Target loses $9 billion in market cap for trying to tranny dress toddlers. I would boycott them over that, but I was already boycotting them over the tranny bathrooms.
“‘There’s Poop Everywhere’: San Francisco’s Office District Not Only A Ghost Town, It’s Also Covered In Sh*t.”
Everyone knows that San Francisco is the nation’s largest public toilet – requiring the city to employ six-figure ‘poop patrol’ cleanup team, however a new report from the city Controller’s Office really puts things in poo-spective.
For starters, feces were found far more often in commercial sectors, covering “approximately 50% of street segments in Key Commercial Areas and 30% in the Citywide survey,” second only to broken glass as can be seen in the ‘illegal dumping’ section.
If you’re wondering about the city’s fecal methodology, look no further than a footnote on page 43;
Feces also includes bags filled with feces that are not inside trash receptacles. Feces that are spread or smeared on the street, sidewalk, or other objects along the evaluation route are counted. Stains that appear to be related to feces but have been cleaned are not counted. Bird droppings are excluded.
As far as where most of the poo is found, Nob Hill takes the top spot, followed by the Tenderloin and The Mission districts.
“After California health authorities in 2014 imposed a mandate requiring requiring churches to provide elective abortion coverage to its employees, four churches sued, and after a long court battle, have now won a $1.4 million settlement.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
In a classic case of bad timing, Tim Scott also announced that he’s running for president. I don’t see him making much headway against Trump or DeSantis, but he’s a serious veepstakes contender.
C. Boyden Gray, RIP. Among his most important tasks was spearheading the campaign for Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court.
It’s weird to be on the same side of an issue as Taco Bell. Namely that no one should be able to trademark “Taco Tuesday.”
Citing air-worthiness concerns, the FAA grounds the…B-17? Good to know they’re finally working through that 1946 backlog… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The first rule of baggage claim fight club is you don’t talk about baggage claim fight club. The second rule of baggage claim fight club is that the blue zone is for loading and unloading only.
What is it like to cross the Darien Gap by car? A green hell.
This is some curious news. Evidently members of anti-Putin Russia militias the Russian Volunteers Corps or the Freedom for Russia Legion has evidently invaded the border town of Kazinka in Belgorod, Russia, with forces that evidently included at least one tank:
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Monday that a Ukrainian army ‘sabotage group’ had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district, which borders Ukraine.
In a statement on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said that the Russian army and security forces were taking measures to repel the incursion.
Earlier, the Telegram channel Baza, which is linked to Russia’s security services, had published footage apparently showing a Ukrainian tank attacking a Russian border post.
It’s a curious story that probably deserves considerable caution in drawing conclusions. False flag operation? Ukraine-backed distraction designed to force Russia to draw troops away from other regions in advance of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive? Who knows? It seems a bit of a sideshow at this point.
The one thing I wouldn’t expect is for this to be part of a broader anti-Putin uprising by Russians tired of the madness of his disasterous war. That would be too convenient, and we would be far more likely to see evidence of that in Chechnya or Moscow than along the Ukraine border.
That makes me feel that it’s more likely this is a false flag operation to give Putin the excuse to use tactical nukes on the pretext that Ukraine had captured some. But I’m a cynical sort…
Over the last several months, Russia would grind out costly gains in the fighting around Bakhmut, only to see Ukraine reverse most or all of those gains a few days or weeks later. This pattern repeated for month after month, with Russia slowly grinding out costly net gains of territory in and around Bakhmut, without ever completely taking the city.
A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday it had routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to confirm an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner private army that the Russian forces had fled.
Later in the day, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2 km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details.
Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city, but Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.
Snip.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly accused Moscow’s regular armed forces of failing to adequately support his men, said on Tuesday the Russian brigade had abandoned its positions.
“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade pissed away three square km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said.
This follows up on Friday’s news that Wagner Group troops around Bakhmut had run out of ammo.
Suchomimus has a video that includes a hefty doses of both Azov head (I think Mykyta Nadtochiy) discussing the advances and Prigozhin complaining about it.
Significant news? I think so. Sector collapses in a front that Russia has poured so much equipment and manpower into can’t be good news for their war aims.
Is this Ukraine’s much-vaunted Spring Counteroffensive? I rather doubt it, though a full-scale front collapse would likely draw a significant investment of Ukrainian forces here.
