War in Ukraine: Updates, Open Thread
Graphic by Homoatrox, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Keeping up with the news, developments, and discussion around the war in Ukraine and the world’s response to Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression.
Sky News Live Feed, News and Updates to follow below:
From the BBC:
An update on what we know about battles across Ukraine now.
There have been more air attacks on Ukraine. Officials says Russian ballistic missiles have been launched from sites in neighbouring Belarus.
For the first time since Russia invaded, air raid warnings were heard in the eastern city of Dnipro.
Sirens have also been sounding in the capital, Kyiv.
And after four days of downplaying its losses, Russia has now admitted its soldiers have been killed in the fighting, but it refused to give any numbers.
An official would only say the figure was lower than that of – as he put it – exterminated nationalists.
From Washington Post:
British oil giant BP said it will “exit” its 20 percent stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, in one of the biggest signs yet of the Western business world cutting ties over the Kremlin’s actions.
BP’s two representatives on Rosneft’s board are also resigning, the company said.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an act of aggression which is having tragic consequences across the region. BP has operated in Russia for over 30 years, working with brilliant Russian colleagues. However, this military action represents a fundamental change. It has led the BP board to conclude, after a thorough process, that our involvement with Rosneft, a state-owned enterprise, simply cannot continue,” BP chairman Helge Lund said in a statement Sunday.
Shipments of stinger missiles have been approved by the US and Germany. If Russia never achieves air supremacy I don’t know how they come out of this with a conventional win.
My prediction is if the Ukranian government hasn’t fallen by the end of the week Russia will have lost the ability to replace it with the forces its deployed.Report
If the missiles need to be there by the end of the week they should have been shipped a month ago. I can’t even get local overnight delivery from Amazon at this point.Report
I’m sure they have a prime account.Report
I can’t even get local overnight delivery from Amazon at this point.
Which raises another important point: the ever-present threat of porch pirates stealing the missiles once they’re delivered, but before the Ukrainians realize they’re there.Report
Amazon is testing the new delivery drones, dropping the missiles right at the GPS location of the customers phone. It’s the new guerilla logistics model.Report
I suspect these would be missiles in stockpiles in Europe – probably in US and German bases. Loading the C-130s or C-17s will take a day and then its a couple hour hop to Eastern Ukraine. They will probably be in play by Thursday.Report
Since my original comment was admittedly jokey in tone, I should probably amplify/clarify what I’m trying to get at: my fear that this is still too little, too late. I want to be optimistic but I don’t know if that’s realistic; even if the missiles are there today, it still presumably takes time to distribute them and train people to use them, time I’m not sure Ukraine has.Report
I would think to the extent we’re talking about stuff already in Europe, which if the German news is to be believed a lot is, then as long as the western part of the country bordering NATO countries stays lightly impacted, it will get in. What happens after is anyone’s guess.Report
We have sent them Stingers for two or three years and trained them on using them. They were a big chunk of the $80 Million in military aid we sent them in January. They know what to do with them.Report
If… (a) the Russian artillery is even half as good as NATO and the Pentagon have been claiming for years, and (b) the Russians can defend the artillery, and (c) the logistics hold up, and (d) the Russians don’t care about civilian casualties, then they can flatten the country city by city.
Side policy note. If any of (a), (b), or (c) are false against Ukraine, then NATO members are spending way too much money on their militaries for the purpose of defense against Russia’s conventional armed forces.Report
If those contingencies go Russia’s way they may be able to flatten Ukranian cities. However I would think that would be an admission that none of the strategic objectives have succeeded and they’re just meting out punishment. I also think there are reasons to doubt Putin’s base of establishment support would tolerate that.Report
Putin certainly seems willing to do that. Who’s going to depose him and take away the keys to the nukes? A military junta seems like the best hope right now.Report
The oligarchy won’t tolerate being separated from their billions, and their mansions and their megayachts forever.Report
NATO has a very large, sometime hostile army on their doorstep which just showed it’s master is willing to trash a country because of political issues and he doesn’t give a crap about international law nor his own peace treaties.
If the amount of destruction dropped on Ukraine only takes one generation to fix and not two then it’s still a mess worth NATO’s defense.
