Day 2, Phase 3

Leaking Intelligence

Map c/o Nathan

No one is sure what’s going on, including Uncle Joe, who has reportedly told Tiger Team to stop leaking information¹ about what intelligence America’s spy agencies are sharing with Ze. Leaked intelligence, as we all know, is a double entendre, that is, open to two interpretations, one of which is usually indecent or risqué, in this case the latter. Just ask Oleksiy. It’s his specialty.

There are upsides² and downsides³ to throwing operation security out the window, depending if you’re a legionnaire standing in the dark near a wooded area between open fields on the outskirts of Ruska Lozova, or merely a voyeur pundit staking out a large Beltway bathroom.

Which, apropos of this murky stage of the war, brings me to Fred, who joins Andriy at Time Magazine’s urinoir.

I still haven’t gotten over Andriy’s zillion-word op-ed appearing in this greasy rag. The nut graph of that scream for attention still makes me queazy.

It wouldn’t make a difference if he had wrote “the first world order never.”

Enter David, who recently opined that Russia’s Initial Failures Don’t Mean Ukraine Will Survive.

David, who reminds me of both Fred and Andriy, says dunking on the Kremlin is a bad idea.

Thanks, David.

Thomas Friedman, who knows almost nothing about Ukraine, got the dunking-on-Russia ball rolling last week in his column for The New York Times, which, when it comes to Ukraine, almost always gets the story wrong⁴.

Silly me. I had thought we were in a war with Russia since, er, at least 2014.

We’ll give the last word to Jen, c/o Uncle Joe, who says he is worried that Vova doesn’t have an offramp.

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1. I once read that many white male Ukraine experts suffer from something called ‘imposter syndrome,’ a perpetual fear that someone will find out they don’t know what they’re talking about. Lost in Translation. Imminent Inevitability in Ukraine’s Underpants (February 4, 2022)

2. Maliar and Sorokin don’t want Ukrainians to be worried, and neither does Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, who repeated official assurances that Russia does not seek a war with Ukraine. On the Edge of Inanity. (January 30, 2022)

3. David Ignatius informs us that U.S. and allied non-permissive environment specialists have already landed in Kyiv and are scheming with indigenous commandos at Tootsie Club to liberate possible future oppressed residents of the capital. Stay Out of Doorways. Tactical Athletics at Tootsie’s (January 12, 2022)

4. Ukraine Baffled by Bullshit from the NYT. (August 19, 2017)