia about the word leaking that they were going ahead with an invasion prevented the establishment of such a war room or not.    

    •          But, it is likely that this core means for managing the invasion was hampered by Putin.

    •          There were light forces sent in to seize cities.  This is a waste and makes sense only if you have underestimated the Ukrainians and think the government is so rotten it will just collapse.

    •          The waste of the paratroopers, squandered on “penny package” attacks, only served to embarrass the Russians, delay them, and give the Ukrainians some early victories. 

    •          The military high command would not have made these kinds of decisions.  These decisions would have been made by Putin and a “handful of ideologues around him.”

    •          This war, in some ways, can be considered a confrontation between “autocracy and technocracy.”  Autocracy will always win. The technocratic vision will always give way to the authoritarian view.

  • [Part 2] Ukrainian sacrifice has created the opportunity for a better future with Russia.

    Ukraine sees how to fight Putin. But they also see a chance for a different future between the West and Russia. We must take it.
    — Read on www.greatpower.us/p/ukrainian-sacrifice-has-created-the

  • UKRAINE: Brutal partisanship, which side are you on?

    FRIDAY 11 MARCH 2022

    UKRAINE WORLD (@ukraine_world)

    • Ukraine World has a new podcast available.
    • Ukraine intelligence says that the Russians are planning an attack on Chernobyl.
    • Russian aircraft have made an airstrike from Ukraine into Belarus on the Ukraine-Belarus border.
    • Ukraine asks the West to close the sky over Ukraine.
    • Ukraine may be attacked from Transnistria in order to cut off Odesa from the rest of the country.
    •  

    KYIV POST

    • Russian media is reporting that “volunteers” from the Central African Republic are ready to fight against Ukraine.

    THE KYIV INDEPENDENT

    • Lithuanian parliament approves a resolution calling for immediate EU candidate status for Ukraine.

    TWITTER

    • Ukraine says that the Belaruian military is set to cross the border into Ukraine at  9 PM.
    • The WSJ is calling the Biden administration refusal to provide the Polish jets, a “fiasco.”
    • Kazakhstan is sending tons of medical supplies to Ukraine.  Kazakhstan?
    • Gary Kasparov: Why are we always hearing what NATO and the US will not do?  Never what they will do? 
    • Republicans are all calling for stricter support and reinforcement for Ukraine.  Is there a PR victory that the Democrats refuse to give the Republicans?
    • General Clark: Putin doesn’t want an off ramp.

    THE BIG TENT BY Brian Beutler

    • President Biden has adopted a magnanimous stance toward Republicans to convey unity in support of Ukraine; Republicans have returned the favor by attacking Biden over higher gas prices, which stem from the Ukraine policy they claim to support

    The irony is that maintaining American solidarity with Ukraine will require Biden and Democrats to defeat the forces of division here in the U.S., even though that will feel divisive, because if they get their way, America will betray Ukraine all over again

    The good news (“good news?”) is, Republican hands are extremely dirty, giving Democrats a lot to work with; the bad news, as always, is Democrats remain reluctant to engage, ceding the battle for narrative control to the GOP

    Was this forwarded to you by a friend?

    Here are two lines I’d like to revisit from President Biden’s State of the Union address last week (sorry, I was away):

    “[Vladimir Putin] thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong.”

    “Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression they cause more chaos; they keep moving.”

    These quotes aren’t contiguous in the text, but they’re deeply connected ideas. If dictators prevail unless they face consequences, and one of the keys to imposing those consequences is American unity, then any forces of division here in the U.S. are (intentionally or heedlessly) working hand in glove with Putin.

    That’s a provocative inference, but Biden never actually drew it in the speech, and the sum of his remarks makes me wonder if he’s taken a self-defeatingly rosy view of American solidarity with Ukraine.

    Biden cast American unity as presumptive, rather than something that must be fought for. He never broached America’s own brush with dictatorship; he alluded in passing and obliquely to ongoing GOP efforts to subvert elections under color of law, but not at all to the insurrection of January 6, which was—we should never stop saying—an effort supported by the majority of elected Republicans to create a dictatorship right here in the United States.

