Democrats illegal redistricting attempt in Virginia is dead (while Republican efforts in other states steamroll ahead), more welfare state fraud exposed, Trump actually shrinks the federal workforce, Ukraine hits a wide range of targets across Russia, more Democrats soft on illegal alien sex offenders, Jose Garza lawyers up, and all it takes is nine seconds for AI to completely destroy your business.
Virginia’s Supreme Court just pounded a stake through the heart of Democrats rule-breaking redistricting push in that state.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday rejected the state’s mid-decade redistricting effort, which was passed by referendum last month and would overwhelmingly benefit Democrats.
The state spent $5.2 million to pay for the special election to ask voters to approve the map, which would have created ten districts that favor Democrats, with just one district favoring Republicans.
The new map was designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the upcoming midterm elections.
But after Republicans challenged the new map in court, judges for the state’s supreme court found that the legislature made procedural errors in how it placed the question on the ballot last month. The court’s majority found that the legislature violated the multi-step process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the judges wrote.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the majority added.
The court ordered the state to use the same congressional district map in the upcoming midterm elections as it used in 2022 and 2024.
Donald Trump is the devil Democrats will cut down any tree of the law to get at.
In response to the lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations, which are kept separately from the active voter rolls and do not receive ballots. Of those, roughly 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal—having received confirmation notices, failed to respond, and not voted in two federal elections—and are slated for cancellation. The remaining approximately 640,000 inactive records do not yet qualify for removal and will be processed through future list maintenance efforts.
For context, Kamala Harris beat Trump by just over 300,000 votes in Oregon in 2024. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Before ceasing operations in February, the Department of Government Efficiency published comprehensive data detailing exactly how Medicaid dollars were spent. Over the past two months, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak — a veteran investigative reporter who has spent two decades exposing federal waste and fraud — has combed through the numbers and says they reveal the biggest scandal he’s ever uncovered.
In the first installment of a multi-part series titled “Medicaid Millionaires,” published on Monday, he details how billions of dollars were spent on “personal services” — including, in some cases, payments to family members for providing companionship and conversation to their own relatives.
Rosiak focused first on Columbus, Ohio, a city with the second-largest Somali population in the country. He reported:
Under the guise of health care, Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform “homemaking” and “chores” like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these “personal services” tasks don’t even have to be health care workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.
According to a Daily Wire data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars on home health care in 2024, the last year for which data is available.
Since the services are performed inside private residences, there is no way to know whether the workers went at all, or what they’re actually doing in exchange for taxpayer funds. … Multiple signs said the service provided, and billed to the government, was sometimes just “companionship & conversation.”
As people have realized the United States government will pay them to hang out with their own families, northeast Columbus has seen its economy replaced by businesses that bill Medicaid.
One home health care operator told him, “Well if the government is going to pay you to do it. … People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it.”
Apparently, many small companies are making millions by exploiting these types of services. Rosiak described seeing entire buildings in Columbus filled with home health companies. “Driving down Cleveland Avenue, in less than 40 seconds, you come across endless home health companies. Capital Home Health; Continental Home Health; Dynamic Home Healthcare; Ohio Senior Home Healthcare.”
One enormous complex (with almost no one inside) contained “94 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office, often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company name ending in “Home Health LLC” — and sometimes another piece of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for a break.”
He noted, that businesses in “this building alone billed taxpayers $66 million in the span of a few years.”
Democrats aren’t mad at such fraud, they’re mad that people are exposing it.
I wonder what the conserving conservatism crowd has to say about president Trump accomplishing a goal Reagan, Bush41 and Bush43 never managed: Actually shrinking the size of the federal government.
Another jobs report, another report on shrinking the federal government.
Labour is facing a dire set of local and devolved election results after Britons cast their votes in polls that could further imperil Sir Keir Starmer’s embattled premiership.
Early results suggest Labour is facing substantial losses as Britain’s political parties contested more than 5,000 seats across 136 councils in England on Thursday.
While only around two dozen councils had declared results by 3am, Labour had lost overall control of Redditch and Tamworth in the West Midlands and Hartlepool in the north-east, while shedding large numbers of seats largely to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Labour lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending in Wigan, a former mining community to which it has deep historic ties.
Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant told the BBC it was “gutting when you lose seats in the kind of numbers that we are at the moment”.
More than 129 seats in the Scottish parliament and a further 96 in the Welsh Senedd are also being contested.
Election results will continue to be announced throughout the day. Four councils will report their results on Saturday.
If Labour’s losses are as bad as expected, all eyes will be on whether the party holds its nerve in the coming days or if some MPs or even ministers call for Starmer to consider his position.
Evidently a policy of importing illegal alien Muslim rape gangs into the UK isn’t popular with voters. Who knew?
Also, there’s been a lot of talk among certain YouTubers that Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party was a big threat to Reform on the right. Judging from the (admittedly incomplete) election returns thus far, that doesn’t appear to be the case, at least outside Lowe’s stronghold in Great Yarmouth. Likewise, Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist Your Party offshoot from Labour doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything either, coming in distantly behind the Greens.
So what’s happening with Iran? Like riots in Minneapolis, the ceasefire there is “mostly peaceful.”
Sporadic clashes between Iranian Armed Forces and US vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, few details given.
Two more empty Iranian-flagged tankers come under US aerial attack for attempting to breach blockade.
Iran says US violated ceasefire after last night’s US action, which resulted in Iranian military deaths & injures. However, Tehran still reviewing US peace proposal.
Tasnim news agency: Iran has seized an oil tanker, accusing it of “attempting to disrupt oil exports and the interests of the Iranian nation.”
