Z tells us Russian invaders have mined and boobytrapped about 20,000 square kilometers of Ukraine, mostly in the country’s southern regions. This explains, in part, why attempts to liberate these areas is dangerous, difficult and time consuming.
Russia moved in on Kherson and Zaporizhia regions at the start of the all-out phase of the 9-year war because Ukraine’s security agencies were managed by Russian spies. They occupied promptly and mined the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest in Europe — and could very possibly blow it up.
DeepState illustrates the military challenge of negotiating Russia’s defensive fortifications today. The black squiggly lines are mostly trenches defended by invaders occupying small, partly underground concrete forts.
Looking on the bright side, the Pentagon yesterday told us they overcalculated —that is, overvalued — by $6 billion the amount of military stuff supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
We are disappointed with Uncle Joe for not providing Ukraine with long-range missiles necessary to counter the decisive military factor in this armed conflict, namely Russia’s significantly disproportionate capabilities — the maximum operating range of its assets of destruction.
From the onset of the large-scale aggression, Russian weapons could hit targets 20 times farther than the Ukrainians. Translated into the language of military practice, it means that the AFU, in the best-case scenario, are able to employ outdated launchers and strike no farther than the depth of the enemy's operational rear. At the same time, the enemy is able to inflict point strikes on targets across the entire depth of the country's territory, doing it with impunity1.
We whined about addressing the decisive political factor last September.
Figuring out what the Schwerpunkt is politically and economically remains a work in progress, at least in Ukraine, where Z team and paid foreign shills continue to evince the complete efflorescence of how groupthink is not that great in aligning collective actions with what might actually be achieved, in practice, that is. Once you realize this, you then have to kind of generalize and point out the importance of monumental fuck-ups, like not taking seriously repeated warnings that Putin would try to decapitate Kyiv in the first place. And so we’re left with gigantic billboards at international airports saying Ukraine is defending our freedom and politicians saying that liberalism, in the broadest sense of the word, can last forever2.
Belatedly, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed a Resolution urging Uncle Joe to provide Ukraine with longer range tactical military ballistic missiles
Our gratitude for this political gesture is overshadowed by our preoccupation these days with Russia’s threats of committing additional acts of genocide and ecocide, e.g., blowing up the titanium plant in Crimea and setting fire to the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power plant.
This is all apropos of what I attempted unsuccessfully to convey on February 19, 2022.
These are the inevitable snarls from those who daily chant via anecdotal, decontextualized intelligence, from those who glibly claim victory for fights in which they took no part, from those who have mined a massive vein of ‘content’ from under Independence Square, from those who, in the face of extremism, take comfort drawing extremists close to their side, from recovering liberals, from those so fully infused with the language and gestures of self-promotion that it no longer matters what the zeitgeist is, only that it is tapped3.
And again on Day 22.
The United States is Advising and Assisting Ukraine in its war against Russia, the Det-A equivalent of suggesting the best place to cross the death strip in Cold War East Berlin. The decision on authorizing the third A - Accompanying - should be a couple weeks, maybe months, down the road.
The decision to deploy U.S. and/or NATO troops will likely depend on how many thousands more innocent Ukrainian civilians are blown to bits by errant Russian cruise missiles and indiscriminate shelling by multiple-rocket launchers. False-flag limited nuclear and chemical attacks might be triggers, but no one knows. So far, Biden and Jens have been mostly talking about what they’re not going to do4.
ATACMs are nice, but we need the third A to end this bloody mess.
2023 Military Campain Prosects. The Ukrainian view (September 12, 2022)
On the Roasting of Chicken. Stay-behind sabotage (February 19, 2022)