DINNER IS SERVED

It’s surprising to realize that only eleven days have passed since Vladimir Putin began his assault on civilization.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is more than a local dispute gone bad, a “regional war.” What Putin is doing is an assault on civilization every bit as much as Hitler’s was 80 years ago.

Sam Freedman, writing in the excellent Substack blog he and his father have, “Comment is Freed” (highly recommended) says:

“The decisions of numerous individuals will determine how this war ends. Can Ukrainian civilians remain steadfast in the face of merciless Russian bombardment? Can the apparently high Ukrainian morale be sustained through a major setback? And on the Russian side, what happens as people realise that they have been misled about the war’s purpose and that their young men have died in an exercise in futility? How are soldiers, many conscripts, responding to the frightening and unexpected situation in which they find themselves? What about officers, alarmed about their lost men and equipment and lack of reserves, unable either to fulfil their orders or to retreat? How do Putin’s courtiers, aware that the war is going badly, explain to their leaders the dire consequences of the current strategy? And then there is Putin. At some point will it dawn on him that he has failed in the greatest gamble of his career?”

“Russia has now committed well over 90 percent of the massive force that was gathered around Ukraine before 24 February, and is still unable to take its early objectives, let alone work out, should they be taken, how they might be occupied and then governed. This suggests there is not much spare capacity for the western parts of the country, which is where Ukrainian forces, commanded from Lviv, could regroup with supplies coming in from Poland, Slovakia and possibly Hungary, if Kyiv were to fall.”

While Putin has displayed bravado, announcing to the world a week ago that Russian nuclear forces had been placed on alert, and threatened NATO with a wider war when he calls the sanctions that have been imposed “the equivalent of a declaration of war,” in truth he is a guy playing Texas Hold ‘Em sitting on the other side of the table holding a pair of deuces when The River comes.

This weakness disguised as creeping authoritarianism got a lot more overt when Putin signed a censorship bill into law that makes it impossible for news organizations to accurately report the news in or from Russia on Friday. The law, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, makes it a crime to disseminate "fake" information about the invasion of Ukraine, with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted. The definition of "fake" is, of course, left up to the Russian government. The New York Times reported the law could make it illegal to merely refer to the Ukraine war as a war. The law carries a sentence of 15 years in prison; this in a country where a conviction for murder carries a sentence of 8-10 years.

A sign that the domestic political opposition is now a factor he’s afraid of is shown in the bill passed by the Duma to conscript anyone arrested at a war protest into the army and send them to fight in Ukraine.

Videos released yesterday from Kherson and Melitopol show unarmed civilians demonstrating against the Russians; this means these towns really aren’t truly under Russian control. Their populations are resolutely Ukrainian in their loyalties, and their public opposition - and more importantly the lack of retaliation by the Russian forces - provide a warning how the lack of effective control could have deadly consequences for Russian units if this became an insurgency.

The famous “40 mile” Russian convoy now stretches from Prybirsk, near Chernobyl to Antonov airport near Kyiv. According to reports, this is no longer a convoy, militarily. It hasn’t moved for days and is full of vehicles that have broken down, been abandoned, or attacked by Ukrainian forces. The spectacle now demonstrates Russia’s poor planning and its equipment limitations.. The breakdowns demonstrate that the vehicles have not been well maintained, while the fact they remain on the road shows they cannot cope with the boggy land that surrounds them. This “convoy” has become an effective road block for any following Russian forces as surely as a blown bridge; in the meantime, the Russian forces are denied access to a vast amount of equipment and supplies.

The world has seen that the Russian military is not the invincible force it was thought to be prior to the invasion. The Russian Air Force has been notably inactive in a situation where air power would be expected to be the cutting edge of the invasion forces. Western analysts are pointing to the fact that air force has no training similar to what American or NATO air forces undergo, and does not have the capability to engage in a large-scale integrated air campaign. They also lack the number of “smart” weapons Western forces have. This means that the Russian campaign will only become more blunt, more unfocused, more a campaign of pure destruction. Even if Ukrainian reports are overstating Russian losses (11,000 dead in 11 days according to the Defense Ministry), even if those losses are only ten percent of the Ukrainian claims (unlikely), the pressure on Putin to escalate only intensifies as the sanctions become more intense. It is likely this next week will see all Russian banks cut off from SWIFT, and an embargo placed on Russian gas and oil exports. A country that spans eleven time zones is about to lose its internal air transport system as western aerospace companies cut off Aeroflot from necessary maintenance support and parts supply; this could begin to happen in two to three weeks.

This is not the only Russian force that has bogged down. All have come under attack by Ukrainian forces. By advancing on multiple points, the Russian forces have become separated and fragmented, and are struggling to get sufficient force to Kyiv to implement a siege. The Russians appear to be looking to find reinforcement by calling up reserves and recruiting more mercenaries, or bringing in units from elsewhere in Russia. That creates risk because those forces are protecting Russian-sponsored separatists in Georgia and Moldova. Unprepared troops ar3e of little value. There are reports that Belarus decided not to commit its forces because the designated units were mutinous.