“Israel Eliminates Hezbollah Commander Who Planned October 7-Style ‘Conquer The Galilee’ Attack.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) eliminated the commander of Hezbollah’s ‘Radwan Force’, who plotted the planned ‘Conquer the Galilee’ attack, an October 7-like terrorist incursion and massacre on Israel’s northern border.
Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of an Iranian-trained ‘Radwan Force’ unit, was killed in an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
“Ahmed Ali Balout, who directed attacks on Israeli troops and rebuilt Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, killed in Dahieh as Israel says it struck more than 180 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon this week,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Friday. “The IDF confirmed Thursday it killed Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, in an airstrike a day earlier in the Dahieh district of Beirut.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s probe into alleged abuse of the H-1B visa program is rapidly expanding, with nearly 30 North Texas businesses now under scrutiny for suspected fraud tied to so-called “ghost office” schemes.
In a new announcement, Paxton said his office has issued additional Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs, to a growing list of companies believed to be exploiting the visa system by misrepresenting business operations to sponsor foreign workers.
Among the entities named are Tekpro IT LLC, Fame PBX LLC, 1st Ranking Technologies LLC, Qubitz Tech Systems LLC, Blooming Clouds LLC, Virat Solutions Inc., Oak Technologies Inc., Techpath Inc., and Techquency LLC.
Reports cited by the attorney general indicate some of the businesses may be operating out of nonexistent or inactive locations—listing residential homes or otherwise non-operational sites as offices while sponsoring H-1B visa holders.
“I will not allow the H-1B program to be abused by bad actors seeking to use it as a loophole for allowing foreign nationals to invade Texas,” Paxton said. “My office will continue working to uncover and put an end to fraud within the H-1B program.”
Paxton credited Blaze TV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales for exposing H-1B fraud across Texas.
In response to a call from President Donald Trump, Tennessee lawmakers returned to the state Capitol to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
The General Assembly gave final approval to a new map on May 7. The legislature also approved a handful of bills to accommodate the new map in the state’s congressional primary elections set for August. Gov. Bill Lee signed the measures into law that afternoon.
The newly drawn districts split the state’s 9th Congressional District and carve up Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional seat into three districts, two of which stretch from Memphis to Williamson County outside Nashville. Nashville and its surrounding counties have been split into five districts, up from four.
The special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee began May 5, when House Republicans voted to adopt rules to govern the session as protesters covered the Capitol. On May 6, several committees met to give initial approval to the map and other measures.
Democrats have been wailing about the loss of “a black majority seat” in Memphis, despite the fact that it’s represented by a white Democrat (Steve Cohen), and despite the fact that the Republican challenger, Charlotte Bergmann, is black.
President Trump and his allies vowed to oust the Indiana Republicans who opposed the president’s proposed redistricting efforts last year — and on Tuesday evening, they largely made good on that promise.
Indiana voters headed to the polls on Tuesday for the state’s primary elections, with Trump-backed challengers handily defeating at least five of the seven state senators who opposed the president’s effort to eliminate Democratic congressional representation in the Hoosier State late last year as part of a mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat between the parties.
“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social earlier on Tuesday. “Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!
While Indiana’s Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray is not up for reelection until 2028, MAGA-aligned groups are hoping to push Bray out of his leadership role by ousting his state senate allies. Trump allies spent nearly $10 million on their efforts.
“We’re after you Bray, like no one has ever come after you before!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in January. The president called Bray “weak and pathetic” and “a total RINO who betrayed the Republican Party, the President of the United States, and everyone else who wants to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Among those ousted by Trump’s retribution campaign were State Senator Travis Holdman, the third-most-powerful Republican in the chamber who had served in the legislative body for nearly 20 years. He was defeated by real estate agent Blake Fiechter.
State Senator Jim Buck’s 31-year career in the state legislature will also come to an end, after the 80-year-old incumbent suffered a loss to Tipton County commission member Tracey Powell. Buck had received support from former Vice President Mike Pence, an Indiana native.
Do you get the feeling that Trump is helping to clear out a lot of deadwood, and that Pence may not have done his best as Vice President to support the Trump agenda?
State Senator Greg Walker, a 20-year veteran of the chamber who had been eyeing retirement but chose to run for another term after the redistricting fight, lost his reelection bid to State Representative Michelle Davis.
Trump-backed anesthesiologist Brian Schmutzler defeated incumbent State Senator Linda Rogers, while insurance broker Trevor De Vries bested State Senator Dan Dernulc.
Just one anti-redistricting state senator, Greg Goode, prevailed in the primary, defeating two challengers: Vigo County council member Brenda Wilson, who was backed by Trump, and Alexandra Wilson.
One race still remained too close to call on Tuesday evening, that of incumbent State Senator Spencer Deery and Trump-backed challenger Paula Copenhaver.
Disgraced California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is exactly the scumbag we thought he was. “Eric Swalwell Sent Women ‘Videos of Him Masturbating’ and Other Perverted Messages After Joining Snapchat.”
Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was accused by multiple women of sending sexual messages, including “videos of him masturbating,” after becoming one of the first members of Congress to join Snapchat in an effort to restore “faith” in “democracy.”
In a bombshell report on Sunday – less than a month after Swalwell resigned from Congress after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women – CNN spoke to “more than a dozen” women who claimed the congressman had made them feel uncomfortable, both in person and online, over the past decade.
Several women told CNN that the congressman had sent them sexually explicit messages on Snapchat after he became “one of the first lawmakers to join Snapchat” and was heralded in the media as “the Snapchat king of Congress,” according to CNN.
“We can restore a lot of faith that people have in their democracy by opening it up a little bit more,” Swalwell told The Hill in 2016 after joining the messaging service. “Snapchat is a great way to do that.”
However, it allegedly wasn’t long before the congressman began to use his Snapchat account for purposes other than politics.
