Last night we covered the initial reports in BREAKING. The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Hit by Ukrainian Missiles, Dead in the Water, Crew Evacuated. The Moskva came under fire from a Ukrainian Neptune missile launcher that fired two missiles. At least one of the missiles penetrated the missile/gun defensive system, and when it detonated set off explosions of weapons loaded in their firing tubes and ignited propellant. The fire and explosions overwhelmed the damage control effort, evacuating the crew. At some point, the fires were either extinguished or under sufficient control to permit Moskva to be taken into tow. While in transit, Moskva sank.

Some stray thoughts.

Today is the 110th anniversary of the RMS Titanic striking an iceberg.
This is the first loss of a Russian flagship since the Battle of Tsushima Straits.
This is the biggest warship lost since World War II.
The Argentines are able to share the ignominy of being one of the two nations that lost a capital ship since World War II.
The Russians are still blaming Russian incompetence for the loss rather than giving Ukraine credit for the missile strikes. Placing the responsibility for the loss on a non-specific “explosion” is rather lame as the evolutions a cruiser would carry out don’t have the same risk factors as those aboard aircraft carriers (see USS Oriskany and USS Forrestal; the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard is in a class of its own). //

Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪
@michaeldweiss
Strange for an “accident” aboard one ship, as per Russia’s MoD, to cause all the others to sail farther away from shore unless the accident was being hit by Ukrainian missiles.
Raf Sanchez
@rafsanchez
NEW: US defence official says Russian warships have moved away from Ukraine’s southern coast after explosion on the Moskva. They’re now 80 nautical miles or more from the shore.

Possible sign they’re trying to get out of missile range.
11:44 AM · Apr 14, 2022 //

The Moskva figured prominently in an event in the early days of the war when it demanded that Ukrainian troops defending Snake Island surrender. The incident is commemorated in a Ukraine postage stamp. The sinking of that ship will create a huge morale boost. //

the permanent loss of Moskva’s impressive array of missile launchers to the Black Sea Fleet. According to the provisions of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, warships of belligerent nations can’t enter the Black Sea unless they are homeported there. Turkey has said that for the purposed of the Convention, the special military operation Russia is flogging away at in Ukraine is a war, and it has turned down requests by three Russian warships to pass through the Straits. The remaining Russian surface combatants are much less capable in a land-attack mode, and they will act, as my old man would say, like a long-tailed tomcat in a room full of rocking chairs. //

She was fatally struck by two homegrown Ukrainian cruise missiles, neither of which, according to any simulation, should have been able to make it through Moskva‘s defenses. The prestige damage to Russia is huge, and it may, in retrospect, be seen as the decisive moment of the whole war.

On April 11, 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 Polish military aircraft slammed into a forest near the runway of a military airfield in Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 passengers and crew. This wasn’t just any airplane crash. This was Poland’s equivalent of Air Force One. Aboard were Poland’s President Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish government officials, and 18 members of the Polish Parliament. They were en route to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the murder of some 22,000 Polish military officers, intellectuals, clergy, and other influential Poles by Stalin’s NKVD.

The investigation was shrouded in controversy from the beginning. While Polish investigators were allowed on the site, they had to be accompanied by Russian investigators. Both “black boxes” were recovered intact and analyzed, but the Russians refused to let the Poles have custody of the wreckage. To add fuel to that fire was the fact that the deceased president was a staunch anti-communist who put Poland’s interests above Vladimir Putin’s, and there have been persistent rumors of traces of explosive residue found in the wreckage. For a good summary of the issues, this is a good article.

https://news.sky.com/story/smolensk-crash-explosions-on-board-before-plane-hit-ground-investigator-says-11233792

After the initial report, other investigations conducted by the Poles that concluded there was Russian involvement in the crash.

Today another of those reports hit the fan.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-antoni-macierewicz-lech-kaczynski-poland-f3f5a2fddb028ffdb4bc12f369aeafd5

A Polish government special commission has reinforced its earlier allegations that the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Russia was the result of Moscow’s assassination plan.

