That’s the assertion of Reporting from Ukraine, who says that the counterattack is happening in Zaporizhzhia:
Reporting from Ukraine is pretty rah-rah for Ukraine, always putting a positive spin on things (“Ukrainian troops successfully withdrew from northern Bakhmut”), but he’s good on reporting the nitty gritty details of tactical movement and seems to have direct sources in the Ukrainian military.
Takeaways:
He’s seeing Ukrainian forces advance all across the Zaporizhzhia front.
“The freshest reports suggest that Ukrainians breached the Russian defense in the trenches in front of Novodanylivka and got closer to Nesterianka and Kopani from the east.”
“Ukrainian presence was also noted in the southern part of Kamianske, which means that Russians highly likely abandoned Piatykhatky as well.”
“Ukrainian Head of Melitopol reported that Russians announced an urgent evacuation from all settlements between Vasylivka and Tokmak, in fear that this may very soon become the most active battleground.”
“In order to prevent the accumulation of a critical amount of heavy equipment in the region, Russian forces started to actively use guided air bombs. These bombs weigh from 500 to 1500 kilograms and have a range of up to 40 kilometers, which poses a significant threat to Ukrainian plans. The craters from the explosions are enormous and can reach up to 50 meters in diameter.” I’m guessing these might be KAB-1500Ls.
“Ukrainians are trying to reciprocate the damage and are also identifying and destroying Russian warehouses with ammunition and equipment.”
“It looks like the same action is going to take place very soon in the Orikhiv direction because Russian reconnaissance recently reported that Ukrainians are actively demining significant clusters of land. Another indicator of the imminent Ukrainian offensive actions here is the fact that certain elements of the 71st Jager Brigade and 46th Assault Brigade recently arrived at Orikhiv, according Russian sources.”
“[The] Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade conducted a series of assaults in the vicinity of Vuhledar.”
“The intensification of fighting along the whole southern line has been noted by many analysts, but today, the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense finally confirmed that the counteroffensive operation has started.”
Well, sort of: “She stated that it is incorrect to wait for a specific date because counteroffensive is a long process and it is only the culmination that happens quickly, but no one can predict when the culmination will happen, as it depends on the conditions on the ground.”
“Right now, Ukrainians are testing Russian defenses, letting the newly formed assault units gain combat experience and, for the most part, follow the path of lowest resistance – meaning they push where they can, leaving the strongest positions for later. Russian analysts are predicting that Ukrainians will make at least two huge attacks during the last week of April to test new tactics and then launch a full-scale counteroffensive during the first half of May.” Sounds like probing attacks for now, but I can see Ukraine moving quickly to exploit any gaps or pushing hard if there’s a sudden Russian line collapse.
Institute for the Study of War also has a similar confirmation-that’s-not-quite-a-confirmation: “Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported on April 19 that Ukrainian forces are already conducting some counteroffensive actions. Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces will never preemptively announce when the counteroffensive starts and reiterated that Ukrainian forces aim to liberate all Ukrainian territory.”
Deep State shows some small recent-ish Ukrainian gains there:
— Geoff' The Frenchy Fella – War News 🇺🇦 (@Geoff_WarNews) April 20, 2023
So it’s hard to say for sure that this push is the much-anticipated Big Spring Counteroffensive. It could be a probing raid, or it could be a faint, with the main blow scheduled to fall elsewhere. Certainly Zaporizhzhia is the front section that has the most promise to split Russian forces in half and cut Russian forces in Kherson and Crimea off from resupply. Russia has to know this, and has been extending defense trenches throughout the area, but continues to throw troops into the Bakhmut meat-grinder rather than (as far as observers can tell) seriously reinforcing the area. Maybe Russia has reinforced it more than we know, but maybe not. It would be very far from the first time Russia made a stupid, obvious mistake in this war.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say that a counteroffensive is underway.
Mutiny! Bank runs! Twitter files! It’s a ginormous LinkSwarm full of interesting (and alarming) links!
And I finally get a chance to talk more about the FTX scandal.
