Gigantic Strategic Failure
Breathing, stride, tempo
It becomes painfully more obvious that fascist Russia’s genocidal campaign is doomed. Ukraine receives more weapons and ammunition each day. Military intelligence daily hoovers up coordinates for long-range artillery rocket strikes which vaporize enemy ammo warehouses and convoys. Russia’s OPSEC is awful. Intercepted chit chats show that morale among Russian troops is low. They are tired, hungry, frightened and want to go home.
While some international legionnaires, including at least one gung-ho retired U.S. Marine, are looking forward to the counteroffensive in Kherson, others are keeping their mouths shut and following orders1. We applaud them. So far, 51 have been reported KIA, but the actual count is probably a lot higher.
In other news, ex Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova is moving to Switzerland. She joins ex Defense Minister Andriy Taran as a member of Ukraine’s diplomatic corps. Both are now ambassadors.
We have written about both previously and are not sad to see them go2.
Which brings me to Taiwan and the unhelpful op-ed appearing in The New York Times by Thomas Friedman.
Of course, there is funny business going on in Kyiv. We don’t dwell on it because it’s not helpful to the war effort. But firing Iryna, Andriy and Ivan [Bakanov - head of Ukraine’s State Security Service] is certainly not the equivalent of Biden firing Garland and Burns the same day.
Ukraine remains sham democracy, a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy not underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings. Absent them, even the illusion of tolerance, much less competency, would not exist.
Z’s decisions to dismiss the jackasses he appointed to top government posts are perhaps the best he’s ever made. We applaud them.
The moral of the story is that endorphins do not pass the blood-brain barrier. That means the relaxed post-run feeling people experience is probably due to endocannabinoids — biochemical substances similar to cannabis but naturally produced by the body. It explains the runner’s high Friedman is SO not enjoying when he SO opines about Ukraine, a country he knows little or nothing about.
Darkness in Sight. Michael’s next Falluja (July 27, 2022)
A Step in the Wrong Direction. Zelensky loyalist appointed Ukraine's Prosecutor General (March 17, 2020)