    All of that recent history is very hard to square with triumphalism about American resolve: Our wannabe dictator and his lieutenants have yet to pay a price for their aggression; they’re also, almost to a person, Putin’s most influential allies and useful idiots in American politics. And they keep moving. Suddenly, the stakes of failing to exact a toll for their crimes against democracy have grown. Before Putin’s invasion, the big domestic fear was that the insurrectionists would try to claim power illegitimately once again; now it includes the certainty that they’ll undermine American resolve to support Ukraine along the way.

    It follows from Biden’s own view of things, then, that defeating Putin will also require imposing consequences, if only political consequences, on the American authoritarians who would be happy to see Putin win. But those villains featured nowhere in Biden’s assessment of America’s civic health.

    ① THE GAS MENAGERIE

    It’s admittedly a bit paradoxical. Victory requires resolve, resolve requires brutal partisanship, which at least feels divisive. But the logic actually follows, and it’s inescapable.

    Biden’s evident purpose was to broadcast American unity for Putin, Ukraine, and NATO to see. State of the Union addresses not delivered by Donald Trump aren’t usually very partisan; this one was civil even by SOTU standards, all to avoid creating the impression that the United States is only half committed to Ukrainian victory. But whether that was the right decision in the context of this one speech or not (I don’t claim to know) it’s important for Biden and all Democrats to understand in their own minds that the display was largely artificial; it gave Republicans far more credit than they deserve, and at some point Democrats are going to have to confront reality head on.

    Why? Brace yourself for this, it may come as a shock: Republicans have not returned the favor of Biden’s magnanimity. If for some reason you thought that they wouldn’t treat Putin’s war first and foremost as a circumstance to exploit for partisan political gain—well, you were wrong, and also I have a vehicle with poor gas mileage to sell you.

    Here I don’t even mean the Republicans like Trump who have really sided with Russia against Ukraine and the west. They of course want the war to be a drain on Democrats not just because they want Republicans to win elections, but because they want Putin to win his war. The consensus Republican position, though, is that Biden should if anything support Ukraine more aggressively than he has (many will even claim to believe that the invasion is his fault) and also that Biden is to blame for the domestic economic consequences of those policies.

    It’s their usual method of reflexive, nonsensical demagoguery (cf. Nikki Haley) deployed in this case on the brink of World War III.

    The point isn’t that members of both parties are obligated to fall in line behind the leader just because there’s a national or global security threat somewhere (that’s what Republicans say when they’re in charge and ginning up wars of conquest). It’s that the world can see their motives are ulterior. Whatever their hearts tell them about Ukraine and how America should conduct itself as an ally, they will undermine American resolve in that role if and when it might yield them a domestic political advantage. And everyone knows it. It’d be as if Democrats had hectored George W. Bush into invading Iraq, for the sole purpose of making Americans angry about the price at the pump, while the most famous members of the party fawned over Saddam Hussein’s great genius.

    National unity behind an effort facing this kind of bad faith won’t endure for very long. And if our role in Ukraine is destined to become marked by partisan rancor it’d be a tragedy for Democrats—the earnestly pro-Ukraine, pro-democracy majority in the country—to end up on the losing side of it.

    ② VLAD TO THE BONE

    At the moment, the American public rightly sides with Ukraine over Putin, viewing the latter as a liar and a tyrant, the person responsible for plunging the world into the gravest international crisis it’s faced in decades.

    With that in mind, let’s review. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, he’d already amassed a lengthy and up-to-then inexplicable public record of pro-Putin adulation. What we didn’t know then, and would only learn when it was tragically too late, is that Putin had bribed him, as he’d bribed many other right-wing political figures in democratic countries, with an eight-figure proposal to build a Trump-branded hotel in Moscow.

    If we’d known, it might’ve colored our view of things when, for instance, the Trump campaign (through it’s criminal campaign manager, whose business partner was a Russian spy) strong-armed the GOP into dropping support for arming Ukraine (then under Russian occupation in Crimea) from its official platform. It might have made us more alarmed than we were when Trump pulled the “Russia, if you’re listening” bit, imploring his patrons in Moscow to steal and publish Hillary Clinton’s emails. It definitely would’ve made us reassess the perceptiveness of Kevin McCarthy, when we learned in 2017 that he’d been secretly taped before the election saying he think Putin “pays” Trump (before supporting Trump’s candidacy without reservation).