The Twitter files revelations continue to roll out. And Democrats aren’t happy that the workings of their thought police apparatus are being unmasked.
As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the “weaponization” of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.
Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two “so-called journalists” as dangerous and a “threat” to former Twitter employees.
She claimed that Republicans brought “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes'” in “to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative – Elon Musk’s chosen narrative – that is now being parroted by the Republicans” for political gain.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had a simple response to her accusations:
“It’s crazy what you were just saying.”
“You don’t want people to see what happened,” Jordan continued.
“The full video, transparency. You don’t want that, and you don’t want two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration, the FTC in a letter. They say they’re here to help and tell their story, and frankly, I think they’re brave individuals for being willing to come after being named in a letter from the Biden FTC.”
Taibbi was having none of it.
Matt Taibbi epic comeback:
"Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a 'so-called journalist'. I've won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books including 4 NYT Best Sellers." pic.twitter.com/crXlWjScEr
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 9, 2023
As Glenn Greenwald chimed in from Twitter: “To Democrats, “journalist” means: one who mindlessly and loyally endorses DNC talking points. ”
Unshaken, Matt Taibbi continued, when he was allowed to respond, laid out what he and Shellenberger had found in their research of The Twitter Files:
“The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere,” Taibbi said.
“What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.”
Taibbi pointedly added that “effectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-policing system.”
“It’s not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is however becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we’re looking at.”
Democrats only response to Taibbi and Shellenberger’s facts was to get personal…
Snip.
As we detailed earlier, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger are testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today. Both journalists were involved in the ‘Twitter Files’ disclosures, in which we learned that the government was directly involved in censoring disfavorable speech.
“Our findings are shocking,” writes Shellenberger at his blog. “A highly-organized network of U.S. government agencies and government contractors has been creating blacklists and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, often without them knowing it.”
Ahead of the appearance, Taibbi released his prepared remarks. He also dropped a new and related Twitter Files mega-thread on ‘THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX’ which will be submitted to the Congressional record which, according to Taibbi, ‘contains some surprises.’
But Twitter was more like a partner to government. With other tech firms it held a regular “industry meeting” with FBI and DHS, and developed a formal system for receiving thousands of content reports from every corner of government: HHS, Treasury, NSA, even local police…
But equally concerning was how those driving The Narrative used NGOs that agreed with them as Arbiters of Truth.
We came to think of this grouping – state agencies like DHS, FBI, or the Global Engagement Center (GEC), along with “NGOs that aren’t academic” and an unexpectedly aggressive partner, commercial news media – as the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Who’s in the Censorship-Industrial Complex? Twitter in 2020 helpfully compiled a list for a working group set up in 2020. The National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, and Hamilton 68’s creator, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, are key…
Twitter execs weren’t sure about Clemson’s Media Forensics Lab (“too chummy with HPSCI”), and weren’t keen on the Rand Corporation (“too close to USDOD”), but others were deemed just right.
NGOs ideally serve as a check on corporations and the government. Not long ago, most of these institutions viewed themselves that way. Now, intel officials, “researchers,” and executives at firms like Twitter are effectively one team – or Signal group, as it were:
The Woodstock of the Censorship-Industrial Complex came when the Aspen Institute – which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID – held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on “Information Disorder.”
The report was co-authored by Katie Couric and Chris Krebs, the founder of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Yoel Roth of Twitter and Nathaniel Gleicher of Facebook were technical advisors. Prince Harry joined Couric as a Commissioner.
Why the fuck is Prince Harry on a committee deciding how free American citizens should be censored?
Their taxpayer-backed conclusions: the state should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, speech offenders should be put in a “holding area,” and government should probably restrict disinformation, “even if it means losing some freedom.”
Snip.
The same agencies (FBI, DHS/CISA, GEC) invite the same “experts” (Thomas Rid, Alex Stamos), funded by the same foundations (Newmark, Omidyar, Knight) trailed by the same reporters (Margaret Sullivan, Molly McKew, Brandy Zadrozny) seemingly to every conference, every panel.
