Ukraine Notes
Apr. 29th, 2022 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneIt hasn't been a slow news week, more like a week slow in the news that I wanted to write about. Just not enough for two postings, plus I needed to expand on some of the items.
More on the Moskva, more anti-air missile tanks, balloons, sheer stupidity, and other stuff
More Moskva news. The Russian Defense Ministry has finally admitted casualties, but not that Ukraine sank the ship. The RIA press agency quoted the Ministry’s press release: “During the struggle to stabilize the ship, one serviceman died and another 27 crew members went missing. The remaining 396 members of the crew were evacuated.” When a warship is on fire, especially an ammo magazine fire, it is crazy dangerous. And after being hit by two anti-ship missiles, ratchet that up a few notches. One dead? Color me dubious.
Germany is supplying about 50 anti-missile tanks to Ukraine. I imagine these are similar to the British units.
Interesting article from Forbes to bring back an extremely dumb weapon from a century ago: the barrage balloon. These balloons force attacking aircraft to fly above the balloons, making their attack runs much less accurate, thus less damaging, and easier to shoot at with anti-air missiles! Based on interviews with German pilots who attacked London when barrage balloons were used, they are a very unnerving defense and quite effective. They're inexpensive and easy to deploy, even though they are a static defense for a city or whatever it is you're setting up to defend. It could also be useful to set up as a decoy: pick a formerly useful site that had been bombed to the point that it no longer has value to you, set up a good density of barrage balloons around it, and let the orcs have fun with it thinking that you've reactivated a valuable facility there!
This, I think, is possibly the best news of the week. Putin announced “the foiling of a CIA and Ukrainian intelligence plot” to murder a Moscow journalist who is a friend of and shill for Putin. In the initial video of the apartment that was raided was a neo-nazi book that was inscribed to the would-be assassins by the author, Signature Unclear. The video has since been blurred out but not before unaltered copies were downloaded. Seems that someone over at the FSB took their instructions on how to manufacture evidence a little too literally.
I had not heard about this until this previous weekend, but several oligarchs have been brutally murdered. I'm sorry, that's not accurate. Several oligarchs have brutally murdered their families then committed suicide in curious ways, according to the investigating police departments. Most recently there have been two oligarchs and their families killed, bringing the totals to four or ten, I am not sure which is the more accurate number. It is clearly an FSB hit ordered by Putin, the question is the motives. In some cases there have been surviving members who have been away and out of the country when the assassination took place. Most recently two murders happened within 24 hours of each other. This Newsweek article lists all oligarchs who have died since the invasion of Ukraine. You will note the common theme of them being involved in oil or banking. My question is whether Putin is able to seize their assets after their death to control them or take them for himself.
https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died-since-putin-invaded-ukraine-full-list-1700022
Donetsk is one of the "separatist" regions that was recognized by Putin as an independent republic before the invasion as a pretense for said invasion. After the troops rolled in and the area taken over, they instituted a draft and started snatching men off the street. The only ones exempted were certain government employees, an anesthesiologist, and a farmer or two. All other men up to age 55 were potentially draftable unless you had a very solid medical exemption. They've now upped the age to 65. Older men are now not just hiding, but hiding in houses where there were no men on the census, never going out except well after dark. Looks like Putin is definitely having manpower problems for his army.
More on the Moskva, more anti-air missile tanks, balloons, sheer stupidity, and other stuff
More Moskva news. The Russian Defense Ministry has finally admitted casualties, but not that Ukraine sank the ship. The RIA press agency quoted the Ministry’s press release: “During the struggle to stabilize the ship, one serviceman died and another 27 crew members went missing. The remaining 396 members of the crew were evacuated.” When a warship is on fire, especially an ammo magazine fire, it is crazy dangerous. And after being hit by two anti-ship missiles, ratchet that up a few notches. One dead? Color me dubious.
Germany is supplying about 50 anti-missile tanks to Ukraine. I imagine these are similar to the British units.