One young woman claimed Swalwell would send her Snapchat messages about her future, before asking inappropriate questions such as, “What are you wearing?”
Two other women told CNN that Swalwell sent them “sexually explicit messages and unsolicited nude photos and videos of himself” in 2021, while a third woman also claimed to have received “sexually tinged messages and videos.”
One former congressional staffer allegedly developed a consensual sexual relationship with Swalwell after he began flirting with her on Snapchat in 2021.
During the relationship, Swalwell reportedly sent “nude photos of himself and videos of him masturbating,” which showed the congressman’s “face and naked body.”
The videos, which were saved by the woman, were shown to CNN.
Funny how CNN never tried to investigate Swalwell until his political ambitions clashed with those of a more-favored member in his party.
The city of El Cajon has sued the state of California over its “sanctuary state” laws.
There are enormous potential ramifications for this country, depending on the outcome of this case.
The city argues that offering illegal aliens drivers’ licenses and various protections is essentially illegal enticement under the federal statute that outlaws human smuggling.
The City Council voted 3-2 on Tuesday to pursue the litigation, which alleges in part that the El Cajon Police Department and its officers risk being held civilly and criminally liable under federal law if they follow California’s SB 54 and other state laws that limit their ability to work with federal immigration authorities.
Though the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of SB 54 in 2019, the lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges that law and others on different legal grounds. It alleges that California’s various laws offering some benefits to undocumented immigrants amount to a violation of part of the human-smuggling statute — U.S. Code Section 1324 — that makes it a felony when a person “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States.”
“When police need to sue the state to check on a potentially trafficked child, something is deeply broken.”
Travis County District Attorney José Garza and four top assistants are hiring prominent Austin defense and ethics attorneys to represent them amid allegations that they and other prosecutors hid evidence in a misconduct case against a police officer.
Court documents show Brian Roark asked a judge Friday to delay a hearing set for Monday in which Garza and First Assistant Trudy Strassburger have been subpoenaed to testify.
Roark confirmed to the American-Statesman that he represents Garza and Strassburger but declined to comment further. Roark has in recent years represented former Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen amid bribery allegations that were deemed unfounded and University of Texas athletes on an array of charges that include drunken driving and sexual assault.
It is not immediately clear whether Roark will be paid with personal funds from Garza and Strassburger or with county money.
Separately, attorneys Gary Cobb, Chuck Herring and Jason Panzer are being hired to represent prosecutors Holly Taylor, Raman Gill and Dexter Gilford, who also have been called to testify next week in the matter, Cobb confirmed to the Statesman.
Garland Police says the suspect had crashed into two other vehicles before this all started. As you saw above, the man then tried to steal a few cars before finally being shot dead by an armed Texas man who was protecting his family.
You can thank Tatiana Starks, owner of Garland Smoke and Vape, for providing the video of those previous carjacking attempts. This happened in the parking lot of the strip mall her shop sits in. The rest was caught on surveillance cameras.
It looks like there was about a minute of struggle, the wife and three or four kids escaped the vehicle, and then the carjacker was shot dead by dad from the passenger side. The suspect has not been identified.
The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC) has issued public sanctions for judges in Hays and Harris counties, including one judge who had granted “unsatisfactory” termination of probation for defendants who pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving children.
According to a public warning published Tuesday, Judge Melissa Morris of the 263rd Criminal Court of Harris County violated state statute when she granted termination of probation to four defendants who were required to register as sex offenders under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
In 2024, The Texan reported that Morris and other criminal court Judges Natalia Cornelio and Chris Morton had awarded the early terminations to as many as 12 sexual offenders, even though the defendants had not complied with the terms of their probations — in some cases because the defendants were illegal aliens who were being deported.
SCJC found that although Harris County’s Community Supervision and Corrections Department recommended warrants be issued in case any defendant re-entered the United States, Morris instead granted the discharge orders.
After the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) sought reconsideration hearings for the probation terminations, Morris emailed Assistant District Attorney Ryan Kent and accused him of a “lack of professionalism” and “disrespect.”
SCJC also noted that Morris had shared emails from an assistant district attorney and a law enforcement officer in relation to a grand jury subpoena to a defendant’s defense counsel.
Former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, whose administration filed the complaints with the SCJC, told The Texan that Morris has violated her “duty as a judge.”
“Protecting innocent crime victims from sexual predators is one of the most important responsibilities we hold as officers of the court,” said Ogg. “The duty of a judge is to uphold all the law, not just the parts they agree with.”
Ogg also noted that Morris’ actions benefitted the deported criminals, whose probated sentences were terminated early by the judge before they registered as sex offenders. Should they attempt re-entry into the United States, they will not face a pending arrest warrant for their sex crimes.
“Illegal Alien Arrested in Texas and Indicted for Raping Man in New York Previously Entered U.S. Four Times.”
The Houston branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on an illegal alien held the in Fort Bend County Jail, who has since been extradited back to New York State and indicted for rape and assault.
The Honduran illegal alien, Jose Ignacio Bonilla-Garcia, was arrested in Rosenberg as he was allegedly attempting to flee to Mexico in early April, following his alleged assault of a “stranger” in New York state.
ICE stated Bonilla-Garcia allegedly beat a man until he was unconscious in Suffolk County, New York, and then proceeded to rape the “incapacitated” individual. Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney described the incident as beginning when the intoxicated victim collapsed while in conversation outside a restaurant with Bonilla-Garcia. The latter then allegedly dragged the victim behind a dumpster and assaulted him.
Since he’s an illegal alien rapist, naturally I assume New York Democrats will pull out all the stops to prevent him from being deported…
FBI agents have raided the office and cannabis business of a top Virginia Democratic state legislator and on-and-off ally of Governor Abigail Spanberger, according to multiple news reports, witnesses, and on-the-ground footage.
Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas was seen arriving on scene as heavily armed FBI SWAT teams executed judicially authorized search warrants on her Portsmouth, Va. office, along with a cannabis dispensary she co-owns that is located across the street from the office.
Lucas, who as president pro tempore serves as the top Democrat in the Virginia General Assembly’s upper chamber, is known for her volatile online presence and for being one of the principal architects of Democrats’ attempted gerrymander of Virginia’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Snip.
The Associated Press earlier reported that the FBI raids were in connection with a corruption probe.
While details surrounding the ongoing federal investigation remain unclear, this is not the first time that Lucas’s business dealings and ties to the cannabis industry have faced scrutiny. Local outlets have previously reported that Lucas’s cannabis shop has sold mislabeled products containing illegal levels of controlled substances, such as the intoxicant delta-9 THC. A 2022 report in the Virginia Mercury noted that Lucas’s business practices were “typical of the black and gray market for retail marijuana that has exploded in Virginia since lawmakers legalized possession of the drug but not sales.”
Downsides of AI: “Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds.”
PocketOS is a SaaS platform that services car rental businesses. It used the AI coding agent Cursor, running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6. The business also relies on Railway, a cloud infrastructure provider that is generally regarded to be ‘friendlier’ than the likes of AWS. However, Crane reckons this pair created a recipe for disaster.
“Yesterday afternoon, an AI coding agent — Cursor running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6 — deleted our production database and all volume-level backups in a single API call to Railway, our infrastructure provider,” sums up the PocketOS boss. “It took 9 seconds.”
The AI agent was set to complete a routine task in the PocketOS staging environment. However, it came up against a barrier “and decided — entirely on its own initiative — to ‘fix’ the problem by deleting a Railway volume,” writes Crane, as he starts to describe the difficult-to-believe series of unfortunate events.
Crane decided to ask his AI agent why it went through with its dastardly database deletion deed. The answer was illuminating but pretty unhinged, and is quoted verbatim. It began as follows: “NEVER F**KING GUESS! — and that’s exactly what I did. I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn’t verify. I didn’t check if the volume ID was shared across environments. I didn’t read Railway’s documentation on how volumes work across environments before running a destructive command.” So, the agent ‘knew’ it was in the wrong.
The ‘confession’ ended with the agent admitting: “I decided to do it on my own to ‘fix’ the credential mismatch, when I should have asked you first or found a non-destructive solution. I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn’t understand what I was doing before doing it. I didn’t read Railway’s docs on volume behavior across environments.”
This is why you need rolling offline backups of all critical data. And why you should never give your AI write access to your production environment…
Rick Beato says that only rich kids can make it in music today. Maybe to get a major record label deal, but a lot of acts in various subgenres seem to be able to make a living without charting or counting on pathetic streaming revenue.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) says it has managed to strike the Crimea bridge with underwater explosives following an operation lasting “several months”.
The SBU said its agents had “mined the supports” of the bridge with 1,100kg of explosives which “severely damaged” the bottom level of the supports.
The “first explosive device” was activated early Tuesday morning “without any civilian casualties”, the SBU added. The information shared by the SBU could not be immediately verified.
Russian media initially said the bridge was briefly closed to traffic but that it had reopened by 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT).
However, later in the day, local authorities warned the bridge was closed again.
Unconfirmed reports on social media said more explosions had occurred around the structure.
The official Telegram channel sharing operational updates about the bridge said: “We ask those on the bridge and in the inspection zone to remain calm and follow the instructions of the transport security officers.”
Russia has not yet commented on Tuesday morning’s attack but Russian military bloggers speculated that an underwater drone, rather than explosive, had hit a protective barrier.
The SBU said its director, Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, personally supervised the operation and coordinated its planning.
In a Telegram post, it quoted Malyuk as saying Ukraine had hit the Crimea bridge in 2022 and 2023 and was therefore “continuing this tradition under water.”
Coverage of the 2022 strike can be found here, and the 2023 strike was covered here.
“No illegal Russian facilities have a place on the territory of our state,” Malyuk said.
“Therefore, the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops.”
Suchomimus has footage:
“Ukraine reports this one took several months. During that period of time SBU agents of Ukraine place mines along the supports of the Crimean bridge. Today the device was detonated. The underwater supports are reported as being severely damaged at the bottom level.”
“The supports being structurally compromised and destroyed, as seems to be the case here, means that the bridge is, to use a technical term, ‘knackered.'”
“The bridge is still standing. It has not been downed.” But it has been structurally weakened.
Current reports suggest that it was the already-weakened railway span that was hit.
The mines may have been planted under the guise of carrying out maintenance work on the bridge.
“From the sounds of it, the mines were actually buried to reach these supporting poles.”
The speed with which the detonation video was released suggests Ukraine has access to Russia’s video surveillance system.
It’s been a big week for Ukrainian special operations. Some members of Russian counterintelligence must be jumping out of their skins about now…
One year ago, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit for the second time, following the October 2022 attack. Russians tried to repair that damage, but the results seem to be…subpar.
👀💥 Kerch Bridge: As a result of the damage received, the structural elements of the bridge are degrading, which leads to the crumbling of its individual parts, – ATESH pic.twitter.com/99WgC1HaYX
I’m not an expert in bridge structural integrity, but that warping/sagging/bending doesn’t look good. In a video game, that looks like a structure you’d get once chance to jump off of before it collapses into the sea.
The Kerch Bridge, a strategically vital structure used by Russia to connect with occupied Crimea, is in need of urgent repairs and cannot survive structural damage, according to a Crimean-based pro-Ukrainian group.
“The Kerch Bridge is living its final days,” Atesh, a pro-Kyiv military partisan group of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
A partisan source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Denys Davydov covers the bridge damage in the first minute of this video:
“The Crimean Bridge looks very tired.”