The #TwitterFiles show the principals of this incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back, claiming a special right to do what they say is bad practice for everyone else: be fact-checked only by themselves. While Twitter sometimes pushed back on technical analyses from NGOs about who is and isn’t a “bot,” on subject matter questions like vaccines or elections they instantly defer to sites like Politifact, funded by the same names that fund the NGOs: Koch, Newmark, Knight.
#TwitterFiles repeatedly show media acting as proxy for NGOs, with Twitter bracing for bad headlines if they don’t nix accounts. Here, the Financial Times gives Twitter until end of day to provide a “steer” on whether RFK, Jr. and other vax offenders will be zapped.
Well, you say, so what? Why shouldn’t civil society organizations and reporters work together to boycott “misinformation”? Isn’t that not just an exercise of free speech, but a particularly enlightened form of it?
The difference is, these campaigns are taxpayer-funded. Though the state is supposed to stay out domestic propaganda, the Aspen Institute, Graphika, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, New America, and other “anti-disinformation” labs are receiving huge public awards.
Meant to cover this back in February, but FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, in additional to all those federal fraud charges, was charged with “12 new counts, including illegally making over 300 political contributions to the tune of tens of millions of dollars through straw donors and using corporate funds.” The overwhelming majority went to Democrats and left-leaning causes. “Bankman-Fried was the second largest individual donor during the 2022 US midterm elections, contributing $39 million to various Democrat causes.” Also: “FTX’s former CEO wanted to give at least $1 million to a pro-LGBTQ political action group, but couldn’t find anyone bisexual or gay at the company whom he trusted, the document said.”
Speaking of Bankman-Fried: “The previously sealed names of two people who co-signed Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail package have been publicly released. The guarantors were identified in the unredacted bonds as Andreas Paepcke, a Stanford research scientist, and Larry Kramer, former dean of Stanford law school…How the fuck did these Stanford faculty members get so rich as to guarantee that size of a bail?”
Speaking of crypto, Silvergate, a California bank that was a heavy player in the crypto space, is shutting down and liquidating after huge bank runs in the crypto-winter. Want to guess who was a big booster of Silvergate? Would you believe Sam Bankman-Fried?
When China began to require Western corporations to establish Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cells, businesses brushed off the move as benign. For example, when HSBC HBA 0.0% became the first international financial institution at which workers established a Chinese Communist Party cell in its investment banking venture in China in July, the bank stated that the CCP committee does not influence the direction of the firm and has no formal role in its day-to-day activities. But the CCP may have begun to flex its muscle in other ways. This week, the CCP cell inside the Beijing office of Big Four accounting firm EY demanded that party members wear CCP badges at work in the run-up to China’s annual parliamentary meetings.
Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect insured depositors, the FDIC created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB). At the time of closing, the FDIC as receiver immediately transferred to the DINB all insured deposits of Silicon Valley Bank.
All insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning, March 13, 2023. The FDIC will pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend within the next week. Uninsured depositors will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds. As the FDIC sells the assets of Silicon Valley Bank, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors.
Silicon Valley Bank had 17 branches in California and Massachusetts. The main office and all branches of Silicon Valley Bank will reopen on Monday, March 13, 2023. The DINB will maintain Silicon Valley Bank’s normal business hours. Banking activities will resume no later than Monday, March 13, including on-line banking and other services. Silicon Valley Bank’s official checks will continue to clear. Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the FDIC may create a DINB to ensure that customers have continued access to their insured funds.
As of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits. At the time of closing, the amount of deposits in excess of the insurance limits was undetermined. The amount of uninsured deposits will be determined once the FDIC obtains additional information from the bank and customers.
SVB was a bank that primarily counted venture capital firms and technology startups as clients. It achieved financial stardom during the COVID-19 pandemic because major cash deposits from the booming firms increased its deposits from $60 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to over $200 billion in December 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported. Its securities portfolio rose from roughly $27 billion in 2020’s first quarter to approximately $127 billion at the end of 2021.