    Still, what we did know was enough to make many of us suspect what Robert Mueller later confirmed: That the Trump campaign and the Russian government had an understanding (and probably a more explicit arrangement) under which Russia would help Trump win the election through illegal sabotage, and Trump would reward Putin with various geopolitical favors: weakening NATO, undermining liberal democracy, and (perhaps most importantly) giving him a freer hand in Ukraine.

    And then Trump did his part. He and Putin stood together in Helsinki and lied to the world about their 2016 collaboration, disparaging the U.S. government which had concluded otherwise on the global stage. After multiple conversations with Putin that have been lost to history—either because he held them in secret, or destroyed U.S. government records of them—he joined a Russian disinformation campaign to claim Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election. We can be pretty sure he knew he was lying because, after all, he participated in the actual, lengthily investigated subversion plot. And for his ultimate act of betrayal, he illegally withheld military aid the U.S. had obligated to Ukraine unless its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to smear Joe Biden ahead of the next campaign.

    When he got caught in the middle of this scheme, the House rightly impeached him. But every single elected Republican save for Mitt Romney decided it was fine, or, at least, nothing Trump should face any consequences for it. They had the numbers to acquit Trump, and, just as Biden said of dictators throughout history, Trump kept moving.

    ③ WHEN THE OTHER SHOE GOPS

    That’s all the background you need to gauge the sincerity of the GOP’s commitment to Ukrainian autonomy. It’s the context that explains why people who now claim to be unwavering supporters of Ukraine and Zelensky would simultaneously try to sour the American public on the costs of allyship. They don’t particularly care if they weaken the national resolve to punish Putin, because Ukraine has always been a pawn to them; or if not a pawn, then subordinate to the higher calling of Republican partisan advantage.

    All of these Republicans are aware of everything Donald Trump has said in recent weeks about Putin and Ukraine, just as they’re aware that he teamed up with Russia to sabotage both Ukraine and the 2016 election, and that he continues to spread poisonous lies about the election in 2020, assaulting democracy at home while we try to defend it abroad. Trump has been banished from mainstream social media, and both Democratic leaders and the national media have frequently engaged in collective, ritual ostriching, as if the best way to limit the damage he might inflict is to act as though it isn’t happening. But everything he says and does filters into the hivemind of the GOP; they know what will come to be party dogma if he runs for the party’s presidential nomination and wins. And through it all, Republican after Republican has made clear that, whether they want him to be the nominee or not, they will support him anyhow, with all that entails.

    Bill Barr says, “It’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.” Mitch McConnell will “absolutely” support the man who heaps abuse on him almost daily.

    And let’s not delude ourselves: That will almost certainly entail abandoning Ukraine. The most slavish Trump loyalists the party have already taken to parroting Kremlin propaganda about Zelensky’s ‘thuggishness’ and echoing conspiratorial lies meant to justify the Russian invasion. We know the overwhelming majority of Republicans will go along with it if forced to choose between that and party disarray, because they’ve done it before.

    And you know who else knows it? Putin, Zelensky, and the rest of the world’s interested parties. As morally satisfying as it may feel to affect a stance of national unity, the benefits for our global alliances are small and the domestic political costs are high. So long as Republicans are what they are, failing to make issue of their fair-weather commitment to Ukraine cedes the whole terrain of political contestation over the Ukraine question to bad actors, allowing them to persuade the electorate that the only thing wrong with our Ukraine policy is Joe Biden’s stewardship of it. That all the sacrifices Putin’s war entails from us are outgrowths of his failures.

    Biden has taken to calling it “Putin’s price hike” but he hasn’t completed the circle to make it clear that the people blaming him for higher gas prices are actually doing Putin’s dirty work. Or that this should come as no surprise since Trump’s in Putin’s pocket and they support Trump all the way. Putin has put the western way of life in existential danger, Trump is subservient to Putin, and Republicans are subservient to Trump. It does no further harm to America to level with the world about what Republicans are, and it does Ukraine no favors to pretend America’s commitments to its sovereignty are consistent across our two parties. The Democratic commitment is ironclad. The Republican commitment is Potemkin.

  • Fox News is Interviewing Bill Barr, the most dangerous bull in the herd.