Rather, I think this is a fixing attack, one designed to force Russia to keep all currently assigned troops in this sector to avoid surrendering gains, making it impossible to relocate them to areas of the front where the main action will actually fall.
A Soros-backed DA is stepping down, a Harvard prof lying about playing footsie with commies sentenced, and another Democratic fundraiser convicted of fraud. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Good news, everyone! Soros-backed St. Louis Democrat DA Kim Gardner has resigned.
On Thursday, a progressive prosecutor who was notoriously funded by far-left billionaire George Soros announced her resignation, after months of bipartisan pressure to do so.
Fox News reports that Kim Gardner, the Circuit Attorney for St. Louis, announced that her resignation will be effective June 1st. Gardner was one of the first prosecutors in the country to be bankrolled by Soros, who has since expanded his efforts to other major cities across the country. She was first elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, largely due to Soros’ financial backing. Prior to her resignation announcement, she had declared her intention to run for a third term in 2024.
After years of criticism for being soft on crime and siding with criminals over victims, Gardner faced a whole new wave of criticism from both parties over an incident in February: Teenage volleyball player Janae Edmonson, who was visiting St. Louis from Tennessee for a tournament, was hit by an out-of-control car while crossing the road; although Edmonson survived, she had to have both of her legs amputated.
The driver of the car was Daniel Riley, a man who was out on bond while awaiting trial for an armed robbery case. It was later revealed that Riley had violated the terms of bond dozens of times, but was never arrested. When the blame turned to Gardner for failing to keep him off the streets, she falsely claimed that her office had attempted to have Riley jailed once again, only to be denied by a judge; there are no records of her office filing any such motion or otherwise seeking the revocation of Riley’s bond.
Following the Edmonson incident, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-Mo.) filed a petition quo warranto, the process by which the state attorney general can fire a prosecutor who has been determined to be neglectful of her duties. Bailey claimed that as many as 12,000 criminal cases have been dismissed due to Gardner’s failures, with another 9,000 having been thrown out right before they were set to go to trial, due to Garnder’s office refusing to provide evidence and speedy trials for defendants.
After Gardner’s announcement, Bailey released a statement demanding that she vacate her office immediately, rather than wait for another month.
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will pull his mercenaries out of the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Russia’s Victory Day Celebrations, which Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to use to shore up support for the Russian invasion.
The Wagner Group, a well-known mercenary unit known to be one of Russia’s most competent fighting divisions, is leading the charge on Bakhmut, a city that that has gained outsized symbolic importance.
“I am withdrawing the Wagner PMC units from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death,” Prigozhin said in full military fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon. The video he released showed him surrounded by masked Wagner fighters. Prigozhin also released a statement to the same effect.
His forces had no choice but to withdraw to rear bases to “lick the wounds,” said Prigozhin, as translated by the Washington Post. If Wagner goes through with the withdrawal, it would be viewed as catastrophic in terms of morale. The Russian invasion has ground to a standstill after large-scale Russian and Ukrainian offensives last year. Kyiv, which has been amassing ammunitions including tanks and fighter jets, is expected to launch a fresh counterattack in the very near future.
Prigozhin also launched a remarkable video tirade overnight on Telegram in which he displayed bodies of dozens of Wagner soldiers killed in Bakhmut. He angrily laid into the Russian Defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, for supplying Wagner with only 30 percent of the ammunition that’s needed.
The statement released today claimed that number was even lower, standing at 10 percent.
One caveat is that we’ve heard complaints from Prigozhin about his ammo supply before.
Russian soldiers dig trenches in horse graveyard in occupied Ukraine. Now they have anthrax.
“Biden CIA chief met with Epstein several times after financier convicted of child sex crime. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns had three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014, when the top spy official was deputy secretary of state and after Epstein was convicted of child sex exploitation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Harvard chemistry professor sentenced for lying about ties to CCP…Former Harvard University Chemistry Department Chair Charles M. Lieber was sentenced Wednesday to time served and over $80,000 in fines for committing fraud and for failing to disclose his connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
New Jersey Democratic campaign strategist James Devine was charged with election fraud for allegedly submitting more than 1,900 fake petitions to help secure a 2021 Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot spot for candidate Lisa McCormick, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Tuesday.