The fact that most of SVB’s assets were seemingly secure — they were mainly longer-term government bonds — led many investors to feel the bank was secure. Those feelings would be dashed in just two days. The bank suddenly announced Wednesday that it needed to raise over $2.2 billion, sending its stock plunging by more than 60% in a matter of days.
The government securities bought by SVB pay a fixed rate, so when market interest rates were raised, a gap began to grow between how much the securities were worth on the open market and what they were valued on the bank’s books. The unrealized losses in SVB’s securities portfolio in December had grown to more than $17 billion, a number expected to grow, as the securities could only be sold at a loss.
Crack the whip: unacceptable because of origins in slavery
Waiter or waitress: server should be used instead
Biological gender, biological sex, biological woman, biological female, biological man, or biological male
Illegal immigrant or illegal alien
Cake walk: “originated during slavery” and thus perpetuates “racist motifs”
In reference to illegal migration: onslaught, tidal wave, flood, inundation, surge, invasion, army, march, sneak and stealth
Anchor baby
Chain migration: this is a term used by “immigration hard-liners”
Peanut gallery: “the cheapest seats often occupied by Black people and people with low incomes”
Third-world countries: too “derogatory”
Oh, it does not end there. Politico reporters are also not allowed to say that a transgender person “identifies as” a certain gender, or describe the current situation at the border as a “crisis.” The guide also warned reporters to make sure not to portray migrants as a “negative, harmful influence.”
Want some more? “Pro-choice” is frowned upon in favor of “abortion rights supporter,” and (of course) “pro-life” is outlawed, with “anti-abortion” taking its place. “Late-term abortion” is also a no-no; reporters are told to use “abortion later in pregnancy.”
College student accused of stealing more than half a million dollars via credit card fraud working part-time at a mall jewelry store where most of the items are under $50. She marked up items, then returned them at the original price and somehow pocketed the difference. She made eight fake transactions totally more than $540,000. As though somehow the store wasn’t going to notice something funny going on.
I’m pro-life but this is stupid. “Texas Lawmaker Looks to Restrict Online Access to Materials Assisting or Facilitating Abortion.” You can’t ban access to information you don’t like, that’s prior restraint and illegal under the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking of violating rights, a judge was suspended for not allowing a defendant access to legal council. Again. The dumbass in question was Kenton County District Judge Ann Ruttle in Kentucky.
In addition to getting over a cold, I spent most of the non-work day trying to assemble a pressure washer so I could attach a water-jetting attachment so I can clean out a blocked exterior line so I can run my dishwasher without it overflowing my sink.
The result of all this labor is that I still need to call a plumber. So enjoy yet another abbreviated LinkSwarm.
Hmmmmmm! “Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators.”
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
“He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the outlet.
“His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested,” Comer continued. “I think that Schwerwin is going to be a very valuable witness for us in this investigation.”
Of note, Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, according to White House visitor log records reviewed by The Epoch Times and first reported by the New York Post.
Patrick L. Wojahn, the Democratic mayor of College Park, MD, resigns over child porn charges. Name that party: His political affiliation only shows up in the 19th paragraph of the piece. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Illnesses to Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman mean that Democrats have temporarily lost their senate majority. That will teach you to rely to Octagenerians and visibly impaired stroke victims to carry your water. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta submits $5.5 billion bid for NFL’s Commanders.” He should move them to Austin and change the name back to the Redskins, just to spite them.
Did MacKay get Tulipmania wrong? It turns out he was also an enthusiast for the far more destructive “Railway Bubbles” that struck England in the 19th century.
Here’s a video from Samir Puri and the Imperial War Museum that echoes something Nicholas Moran said ten months ago, namely that the tank is not obsolete on the modern battlefield, it’s just that the Russians are using them wrong.
Takeaways:
Russia, despite a century of data, isn’t using tanks properly in combined arms operations in concert with infantry, artillery and close air support.