The latest of the commission’s reports, released Monday, alleges that an intentional detonation of planted explosives caused the April 10, 2010 crash of Soviet-made Tu-154M plane that killed Kaczynski, the first lady and 94 other government and armed forces figures as well as many prominent Poles.

Their deaths were the result of an “act of unlawful interference by the Russian side,” the commission’s head Antoni Macierewicz told a news conference.

“The main and indisputable proof of the interference was an explosion in the left wing … followed by an explosion in the plane’s center,” said Macierewicz, who in 2015-2018 served as defense minister in Poland’s right-wing government. //

Reintroducing this controversy, especially the high-handed and disrespectful way Poland was treated by Russia during the investigation, at this time is a way of reminding Poles what they are up against and what living under Russian domination means. And it serves as a way of building national unity in the long term struggle to restrain Putin’s cavalier use of military force to get what he wants.

One of the bogus reasons that Vladimir Putin laid out for his incompetently executed invasion of Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Against all evidence and commonsense, he claimed that Ukraine’s membership in a defensive alliance like NATO posed a direct threat to Russia. Putin and his acolytes would have us believe that NATO has just been lying in wait for the chance to bring Ukraine into NATO so NATO can invade Russia or something. Instead, in something of a geopolitical “own goal,” the invasion of Ukraine has created a de facto expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, and a de jure expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden is only months away //

A very insightful statement came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, “I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair. You give us weapons; we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine.”

All of the actions taken by NATO countries indicate they have agreed to Mr. Kuleba’s deal.

What is happening in Ukraine is far more than a proxy war; it has turned into a low-key way of bringing Ukraine into NATO. //

Why is the sale of 16 artillery pieces a big deal? Three silly millimeters. Russian artillery uses a 152mm projectile. The NATO standard is 155mm.

When one looks at the atrocities uncovered in Bucha (not for the squeamish here | here), the targeting of civilian buildings, and the indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities, it isn’t hard to see how and why this is taking place. These are not the actions of rogue commanders or poorly trained troops. Instead, this is a planned program of national eradication. This is Putin’s “Final Solution to the Ukrainian Problem.” The killings, kidnappings, and terrorism are not bugs in a sloppy military operation; they are highly prized features of a plan to absorb Ukraine back into Russia and, over time, eliminate the national and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people.

The implications of this are stark. In the rawest terms, it means that a peace deal is not possible in Ukraine. There can only be an armed truce awaiting the next round of hostilities or until Russia changes leadership, and that change brings a different attitude.

There is slim hope that any of the major perpetrators of this horror will ever be held to account. Even though Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov have long since breached the threshold for war crimes using the standard of Nuremberg or the Yamashita trial, they are outside the reach of justice. They can be inconvenienced by travel restrictions and personal sanctions, but they will never stand trial for their crimes.

A second-best solution is to document the units serving in areas like Bucha. Thanks to a massive data breach, we can identify at least 120,000 Russian soldiers and their units of assignment thanks to a hack by “Anonymous.”

Soldiers serving with targeted units should be targeted for arrest if they ever leave Russia. The same applies to Russian commanders serving in Ukraine. They are all liable for any war crime that took place under their command, which they did not investigate and prosecute. As General Yamashita found out, it isn’t even necessary to have been informed about the war crimes to be convicted for committing them.

The Russian Army is not a professional military. We must stop regarding it as such and treat it as the criminal enterprise that it is.

For a month after the invasion of Ukraine, the high-speed Allegro train carried disaffected Russians to Helsinki. On Sunday, that final rail connection to Europe was severed.

Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that the people behind this assessment were the same ones that aided and abetted the Russia Hoax perpetrated against President Trump and who declared Hunter Biden’s laptop to be a Russian provocation is any part of this story plausible were it told by people capable of telling the truth?