Devine was McCormick’s campaign manager and sent the fake voter certifications to the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Division of Elections via email in April 2021, but the New Jersey Democratic State Committee challenged his attempt days later, arguing that all the forms featured same the style of signature and at least one of the named voters was deceased, Platkin said.
A judge subsequently took McCormick off the primary ballot, and Devine is now charged with third-degree offenses concerning nomination certificates or petitions, tampering with public records or information and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
LoRA updates are very cheap to produce (~$100) for the most popular model sizes. This means that almost anyone with an idea can generate one and distribute it. Training times under a day are the norm. At that pace, it doesn’t take long before the cumulative effect of all of these fine-tunings overcomes starting off at a size disadvantage. Indeed, in terms of engineer-hours, the pace of improvement from these models vastly outstrips what we can do with our largest variants, and the best are already largely indistinguishable from ChatGPT. Focusing on maintaining some of the largest models on the planet actually puts us at a disadvantage.
I didn’t mean to do two big “Russian fire” stories back-to-back, but this seems like potentially big news:
A fire broke out on the territory of the Motovilikha Plant defence holding in Perm, Russia.
Source: Kommersant citing Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation and Motovilikha Plant
Details: Photos of the fire were posted by Perm’s social networks. Smoke from the territory of the plant is visible from different locations in Perm.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation stated that a report of a fire on the territory of PJSC Motovilikha Plants was received at 20:08. After arriving on location, it was established that the transformer booth was on fire. 37 people and 10 pieces of equipment from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia were involved in extinguishing the fire. The previous area of the fire was 10 square metres.
Quote: “Today, a fire broke out at the transformer substation on the territory of the enterprise. The fire was promptly contained by the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who went to the spot,” the press office of the PJSC Motovilikha Plant reported.
Frankly, those giant plums of smoke don’t look particularly contained.
The transformer station belongs to the VK-2 boiler house (MZ subsidiary – Teplo-M LLC). According to the media sources, the fire did not affect the power supply of the boiler house.
As Kommersant writes, PJSC Motovilikha Plant, Russia’s only manufacturer of multiple rocket launcher systems, has been in the tender process since 2018. At the time of its introduction, the company’s registered debt amounted to about RUB 17.6 billion. The production activity of mashholding is concentrated in its subsidiary structures: Special Design Bureau CJSC is engaged in the manufacture of weapons, and the rest of the production is carried out by Motovilikha – civil engineering, LLC. The PJSC property complex is put up for auction.
Could be shoddy Russian safety protocols. Could be sabotage from anti-war Russian partisans. Could be Ukraine action, though Perm is some 2,300 kilometers from Kiev. Could just be Uncle Ivan torching the place for some Goodfellas-esque debt erasure.
But whatever the cause, MLRS systems are a huge part of “the Russian Way of War,” and having their main factory offline is going to put a huge crimp in Russian field operations.
Russia has begun using its new T-14 Armata battle tanks to fire on Ukrainian positions “but they have not yet participated in direct assault operations,” the RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting a source close the matter.
RIA said that the tanks have been fitted with extra protection on their flanks and crews have undergone “combat coordination” at training grounds in Ukraine.
The T-14 tank has an unmanned turret, with crew remotely controlling the armaments from “an isolated armoured capsule located in the front of the hull.”
The tanks have a maximum speed on the highway of 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, RIA reported.
In January, British military intelligence reported that Russian forces in Ukraine were reluctant to accept the first tranche of the tanks due to their “poor condition.”
It also said that any deployment of the T-14 would likely be “a high-risk decision” for Russia, and one taken primarily for propaganda purposes.
“Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” the British military said.
“Eleven years in development, the programme has been dogged with delays, reduction in planned fleet size, and reports of manufacturing problems.”
Here’s a brief overview video:
The T-14 has had more than its share of developmental problems, and there are plenty of articles and videos detailing its shortcomings. Lazer Pig’s “The T-14 Armata tank sucks” is a long example of the genre.
If your interest level doesn’t support viewing a full hour of Armata-bashing, here are some takeaways:
“The T14 combines all the ultimate Russian technology previously introduced onto NATO tanks 25 years ago in a way that only a country trying to inflate the share prices of Raytheon would understand.” (Raytheon makes Javelin.)