Interesting article from Forbes to bring back an extremely dumb weapon from a century ago: the barrage balloon. These balloons force attacking aircraft to fly above the balloons, making their attack runs much less accurate, thus less damaging, and easier to shoot at with anti-air missiles! Based on interviews with German pilots who attacked London when barrage balloons were used, they are a very unnerving defense and quite effective. They're inexpensive and easy to deploy, even though they are a static defense for a city or whatever it is you're setting up to defend. It could also be useful to set up as a decoy: pick a formerly useful site that had been bombed to the point that it no longer has value to you, set up a good density of barrage balloons around it, and let the orcs have fun with it thinking that you've reactivated a valuable facility there!
This, I think, is possibly the best news of the week. Putin announced “the foiling of a CIA and Ukrainian intelligence plot” to murder a Moscow journalist who is a friend of and shill for Putin. In the initial video of the apartment that was raided was a neo-nazi book that was inscribed to the would-be assassins by the author, Signature Unclear. The video has since been blurred out but not before unaltered copies were downloaded. Seems that someone over at the FSB took their instructions on how to manufacture evidence a little too literally.
I had not heard about this until this previous weekend, but several oligarchs have been brutally murdered. I'm sorry, that's not accurate. Several oligarchs have brutally murdered their families then committed suicide in curious ways, according to the investigating police departments. Most recently there have been two oligarchs and their families killed, bringing the totals to four or ten, I am not sure which is the more accurate number. It is clearly an FSB hit ordered by Putin, the question is the motives. In some cases there have been surviving members who have been away and out of the country when the assassination took place. Most recently two murders happened within 24 hours of each other. This Newsweek article lists all oligarchs who have died since the invasion of Ukraine. You will note the common theme of them being involved in oil or banking. My question is whether Putin is able to seize their assets after their death to control them or take them for himself.
https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died-since-putin-invaded-ukraine-full-list-1700022
Donetsk is one of the "separatist" regions that was recognized by Putin as an independent republic before the invasion as a pretense for said invasion. After the troops rolled in and the area taken over, they instituted a draft and started snatching men off the street. The only ones exempted were certain government employees, an anesthesiologist, and a farmer or two. All other men up to age 55 were potentially draftable unless you had a very solid medical exemption. They've now upped the age to 65. Older men are now not just hiding, but hiding in houses where there were no men on the census, never going out except well after dark. Looks like Putin is definitely having manpower problems for his army.
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Date: 2022-04-29 11:17 pm (UTC)I wonder if you could equip barrage balloons with IR strobes. They'd have to be hanging underneath, of course.
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Date: 2022-04-29 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-29 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-29 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-30 12:17 am (UTC)No reason at all that you couldn't put IR strobes on 'em. You'd probably want them on the outer perimeter. I like the idea of the retroreflectors, put those deep inside the mass of balloons, though.... ;-)
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:19 am (UTC)The news from Ukraine is that the new Donbas front has had heavy casualties for Ukraine, but massive, massive casualties for Russia. Ukraine cannot sustain heavy casualties, and Putin doesn't want to send actual Russians into Ukraine to die because of the backlash at home, so it's an interesting dance going on.
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:20 am (UTC)Ah, interesting! That an FSB operative would do such is quite telling. I always thought the FSB was more or less lockstep behind Putin, knowing that there may be factions within it really complicates the political picture, and not in a good way for him.
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:23 am (UTC)I did not either! I heard the news report about the two within 24 hours, and my wife said that actually there had been TEN! In another comment, DEW posted that the 'unrecognizable signature' was actually FSB 'malicious compliance' rather than incompetence, which could represent a fracture of the FSB and a very serious danger to Putin!
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:33 am (UTC)The point to barrage balloons is to have a lot of them, quickly.
Anything that slows you down is not good; the Mark IV can have strobes. The Mark I is late.
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:36 am (UTC)If you know Putin's health problems are terminal (or believe you do), your calculus of behaviour changes.
Putin's core goal is the same as that of any autocrat; not being murdered artistically. That requires control, and demonstrating that he has control by murdering oligarchs keeps the oligarchs from deciding it's time to murder him.
The FSB internal rumour mill may consider the point moot, though; they'll have reached a consensus on Putin's health problems. If they think those are terminal, they want the process over with soonest because the more change, the lower their resulting social position.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-30 12:38 am (UTC)That's an interesting thought, and it wouldn't surprise me. :o
Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2022-04-30 10:50 am (UTC)Thanks for posting. I hadn't realized barrage balloons were that effective, but if surviving pilots say they were, will take their words for it.