    UKRAINE UPDATE, 3:30 PM

    CNN

    • Russia is claiming that the victims of their invasion are “crisis actors.”

    FOX NEWS

    • Fox New seems to have completely forgotten how deeply up the ass of Putin the Republican party has been in the past and is now.  To hear them tell it, Putin is the most evil man in the history of the universe.  But, the leader of their party, Trump, accepted Russian help to get “elected” in 2016.  He has done extensive business with Russian oligarchs.  He hired Paul Manafort, who got Russia’s puppet government into power briefly in Ukraine.
    • Of course, they have to interview Bill Barr now, one of the most dangerous, corrupt men in the country.  Barr is pimping for John Durham.  I am just not sure I can listen to this.  There are not many people I despise more than Bill Barr.  I always think of something Cicero is supposed to have said about Pompey: “He’s the most dangerous bull in the herd.”
    • Fox: New revelations in his book. 
    • Barr, 2019: “I think spying did occur.”  It was an FBI issue, not a CIA issue.  Durham is looking at the Clinton campaign and the role her operatives played in getting this thing  rolling. 
    • Fox: According to the Durham filing, they were gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.
    • Barr: Two different groups of characters, people in the government, and then the private actors, Clinton campaign personnel participated.  Durham is taking a hard look at the Clinton campaign.
    • Fox: “Will anybody ever be held accountable?”  She mentions Marc Elias.
    • Barr:  “I hope there will be more indictments.”  “I think there will be possibly criminal charges.” 
    • Fox: January 6th.  You expressed a concern about mail-in voting.
    • Barr: Anything that affects integrity.  People are going to be suspicious.  “…weakening them creates an opportunity for fraud.” 
    • Fox quoting Trump: “Barr was a ‘Bushie’ who never had the energy or competence to do the job that he was put in place to do.”
    • Barr:  “They wasted four or five weeks on these machines, which was a bogus claim…absurd….instead of focusing in and trying to get the evidence” that was necessary to overturn the election.  “There was some illegal harvesting.”  “There’s no secret why he lost.”  It was in the suburbs who defected.  He ran weaker than the Republican party in Wisconsin.  “Think about that.”  He got 60,000 votes less.  “You can’t win a national election if you’re running weaker than the national ticket.” 
    • Fox: James Comey piece.  Urged FBI not to soften on prosecuting anyone who was in the capitol on Jan. 6.  Comey advocated sending a “shock wave of deterrence….vote, argue, litigate, demonstrate….don’t you dare interfere by force in the operation of this democracy.”
    • Barr:  Why didn’t he write that during Portland when governmental officials were being seriously injured.  They were trying to turn down a building with the officials in it.  I didn’t see him saying anything then. 
    • Fox: Vote for Trump?
    • Barr: “I think we are going to be making a grave mistake if he is nominated.  I hope he isn’t.”  “I think the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda that is dominating the Democratic Party.”  The Republicans are blessed with a lot of qualified people.  Biden is “too old to govern.” 

  • Which countries import Russian oil and what it will take to stop the flow – The Washington Post

    The countries that import Russian crude and other petroleum products — and what it would take to turn off the spigot.
    — Read on www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/russia-oil-imports-ban/

  • Ukraine: Morning Update Notes

    Ukraine

    CNN

    • Russians are bombing the humanitarian zone in Mariupol.

    MSNBC

    • All the usual suspects following along with the “too risky” narrative for the jets from Poland.
    • Jane Harmon is on Way Too Early.  The war is going very badly for Putin.  Harmon supports (surprise, surprise) the Biden administration refusal to implement a No-Fly Zone and transfer of Polish jets.
    • Turkey is a NATO member. 

