This is an interesting video of Ukrainian tanks taking out a Russian strongpoint dubbed “Moscow.”
Takeaways:
Also, the Ukrainian military have reported entering Lyman:
Нічого не відбувається у Лимані pic.twitter.com/6k2roWqa6f
— Serhii Sternenko ✙ (@sternenko) October 1, 2022
California is (still) broke, Stacey Abrams is (still) not very bright, Joe Biden tried to deal gas to the commies, and the FBI can’t be bothered to investigate such trivia as “sex crimes involving children.” It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee have obtained bombshell documents proving that Joe Biden was deeply involved in the family business of selling American natural gas to the Chinese–while he was planning to run for President. According to multiple whistleblowers, the Biden family made promises to those who worked with them in 2017 and onward that they would “reap the rewards in a future Biden administration.” These explosive revelations “pose national security concerns,” Oversight Republicans proclaimed Tuesday night.
The Biden clan enriched itself by selling the natural resources to a Chinese firm closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—just a few years before the cost of gas in the United States hit record highs, the Oversight Republicans stated.
In a letter to United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee, alleged that according to whistleblowers, Joe Biden was heavily involved in this treachery.
“This comes to light at a time when the cost of natural gas is at a 14-year high and Americans struggle to pay their energy bills,” Comer wrote in the letter to Yellen. “The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President.”
Comer sent a letter to Yellen in July complaining that the Treasury Department was restricting access to over 150 Suspicious Activity reports (SARs) on Hunter Biden, amid explosive revelations that came out from Biden’s “laptop from Hell,” and iPhone.
On Sept. 2, 2022, the Treasury Department stated in a letter to Committee Republicans, that the SARs may be provided “upon a written request stating the particular information desired, the criminal, tax or regulatory purpose for which the information is sought, and the official need for the information.”
In response, Comer said that “based on the documents provided in this letter, we request all SARs from Biden family transactions, including those involving President Biden, related to transactions with Chinese entities. We are concerned that the President may have compromised national security in his dealings with the country most adverse to U.S. interests—China. These SARs will inform our analysis of this matter.”
Comer said Oversight Republicans have obtained a “presentation” emailed to Hunter Biden’s firm Hudson West III LLC (Hudson West) on December 13, 2017. The document, translated from Mandarin Chinese, is titled, “Overview of the U.S. Natural Gas Industry Chain, and is concerned with selling American natural resources to China.”
“Jiaqi Bao, who created the presentation, was previously an employee of the CCP, and worked for Hunter Biden’s corporate entity Hudson West,” the letter states.
Comer provided Yellen with two maps that were part of a presentation emailed to Hunter Biden. The maps include sophisticated analysis written in Chinese, and show the United States carved up based on natural gas reserves “with particular emphasis on Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.”
“The emails that accompany the transmitted maps reveal a plan to sell natural gas reserves to China via the same corporate entity branded on the presentation-Hudson West III LLC (Hudson West)–set up by Hunter Biden with officials from the Chinese company CEFC, at the time, one of the largest oil companies in China,” the letter stated.
(Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt (and her shocked face) at Instapundit.)
I have only skimmed this dog's breakfast of a complaint, but what popped out at me for the parts I looked are were the lack of damages allegations, much less ones against NY, the plaintiff. You cannot sue if you did not suffer a loss. None are pleaded in the parts I looked at.
3/— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) September 21, 2022
So, the initial motion to dismiss will not be heard before the midterm – the real mission was accomplished by filing suit in time to influence the election, but not so early that this garbage case could be tossed out before the election.
6/
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) September 21, 2022
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
At lot of details of how Russia will carry out its projected 300,000 man mobilization discussed yesterday are unclear. Binkov’s Battlegrounds, which covers a lot of different military topics, discusses some of the details about how it would (theoretically) be carried out.