We also have the issue that a lot of the European countries have been trying to skimp on defense for decades so getting them to have any army at all is an accomplishment.Report
Conventionally, they’re in a pretty good position to encircle and pocket the bulk of the Ukrainian standing army that was facing the breakaway Donbass republics. Plus pocket and destroy Kyiv as the center of resistance. The Russians haven’t deployed half their forces yet either.
In a straight up army to army slugfest, the Ukrainians are putting up a much better fight than expected but the odds on favourite is still Russia. Even if the Ukrainians odds seem to get better by the day.
Now nobody seems to have any idea how Russia would manage the aftermath and occupation, but they still hold a lot of strong cards in the war itself.Report
Sure, that’s still a possibility. But I think the unexpected level of resistance is putting Putin in a real quandary by forcing him to have to consider things he really doesn’t want to do (and didn’t think he’d have to do) in order to win.
Remember, Putin is still saying this is a humanitarian mission on behalf of fellow Russian people severed arbitrarily from the homeland. This is not ISIS, and it’s not even Chechnya where no one in Russia proper will care if the gloves come off. I will not pretend to know what Putin’s constraints are but I think there very likely are some lines specific to Ukraine he will have trouble crossing.Report
I can’t tell if there is an unexpected level of resistance. The Ukraine gov and the western media would like there to be. Certainly the gov hasn’t folded in the way Afghanistan did.
But if Russia was planning on a two week war and if they were on track to have exactly that, we’d be getting from the media roughly what we’re getting.Report
I’m as cynical about the media as anyone but I think the fact that they’re even talking to the Ukrainian government is telling. We weren’t negotiating with Saddam a week into the Iraq invasion.
I think they believed this was going to be Abkhazia and South Ossetia where all they really needed was a big show of force to chase off of a Georgian government without a lot of local support. If you had asked me a week ago I would have thought they were probably right.Report
Putin entered thinking he would have Kyiv in 72 hours. ITs way past that and while he seems to be consolidating positions around cities in the south (branching off from his favored breakaway republics) the only strategic target that is being reportedly held by Russia is Chernobyl. Which I am sure the Ukrainians would love to have Russia finish cleaning up.
Its not clear if he had the fuel and ammunition lines in place to keep his mechanized units engaged for long – everyone learned the hard way how much fuel armored cavalry uses in Iraq.Report
Dark is right that there’s definitely some pro-Western spin in the Western media. You can see it with the rapid clarifications of Snake Island and fighter ace stuff.
But otherwise I agree that there are a lot of signs pointing to a miscalculation. Al-Jazeera and other news agencies not known for knee-jerk pro-West stances are reporting that way. Of course none of this means Ukraine is out of danger or has won. It’s still entirely possible Russia will escalate at enormous human cost. This is where it would be nice to have a better understanding of what Putin’s constituency wants or is willing to tolerate but I think that’s a subject where we’re completely in the dark.Report
This assumes he has a constituency he is listening to beyond the paranoia in his own head.Report
I believe he does. Obviously not in any kind of popular, democratic sense but he can’t control the whole country by himself. Even the most authoritarian leaders rely on some level of legitimacy and cooperation from other elite players.Report
I assume he has an echo chamber filled with yes men.
Their job is to polish that paranoia and make it sound reasonable.
This is an issue for anyone who has been in charge and dominate for years/decades.Report
It’s possible he believed everything he said and, being surrounded by yes-men in an echo chamber, so did his military planners.
So they expected to have no serious resistance because everyone would love to rejoin the motherland and be purged of western influence.Report
That this degree of resistance is unexpected is supported by tactical and strategic decisions the Russians made in the opening. Pushing forward unsupported recon units willy-nilly, sending airborne units in a suicide rush and prioritizing a rush to Kyiv for a decap strike.
A lot of these are the moves of an army that was thinking/hoping they’d roll through without much resistance and got some bloody noses as a result.Report
JFC are people dumb: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/26/poll-trump-russia-ukraine-white-house
Apparently 62 percent of Americans believe that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump was President. Likewise, they also seem to think that there is a dial on the Resolute desk that controls gas prices.Report
Are you really surprised though?Report
They are right, though.