“It does away with all the unnecessary ERA systems of the T90, which cannot protect the tank against missiles that were invented in the 80s, and instead replaces them with an active protection system that can almost defend the tank against missiles that were invented in the 90s.”
“An auto loader famous for jamming that now cannot be accessed and cleared when it does jam, is somehow heavier and slower than the tank it has replaced, and comes combined together in a package so expensive the company that made it immediately went bankrupt. The country that bought it cannot afford it and it has about as much export potential as English whiskey.”
“For a while, every idiot with even the vaguest sense of military interest was banging on about this tank as if Stalin had come back to life and had personally forged the hull from his own ball sack. And that all tanks across every nation in the world had just been rendered obsolete.”
Sections on repeated post-Soviet tank design failures, like the T-95 and Black Knight, and coverage of Russian brain drain, omitted.
The weird, Tiger-2 derived engine is unreliable.
The driver’s vision sucks.
No crew access to the turret internally.
The autoloader is slower than the manual fire rates on T-80s, T-72s and Abrams.
“The qualifying time for [an Abrams] loader to pass training is seven seconds, and the best crews claim they can reload in about four to five seconds. Meaning a good Abrams can fire twice before the T-14 has reloaded.”
“Ukrainian hackers found that most of the electronic systems on board, including the digital sights, the night vision, the infrared, were all in fact western imports. Most notably, these were last generation French optics from Leclerc MBTs left over from when they were all upgraded to ICONE in 2009.”
Current Russian tank optics are actually available to the general public. “They’re not even the best that are currently available. If you’ve got a spare five grand, you can go into any high-end spy gadget store and buy a drone that will give you better night vision and IR tracking capabilities than the latest generation of modern Russian tanks.”
China reportedly found out that none of the tank’s systems actually worked. “The soft kill defense systems were simply smoke screens, and the hard kill systems designed specifically to stop the Javelin and the TOW missile could not detect if either of these systems had been fired at the tank, and relied entirely on the crew being able to notice a missile traveling at the speed of sound flying towards them.”
“To top it off, there was no evidence of the supposed electronic warfare systems that could render guided missiles and mines inert.”
“Nothing in the Armata is new.”
The idea that western tanks need to catch up to the Armata is laughable. “By the time the Armata enters service, it will already be outdated.”
“Everything the Armata is has been done before, and in many cases has been done better.”
“Russia is not an equal to the United States and NATO, it’s an equal to North Korea, both technologically backwards nations.”
Will all those problems still be present when the Armata engages enemy armor in Ukraine? Some certainly will. I doubt Armata electronics or optics can compare to those on western vehicles, and I bet that its active protection package is miles behind Trophy (which I don’t think will be on any Ukrainian tanks anyway). But I do suspect they’ve had enough time to improve the reliability of the engine, and I’m guessing the armor and autoloader improvements will improve survivability for the tank crew.
Can the Armata take out Ukraine’s legacy Soviet tanks? Almost certainly. Can it take out Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, and M1A2 Abrams? If it’s able to close in and get off the first shot, probably. But I’m guessing it will find the opportunities to do so few and far between.
Back in November, I put up a post on Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro River for a probing raid. Since then I’ve noticed a persistent trickle of hits to the post, presumably off social media posts of further activity. Today came more concrete evidence that Ukrainian troops are landing and operating on the eastern/southern bank of the Dnipro.
Ukrainian soldiers have crossed the Dnipro River for the first time since the early days of the invasion and built positions that could be used to launch attacks deeper into Russian-occupied territory, analysts have said.
The crossing of the Dnipro River, which has marked the front line since Russian forces retreated from Kherson city in November, comes days after reports of a partial Russian retreat in the area.
It comes as Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counteroffensive, which analysts have said may be aimed at pushing 100 miles south of the Dnipro River at least as far as Crimea.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said that video and photos have generated the first “reliable geolocated imagery of Ukrainian positions” south of the river.
“The extent and intent of these Ukrainian positions remain unclear, as does Ukraine’s ability and willingness to maintain sustained positions in this area,” it said.
Several Russian military bloggers used geolocation techniques to pinpoint Ukrainian military positions around the village of Oleshky, south of the Dnipro River.
Russian military blogger “Thirteenth”, who has more than 100,000 followers, posted a video that he said showed Ukrainian special forces using fast small boats to land on the river bank, where “they have been hanging out for a couple of weeks”.