Takeaways:
If almost all of those new reserves are to serve in the land forces, with the Army being a third of the overall military, it might mean people called upon will mostly be five years past their military service. [Defense Minister] Shoigu further said mobilization will also be limited to those with combat experience. All the Russian troops rotated in Syria since 2014 are unlikely to reach that figure, but there are veterans of operations in Ukraine 2014 of Georgia in 2008 and the wars in Chechnya. Those may indeed yield a force over 300 000, but it also may mean that some of those mobilized reservists will have not seen military training for 15 or more years.
Veterans of the Georgian war (which Russia won handily) probably won’t be a problem, but I doubt the others were such happy affairs that veterans of those campaigns will be eager to repeat the experience against the far better-armed and better-trained Ukrainians.
Judging from how well Russia has previously run this war, expect badly equipped and under-trained reservists to be thrown piecemeal into the battle lines to be slaughtered.
Faced with the continued erosion of Russia’s military position in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has chosen to double-down on failure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced the partial mobilization of military reservists, a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine after battlefield setbacks have the Kremlin facing growing pressure to act.
In a rare national address, he also backed plans for Russia to annex occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine, and appeared to threaten nuclear retaliation if Kyiv continues its efforts to reclaim that land.
It came just a day after four Russian-controlled areas announced they would stage votes this week on breaking away from Ukraine and joining Russia, in a plan Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed as a desperate “sham” aimed at deterring a successful counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops.
Before this announcement it was apparent that Russia basically had no reserves, so a mobilization isn’t a surprise. Why admit failure when you can simply get more of your countrymen slaughtered for doubling-down on your own mistake?
Stephen Green notes that there’s less to this announcement than meets the eye.
It won’t be easy or fast to call up that many reservists, according to military experts, because Russia basically doesn’t have a reserve.
A 2019 RAND study noted that “Russia has paid little attention to developing an effective and sizable active reserve system that might be immediately required in the event of a major war.” RAND estimates that Russia has an effective reserve of only 4,000-5,000 men.
The country’s former army reserve units had been disbanded from 2008-2010 as part of the military’s modernization program, with their equipment — all of it older — going into storage or scrapped.
That doesn’t mean that Russia can’t conscript, train, organize, and arm 300,000 new soldiers, but it won’t be quick or easy.
One problem, as Foreign Affairs analyst Oliver Alexander put it, is “effectively readying and equipping these reservists. Russia already has problems equipping its professional armed forces.”
Then there’s the speed problem. Dara Massicot wrote back in August — weeks before Kyiv’s stunning counteroffensive in Kharkiv — that “Even if the Kremlin pulls all levers available, declaring a general mobilization to call up sufficient armored equipment and trained personnel, that process would still take time.”
That’s because with something like 80% of Russia’s combat power already fighting in Ukraine, plus wartime losses to their NCO and officer corps, the Russian army will need to train more trainers before anything like 300,000 men can be mobilized.
Just last month, Putin ordered an increase in the size of the Russian military of 137,000 troops. But as I reported to you then, Putin’s order only meant that “Starting next year, the Russian military will be authorized to find another 137,000 troops.” The country has long had a problem with draft dodgers, one that Putin’s “special military operation” won’t help.
He also notes the problem of obtaining new equipment. Even the first wave of Russian invasion included troops who were armed with ancient rifles. With the sanctions in place, none of that is going to get any better. Plus the fact that Russia essentially used up all their smart ordinance during the first stage of the war and that sanctions ensure they can’t easily make more.
Is there a Peter Zeihan video on the topic? Of course there is.
Some takeaways:
Nor are the sham referendums likely to make any difference either.
Russian-appointed occupation officials in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts announced on September 20 that they will hold a “referendum” on acceding to Russia, with a vote taking place from September 23-27. The Kremlin will use the falsified results of these sham referenda to illegally annex all Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and is likely to declare unoccupied parts of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts to be part of Russia as well.