Ukraine is, though much of their close air support has taken the form of drones. “These unmanned aerial vehicles have proved very effective especially against slow-moving Russian armored convoys.”
“We don’t really see this kind of tight combined arms operations being mounted by the Russians. They really struggled to do this. Instead, what we saw were quite disconnected Russian elements, and that meant that often the Russians were moving into positions it was still very well defended that hadn’t been softened. Which is why as the war has moved on sixth, seventh, eighth month [this video came out two months ago], the Russians have changed tack very much to I guess quite brutal indiscriminate bombardment of the cities they want to take.”
“There are no massed tank battles for which the Cold War T-72 was designed. In fact, engagements in Ukraine are on a much smaller scale with platoons and companies clashing together rather than divisions and corps.”
“There has also been an absence of close air support, a crucial tool for supporting tanks as part of combined arms operations. There was a lot of aerial activity, there was a lot of dog fighting as well, early on in the in the invasion. But the aerial defense systems that both sides have gotten and can deploy to cover their their more fixed positions are effective enough that the attrition rate amongst combat aircraft has risen. And the Russians interestingly appear to be husbanding the resources of their air force.”
“In the early months of the war, Russia had little infantry with which to protect its tanks, particularly in urban settings. That that allowed small groups of Ukrainians to mount what almost seemed like guerrilla operations. Getting in close to Russian armor and taking them out with anti-tank guided missiles before they knew what was happening.”
“Russia has now launched a much larger mobilization of manpower to try and fix this problem, but with many of its best troops and equipment already expended, there are questions about the quality, supply, and morale of these new soldiers.”
“The fact that the Ukrainians are actually able to capture intact or largely intact T-72s is a testament to the Russian logistics. Meaning that you find in captured Russian equipment low supplies, some Russian PWOs complaining of a lack of lack of proper support from their headquarters and have simply given up or run away.”
Drone warfare has also made it much harder for Russia to use tanks in a traditional defensive role in static positions on systems of defensive trenches.
Though Russia’s forces have shown some small signs of increasing technical competence in various areas, the fact that they lost so much armor attacking Vuhledar shows that they still have a long way to go when it comes to staging competent combined arms operations.
Feb 21 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was suspending participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, after accusing the West of being directly involved in attempts to strike its strategic air bases.
“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty,” he said.
New START is the successor to START I, signed by Bush41 and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, limiting strategic weapons to 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 ICBMs and nuclear bombers. New START, signed by Obama and Putin, lowered that to 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers (800 total for non-deployed). It placed no limits on tactical nuclear weapons.
Should we worry that Putin is about to launch a new nuclear arms race?
I wouldn’t.
One repeated lesson of the Russo-Ukrainian War is that Russian equipment is ill-kept and ill-maintained. If Russia can’t even properly maintain it’s current military infrastructure, how is it going to launch a new nuclear arms race?
The United States is going to spend some $634 billion this decade maintaining its nuclear deterrent. The U.S. spends more money maintaining nuclear weapons in a given year than Russia spends annually on its entire military. Thermonuclear weapons (not fission-only tactical nuclear weapons) require regular Tritium refresh. Fission weapons still require battery and explosive refresh. Where is Russia going to find money to expand it’s nuclear arsenal when it’s going into it’s second year fighting a full-fledged conventional war, for which it’s already expended most of it’s high precision munitions?
Could Russia build more nuclear weapons? Sure. They have a lot of the old Soviet infrastructure left over, known Uranium deposits, and probably some remaining personnel from the Soviet era with the know-how to do so. But what they don’t have is an overabundance of money, with the Russian economy contracting under sanctions, dwindling hard currency reserves and difficulty obtaining high tech components.
The real reason that Putin withdrew from START is that it allows America to carry out regular inspections of Russian infrastructure, and I’m sure they feared America relaying any actionable intelligence from such inspections to Ukraine.
Aside from that, it’s likely this is simple brinkmanship designed to make the world back down from supporting Ukraine, but if Russia does want to expand it’s nuclear arsenal, expect the process to be slow, difficult and underfunded.