Another, Rybar, which has links to the Russian security services and has more than 1 million subscribers, posted a lengthy blog on the “foothold” the Ukrainian forces have secured.
Suchomimus has the video and geolocation north of Oleshky, near both Dachy and Dachi (enjoy the confusion) near the Antonovsky bridge.
“Both have little Russian presence in them, with Ukrainian forces now there in some number, with a claim being that Ukrainian troops Advanced alongside the E97 [road] south towards Oleshky.”
These landings have evidently been going on since April 20.
“It’s looking like a decent amount of troops, though most likely without vehicle support, are operating along this area of Kherson along the Dnipro.”
Suchomimus suggests that it may be an attempt to secure both sides of the Antonovsky bridge and repair the dropped spans, but I’m not so sure. Without a sustained effort to push Russian troops out of artillery range, if would be very difficult to repair and maintain the bridge as a crossing point. I also question his assertion that it would be easier to repair those than throw up a pontoon bridge. True, Russia has proved inept at building them quickly (as it has in so many things), but in World War II the U.S. army could throw them up at 50ft an hour or so.
“This could be anything. It could be recon. Could be special forces. Could be a diversion. Could be harassment of Russian forces.” Or a probing raid to map and exploit Russian weaknesses.
It’s unclear how much special forces or infantry could accomplish on their own without vehicle support, but they would have enough artillery (at least initially), drone and possibly air support for a probing raid to cause panic and confusion among Russian forces, especially as part of a broader spring counter-offensive.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”
He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.
There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.
President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.
These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.
A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.
Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.
The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.
The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.
“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).
Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.
Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
“Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”
As Russia enters the 14th month of its 72 hour campaign to take Kiev, there are signs that its meat-grinder approach to combat is depleting the exact resources it needs to win.
First up: Anders Puck Nielsen on Russia’s likely manpower shortage:
He looks at various how and low counts for determining Russian casualty rates, then builds his arguments around one in the middle.
There is a rule of thumb that is often mentioned, that for every dead soldier there are three wounded. So if we take some round numbers, and remember it’s not actually important if they are a little bit off. It doesn’t change the point that I am getting to if you think real the number is a little lower. But say that on average about 500 Russian soldiers have been killed every day since the mobilization in September, when Russia also really started to have very big attrition numbers. And if we then make a conservative estimate and say that for every dead soldier, there have been two wounded, then we get that the Russian fighting force has been decreased by about 1500 soldiers every day. Then we can divide 300,000 by 1500, and we get that they have soldiers for about 200 days, until the Russian army will have consumed all those mobilized soldiers. This is not exact science. It’s just a rough estimate to illustrate Russia’s manpower problem. Putin announced the mobilization on 21 September, and incidentally 200 days after that is about now. It’s on 9 April 2023.
“Putin probably should have announced the second wave of mobilization months ago, but he didn’t. So that is why military analysts are talking about a Russian manpower shortage.”
“Those 300,000 soldiers that Russia mobilized in the fall are probably not there anymore.”
Second up is a report that both sides are rationing artillery shells in advance of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive.
Artillery units on both sides of the line, despite the continued duels, are reportedly dialing back fire missions to save up ammunition for the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian milblogger Alexander Khodakovsky claims that those Russian units not involved in ongoing offensives have had ammunition supplies seriously curtailed. Khodakovsky attributed the rationing to concerns about the potential offensive.
At the same time, a frontline account from the Washington Post highlighted Ukrainian artillery crews similarly conserving shells. While embedded with an artillery platoon in Ukraine’s 56th Motorized Brigade, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk reported the unit’s 152mm howitzers used to fire more than 20-30 shells a day. That number has dwindled to fewer than three.
The nearby units equipped with NATO 155mm caliber guns are reportedly facing less of a shortage than the Warsaw Pact-era guns. Citing an anonymous Ukrainian military official, the report claimed Ukraine is still firing 7,700 shells a day. Russian shelling reportedly dwarfs even that figure. Ukraine’s incredible artillery consumption remains a concern for NATO as Western production lines struggle to keep supplies moving.
Russia’s grinding style of combat requires a fresh supply of bodies and artillery shells to function, and those are the things (along with money, high tech munitions and global sympathy) that Russia seems to be running short on…