The Kremlin’s annexation plans are primarily targeting a domestic audience; Putin likely hopes to improve Russian force generation capabilities by calling on the Russian people to volunteer for a war to “defend” newly claimed Russian territory. Putin and his advisors have apparently realized that current Russian forces are insufficient to conquer Ukraine and that efforts to build large forces quickly through voluntary mobilization are culminating short of the Russian military’s force requirements. Putin is therefore likely setting legal and informational conditions to improve Russian force generation without resorting to expanded conscription by changing the balance of carrots and sticks the Kremlin has been using to spur voluntary recruitment.
Putin may believe that he can appeal to Russian ethnonationalism and the defense of purportedly “Russian peoples” and claimed Russian land to generate additional volunteer forces. He may seek to rely on enhanced rhetoric in part because the Kremlin cannot afford the service incentives, like bonuses and employment benefits, that it has already promised Russian recruits. But Putin is also adding new and harsher punishments in an effort to contain the risk of the collapse of Russian military units fighting in Ukraine and draft-dodging within Russia. The Kremlin rushed the passage of a new law through the State Duma on September 20, circumventing normal parliamentary procedures. This law codifies dramatically increased penalties for desertion, refusing conscription orders, and insubordination. It also criminalizes voluntary surrender and makes surrender a crime punishable by ten years in prison. The law notably does not order full-scale mobilization or broader conscription or make any preparations for such activities.
ISW has observed no evidence that the Kremlin is imminently intending to change its conscription practices. The Kremlin’s new law is about strengthening the Kremlin’s coercive volunteerism, or what Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called “self-mobilization.”
The Kremlin is taking steps to directly increase force generation through continued voluntary self-mobilization and an expansion of its legal authority to deploy Russian conscripts already with the force to fight in Ukraine.
- Putin’s illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory will broaden the domestic legal definition of “Russian” territory under Russian law, enabling the Russian military to legally and openly deploy conscripts already in the Russian military to fight in eastern and southern Ukraine. Russian leadership has already deployed undertrained conscripts to Ukraine in direct violation of Russian law and faced domestic backlash. Russia’s semi-annual conscription cycle usually generates around 130,000 conscripts twice per year. The next cycle runs from October 1 to December 31. Russian law generally requires that conscripts receive at least four months of training prior to deployment overseas, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that conscripts will be deployed to Ukraine. Annexation could provide him a legal loophole allowing for the overt deployment of conscripts to fight.
- Russian-appointed occupation officials in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts announced the formation of “volunteer” units to fight with the Russian military against Ukraine. Russian forces will likely coerce or physically force at least some Ukrainian men in occupied areas to fight in these units, as they have done in the territories of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR).
- The Russian State Duma separately passed new incentives for foreign nationals to fight in Russia’s military to obtain Russian citizenship and will likely increase overseas recruitment accordingly. That new law, which deputies also rushed through normal procedures on September 20, allows foreign nationals to gain Russian citizenship by signing a contract and serving in the Russian military for one year. Russian law previously required three years of service to apply for citizenship.
- Putin’s appeals to nationalism may generate small increases in volunteer recruitment from within Russia and parts of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. However, forces generated from such volunteers, if they manifest, will be small and poorly trained. Most eager and able-bodied Russian men and Ukrainian collaborators have likely already volunteered in one of the earlier recruitment phases.
- Local Russian administrators will continue to attempt to form volunteer units, with decreasing effect, as ISW has previously reported and mapped.
- Russian forces and the Wagner Private Military Company are also directly recruiting from Russian prisons, as ISW has previously reported. These troops will be undisciplined and unlikely to meaningfully increase Russian combat power.
Putin likely hopes that increasing self-mobilization, and cracking down on unwilling Russian forces, will enable him to take the rest of Donetsk and defend Russian-occupied parts of Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts. He is mistaken. Putin has neither the time nor the resources needed to generate effective combat power. But Putin will likely wait to see if these efforts are successful before either escalating further or blaming his loss on a scapegoat. His most likely scapegoat is Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian Ministry of Defense. Reports that Shoigu would accompany Putin while Putin gave a speech announced and then postponed on September 20 suggest that Putin intended to make Shoigu the face of the current effort.
