I listened to Yuriy talking about military mismanagement in eastern Ukraine.
We assume Team USA’s new national security team has received the brief and concluded same. Z and Donald can chat about it during Ukrainian Week.
The big news is that Masha is back exposing mansplaining, telling us the war has lasted almost three years. Actually, eleven. She was among the Russia/Ukraine experts opposed to US lethal military assistance in the early years of the war.
The last time we encountered Masha and Ukraine on the same page was, er, Day 4481. Her brother Keith wrote something idiotic for The Harriman Institute at Columbia Univeristy this month, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it2. I hope they don’t let him teach anything there.
Hanna has an article appearing in on January 20 in RUSI, titled “From Budapest Memorandum to Ukraine Compact: A Conundrum of Guarantees,” concluding that the two dozen or so friendship agreements Z and his top managers arranged last year “introduce an overlapping puzzle of security commitments without any concomitant guarantees.” That sounds about right.
Z’s big mistake was not listening to his generals in the fall of 2023 when they told him Ukraine needed 450,000 new trained soldiers for the coming year. Instead, we got a bunch of bullshit pacts, the Peace Formula, Victory and Resilience Plans.
Looking on the bright side, the days are getting longer.
Do Russians Really Support the War in Ukraine? (The Harriman Institute, January 21, 2025)