Day 897
Hurricane twister, break the transmitter
The rave – to paraphrase Glenn Gould – is twelve bars of brilliance surrounded by three and a half minutes of sticky tedium (no gimmick is left untried: from a wandering rubber-twang guitar lead on loan from ‘La Vida Loca,’ to slatherings of futbol-arena organ, to a glib rhythm track so close and overproduced it might as well come in ones and zeroes). It’s the sort of fpv-drone-death soundtrack that makes your ass move the first and second time you hear it.
By the fifth, you want to slice your ears off.
Yesterday evening, with the goal of improving these tumbling deskbound hours I walked around downtown Kyiv taking pictures and bumping into at least three close relatives. The first was Stephanie, who is leaving Kyiv later this month.
An hour later, unannounced, two cousins materialized, Zakhar and Nazar, specializing in field theory and particle physics, respectively. They looked happy.
On Ukraine’s war jacket, it’s all Kursk. That’s a shame, because we are more interested in what’s happening in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has been raging for months. Vasyl has the details.
This from Francesca at The Washington Post (via Moscow):
The Institute for the Study of War agrees with Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Kyrylo that Russia’s latest offensive will poop out by the end of September.
[Kyrylo’s] statements are consistent with ISW's assessment that Russian forces are currently committing the breadth of their present materiel and manpower capabilities to pursuing offensive operations throughout the theater, particularly in Donetsk Oblast, and that Russian forces are unlikely to launch a new distinct offensive operation this summer due to mounting constraints to their capabilities. — ISW (August 7, 2024)
If recent history is any guide, we should disregard both ISW and Budanov.
Z, sporting a new pajama top, does not mention Kursk in his daily pep talk, but Myhailo has something to say.
"Will [Russians] understand anything other than fear? No. Will they care about it? Yes. Will they react to anything other than fear? No. This is something that finally needs to be understood. The Russian Federation sees any compromise as your weakness and willingness to kneel. <...> You can squeeze them, get something if they realize that the war is not going according to their scenario," Podoliak said.
We are all confused.
And, finally, this from JD on the American jacket1.
Vance’s elevation to the ticket was controversial within a certain sect of the Republican Party, in part because of his outspoken opposition to aid to Ukraine, which passed earlier this year with the support of Republican leaders in Congress.
Vance told Semafor he rejected arguments from Ukraine supporters, including the Biden administration, that investing in the country’s defense was necessary to deter Russian aggression against NATO allies.
“You don’t have to believe that Putin is a good guy — I certainly don’t — but you have to ask yourself, what are his actual capabilities?” he said. “I think he’s shown in Ukraine that he can’t go that far.”
Vance said that he and Trump would maintain the historic friendship with Europe, but demand they be “self-sufficient” both in their military capacity and their ability to power their countries without Russian energy.
“When the Harris administration says if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he’s gonna march all the way to Germany, one, it’s not true, and two, what does that say about Germany’s defense capabilities?” he said. “It’s the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world, if they can’t repel a Russian invasion that does not suggest America should effectively serve as a security protector for Germany, that suggests the Germans ought to get off their ass and invest in their own defense.”
Last time I checked, JD knows zippolla about Ukraine and Germany and Russia. “Russians marching all the way to Germany” is a red herring. I encourage JD to visit Ukraine and the front line before he and Trump lose the presidential election in November. At least, the trip will give him a better idea of what he doesn’t understand.