    UKRAINE WORLD @ukraine_world (One of the best podcasts about Ukraine

    • Lavrov admitted that the shelling of the maternity hospital was deliberate in a press conference in Antalya.
    • Lavrov once again said that a ceasefire was only possible if Ukraine accepted Russia’s demands.
    • Ukraine’s president’s office is saying that there are enough Ukraine soldiers in Kyiv to make encircling the city impossible. 
    • Mariott, Hyatt and Johnson and Johnson are still operating in Russia.
    • Intercepted calls from Russian soldiers describing the loot they are bringing home, liquor, TV’s, speakers from Ukrainian homes. 
    • Interview with Zelensky: “We can’t stop alone in this.”  “It’s still very slowly.”  The people from Europe and the United States are far from Ukraine.  “You are not fighting here.”  “If you are united against this Nazism you have to close (the skies).”  “Close the sky.”  Tell the parents who lost their children.  “Sorry, we didn’t do it yesterday, one week ago.  We didn’t push Putin, we didn’t speak with him a lot…we did nothing.”  “Yesterday the world did nothing.”  “What does mean worse, for whom?”  “In future, you will be too late.”  “They will close the sky, but we will lose millions of people.”
    • Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs, is warning that reserve diesel generators have only a 48 hour capacity to power the Chornobyl.  After that, cooling systems for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent.

    KYIV POST

    • Ukraine has proposed a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol.
    • There have been reports in Russia that Ukraine is experimenting with COVID.
    • Now seeing “o”s on Russian tanks.  It is thought this means that the tank came from Belarus.
    • Russia is claiming that reports that it bombed a children’s hospital is “fake news.”
    • 300,000 citizens are trapped in Mariupol.
    • UK sanctions 7 Russian oligarchs (Abramovich, Sechin, Miller, Kostin, Tokarev, Lebedev, Deripaska).
    • Retired Ambassador Francis M. O’Donnell supports a no-fly zone.

    TWITTER

    • My twitter feed is full of Russian bots.  Russian bots are starting to follow me.  Most of them I block.
    • Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) Journalists choose to forget that Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the West and Russia under the Budapest memorandum in 1994.  Some in the EU want Ukraine to surrender so that they will have a buffer state between them and Russia.
    • “Ukraine has, is not and will not surrender.” Kuleba after speaking with Lavrov.
    • FSB active analyst translated by Igo Sushko @igorsushko:  1) there is a threat of famine due to the destruction of wheat, 2) the FSB is being blamed (inside Russia) for a faulty analysis that led to the invasion, 3) no one knew that this war was going to be launched, 4) when possible repercussions of such an invasion were analyzed, it was only theoretical, we thought it was just so some bureaucrat could check off something in his list, 5) “no one prepared for these sanctions, 6) Kadyrov, head of the Chechen government, was very upset over reports that an FSB operative tipped off the Ukrainians about an assassination attempt on Zelensky, 7) had Zelensky and his deputies been captured in the first three days they would have been forced to read an address announcing their surrender, 8) a newly installed government will be overthrown in three days, 9) mobilization inside Russia would implode, 10) We have lost contact with major divisions, we don’t know what is going on inside of Ukraine, 11) “In June, there will be no economy left in Russia.”
    •  

  • Ukraine: Notes from Last Night

    KIEV, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 01: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the media on October 1, 2019 in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine has been at the core of a political storm in U.S. politics since the release of a whistleblower’s complaint suggesting U.S. President Donald Trump, at the expense of U.S. foreign policy, pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

    UKRAINE, Wednesday Night:

    There will be jets from Poland and no No-Fly zone.  I had to turn off the bullshit from Kirby at the Pentagon.  I cannot sit and listen to the U.S. government insulting our intelligence by telling us that the situation would be worse if we implemented a no=fly zone. 

    Alexander Vindman, Ted Lieu and others are saying that this idiotic narrative that we can’t figure out how to transport some fighter jets to Ukraine is just that, idiotic.

    CNN

    • There has been a strike on a hospital in Mariupol.  No food, no water, no heat
    • Zelensky talked about the “genocide” of the Ukrainian people.
    • More coverage on the heartlessness of Putin.  (Note: I don’t care about the heartlessness of Putin or whether what he is doing fits the definition of “genocide.”  I care about doing something about it.)
    • Russians are claiming that the Americans are protecting chemical weapons manufacture in Ukraine. (Note: Earlier today I saw on a program I taped from RT, the crawl line said that Americans were only trying to protect their chemical weapons plants in Ukraine.)
    • There are warnings that Putin plans to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
    • Zelensky says they need more aircraft.
    • The Pentagon has rejected a proposal to provide those planes.
    • (Note: I am disgusted).
    • Interview with mayor Alexander Senkevich, of Mykol, Ukraine.  They have used cluster bombs to kill our people. 
    • Wolf Blitzer is emoting about “horrific” photographs of children.  (Note: That does us a lot of good.)
    • Wolf Blitzer: How are your citizens holding up?  (Note: This is the best he can do?)
    • Note: I am increasingly disgusted an embarrassed by the questions being asked these people who are being attacked and killed every day.  “How are you doing?”  Jesus.  Now, he’s saying: “Good luck.”