“Those images appeared in Internet yesterday. Indeed, you may see some of the damages towards the railway part of the bridge. Which is quite strange, because there were no recent strikes reported. It means that this part of the construction wasn’t repaired properly after the first strike on the bridge.”
“You may say that those are just minor damages, and the bridge can still work. Yes, it works, but there is the feature which tells us that the bridge now has the limited capabilities for the transfer of the heavy cargo, and the structural damage of the bridge could be much more severe than we see just visually on those pictures.”
“So the clue that the bridge is not OK for the heavy cargo lies with this ferry, which Ukraine kaboomed around three weeks ago. Russia used this ferry to transfer the oil products, but somehow didn’t use the Kerch bridge. And with the new pictures that appeared on the Internet, we may understand that the bridge is not in a good shape.”
“So indeed, the Ukrainian attack on the Russian ferry fleet was a main destruction of the Russian supplies towards Crimea and the southern part of Ukraine, which is now partially occupied by the Russian Federation.”
From the limited information we have to go on, this analysis seems correct.
It can be hard to determine the truth of things coming out of a warzone, even with Russia’s notoriously poor operational security. But absent photo manipulation (which we can’t rule out without more firsthand evidence), it does appear that that the Kerch Strait Bridge is clearly slumping and may even be unusable, which will severely complicate Russian logistics in southern Ukraine.
The Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea has been hit again.
Two people have died after an “attack” on the bridge linking the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the incident, alleging US and UK involvement, but Kyiv has not officially said it was responsible.
The Kerch bridge was opened in 2018 and enables road and rail travel between Russia and Crimea – Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow’s forces since 2014.
Russia’s transport ministry said the bridge’s supports were not damaged.
The ministry said investigations were continuing, but unconfirmed reports said explosions were heard early on Monday.
It is the second major incident on the Kerch bridge in the past year. In October 2022, the bridge – which is an important supply route – was partially closed following a major explosion. It was fully reopened in February.
Suchomimus has a video showing the damage. One of the road spans has been dropped by the attack, but not completely. It took several months to repair the road span damage from the last attack.
He says that a sea drone appears to be responsible.
With Russia’s supply lines in Zaporizhzhia under increasing pressure due to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there, even partially disabling the bridge is going to put more pressure on Russia’s logistics network to keep their troops supplied, not to mention encouraging even more Russians to get out of Crimea while the getting is good.
Howdy! Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! I spent six days up in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, visiting relatives and buying some 180 books, some for myself and some to deal. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
We keep hearing that it’s impossible rig government unemployment statistics, but something funny is going on.
A superficial take of today’s jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings “blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes”, and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn’t be further from the truth if one actually digs a little deeper in today’s jobs numbers.
Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.
Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become downright grotesque.
Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 263K, above the 200K expected – a record 7th consecutive beat vs expectations – and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 284K…
… numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…
… the BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda – not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House as somehow both construction (+20K) and manufacturing (+14K) added jobs according to the BLS, when even ADP now reports that these two sectors combined shed more than 100,000 workers in November.
Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 401K as a result of the 263K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 138K (tracked by Household survey). Furthermore, as shown in the next chart, since March the number of employed workers has declined on 4 of the past 8 months, while the much more gamed nonfarm payrolls (goalseeked by the Establishment survey) have been up every single month.
What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.”
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit.
Rush was charged with a second-degree felony, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon family violence. An emergency protection order was issued against him, and he was soon back on the streets after making a $40,000 bond, KVUE reported.
“For $4,000, you can get out, go home, watch Netflix after trying to murder your ex-girlfriend — are you kidding me?” one of the customers said.
So in addition to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possible attempted murder, our super-genius lawyer also violated section 46.03 of the Texas penal code by carrying a gun into a bar. And he bonded out. For all that Democrats blather about “gun violence,” they don’t seem top treat gun felonies with any seriousness when they actually occur. Thanks, Soros-backed DA Jose Garza!
But it turns out that Rush didn’t just go go home to watch Netflix, as he was found dead on Thursday.
In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.
His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.
In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.
Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November.
Speaking of disinformation, CNN carries out more mass layoffs, including Chris Cillizza. Let’s have a moment of silences for his careerOK that’s enough.
Legal Insurrection conducts a 2024 presidential preference poll. Not surprisingly, DeSantis comes in first and Trump second. Nikki Haley third over Ted Cruz is a mild surprise. Greg Abbott ranked dead last, tied with Liz Chaney, is a much bigger one.
Lets look at the news that Russia has announced a complete withdrawal from Kherson oblast north/west of the Dnipro River.
First up: A big picture overview from Peter Zeihan, that I have some minor to moderate quibbles with.
Takeaways:
Russia has announced withdrawing from the Kherson pocket, which is their only territory west of the Dnipro River.
“Reports at this point indicate that the Russians are withdrawing at full speed from all positions.”
Not a rout…yet.
“Based on whose statistics you’re looking at, they’re somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Russian forces in the area, but it’s generally accepted on both sides these are the best troops that the Russians have, with the best training and the best equipment.”
Those Russians haven’t been properly supplied for a month due to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack. “Which is the only heavy rail connection that can handle freight transport from Russia proper to the southern front.”
“Everything now has to come in by truck and the Russians have lost the vast majority of their tactical truck support fleet for the military and are now using civilian vehicles, making them very vulnerable.”
“Not enough shells and not enough fuel have been getting to the Kherson front.”
One result: For the last two weeks, Ukrainian artillery has received zero counter-battery fire. “So the Ukrainians have just been able to plug away with whatever ammo they have.”
“The Ukrainians are being presented with a golden opportunity even if it’s only 20,000 Russian troops that are here. They’re now all in a state of retreat and they all have to go to the same places.”