Is it plausible that the entire Russian government was terrified to tell the emperor about his new wardrobe? I suppose, but if so, it speaks to an incredible level of self-delusion. I’m willing to credit that he was fed horsecrap on the operational abilities of the Russian Army because armies tend to lie about their readiness unless there is a system to enforce the rules, and there is not an ethic of lying on reports in the officer corps. I’m much less inclined to believe that he hasn’t been intensely monitoring Western sanctions as he whines about them so much. I also find it difficult to believe that Putin, the very “reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter” kind of guy described in the story, could give a public order that conscripts would not be used in combat and someone down the chain-of-command would have the cojones to say, “Igor, I don’t care that you are a conscript and I don’t care what Putin says, I’m telling you to get on the f***ing truck.” That makes no sense to me.

Even if we accept that the Russian military lied through its teeth about its capabilities to its political masters or even the upper ranks, we still have to wrestle with the idea that Putin doesn’t have any idea about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, especially about casualties. //

Making the story less credible is that his evaluation of the situation was leaked now. Why now? Why not two weeks ago when the same information was available?

All in all, this intel leak seems to have another purpose. It is almost like they are giving Putin a pass for everything because his staff lied to him. Consider it to be an off-ramp to facilitate negotiations. It gives him the ability to purge the senior ranks of the military and bureaucracy by blaming them for both the crap intelligence and the disastrous plan. Then he’s only left with responsibility for the idea.

The United States assesses that Russia is suffering failure rates as high as 60% for some of the precision-guided missiles it is using to attack Ukraine, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence told Reuters.

The disclosure could help explain why Russia has failed to achieve what most could consider basic objectives since its invasion a month ago, such as neutralizing Ukraine’s air force, despite the apparent strength of its military against Ukraine’s much smaller armed forces. //

One of the staples on social media accounts reporting from Ukraine has been the very high rate of cruise missiles that have failed to detonate.

During WWII, four brothers from the same Jewish family signed up to fight against the Nazis. Only one of the four brothers survived. His grandson is the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russian military secrets could be laid bare after Ukraine captures electronic warfare systems
The Krasukha-4 unit, which was recovered from the battlefield near Kyiv, will be flown to the US for examination

Western spy agencies are getting ready to examine one of Russia’s most potent electronic warfare systems after a unit was captured in Ukraine....

I think it’s vital for the US and NATO to make the message very clear that the liberal democracies of the West do not wish the Russian Federation or the Russian culture to perish. It’s important to get the message to ordinary Russians that the West knows that even if Mr. Putin’s reign ends, Russia will go on.

We want Russia to get back on the path to flourishing as a member of the international community. We need to make it clear that the West does not believe in the isolated spheres of influence that Mr. Putin wants to carve the world into, not because we are the agents of an evil hegemony, but because we do not want Russia to become a hermit kingdom with its people returning to the levels of poverty that happened when the Soviet Union catastrophically collapsed.

I think it’s also important to get the message to Russians that, given the damage Mr. Putin has inflicted on his own nation militarily and economically, realistically, his country will only get back to where it should be if Mr. Putin passes the baton to someone new.

What Vladimir Putin has proven to the world is that he is an irresponsible caretaker of a nuclear arsenal.

He abused his possession of nuclear weapons threatening NATO and the United States, who are also nuclear powers, to bluff the West into meekly standing by while he invaded Ukraine. This is not the mark of a thoughtful leader. //

We should be making it clear that we want the sanctions to end and the world to mend this terrible rift. But we should also make it clear that the longer Mr. Putin continues his course of destruction, the more difficult it will be for the world to undo the adaptations it is now making to bypass his country. //

But Mr. Putin’s problems won’t end when he tells his troops to cease fire in Ukraine. He will then have to negotiate with what he calls the “Empire of Lies” to lift sanctions.

And I think the price the West should demand is that he needs to dismantle his tactical nuclear arsenal. The west should demand three things.

First, Russia must pledge to abandon the ridiculous doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” that contemplates the first use of a tactical nuclear weapon as an instrument of terror. //

Second, Russia should unilaterally adopt a parity of warheads policy for its tactical nuclear arsenal in order to get sanctions lifted. They should reduce the number of tactical nuclear weapons in the European theater to levels that are at parity with the tactical warheads the US and NATO have in the same region. //

Third, Russia should agree to let the West develop and deploy a shield system that can both intercept and attack ballistic, cruise, hypersonic missile threats as well as aircraft and artillery delivered tactical nuclear weapons.