    PBS

    • “This is a fight for our planet to be a peaceful place and not a place of war.”  Ambassador to the U.S. from Ukraine, Ms.  Markarova.  We need more help.  “Putin will not stop in Ukraine.”
    • (Note: What is the point of news anchors repeatedly asking “How long can Ukraine hold out?”)
    • Markarova answers with a calm that I certainly would never have been able to maintain:  The question is not how long Ukraine can hold out but how long it is going to take the West to do something about it.

    MSNBC: Chris Hayes

    • A children’s hospital has been attacked. 
    • Zelensky renews calls on closing the sky.  A reporter says to Zelensky that the west maintains that a no-fly zone or supplying them with jets would make the situation worse.  “What does it mean worse?” Zelensky replies. Worse for whom?”  (Note: I just don’t see how reporters can ask these questions.)
    • Zelensky: “Nobody knows…in future you will be too late….they will close the sky but we will lose millions of people.”
    • Hayes: That attack on the maternity hospital “should never have happened.”  Hayes’ argument is that they should have already taken the country?  (Note: What?) 
    • Showing Haines, DNI, testifying about “an ill constructed plan” by the Russians.    
    • Russia has the second largest air force in the world.
    • Turkey is supplying armed drones.
    • Hayes: “It’s not clear that it is achieving any tactical objectives.”  He’s talking about the bombing of Kharkiv.  (Note: It is achieving a tactical objective, terrorizing the population, driving people out).
    • Showing Blinken: Talking about Putin’s war: “To what end?….Failures of the initial military plan.”  “strategy of laying waste to the…country.”
    • Two million people have fled the country, half of them are children.  In two weeks.
    • Russian toll is around 2-4,000 Russian soldiers.  2,500 Americans were killed in Afghanistan in 20 years.  15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in 10 years.  This was in less than two weeks. 
    • Cal Perry in Lviv.  Mariupol, has been on Ukrainian television all day.  Mayor estimates that 1200 civilians have been killed.  They dug a mass grave because they didn’t have the time to bury everyone individually.  In Kharkiv, no power, no water, no heat.  Chernobyl has been cut off the IAEA monitoring system as has another nuclear power plant.  We don’t know what has been happening at Chernobyl for 10, 12 days.  We are expecting a false flag operation perhaps involving chemical weapons.
    • Interview with Stavridis: “There is no method but a great deal of madness.”  “It makes me heartsick.”  Putin is “frustrated by the failure of his generals, frustrated by the failure of logistics….”  The damage we are seeing if from artillery, some large range missiles.  They are not going after specific military targets.  The aviation side is not significant.  If the Ukrainians had tactical weapons they could go after that convoy that is stopped.  The quickest way to get at it is fighter jets.  That’s why I support getting the jets from Poland to the Ukrainians.  “There are no forgone conclusions in war.”    

  • Millions of Leftists Are Reposting Kremlin Misinformation by Mistake

    A Kremlin-backed media outlet masquerading as a left-wing news source has been racking up likes and shares on its posts about Ukraine.
    — Read on www.vice.com/en/article/wxdb5z/redfish-media-russia-propaganda-misinformation

  • UKRAINE UPDATE: Blinken and more excuses about the No-Fly Zone, Fox News and Petraeus, Vindman

    WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH 2022

    Ukraine Update: 11:30 AM

    MSNBC

    • Blinken speaking.   
    • More excuses about the No-Fly Zone.  Blinken: Ukrainians are amazing, I (like Zelensky) would be asking for everything possible.  The US and UK have done “extraordinary things,” we have made sure they have everything to defend themselves.  (Note: If they lose it’s their fault.)  The goal is to “save lives.”  Have to see to it that this war doesn’t expand, that the war is not prolonged.  We don’t want this was to be “even deadlier, involve more people…make things harder to resolve in Ukraine itself.” (Note: Bullshit.)
    • UK Foreign Minister: (Note: London is awash with Russian money.)  She is citing the action of private industry.  (Note: So now we are relying on McDonalds to stand up for democracy and using them as an excuse for why governments in the West don’t need to.)
    • Blinken:  “I’m absolutely convinced that Putin will fail.”  (Note: So now we are just sitting and waiting for Putin to fail.  What a laudable position.)
    • “We’re committed to defending them.  We’re committed to standing for them until we succeed in making it clear that they will hold and Putin’s efforts to undermine them will fail.” (Read: We will stand up for Ukraine until it wins.  We ain’t fighting.”)

    CNN

    • Vindman: US. defense systems have been moved to show that we will defend NATO. That defense system on Ukrainian soil would defend against missiles.  Patriot batteries moved closer to the Ukraine border. 
    • An aircraft carrier has been moved into the Aegean Sea.  Vindman: It’s more than the ship and its planes.  It’s mainly a deterrent.
    • Offer of fighter jets from Poland.  Offer was to fly them to Germany and then fly them back to Ukraine.  The US has declined that as an option.
    • Vindman: The US tried to stop discussion of planes being provided earlier.  They think it’s way too provocative.  This is a “fundamentally flawed assumption.”  There is no reason for us to limit ourselves and not supply Ukraine with what they need.  Vindman fears that the blocking of the offer from Poland is a sign that the Biden administration is not willing to go for more serious weaponry.  This is a mistake.

    FOX

    • I was going to say that this note wasn’t about Ukraine, but it is.  Fox News is evidently marketing (using the shill Huckaby) children’s books about how wonderful Trump is.  The books are illustrated with badly drawn cartoons.  One of them shows Donald Trump with Abraham Lincoln.  These are being used to indoctrinate children.  As always, the right complains that the left is doing what they are doing (cheating on elections, indoctrinating children, attempting an authoritarian take over of democracy, on and on and on).  Just as an aside, I would like to remind you that the right accuses the left of organizing a child sex traffic ring and also eating children.  Just think about that one.
    • Fox advances the narrative that a rise in oil prices has nothing to do with oil and gas companies.  They are pimping the line that Biden is using that as a distraction for his own bad administration.
    • Fox is interviewing the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.  He’s trying to scare people about policies that don’t allow the oil and gas industry to drill without constraints.  Sommers (CEO) trying to portray oil and gas as responsible for winning WWII.
    • Fox and the right never let an opportunity go by to advance their interests, not even a war.  See the book: “Disaster Capitalism.”
    • Horrible woman on Fox argues that when Trump was in office the bureaucracy was wiped away.  What is that woman’s name?  Harris? 
    • Note: Yesterday she was telling these long-convoluted stories about what her father always told her.  Usually, these stories are composed of short, pithy statements.  No, she was going on and on about what her father supposedly always told her.  Something like: My father always told me that you had to give oil and gas free hand to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do because it was essential to the freedom of black people and the free world.  You have to watch this stuff to believe it.
    • Fox is reporting that the RT editor resigns in protest over Putin’s war.
    • Fox News hosts Petraeus on to comment on Ukraine.  Petraeus who gave classified information to his lover so she could write a great biography of him. This is who they have on?

    TWITTER

    • The EU has agreed on a ban on the provision of euro banknotes to Belarus.

    NOTES

    • There are so many things to learn about Ukraine and Russia, but the corporate media keeps spending hours and hours of time interviewing individuals on the ground in Ukraine.  I understand the effort to make the war personal, human, but I think we get it by now that there are real people involved in this disaster.  Simply repeating story after story after story of people who are fleeing serves only the purpose of filling air time and not talking about the things that brought us here.  The corporate media refuses to educate.  We need an educated population, not an entertained population. 
    • I used to tell my students: I’m not here to make you happy.  I’m here to make you think. 
    • I’ve been thinking lately about what this point in history could mean.  If people see by watching the Ukrainians, what ordinary people can do, how they can change the conditions of their existence, it may have profound implications beyond Ukraine.  That, in fact, is what Putin is so afraid of, the demand for democracy from the Ukrainians, the fact that the Ukrainians with just their bodies, threw a Russian stooge president out of the country.
    • On the podcast @skullduggery, they have a Ukrainian MP on the phone and the question?  The significant question?  Whether we can expect there to be more refugees.  Jesus.  Michael Isikoff

  • When Railing Against Cancel Culture Is About Railing Against Accountability | The Nation. Always, always read elie mystal.