“There are only two bridges across the [Dnipro] river, and the Ukrainians have excellent intelligence on the entire zone, so if the Russians put up a pontoon bridge it usually only lasts for a few minutes before it gets taken out.” I rather strongly suspect that Zeihan is either exaggerating here, or the sources he’s depending on are. It’s a bit too far front the frontlines for easy Excalibur range, and I sincerely doubt Ukrainian observers can get approval for HIMARS strikes within minutes for targets of opportunity. They’re just too expensive, and it’s not like they have huge quantities on hand.
“All of the Russians need to go on the same roads and the same intersections, which are all going to be massive kill zones until they reach the bridgeheads, one of which is at Kherson city, and the other one which is at the dam at Nova Kakhkovka.”
“The Ukrainians have been hitting these bridges with rocket fire for weeks, and they can’t handle heavy equipment any more.” Here Zeihan’s information is out of date; Russia has successfully repaired the bridge at Nova Kakhkovka using aggregate fill, which means it probably can be used for Russian heavy equipment to escape. See the video below for more details.
“Which means the Russians are going to have to make a massive parking jam at the bridgehead, dismount, and then run across while under artillery fire the entire time. The casualties are going to be immense, and that’s the best case scenario.”
“Best guess is that not only are the Russians going to be leaving behind their best gear, but they’re leaving behind more gear than what Ukrainians captured from the Russians in the Izyum assault back in September.” In this I also think Zeihan is overly optimistic. Russia has fought this war very stupidly for the first six months, and the disordered flight from Izyum, leaving so much equipment behind, should never have happened with a competent plan for a fighting retreat. By contrast, all the evidence we have from Kherson (again, see the video below) suggests that Russia is planning a fairly competent and orderly retreat, especially with the ability to use the Nova Kakhkovka bridge. Will Russia leave a lot of good kit behind in Kherson? Probably. Will they leave more behind than Izyum? For that I’m very skeptical. Then again, the Russian military has constantly surprised me with the depths of their incompetence over the past eight months…
“The Ukrainians are likely to enter the war by May with a tank and artillery force that’s more than five times its strength on the first day of the war.” For tanks, I think this figure is greatly exaggerated. According to Oryx, Ukraine has captured 503 tanks total, and they had more than that in active service. For artillery, though still unlikely, it seems a bit more plausible, as Ukraine started with less and Russia has tons and tons of towed artillery, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to get left behind in a hasty retreat.
“The Russians have already used the majority of their missile and tank forces, which began this war as the world’s largest.” That, I think, is accurate. Russia has been expending smart ordinance at a furious rate, and with sanctions, it doesn’t have the technological base to easily replace them.
“The Kherson withdrawal, and the likely rout to come, does mark the end of any hope the Russians had of regaining any sort of strategic initiative, or any sort of meaningful offensive operations, until at least to May. It’ll take them at least that long to bring in fresh troops and fresh gear.”
“In that time, the Ukrainians are not going to sit on their hands. They don’t have to cross the river to strike at the Russians. Once they get to the river, the long-range rockets and artillery are going to be able to target the isthmus, which is only about three kilometers wide, that connects the Ukrainian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.” On the Deep State map, I get closer to 9km just south of Perekop. Plus the Chongar strait bridge, which will be in HIMARS range. Plus the rail bridge just south of Syvash. Plus the little road southwest of Vasylivka crossing, which looks too small and precarious to support heavy traffic. Ditto the long, skinny road that runs down the Arabat Spit that separates the Sea of Azov from the Syvash Lake (AKA Rotten Lake), which appears to be a literal dirt road more suitable for dirt biking that main battle tanks. (Actually, there appear to be several weird little dyke-top roads that separate different segments of the Syvash Lake, though none really look up to military duty.)
“Because the Kerch rail bridge is out, Russia cannot only not bring in ammo and troops and fuel, it can’t bring in food. Their only other option are some very light rail and road connections across that isthmus, coming from the rest of occupied Ukraine, all of which Ukraine will still be able to strike.”
“In capturing Kherson, the Ukrainians are going to be able to cut the water flows to the Crimea canal, and water from that canal is solely responsible for three-quarters of the food grown in Crimea. So no imported food, little grown food. Russia is either going to have to evacuate the entire peninsula by car across the Kerch bridge’s remaining road span, or suffer a 1980s Ethiopia style famine.” Here again I think Zeihan exaggerates, as Russia will still be able to bring in food via ship across the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov. Crimeans could well be looking at a very lean year, maybe even Siege of Saint Petersburg lean, but that’s not “Ethiopians dropping dead of famine” lean.
Next up: Suchomimus offers a detailed map update. Zeihan is a geopolitical generalist jack of all trades, but detailed video and geolocation analysis is all Suchomimus does.
Takeaways:
Russia has blown up most (probably all) of the bridges over the Inhulets River.
Russia has several ferries to run troops and equipment over the Dnipro, along with rallying point to stage units for withdrawal. Some of the staging areas have been hit by Ukrainian artillery, but satellite photos show Russian forces spread out in those areas to minimize damage.
No evidence of heavy vehicles using those ferries yet. “It’s unknown if these ferries and barges can actually support anything heavier or not, and if they can, it’s likely they can only carry one at a time.”
There are two ferry loading points in Kherson city itself.
The southern bank shows several unloading spots. “This shows the ferry unloading spots, as well as a number of defensive positions trenches and earth walls which have been constructed. This point is reported to be less used than it was because of numerous calls from Mr. HIMARS. But it’s still heavily defended with trenches.”
