Ukraine Open Thread 2023-225

Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.

The MoA Week In Review - (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-224

Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:

• September 18 - Ukraine SitRep: Weird Claims, High Losses
• September 19 - New York Times Acknowledges Ukrainian Origin Of Deadly Strike
• September 22 - Ukraine SitRep: The War By Numbers Of Humans
  Related:
  - Ukraine, before and after. - Scott Ritter / The Floutist
  - The West’s Sacrificial Lamb to NATO Expansion - Gordon Hahn
  - Living conditions in Ukraine are resembling a new slavery, a triumph of Western 'democracy' in the 21st century - Al Mayadeen
  
  - Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction - Consortium News
  - This War Wasn't Just Provoked — It Was Provoked Deliberately - Caitlin Johnstone
  - The US is de-industrializing Europe. Next on the agenda, to destroy European agriculture - Gilbert Doctorow
  
  - The History of Fascism in Ukraine Part I: The Origins of the OUN 1917-1941 Part II, Part III - Internationalist 360
  - Zelenskyy joins Canadian Parliament’s ovation to 98-year-old veteran who fought with Nazis - Forward

Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski - 0:23 UTC · Sep 24, 2023

These are photos of SS Galicia Division veteran who was given standing ovation by Canadian parliament, prime-minister of Canada and president of Ukraine. He published these photos of himself in this division during training in Germany. He is standing in the middle in 1st photo, second on the left in 2nd photo & without helmet near machine gun in 3d photo.

• September 21 - How Will The Biden Administration Cope With Its Loss In Ukraine?
  Related:
  - Spinning the Press on Hunter Biden - RealClearInvestigations
  - If the Facts Come Out, it Could Spell the End for Joe Biden - Consortium News
  - Anxiety ripples through the Democratic Party over Biden - Washington Post
  - Post-ABC poll: Biden faces criticism on economy, immigration and age - Washington Post
    The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, ...

• September 23 - Egyptians Beef Eaters Paid A Special Tax - Money Used To Bribe U.S. Senator Menendez
  Related:
  - Gold Bullion and Halal Meat: Inside the Menendez Investigation - New York Times
  - Menendez corruption charges complicate tense ties with Egypt - Washington Post

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-224

Ukraine Open Thread 2023-223

Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.

Egyptians Beef Eaters Paid A Special Tax - Money Used To Bribe U.S. Senator Menendez

Yesterday one of the crooks and grifter who are leading the U.S. got indicted:

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was indicted Friday on allegations that he and his wife accepted bribes from a group of New Jersey businessmen on behalf of interests in Egypt, totaling over $600,000.

Prosecutors allege the senator and his wife accepted cash, gold bars and a luxury car in return for assisting the businessmen. The FBI found nearly $500,000 in cash and more than $100,000 in gold at Menendez’s home in a raid last year, allegedly payment for the bribes.

The senator stepped down from his seat as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late Friday.

Some additional details:

Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and his wife have been indicted by a federal grand jury, according to court filings unsealed Friday, with prosecutors alleging the couple accepted lavish bribes in exchange for official acts.
...
Menendez, 69, and his wife face one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. The three New Jersey associates, identified as Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, are also named as co-defendants and face two counts. Menendez and his co-defendants are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

Nadine Menendez and Hana were friends for several years before she began dating Menendez, according to the filing. A court-authorized search of Hana's cellphone in November 2019 revealed "thousands" of text messages between him and Nadine Menendez, which prosecutors said were deleted from her phone. Daibes, a longtime fundraiser for Menendez, was charged by the Justice Department in 2018 with obtaining loans under false pretenses from the New Jersey bank he founded, the indictment said.

Menendez vehemently denied the charges, but a chorus of New Jersey Democrats began urging him to step down later Friday. Gov. Phil Murphy said the allegations are "so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state," calling for his "immediate resignation."

A copy of the indictment is here. The case looks solid.

Menendez was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. A previous chairman of the committee, and also a crook and grifter, still sits in the White House.

Cont. reading: Egyptians Beef Eaters Paid A Special Tax - Money Used To Bribe U.S. Senator Menendez

Ukraine SitRep: The War By Numbers Of Humans

When I was much younger and still lived in my hometown I was training two local female volleyball teams.

There was also a local team for men with disabilities. We had some friendly matches. Most of the men, then in their 50s to 60s, had had amputations. Some due to accidents but most due to the second world war. But even with only one leg or one arm they beat my teenage girl teams without much problems.

After such matches I often sat down with the men and talked about the war and the consequences it had for them. They had all done well and were living more or less normal lives. But many more who had been wounded like them had killed themselves or died young due to the long term consequences of their wounds.

The numbers further down remind me of those men.