The US and NATO should proceed to work on this system while economic sanctions are in place. Russia has already proven it abuses the nuclear card. As Mr. Putin put it, “That line has been crossed.” //

We should also announce that the US and NATO intend to share this defense shield technology with countries around the world. Our objective is to make it too risky for any aggressor to believe that their attack could succeed unchallenged.

One last note: The US has neglected its tactical nuclear arsenal for too long. To put it bluntly, the hole we created in our arsenal created a window of power projection vulnerability someone like Mr. Putin would be tempted to exploit.

tobybrut Giab
2 months ago edited
The situation there is a lot more complicated than just an invasion by Russia. There are eastern Ukraine provinces that WANT to be a part of Russia. Europe helped to negotiate the Minsk Protocols between Ukraine and Russia, which essentially gives those provinces autonomy. The Minsk Protocols did not stop the civil war going on in that area, unfortunately. It is not just a case of Russian aggression here. They see it as a defensive move to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine and as defense against yet another NATO front. War is not desired, of course, but the West lead by Brandon has been rather feckless in finding a solution that doesn't involve a Russian invasion.

NATO is another piece of that Ukraine puzzle, and this is where all of our presidents have failed going directly back to Bill Clinton, who treated the newly liberated Russia as a conquered foe rather than trying to get Russia to become a friend or ally. Russia has far more in common with the West than it does with Communist China, yet persistently, Russia has been pushed into the arms of the Chicoms. Yes, Russia has a large nuclear force, but not so much anything else. It has a tiny economy and a far weaker military (except nuclear) that poses no real threat. Russia watched as its former Soviet republics turned into NATO members and feels like it is under siege. They do not want Ukraine brought into NATO creating yet another front that could threaten it. What Clinton and his successors should have done was to concentrate on Russia itself to bring it into NATO or at least to become a friendly nation. Ukraine and its eastern provinces would be a regional problem now instead of a global problem. Is it too late? I don't know, but there's enough bad blood between Putin and Western leaders that there may be no resolution, but this was a failure that goes back three decades. Brandon just makes it worse because he is essentially an empty suit.

NATO is outdated and needs to be repurposed to defending against the real enemy, the Chicoms, and to de-emphasize Russia as its primary opponent.

Unlike the United States, which has a policy of no use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, Russia has no such policy. In fact, Russia has a strategic theory called escalate-to-deescalate.

This does not mean that Russia will use such weapons, and deterrence at the strategic level appears to be robust. At the tactical level, however, the situation is different. The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review ascribed to Russia the view that “the threat of nuclear escalation or even first use of nuclear weapons would serve to de-escalate a conflict on terms favorable to Russia.” Russian military theorists have certainly discussed this idea of “escalating to de-escalate,” though whether it is a part of Russian doctrine is disputed among students of Russian strategy. “Escalating to de-escalate” in a war with NATO would run the serious risk of escalation rather than de-escalation. In a local war with a non-nuclear adversary, however, the small-scale tactical use of nuclear weapons might be a serious temptation, especially if the war were not going according to plan. In short, the impulse to escalate in a tight corner could be strong.

In other words, if the war in Ukraine goes pear-shaped, and I think it is safe to say we are getting close to that point, it would not be outside Russian strategic thinking to pop a smallish nuke somewhere in Ukraine and say to NATO, “stop supplying Ukraine right now or I’ll do the same to you.”

I think we are in the middle of that strategy right now. //

Russia is a nuclear power. Even though the odds of a nuclear weapon surviving 30 years of Russian-quality maintenance, we have to assume some of them still work. That fact is not going to change. That said, the fact that Russia has nukes and is becoming increasingly casual about threatening to use them is no reason for us to engage in submissive urination when he does. Under no circumstances can we allow ourselves to be intimidated into submission because Putin is making public noises about what he might do. If we go that route, we will find ourselves abandoning all the NATO states bordering Russia and more. Because once he finds he can get his way using this tactic, he will not stop.