Were Trump President, Putin could have simply ordered American troops to invade Ukraine and install a Pro-Russian puppet.Report
A pretty strong argument has been made that Trump was trying to dissolve NATO and as long as he was in office and working towards those goals all Putin needed to do was keep quiet and thank his lucky stars. I don’t think that’s necessarily the thought process righties are making but the end conclusion is the same. If Trump were in office Putin wouldn’t be invading- not because he’d be afraid to but because he had plausible odds of being given everything he wanted without having to invade.Report
Since Trump is almost certain to run again (and have a pretty good chance of winning) we are going to need to point out again and again and again, the history of his dealings with Russia, Paul Manafort’s work with pro-Russian parties, and they bizarre loyalty Trump still holds for the Russian dictator.
One little discussed aspect of Nick Fuentes/ Marjorie Taylor Greene/ Paul Gosar conference was the open cheering for the Russians over Ukraine.Report
I agree with everyone who says it could be true but for bad reasons but I am not sure the majority of people answering the poll are thinking with this kind of thought process. Some of them are. A good chunk of the American people seem to think of the President as some kind of quasi-mythical bronze age priest-king who is supposed to solve all the problems or be sacrificed to a volcano or something.
It seems like a good chunk of them think the White House desk is filled with dials labelled gas prices, inflation, international peace, etc.Report
Man, if it’s a bunch of people who only happen to have gotten the right answer due to partisan politics with a much smaller number of people who got it right because of actually thinking about it, that’s a bad indicator.
I guess it’s a good thing that so many democrats are willing to give the wrong answer due to partisan politics (even though they probably thought about it first).Report
I thinks it’s more like people want the Hollywood version of a President who punches a terrorist and growls “Get off my plane”. Think of all the righties who still get boners at pictures of Putin riding barechested.
God only knows how these people would react if they knew Hitler and Stalin were being met by a frail old man in a wheelchair.Report
Related poll:
https://news.yahoo.com/poll-74-percent-of-americans-call-russias-ukraine-invasion-unjustified-142128676.html
The nut graf is that the numbers are moving rapidly, away from the Tucker Carlson pro-Russian position towards a pro-Ukraine position.Report
Quick history refresher: Stalin and the frail old man in the wheelchair were allied against Hitler.Report
Right – but Chip’s point is the frail old man in the wheel chair . . .Report
But he said it in a complaint that people don’t know history! You’ve got to be able to laugh at that. That’s just hilarious.Report
The USSR was both enemy and ally, and the frail old man was a match for both.Report
Every four years, America goes to the polls and hope they are electing the return of King Arthur.Report
Purim’s invasion is about revanchist nationalism. His speech makes it clear that he believes Ukrainians and Belarusians are just a type of Russian. He wants them back.Report
For sure, but if Trump was in office and was going after NATO with a hatchet I think it’s safe to say that Putin would be content to delay his unification plans until after Trump was finished.Report
But Trump was in office and didn’t.Report
I wish there was a response to this. I mean, he was actually president, and the Russians invaded Ukraine during the previous administration, and they invaded in the following administration, and we’re supposed to look upon Trump as the compliant one? He issued sanctions against Russia, expelled embassy staff, denounced the annexation of Crimea, and even armed Ukraine. He wanted NATO members to pay their fair share, so he threatened to leave, but there’s nothing to support the narrative that he was soft on Russia.
And again let me say that comments like Saul’s make him look more concerned with scoring domestic political points than with a serious world crisis. The fact that he doesn’t understand domestic politics is less ugly than that he prioritizes them over a real crisis.Report
Trump was not and is not,, any sort of defender of Ukraine nor of NATO.Report
He wasn’t… although a lot of what he did was pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Germany’s pipeline, foreign policy, and European military spending in general indicated that Russia was a non-factor.
Now Trump was so unpredictable Putin might have held off because he had no clue what Trump would have done. Blowing up that Iranian general might have sent a message.
More likely Putin just wasn’t ready and American politicians and politics had little to no impact.Report
He openly admires dictators and was more than happy to withhold urgently needed defense from Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on his political opponent.
His only contribution to the 2016 platform was to strip out Ukrainian defense.
Looks like I’m going to have to say this every day from now on-
Republicans, and conservatives can get off the Trump bus anytime they want.
Anyone can be a Liz Cheney and stand proudly for conservative ideas, while still condemning Trump and the Putin loving white supremacists.