Yves Smith looks at Ukraine's future:

The Coming Ukraine Collapse and the “Rebuilding” Headfake

Its economic prospects are terrible and all the talk about 'rebuilding' it is mostly nonsense:

Now after that introduction, to the main event of the exceedingly poor economic prospects for what will be left of Ukraine… which is not even known. It’s pretty remarkable to see chipper talk in the West of rebuilding Ukraine, since it presupposes there will be a meaningful Ukraine left. It’s reminiscent of children discussing how much of an ailing parent’s wealth they expect to carve up when the process of dying could well wipe out the remaining assets.

When the war is over Ukraine will be a bankrupt and largely empty country. Yves quotes Michael Vlahos who mentions a piece by the intel-connected Jamestown Foundation about Ukraine's population numbers.

I searched for and found it:

Ukraine’s Manpower Requirements Reaching a Critical Threshold

The piece was published two months ago and its numbers are grueling. Here are some snippets:

Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep: The War By Numbers Of Humans

How Will The Biden Administration Cope With Its Loss In Ukraine?

While this piece will touch on the war in Ukraine it is more about the U.S., and the Biden administration, and how they will cope with their  defeat in their war on Russia. Please keep that in mind when commentating.

Washington's moment of recognizing the defeat in Ukraine, and its consequences, has yet to arrive.

In his latest piece (archived) Seymour Hersh reports on the state of the war and of significant differences of opinion between the U.S. intelligence services:

There are significant elements in the American intelligence community, relying on field reports and technical intelligence, who believe that the demoralized Ukraine army has given up on the possibility of overcoming the heavily mined three-tier Russian defense lines and taking the war to Crimea and the four oblasts seized and annexed by Russia. The reality is that Volodymyr Zelensky’s battered army no longer has any chance of a victory.

The war continues, I have been told by an official with access to current intelligence, because Zelensky insists that it must. There is no discussion in his headquarters or in the Biden White House of a ceasefire and no interest in talks that could lead to an end to the slaughter. “It’s all lies,” the official said, speaking of the Ukrainian claims of incremental progress in the offensive that has suffered staggering losses, while gaining ground in a few scattered areas that the Ukrainian military measures in meters per week.
...
The American intelligence official I spoke with spent the early years of his career working against Soviet aggression and spying has respect for Putin’s intellect but contempt for his decision to go to war with Ukraine and to initiate the death and destruction that war brings. But, as he told me, “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.

“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

The differences between the current CIA and the more neoconned Defense Intelligence Agency extend to their view on China:

Cont. reading: How Will The Biden Administration Cope With Its Loss In Ukraine?

Ukraine Open Thread 2023-222

When the Ukrainian President Zelenski recently spoke at the UN General Assembly the hall was pretty empty.

What the media hides. @narrative_hole - 23:43 UTC · Sep 20, 2023

🇺🇦 Ukrainian media edited the audience for Zelensky’s speech at the UN to make it look like everyone was listening, including Zelensky himself 😂
Embedded video

Strana also reported this (machine translation):

The telethon showed how Zelensky listens to himself in the UN hall during his own speech on the podium

A live broadcast of the national telethon of United News showed an edited version of President Volodymyr Zelensky's speech at the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, which took place on September 19.

As a result of editing, it turned out that Zelensky was sitting in the hall next to the head of the Presidential Office Andrey Ermak and Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, listening to himself from the podium.

There was no such oversight in the official UN broadcast.

Use as Ukraine Open Thread ...

The current open thread for other issues is here

Ukraine Open Thread 2023-221

Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.

Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 220

News & views (not related to the war in Ukraine) ...

New York Times Acknowledges Ukrainian Origin Of Deadly Strike

The New York Times is finally acknowledging that the September 6 deadly impact of a missile in the center of Kostiantynivka was caused by a Ukrainian missile:

Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy

One wonders what took them so long.

The Sept. 6 missile strike on Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine was one of the deadliest in the country in months, killing at least 15 civilians and injuring more than 30 others. The weapon’s payload of metal fragments struck a market, piercing windows and walls and wounding some victims beyond recognition.

Less than two hours later, President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian “terrorists” for the attack, and many media outlets followed suit.

The New York Times was of course one of those media outlets that had spread Zelenski's lies:

The attack clouded Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s unannounced visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, the same day, one of the highest-level visits by a U.S. official to there since President Biden visited in February. Mr. Blinken met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, announced more than $1 billion in new U.S. aid for Ukraine and praised its people’s valor and resilience in the face of what he called Russia’s “horrific” aggression.

Just hours after the impact several bloggers has already found that the missile had come from the Ukrainian side. The next day the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) published a report about it:

On Sept. 6, a missile strike rocked Kostiantynivka, a town in the Donetsk region under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The missile hit a bustling city market at 2:04 p.m. local time, leaving 16 dead and 33 injured. Photos and videos of the aftermath of the strike have been circulated by various media outlets worldwide.

The videos showed evidence that the missile had come from the Ukrainian side. Ironically the main one had been published by Zelenski's office:

Cont. reading: New York Times Acknowledges Ukrainian Origin Of Deadly Strike