Mosh Pit of Gloom

Day 356-ish

(Vladimir Kazanevsky/Cagle Cartoons Inc. Syndicate/Cagle.Com)

Friends of Ukraine say they are (still) willing to help expel Russian invaders.

Wonderful!

Ukraine’s Ammunition Needs Top Agenda as NATO Defense Ministers Meet (The New York Times, February 14, 2023)

“New phase” is the term coined by David Leonhardt, a writer at The New York Times, who might not have any idea of how long it will last.

In fact, we are stuck in Phase 3¹, which we first started talking about on May 8, 2022². The next stage of our bloody mess, Phase 4, will only start after we kill, kick out or take prisoner all Russian invaders. That might happen this year, if Team USA and Ukraine’s allies cough up enough arms and ammo fast enough.

Day 22. Phase 3 (May 30, 2022)

The Financial Times, meanwhile, screams:

Western intel shows Russians amassing aircraft on Ukraine border (The Financial Times, February 14, 2023)

Actually, no.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hold a Press Conference Following the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Brussels, Belgium (U.S. Department of Defense, February 14, 2023)

But the article getting the most play on V-day appeared in The Washington Post.

U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war (The Washington Post, February 14, 2022)

Are these the same U.S. intelligence officials who concluded last year that Russia would succeed in capturing Kyiv?

Probably. And maybe they are the same ones chatting up unnamed Ukrainian sources, who provided this piece of gossip to the Kyiv Post’s Aleksandra Klitina.

UPDATE:

Source: Guardian

Moral of the story: Aleksandra’s sources are unreliable.

1. Day 25, Phase 3. Some died, pro Patria (June 2, 2022)

2. Phase 2 ends. Front kick to the face (May 8, 2022)