What we do know is that there is no reason to believe that any moral or humanitarian case will persuade Putin not to pop a nuke on Kiev or some other Ukrainian city. What we have an obligation to do is spell out very clearly, in private, that if he does use a nuclear weapon, we reserve the right to retaliate with a similar weapon on a similar target inside Russia. And we will hunt to the ends of the earth anyone who had any role in its use, from Putin down to the guy who changed the flat tire on the vehicle used to transport the warhead and kill them.

My personal suspicion is that Putin and his nuclear threats are a lot like Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. They only work if we buy into the framework Putin is constructing.

Belarus’ army is 20,000 men and not trained to the exacting standards of the Russian Army. It would be mauled by Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces and have a minimal impact on the war.

The real effect of Belarus joining the fight would be an expansion of the conflict that would be unlikely to remain limited to Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

The Ukraine crisis has brought unconscionable suffering to the Ukrainian people, and it revealed some of the harm authoritarian regimes can cause. If there is one positive outcome of this crisis, Taiwan and Japan have begun to take China’s military threat seriously. The steps they are taking to strengthen their defense may keep the peace in the region by deterring China from launching military strikes against Taiwan.

Nothing can make up for the senseless loss of life and homes, but if there is anything to celebrate alongside the dogged determination of the Ukrainians in holding the Russian army back, it is this: Putin has himself put to rest the idea that he is some kind of infallible genius. After many decades spent building up his influence, he has entirely destroyed his credibility with politicians, business, and the broader public. In the end, Putin has achieved what no one thought possible: a Ukraine defiant, a West united, and a Russia humbled.

Regime change, wrapped in all of its fantastical failure, is making a comeback in Washington, and no one seems to notice or even care. //

Sadly, history tells us how the war in Ukraine will end if we are lucky. Ukraine will be destroyed. Russia will take parts of its territory. Kyiv will join the European Union and NATO but not officially, integrating itself economically and getting billions in weapons to deter another Russian invasion. Russia will be massively weakened and completely dependent on China for its economic survival, selling anything it can to Beijing, including its best weapons, to survive.

What if we aren’t lucky, and the war drags on for months? Putin will keep upping the pressure, and we will do the same. With every bomb Russia drops on Ukraine, the moral outrage will keep rising and Western nations will give Ukraine more and more arms and sanction Russia in every way possible to the point that Russia will come close to collapse.

At some point, when Putin sees the Ukraine crisis as not a giant mistake but instead a fight for his own survival, true hell will break loose.

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has faltered so far thanks to military, supply and tactical blunders – but the Russians are still capable of crushing their defiant opponents.

Chinese officials warns that nation’s winter wheat condition could be “worst in history”. //

While oil prices are exploding, and petroleum products are certainly a necessity in modern life, there is a potential developing crisis that could impact the global economy even more than energy.

As Russia continues to pound Ukraine, it is important to note that the region is responsible for about 1/3 of the world’s grain supplies. //

The stability of regions even more dependent on Russian-Ukrainian wheat is threatened.

Cairo relies on large volumes of heavily subsidized imports to ensure sufficient as well as affordable supplies of bread and vegetable oil for its 105 million citizens. Securing those supplies has led Egypt to become the world’s largest importer of wheat and among the world’s top 10 importers of sunflower oil. In 2021, Cairo was already facing down food inflation levels not seen since the Arab Spring civil unrest a decade earlier that toppled the government of former President Hosni Mubarak.

After eight years of working assiduously to put Egypt’s economic house back in order, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi is now similarly vulnerable to skyrocketing food costs that are reaching budget-breaking levels. //

War – check.
Pestilence – check.
Famine – This looks like the next horseman lining up to make an appearance.

But the good news: No mean tweets. We can take comfort in that.

I feel shame that we came to this country. I don’t know why we were doing it. We knew very little. We brought sorrow to this land.