Or they can stay on the bus and continue to defend him.Report
I was just reading a 2018 article about Trump selling them missiles.Report
The $40M or so for Javelins and a couple of launchers? The deal that came with explicit language that the Ukrainians could not use the missiles against Russian separatists?Report
Urm pinky, you do remember the entire impeachment of him was for not giving missiles that had been authorized by congress until Ukraine helped him out with a little job he wanted some help with.Report
So did they get their missiles or didn’t they? And this seems like a random walk. Trump pretty clearly didn’t give a damn about U’s defense one way or the other. He could have killed the deal on some pretext or just let it go through without the blackmail.Report
Five vile things Trump did to Zelensky and Ukraine that you forgot about
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/01/vindman-zelensky-ukraine-putin/
My personal favorite is #5:Turned Ukraine policy over to Rudy Giuliani. I guess Ivanka was getting her hair done that day.Report
Why yes he didnt’ care about a free democratic ally when he tried to extort them for his own benefit. I agree with you completely on that. He could have not been a corrupt crapsack but ……well how would that have benefited him.Report
Major correction before this gets out of hand: Ukraine is not an ally and its credentials as a democracy are… we’ll be very generous and say nascent.Report
Today’s winner of the Internets: https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1498363645650157571?s=20&t=a4rhNzRZn65TNstGbkzzswReport
Clearly he’s taking his COVID protocols seriously.Report
Maybe on a side note, Putin’s demands for there to be peace were NOT “Ukraine doesn’t look West”. His demands were “Everyone who has joined NATO since 1997 is kicked out”.
So Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia, Hungary, & Poland.
Meaning all the East European countries the USSR dominated at gun point.Report
I think this is a key, if not the leading piece of this for Putin.Report
Yes, that. He’s trying to put the USSR back together again. This isn’t “paranoia” on his part. He sees, correctly, that the West is in the way.
Another cold war is one of the better outcomes.Report
And some they didn’t, like Albania, Croatia, and Slovenia.Report
Report
Over the last couple of days, Russia has responded to the EU sanctions by pulling their people out of Arianespace’s facilities in French Guinea, and said no more Soyuz rockets for them. Arianespace uses a fair number of Soyuz because they can only manage a half-dozen or fewer Ariane 5 launches per year. There has been at least an implied threat that the European Space Agency will be denied access to Proton heavy lift launches from Russia as well, whether already booked or not.
Guess who has available heavy lift launchers? Yep, pretty much pick a month and Elon’s got a Starlink launch (or two) scheduled that can be repurposed. And of course, when the Russians posed the question on Twitter, “Who’s gonna keep lifting the ISS back to proper orbit, and provide capsules for emergencies?” Elon’s comment was just the SpaceX logo. Man, if Boeing’s unmanned Starliner launch now scheduled for May doesn’t go off perfectly, Elon’s going to be sitting fat and happy.Report
There are, of course, a thousand reasons to do this.
Report
Amid all the cheering over all these companies declaring that they are Simply Deciding As Private Entities Not To Associate With That Particular Group Of People, I feel like I should point out that Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution states that only Congress can grant Letters Of Marque, and that “a private entity engaging in acts that cause economic hardship for civilians of another nation with the goal of influencing that nation’s governmental policy” is a pretty fair definition of “privateer”…Report
On the flip side, maintaining an economic relationship with a country that is currently a belligerent in a conflict the US has an interest in with the other side could be considered giving material support to an enemy.
So really it’s a question of, which way do you think the DOJ is going to swing at the end of the day?Report
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/02/1083911717/russian-police-jail-kids-who-took-flowers-and-no-to-war-signs-to-ukraines-embassReport
Russia has allegedly shelled a nuclear power plant:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russia-ukraine-nuclear-plant-zaporizhzhia-b2028294.html?ampReport
If they can start a panic over nuclear power, they’ll retain market power for natural gas.Report
Very astute assessment. Plus they already left one nuclear disaster for Ukraine to deal with, what’s a second (or third or forth etc).Report
To be honest, this is where I’m pretty sure the US could get away with, like, stuff short of nukes.
This is one of the long-term atrocities that is worth preventing even at the price of some short-term atrocities.Report
Wait, unless this is an attempt to draw the US and Russia into a shooting war at which point this is, like, WWIII for real.
Which might be an even longer-term atrocity.Report
Never put to malice and planning what you can put onto incompetence.
And we’ve seen a lot of incompetence and not a lot of planning.
Among other things, captured Russian soldiers are saying they had no clue they were going to be doing this.Report