    A speech by Andrew Cuomo and an article by a college student suggest what’s really behind the lamentations about “left-wing censorship.”
    — Read on www.thenation.com/article/society/cuomo-camp-canceled-not/

  • UKRAINE

    By the way, I am on twitter @cjjohns1951

  • Update:

    I’m going to put two of my nine cats in carriers and take them to the vet for booster shots. I am dreading the disapproval. I, however, can come home with my cats. They will be fed and safe tonight. I will have dinner and sleep in a warm bed. Democracy is not a given, a state of being. Peace is not a given.

    I really wonder if people too young to have had parents in WWII even grasp that this reality they are experiencing is fragile. People in the U.S. were not attacked in WWII. They only experienced the war on other people’s territory. I think that younger people assume this post-war stability is a given, that it cannot go away. It can.

    Elites in this country are dealing with Putin the same way they are dealing with Trump. There is no accountability for the bullies, the authoritarians, the soldiers against justice and democracy. They will not stand up and fight Putin over Ukraine, and they will not stand up and put Trump and his henchmen in jail after a coup.

    Weakness in the face of tyranny ensures disaster.

  • UKRAINE UPDATE: Evacuation routes, Corporate media, What Putin is experiencing

    CNN

    •          The Russians want to use the evacuation routes as targets according to military commentator on CNN.

    •          Kimberly Dozier on CNN.  This tactic (attacking routes) creates fear and distrust of evacuation routes.  Men will escort women and children because they don’t trust the routes. This will leave less men to fight.  It makes Russia look as if they are cooperating with a humanitarian effort.  She notes the “image fatigue” of Western populations.  (Note: This is a pathetic statement.)

    •          There are now calls for “humanitarian” no-fly zones.

    •          Military expert argues that there is no such thing.  Talks about a “level of desperation” experienced by Putin.  (Note: I am so tired of listening to people tell us they know what Putin is experiencing.  First, I don’t care and second, they don’t f…king know.)

    •          Biden announces a banning of Russian oil.  (11:25 AM).  Some of the European countries cannot afford to do this, they import more oil. 

    •          Zelensky: “We are looking for the help of the civilized nations.”  “Please make sure that the Ukrainian skies are safe.”  Speaking to the UK Parliament.

    MSNBC

    FOX NEWS

    •          Fox is, of course, after the Biden announcement about cutting off Russian oil, blaming Biden for the increase in the price of oil and maintaining that the Biden administration is blaming Russia and the invasion for the increase in prices.

    KYIV INDEPENDENT

    •          The Irish Times reported that the UN had told its employees not to use the word “war” to refer to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The UN denies this.

    •          UK to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022.

    •          27 Foreign policy leaders urged a limited “no fly zone.”

    •          Belarus conducted phishing attacks against Ukraine.

    NOTES:

    •          ALJAZEERA publishes a Ukraine War summary.

    •          Refugee numbers have reached 2 million.

    •          Moscow threatens to close a major pipeline to Germany.  Note: This was the purpose in the first place).

    •          Ukraine says that it has killed more than 11,000 Russian Troops.

    •          Access to what’s going on in Ukraine is increasingly difficult.  People we have followed on Twitter in Ukraine have gone silent.

    •          Corporate media is reporting that Biden is “increasing troop strength in Europe” BY 500 soldiers?  The media is just outrageous.

    THOM HARTMAN, The Hartman Report, March 7, 2022

    •          If houses had solar panels, the cutting off of central power sources would be less devastating.  Germany and California are requiring this on all new construction.  (Note: But still Republicans and scum like Joe Scarborough are back to the “Drill Baby Drill” narrative.

    •          Centralized power generation is not a reliable wad of money that for-profit companies can appropriate after the Republicans allowed them to privatize the energy business.  They are no longer reliable (See Texas).