Also didn't know about the oligarchs. Clearly there are factions; as always, what is a monolith from the outside is no such thing from the inside.
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:57 am (UTC)Excellent point. Any barrage balloon now is better than a more sophisticated one three months down the line.
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:58 am (UTC)Makes me wonder if they're waiting for him to give the order to launch nukes. "We had to shoot him because he was a madman! We were saving the world!"
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:59 am (UTC)He is in all but title a dictator.
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Date: 2022-05-01 08:03 am (UTC)I meant to include some more info on the barrage balloons. There's something very specific that makes them effective right now: the Russians are out of precision munitions! They're back to dropping dumb iron gravity bombs, and to get good precision out of those, you have to go in low. So barrage balloons are ideal for confounding such attacks, which forces the aircraft back to high altitude, which kills their precision. Great defense for the current situation! Yeah, the oligarch thing is quite something. Another comment postulates that it's Putin sending out a warning proving that he's still Alpha Dog to dissuade the other oligarchs from trying to cap him.
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Date: 2022-05-01 09:47 am (UTC)I think the phrase is capo di tutti capi.
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Date: 2022-05-01 11:38 am (UTC)I think they're looking for a survivable course of action and don't have one. There's no obvious alternative source of power so no obvious successor. Certainly no successor in the party system.
(The point to a kleptocracy is to not have functioning institutions; if there were functioning institutions it can't be a kleptocracy. It also means that in times of crisis you get an interlocking series of surprises.)
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Date: 2022-05-01 05:28 pm (UTC)Very good take. Can't say that I had thought about it that way.
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Date: 2022-05-01 05:43 pm (UTC)Thank you!
If you want people to do what is right, you have to make it possible.
What's possible tells you what the society as a system thinks you should do is another way to put it. And by all reports, the only possible things in Russia are contributing a large fraction of your working lifespan to kleptocrats.
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Date: 2022-05-01 06:39 pm (UTC)And that's been the problem with Russia for a century. They had the labels of socialism and communism for 70-80 years when it fell apart, flirted with capitalism for a while, then Putin came in and his kleptocratic dictatorship started up. And when they were a socialist/communist state, those were just labels for those at the top skimming off the top. Everyone knew it and just got along the best they could.
Their country is so massively screwed, I don't know what can be done for them.
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:07 pm (UTC)Same basic problem as here.
Here retains the illusion of laws, but it's mostly repressive to prevent any political change away from a system where you extract money by controlling a necessity of life. (Housing, food, etc.) (Tangled up by religious ethnic superiority movements and the fossil carbon foundations of military power.)
The fixes are the same; income and asset caps ("no opulence", the Runyon Rule ("nothing between humans is ever more than 3 to 1") as applied to economic outcomes), widespread public education, and anything (roads, internet, water, housing, etc.) that is a necessity of life gets provided publicly/collectively with guarantees and no escape clauses. (Just because you are a Hohenzollern does not mean you get to live in a castle.) In short, insecurity management through a collective decision to take care of everybody. (Which means winning the fight with supremacists, as well as not allowing great wealth, since both great wealth and supremacists want to forbid general security; it makes being wealthy or the right hereditary category much less useful, if not outright forbidden. Mammonism delenda est.)
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:29 pm (UTC)Quite true. I love the Mammonism delenda est! One thing that I believe has really held back the USA for the last century has been the two-party system. While America's founding and constitution define Congress and the House and Senate, they do not define how many political parties we have. Our structure has pluses and minuses, just like Parliamentary systems do. But at least Parliamentary systems have more political parties representing more viewpoints, and on occasion they force coalition governments to work together. Neither party really represents me. And now we have one party that tries to function as a party and a party that doesn't know what it's doing.
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Date: 2022-05-01 07:33 pm (UTC)It knows exactly what it is doing!
It wants a white supremacist theocracy and to repeal every constitutional amendment except the second.
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Date: 2022-05-01 08:57 pm (UTC)