Part of the mobilization effort seems to be banning airline ticket sales for males between the ages of 18 and 65.
That decree is every bit as popular as you would expect.
Takeaways:
Neither the mobilization nor the sham referendums change any immediate facts on the ground in Ukraine. It will take many months to take new “recruits” up to even the most basic soldiering standards. Or maybe they’ll just give them three days training and send them into battle with old rifles and old ammunition like they did before, with the same results.
Either way, it doesn’t solve any of Putin’s immediate problems…
Facebook violates user rights, Larry Krasner held in contempt, mass graves in Izyum, and more Disney groomers indicted. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Pennsylvania House voted Tuesday to hold Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by a legislative committee searching for grounds to impeach him.
The chamber voted 162 to 38 — with support from 10 Philadelphia Democrats — to approve the resolution holding the city’s top prosecutor in contempt, a highly unusual move that even the measure’s sponsor told House colleagues he’d never seen before.
State Rep. John Lawrence — a Republican who represents parts of Chester and Lancaster Counties and chairs the select committee investigating Krasner — said the DA had “willfully neglected” the subpoena and was treating it like “a worthless piece of paper.”
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the state of the American academy today knows that employment discrimination runs rampant on campus. Not the old-fashioned kind where women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Asians, gays, or communists were excluded from employment opportunities, but the modern Kendian variety, in which overt discrimination against white men (and, in many disciplines, Asian men as well) is embraced as official university policy and as a necessary part of being “antiracist.”
As Mark Perry has documented in hundreds of complaints he has filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, such “discrimination for the ‘right’ reasons” is as common on campuses today as empty Red Bull cans. Nor does anyone with any actual knowledge of employment law dispute that such overt and intentional sex and racial discrimination is patently illegal under federal law, and usually state law as well.
Why is this so? If such “no white / Asian guys need apply” practices are clearly illegal, how have they been allowed to not only stand but spread to all corners of campus?
Part of the reason is that under Grutter and Fisher II, the Supreme Court gave universities the benefit of the doubt when using racial and other demographic characteristics in admissions decisions. Rather than use race sparingly in admissions decisions, and in the narrow, surgical method the Supreme Court envisioned, universities instead have taken those decisions as a mandate to do whatever they want in not only admissions, but also employment and other areas.
Indeed, as I have noted before, university administrators often admit to overt discriminatory reasons for their DEI employment initiatives (e.g., the need to provide “role models”), despite the fact that the Supreme Court rejected such reasons as illegal decades ago. (Such abuse of the limited leeway the Supreme Court gave universities in admissions decisions is why many observers are predicting that the Supreme Court will end it in the upcoming term, when it decides cases challenging admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.)
However, the main reason for the ubiquity of such practices is that only people who are, in fact, victims of such discriminatory practices have standing to sue to stop them. Leaving aside the serious economic challenges of litigating such a suit against a wealthy university, what would happen if you actually did so? E.g., “I exceed the posted qualifications for a tenure-track position at Enormous State University, but ESU’s official policy is that only BIPOC candidates are eligible for the position. As a white [or Asian] man I am ineligible for the position because of my race, and so I am suing ESU for racial discrimination in employment.”
In the woke monoculture that pervades most campuses today, being known as someone who took legal action to challenge a DEI initiative would render you radioactive and unemployable, not only at ESU but across most of the American academy. And even if you prevail in your lawsuit, you would thereafter be known as the guy who got an “antiracist” affirmative action employment program shut down. Given what the campus cancel culture mobs have done to people like Dorian Abbot who merely question the legality or morality of such programs, what do you think they will do to someone who actually succeeds in having them declared illegal? Ask Allan Bakke.