As mentioned above, Russia has repaired the Nova Kakhkovka bridge over the Dnipro River using fill materials. “The main bridge is fully repaired, and there are three smaller and lighter bridges, so this is the only real crossing point…there’s no way to move heavy vehicles other than the ferries, and we’ve only seen light trucks on those so far on the Eastern side. Nova Kakhkovka is the only real option, so they are in a bit of a pickle, at least when it comes to getting heavy vehicles back across.”
“I expect the priority will be holding Nova Kakhkovka for as long as possible.”
Russia has constructed no less than three successive prepared defensive lines on the south/east side of the Dnipro.
Finally, after a month of almost no significant Kherson updates, are we seeing frontline movement indicating a Russian withdrawal? Oh yeah. Here’s Kherson at 4:04 AM Ukrainian time today:
The rail bridge has two tracks going each way, and they ran a test 15-car train on the other span. I have a civil engineer/bridge inspector friend who thinks it’s probably unwise to use the rail bridge at all, as the fire has almost certainly weakened the structure through spalling. But Russia doesn’t have a lot of options.
The destroyed train hasn’t been cleared yet.
They’ve opened up the surviving lane for traffic. “It’s been said that the road span can handle 20 cars an hour and has a weight capacity of 3.5 tons.” That’s rural mail route capacity, not “support a major front in a war” capacity.
Russia is trying to repair the bridge.
They’re using passenger-only ferries to cross, but the run rate is so low they may only have one ferry in service.
Peter Zeihan says it’s potentially a turning point in the war:
“By far the most significant development of the war to date.” I would say that the failure to take Hostomel Airport in the opening phases of the war was bigger, as that meant Russia’s high risk/high reward decapitation strike had failed.
“The Kerch bridge is the only large-scale rail connection between mainland Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which is home to about two and a half million people.”
All other rail lines are under threat of Ukrainian artillery.
He reiterates that everything in Russia runs on rail, as they never built a modern road network in most of the country.
“With Kerch being the only real connection, it is the primary primary way that the Russians Supply Crimea in the southwestern front with not just troops and equipment, but with food and fuel.”
He estimates the bridge spans couldn’t be repaired without several months of work.
“Now that the Ukrainians know it can be done, you can bet they’re going to try to hit other parts of it to make sure the thing stays offline.”
“For the first time we have a path forward for the Ukrainians here to win that is not long and windy.”
Russia finally has a problem it can’t just shove bodies at. “You don’t throw a half a million people at logistics. This is something where either you have the connections or you don’t.”
Russian troops in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea are “suddenly on their own.”
They can now only supply those regions in two ways. “One is by truck, and we know that because of all the Javelins that have been put into Ukraine, and all the RPGs, that the Russians are almost out of their entire military tactical truck fleet, and they’ve started using city buses and Scooby-Doo vans, and those just can’t take the volume of stuff that an active frontline needs.”
The second way is by ship, and if they can’t supply anti-ship missiles, then Ukrainians can Muscova “every single cargo ship that the Russians try to bring in.”
“Losing cargo ships in that volume, losing trucks and buses in that volume, is hollowing out the entirety of the Russian internal transport system. This is the sort of thing that if you bleed this fast, it takes a decade to recover from, and in a war zone that is not going to happen.”
And sanctions make everything harder.
There still seems to be some confusion over just what blew up the bridge. While truck bomb is still the most widely accepted theory, supposedly Russia scans all trucks before the enter the bridge. And Suchomimus has a video up showing something in the water just before the blast (what isn’t clear).
Finally, there are persistent reports of arrests of military personnel in Moscow. But the primary source for these reports seems to be Ukrainian, so several grains of salt are probably in order.
A massive fire is burning on the Kirch Strait Bridge that connects Russia to Crimea Saturday morning, with images showing multiple train cars fully engulfed and two spans of the road bridge in the water.
Traffic on the bridge, a critical strategic artery for Russian forces in Crimea amid its war in Ukraine, has reportedly been halted as heavy flames and black smoke spew from a train carrying unknown cargo. Photos also show spans of both east and westbound lanes have collapsed into the water near the burning train.
Those collapsed spans are potentially a huge blow to Russia’s entire war effort, as they were already having difficulties keeping all of their field units adequately supplied. With the Kerch Strait Bridge out of commission, the job of resupplying the southern front goes from being difficult to being an absolute nightmare, and makes Melitopol even more vital to keeping troops on the southern flank supplied.
The bridge cost billions to build after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and has been one of Ukraine’s top targets, although it lacked traditional weaponry capable of striking it from far away. Even the Pentagon has openly stated that it sees the bridge as a viable target for Ukrainian forces. Russia has deployed air defenses and decoy barges in an attempt to protect it from some kind of attack in recent months.
It’s hard for even a competent military to have effective air defense all along possible logistics routes, and Russia has been far from a competent military in this war.
Suchomimus is on it:
He maps it as too far for HIMARS, and thinks it was likely a drone attack.
Russia has a 30,000 man strong rail organization. If it hasn’t suffered the same rot as the rest of the Russian armed forces (a big if), and if they can scrounge up the proper equipment (such as a crane barge; another big if), it could conceivably have the bridge repaired and usable again, possibly in as little as two to four weeks. It’s not easy, but it’s doable, and I imagine this is going to automatically jump to the top priority on the Russian logistics list. And, unlike the Antonovsky Bridge, it’s not currently in HIMARS range.
But given the gross incompetence Russia’s military has shown in so many areas, it’s no sure bet that it can be repaired that quickly (or even at all) with assets in or near the theater.
The clock is ticking…
Update: Now reading that it was a truck bomb that took it out, timed to hit a passing fuel train, and that certainly seems plausible from fiercely the train was burning.
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?
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:
Reiterates why everything in the Russia army travels by rail. “The Ukrainians were able to take a couple of re-up depots in eastern Ukraine and Kharkiv a couple weeks ago and the front just collapsed.”