Russia didn’t plan for an extended war. They are having trouble keeping the forces already involved supplied properly to continue fighting. Without a major successful resupply effort, the deployed force will run out of the ability to fight by the end of this month at the latest. And with the sanctions - both the official ones and those being imposed privately by companies around the world - Russia loses the ability to sustain this every day, little by little.

In the meantime, Putin’s war machine continues killing people like Anastasia Yalanskaya, who was killed outside Kyiv yesterday . The car she was driving to deliver food supplies to a dog shelter that had been without food for three days was targeted by a Russian Mi-35 Hind-F helicopter gunship and destroyed by a salvo of rockets. She had stayed behind in Kyiv to volunteer. After reading that, I found a great deal of personal satisfaction watching the video of the Hind gunship that blew up when it got hit by a Stinger missile; I’m fine with the fact the pilot and gunner got fried. More, please.

President Zelens’kyi continues to prioritize a NATO no-fly zone, but this is not going to happen, and if it did, it might work against Ukraine since the Russian air force has not been particularly effective to date, and any NATO jets on “no-fly” patrols would not provide aggressive air support for Ukrainian ground troops, where they could be very effective; even just limiting them to air-to-air patrols, such activity could potentially get into a shooting war with Russia, with dangerously unpredictable results.

The plan to provide the Ukrainians with former Soviet Mig-29s (which are the fighter jets they already have in their air force) from the MiGs in the Polish Air Force, with the Poles getting “replenished” with U.S. F-16s, appears to make some sense due to the inactivity of the Russian Air Force and their failure to destroy Ukrainian air fields. As to whether the Polish middleman takes the U.S. out of providing direct expanded military support in Putin’s eyes is another matter.

If Putin should decide to wield his nuclear sword, it would likely happen thus: there would be intelligence reports from France or Germany that Russia is arming its battlefield ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and has activated the command circuits used for issuing authorization to employ nuclear weapons. Putin would then approach either German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz or French President Emmanuel Macron and tell them they have a last chance to avoid a nuclear strike by ending NATO military supplies being sent to Ukraine through German air bases.

At which point, what would NATO do? And what could we do?

In case you missed it, El Blobbo del Mar A Lardo had some Deep Thoughts last night:

At a GOP donor dinner “Trump mused to donors that we should take our F-22 planes, ‘put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out’ of Russia. ‘And then we say, China did it, we didn't do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.’”

This guy is the alternative to President Biden? Well...

At almost the same time, Mike Pence said “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.” He is clearly not only wrong, but apparently living in an alternative reality. For all his dumbfuckery, Trump still controls the GOP and remains the 2024 front-runner; in YouGov poll on February 13, 2022, when asked whom they would support in a hypothetical Republican primary, 49 percent of GOP voters chose Trump, with DeSantis a distant second at 14 percent and Pence close behind him with 13 percent support.

As to whether he would win in 2024, there is no current polling, but ten days before Putin invaded Ukraine, that YouGov poll shoed that - among people who didn't vote last time - 14 per cent said they would vote for Biden in 2024, while a whopping 34 per cent chose Trump. Admittedly, people who didn’t vote in 2020 are likely among those who still believe the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, but the question of whether they would vote in 2024 is open; these are the people who would vote against Biden over gas prices being $5.05 per gallon (the most recent I saw at the local station here in Encino yesterday).

As of March 1, less than half of Americans approve of President Joe Biden, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. The national opinion poll, conducted Feb. 28-March 1, found that 43% of U.S. adults approved of President Joe Biden’s performance in office while 54% disapproved. In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll, Americans' approval of Biden's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine rose over the past week, with 43% saying they approve, up from 34% last week, but less than the 47% who disapproved.

There are polls showing the president’s numbers are improving over this past week regarding his handling of the current crisis, but even the astounding employment numbers announced this past week are not changing overall approval of him in office. And there is no likelihood of gas prices coming down anytime soon; the reverse is more likely as sanctions continue with Russia.

UPDATE: According to the latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll this past Friday:

Overall approval rating jumped to 47%, up 8 points from the NPR poll last month. Presidents don’t generally see much, if any bounce, out of a State of the Union address. Since 1978, there had only been six times when a president saw an approval rating improve 4 points or more following State of the Union addresses, according to the pollsters. Three of those bounces were for former President Bill Clinton.

Ukraine handling is up 18 points to 52%; Coronavirus pandemic handling is now 55%, up 8 points; and Economic handling up 8 points to 45%.

The only way gas prices could come down would be for Saudi Arabia to increase production. At this time, that’s unlikely because the price of such Saudi support is Biden’s pledge to stop treating Mohammed Bin Salman as an outlaw and for the United States to ignore what he does as absolute monarch of the kingdom.

UPDATE: Plans are underway for President Biden to make a personal visit to Saudi Arabia. MBS is not softening his terms, but the White House is reportedly “looking at the whole situation.” See below as to what this is.

I was talking to a good friend in the military history community this weekend. We both concluded that a good metaphor for the current situation is a dinner table covered with piles of sandwiches. Shit sandwiches. Some have nice solid turds on three-day old bread, some have runny dysentery on bread covered in green mold, and there’s all in between. All filled with shit.

And they all have to be eaten. Dinner is served.

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