With universities perceiving no real risk of being sued, and with the Biden administration having about the same interest in neutrally enforcing federal discrimination law as it does in securing the southern border, university administrators know there is no serious risk to giving in to the demands of “antiracist” activists for official, overt discrimination against white and Asian men. That many state officials (including some red-state officials such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott) are too cowardly to do anything to resist the campus wokesters further compounds the problem. Like the days of Mob-controlled garbage collection in New York City, university administrators can say, “Yeah, what we’re doing is illegal. Whaddya gonna do about it?”
But just as the law eventually destroyed the Mob’s garbage cartels in the Big Apple, the law may finally be coming for the overt employment discrimination practiced on most campuses today. The form of the destructor may be a test case filed on September 10: Lowery v. Texas A&M University System.
As described in the complaint:
8. The Texas A&M University System, along with nearly every university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when hiring its faculty, by giving discriminatory preferences to female or non-Asian minorities at the expense of white and Asian men. This practice, popularly known as “affirmative action,” has led universities to hire and promote inferior faculty candidates over individuals with better scholarship, better credentials, and better teaching ability.
9. These race and sex preferences are patently illegal under Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit all forms of race and sex discrimination at universities that receive federal funds. But university administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way.
10. These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States. The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system.
Specifically, the complaint avers that in July 2022, Texas A&M’s “office for diversity” announced a program for hiring professors that was limited to members of “underrepresented groups,” which it defined as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians.” In other words, like many DEI initiatives that pervade most university campuses today, white and Asian men need not apply for this program. Texas A&M justified the program with the goal of establishing a faculty whose racial composition attains “parity with that of the State of Texas”—despite the fact that even Grutter recognized that such racial balancing was “patently unconstitutional.”
Just a heads up,
Twitter is locking and banning accounts that post pics of Joe Biden’s son smoking crack. pic.twitter.com/F85FgMAwcL
— NevilleTheCat (@FearTheFloof) September 12, 2022
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Peter Zeihan says the abysmal performance of the Russian Army is going to have a whole lot of ramifications around the world, many in Russia’s own near abroad. “It means that the image of the Russians as a regional power, much less a global one, is gone, and it’s not coming back.”
Some takeaways:
There’s a small secessionist republic there called Transnistra. It’s only 10 percent of the population of a country of like three and a half million people. There’s not much going on there, but the Russians intervened decisively right at the end of the Soviet collapse to basically make sure that Transnistra could be functionally independent under Russian sponsorship, but unlike the Georgian secessionist territories, which share a land border with Russia proper, Transnistra is on its own. The only way to supply it is through Ukraine, and that has obviously stopped. So the Moldovans and their sponsors in Romania have now a vested interest in ending this historical aberration, and I would expect to see that being wrapped up within a year or two.
The Russians have very publicly, unfortunately for them, relocated a lot of hardware from Syria to Ukraine, specifically air defense equipment to help them with their assaults. Which means that if you are Israel, the only thing that is standing in your way of going after the Syrian regime is someone from the Biden Administration saying “You know what? We really don’t want a nuclear event to erupt because there are Russian troops involved.” Well, the tone of the Biden Administration in the last 72 hours has kind of changed. Now it’s more of “You kids go have fun” sort of vibe, so I expect us to see some very interesting pyrotechnics between the Israelis and the Syrians in a very short period of time, followed by the Syrians suing for peace. Which means that we get to revisit the entire Syrian Civil War now without the Russians being players.
Two caveats from my viewpoint: 1. Given the history of Israeli striking Syria with impunity several times over the past decade, with possibly one Israeli plane hit during that period, I don’t think Russian anti-aircraft equipment have provided any significant deterrent to Israel doing whatever it wanted in Syria. I view it more likely that Israel views a weakened Assad continually beset by a grinding civil war against numerous enemies a preferable option to taking him out entirely. 2. Not sure where Zeihan is getting his information on a change in the Biden Administration’s messaging to Israeli, but I readily concede that he likely does have better sources than I do. It may also be that the most recent failure of the asinine Iran deal has changed the collective mind of whatever passes for a Biden brain trust.