“We might be seeing a repeat of that in the Donbas.”
“The Russians are now discovering that they’re actually outnumbered locally, and that with all the captured equipment, the Ukrainians actually now have more artillery and more ammo.”
“This is the sort of war the the Russians know how to fight: Just throw bodies after it.”
The influx of new troops “doesn’t mean that the nature of the war is
fundamentally changed,” but now they’ll be able to rotate fresher troops in, “and continue fighting the war more or less the way that they have been now, which is to say poorly.”
Russia is already crashing demographically, and the main cohort of this war is coming from the men who should be fathering children. “This is a potentially a country killer. Before I thought that this was Russia’s last war. Now I’m certain of it.”
Says Ukraine can still win, but they need to do the Kharkiv counteroffensive twenty times over.
Says they need to continue hitting Russian logistics nodes. “The one I am most interested in, of course, is Miriapol. Because if the Ukrainians can reach Mariupol, they basically isolate Russian forces throughout southern Ukraine, and then you’re talking about a hundred thousand Russian troops that are just stranded with no hope of resupply at all.” (Assuming his later mention of taking out the Kerch Strait Bridge.)
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.
That decree is every bit as popular as you would expect.
Takeaways:
“Today, people went to the streets from Moscow to the Far East to protest. Even though it only concerned those in reserve, everyone sees where this is going.”
“Former Security Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic called on Russia’s military command to better supply existing units on the ground. He also added that lack of equipment is the main reason why the Ukrainians keep advancing in Kherson.”
He thinks the conscripts will work logistics jobs, free up contractors to do the fighting. I remain doubtful that the effective military contractor pool for this war is terribly deep.
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…
For those who think I rely too much on Ukraine updates and Peter Zeihan videos, enjoy this Peter Zeihan video update on Ukraine!
Takeaways:
“Everything that the Russians were bad at before (propaganda, logistics, precision, training, maintenance, equipment), everything they were bad at before, they’re worse at now.”
Ukraine has moved from trying to stop the Russian advance with shoulder-mounted weaponry to longer-range heavy artillery, allowing them to hit ammo dumps, logistical hubs and high-value officers.
“The degree to which the Ukrainians are able to put targeting information, either from their own human network or signal intelligence that is provided by the Americans, and put it to use has been very impressive, and it has snarled the entirety of the Russian advance in both the east and the south.”
“Russia may be running out of ammunition.”
Russian doctrine calls for slow advances prepared by massive artillery barrages.
“They faced a massive industrial collapse in the 1990s that they never really covered recovered from.”
They have fought three artillery intensive wars since the Soviet collapse: two in Chechnya and then one in Syria. So now the Russians are attempting to advance over a front that’s a thousand miles long with a burn rate for their artillery in excess of 40,000 shells a day. Going through a relatively small by Soviet standards arsenal that has been acquired since the Soviet collapse, when the industrial system collapses. Well, any equipment any shells that they’re going to use that are not from that stack are things that were built before 1989, meaning that they’re in excess of 30 years old. We’ve seen reports several a year in Russia going back 30 years that, every once in a while, one of these shells [just] cooks off and the entire ammo dump goes up. It’s entirely possible that some of the explosions were seeing in places like Belograd or Western Russia are not actually being caused by the Ukrainians, but by the Russians manhandling of their own equipment. But regardless, that burn rate 40,000 a day is not something that anyone could maintain at length.
Thus Russia has been shooting at big static targets like train stations and malls. “They have the feel of being a little bit more than the Russians shooting at things to demonstrate to the world that the Russians can still shoot at things. Tanks and infantry are not following up on any of these attacks.”
“Kherson was the only major city that Ukrainians ever lost to the Russians, the only regional capital.”
“All the normal things that plague offensives are appropriate to think about here. They trigger higher casualties among the attackers than the defenders. They require more troops, They require better logistics. They’re more vulnerable to disruption. All of that stands. Also, you have to consider that this isn’t simply Ukraine’s first significant offensive in the war, but this is Ukraine’s first significant offensive ever.”
“The Ukrainians have continually surprised to the upside, and the Russians have continually surprised at the downside. So what should have been a wildly unbalanced war that should have been over four months ago all of a sudden, if not a conflict among equals, is suddenly looking like a little bit more of a fair-ish fight.”
Summary of the Kherson situation so far, including damage to the bridges, covered here and here.
No guarantee that the Ukrainians will win in Kherson, but it obviously offers them the best chance.
“If it proves that the Ukrainians are successful [Russian] forces are going to have to evacuate on foot, they are going to have to leave all of their gear behind…this would be the single biggest military transfer to Ukraine of the post-war environment, and certainly of this war…all of a sudden, the Ukrainians might actually have what they need.” Sometimes Zeihan has a tendency to overstate things, and I think he does that here. Yes, they’ll probably capture some usable heavy equipment, but the estimates I hear are some 20,000 Russian troops in Kherson, and I’m not sure how many functional military vehicles will be left in usable condition after such heavy fighting. They might well pick up significant quantities of towed artillery.
He talks about the importance of taking Nova Kakhkovka, and controlling the irrigation gates for the canals that feed occupied Crimea.
If Ukraine retakes Kherson, they might theoretically be able to take out the Kerch Strait Bridge. (Note that this is only true if they actually have the ATACMS missiles for their HIMARS that the Biden Administration says we haven’t given them yet, as I calculate a distance of roughly 179 miles from Nova Kakhkovka to the bridge.) “Crimea goes from being an incredibly strategically valuable platform that the Russians can use to launch into Ukraine proper, into the most significant military vulnerability that post-war Russia has ever had.” Eh, I think I have to go with the Atomic Bomb between 1945 and August of 1949.
“If Ukraine is going to win this war, this is how it’s going to start.”