Russia acknowledges defeat in Kharkiv, ultranationalists start to turn on Putin, Lyman is the new battleground, and unconfirmed reports of Russian troops abandoning Melitopol.
Let’s dig in.
- The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
- The Kremlin is likely seeking to use the defeat in Kharkiv to facilitate crypto mobilization efforts by intensifying patriotic rhetoric and discussions about fuller mobilization while revisiting a Russian State Duma bill allowing the military to send call-ups for the regular semiannual conscription by mail. Nothing in the Duma bill suggests that Putin is preparing to order general mobilization, and it is far from clear that he could do so quickly in any case.
- The successful Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkiv Oblast is prompting Russian servicemen, occupation authorities, and milbloggers to panic.
- Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are likely continuing to weaken Russia’s leverage in the former Soviet Union as Russia appears unwilling to enforce a violated ceasefire it brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan or to allow Armenia to invoke provisions of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization in its defense.
- Ukrainian troops likely continued ground attacks along the Lyman-Yampil-Bilohorivka line in northern Donetsk Oblast and may be conducting limited ground attacks across the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast.
- Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Ukrainian forces are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counter-offensive.
- Russian troops made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks throughout Donetsk Oblast.
- Ukrainian forces provided the first visual evidence of Russian forces using an Iranian-made drone in Ukraine on September 13.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian troops were now trying to retake the Russian-held town of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and were eyeing territorial gains in the neighbouring Luhansk region which is under Russian control.
“There is now an assault on Lyman,” Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube.
“And that is what they fear most – that we take Lyman and then advance on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” he said, referring to twin cities in the Luhansk region taken by Russia after fierce fighting in June and July.
I'm hearing more & more reports that Russians are evacing Melitopol. This remains UNCONFIRMED. If true, Ukr can reach the Black Sea, blow the Kerch bridge, & utterly destroy every Russia military unit in southern Ukraine and Crimea. And THAT would be a nation-ending event. pic.twitter.com/8cCDnDEbVl
— Peter Zeihan (@PeterZeihan) September 14, 2022
DEEP STRIKE: Major explosions rocked the RU air station at Taganrog, followed by a number of secondaries & fires. Russian AWACs, including the including the newest A-100 platforms, are forward deployed at Taganrog. This strike will negatively affect RU air defense in the region. pic.twitter.com/iKPeaIW5w8
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) September 12, 2022
Taganrog, Russia now pic.twitter.com/m3ZDPoJ3Nq
— Paul Jawin (@PaulJawin) September 12, 2022
In the newly-liberated areas, relief and sorrow are intertwined – as accounts emerge of torture and killings during the long months of Russian occupation.
Artem, who lives in the city of Balakliya in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC he was held by Russians for more than 40 days, and was tortured with electrocution.
Balakliya was liberated on 8 September after being occupied for more than six months. The epicentre of the brutality was the city’s police station, which Russian forces used as their headquarters.
Artem said he could hear screams of pain and terror coming from other cells.
The occupiers made sure the cries could be heard, he said, by turning off the building’s noisy ventilation system.
“They turned it off so everyone could hear how people scream when they are shocked with electricity,” he told us. “They did this to some of the prisoners every other day… They even did this to the women”.
And they did it to Artem, though in his case only once.
“They made me hold two wires,” he said.
“There was an electric generator. The faster it went, the higher the voltage. They said, ‘if you let it go, you are finished’. Then they started asking questions. They said I was lying, and they started spinning it even more and the voltage increased.”
Artem told us he was detained because the Russians found a picture of his brother, a soldier, in uniform. Another man from Balakliya was held for 25 days because he had the Ukrainian flag, Artem said.
A school principal called Tatiana told us she was held in the police station for three days and also heard screams from other cells.
Life comes at you fast: pundits on Russian TV realize that their military is failing and their country is in trouble. They are starting to play the blame game. Some of them finally understand that their genocidal denial of the Ukrainian identity isn't working in Russia's favor. pic.twitter.com/jNNn5xifI5
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) September 11, 2022
Their criticism is that Putin is not doing enough. That the special military operation is insufficient, and that Putin should declare full mobilization. These ultranationalists are largely represented by those Russian military bloggers that have become quite famous during the war. The most famous one is probably Igor Girkin. These bloggers make sometimes very good military analyses, and they clearly have a network of sources that provide information about the situation on the frontlines. And we also know that their views are shared by many of the soldiers. For example, there have been studies that show that these ultranationalist views are pretty common in spetsnaz units. And these ultranationalist voices are a real challenge for the Putin regime. Because obviously he can’t dismiss them as being unpatriotic or foreign agents or something like that. And what is happening now is that these ultranationalists are turning against Putin. And that is dangerous for him.
The shift has been from “If you support the troops, you have to support Putin” to “If you support the troops, you have to blame Putin for fucking things up so badly.”
Things in Ukraine are moving so fast that the only thing I can be sure of is that what I post here will probably be obsolete before I press the Publish button.
What was a very successful Ukrainian counter offensive in Kharkiv Oblast is now a massive rout of Russian forces throughout the extent of their northeast line. All of Kharkiv (save a tiny bit east of the Oskil River) has been liberated.
“Ukraine controls all the land west of the Oskil River.”
The Russians left massive amounts of equipment behind, too much for any sort of orderly withdrawal, and they don’t appear to have torched any of it, either. They just turned tail and fled. “This is an armored brigade worth of vehicles. Looking at this, I think Russia has given more military aid to Ukraine than the United States.” Also, Russian civilians are fleeing the captured territories, only to be refused entry at the border.
“Fuck, every one of us can get a tank.”
Rus, Rus, Rus of the Ukraine
Fleeing as fast as he can flee
Rus, Rus, Rus of the Ukraine
Watch out for that tree!
Got to disagree with the first video: it’s damn hard to see if you’re peering out the forward driver’s port, and it’s quite possible the tank driver was unaware troops were falling off.
It looks like logistical problems and those long-documented Russian morale problems have finally intersected to destroy the ability of numerous Russian units to function as effective fighting forces. Here’s a recorded Russian phone soldier’s phone call from back in August illustrating low morale and how much Russian soldiers hate the war:
Russian soldiers don’t seem to be eager to die for a mistake. The extent to which Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast have been routed and broken makes it an open question whether any can be reconstituted as effective fighting forces and redeployed to Donbas. That may explain why Russia seems to be trying to carry out a stealth conscription mobilization:
On their way out, the Russian army has given Ukraine a parting gift: destruction of Kharkiv’s civilian infrastructure. “Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were cut off. In Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy there are partial problems with power supply.”
Total dick move, but not necessarily a war crime; power generating facilities are usually considered legitimate military targets. Russia obviously held off attacking them because they expected to control the territory.
Now that Ukraine has that territory back, a lot more Russian logistic routes (especially those out of Belgorod) are under threat of disruption from Ukrainian artillery. Indeed, Belgorod now loses a lot of value as a logistics hub, since it’s farther away from the frontlines, on worse roads. Russia may shift to routing everything through Kamensk-Shakhtinsky or Rostov-On-Don.
Ukraine continues to grind out more modest gains in the Kherson counteroffensive. As for the next phase of the war, it’s an open question whether to attempt to push Russian troops out of Luhansk next, or to apply more pressure toward the center of the Russian line and retake Lysychansk and Severodonetsk. But it’s clear that right now Ukraine enjoys the strategic initiative.
Downfall parodies! The lazy blogger’s friend!
Got to admit I laughed at this one. And of course, Putin is more like Hitler than the average target…
My one main criticism is that they didn’t work the shout of “Stalin!” into the script. I mean with Putin, how hard would that have been?