Ukraine Open Thread 2023-15
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 2023-14
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
- Jan 10 - Ukraine And Russia Agree - Russia Is Fighting NATO
- Jan 11 - Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached
Related:
- 'NATO’s mission' leaves Ukraine destroyed - Aaron Maté
- The Saturday morning attack on Kyiv appeared to best the air-raid warning system. - NY Times
- Grandson of Charles de Gaulle, an Old CIA Nemesis, Condemns West’s Policy in Ukraine - Covert Action Magazine
Says the U.S. and NATO triggered the conflict and are making Europeans suffer
- Russia-Ukraine war: How the US paved the way to Moscow's invasion - Jonathan Cook / Middleeasteye
- Jan 13 - Why Didn't Biden Just Burn Those Classified Documents?
Related:
- Biden’s Corvette Defense Was a Lemon But His “Inadvertence” Defense Could Prove Worse - Jonathan Turley
- Additional Documents Found at Biden’s Wilmington Home, White House Says - NY Times
- Jan 14 - Emmanuel Todd On The Third World War
Related:
- Emmanuel Todd - Crise de la société occidentale et guerre en Ukraine (Video) - Gavroche
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-14
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-13
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.
Emmanuel Todd On The Third World War
The French Le Figaro has an interview with the well known anthropologist Emmanuel Todd.
Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé»
"The third world war has began" is his new thesis. Todd is quite famous for correctly predicting the devolution of the Soviet Union long before it happened. He was quite alone at that time.
I once had a piece on Todd's later predictions for the U.S. and Europe which still seems spot on. I also quoted him in a piece on social decline as a national security issue.
Unfortunately the Figaro piece is paywalled. But Arnaud Bertrand has done us the favor of translating the gist. Here is his slightly edited thread:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand - 15:42 UTC · Jan 13, 2023Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."
Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.
He says "it's obvious that the conflict, which started as a limited territorial war and is escalating to a global economic confrontation between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war."
Cont. reading: Emmanuel Todd On The Third World War
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-12
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.
Why Didn't Biden Just Burn Those Classified Documents?
On Monday CBS launched a story about classified papers found in a former office of president Biden. I am curious why the story came out and why it came out now.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney's inquiry.The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden's personal attorneys "were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.," Sauber said in a statement to CBS News.
The story was kept under the wraps for more than two month. Biden's lawyers, who allegedly found the documents, informed the National Archive which took possession them the next day. It then informed the Attorney General who assigned a U.S. attorney and involved the FBI.
That is at least how the story is told.
But I am curious on how much back and forth there was between Biden's lawyers and the White House after the find. That the lawyers did not ask Biden or his handlers how to proceed with the documents before informing the National Archive can be excluded. The alleged find was easy to hide. The National Archive is said to not have known anything about the documents. The lawyers were bound by their attorney client privilege that would have prohibited them from talking about the issue.
By informing the National Archive, which then involved others, it was made inevitable that someone would let the media know about this.
So why weren't those documents just burned up? Why not avoid the scandal that has now been reinforced by a second find of such documents, this time in a garage at Biden's home in Wilmington? Who made these decisions?
Biden is not an honest man when it comes to political issues. He is not a stranger to covering things up.
The decision to let this out, to not cover it up, is so far unexplained. The whole thing can only hurt Biden. It also disables the Democrats of using Trump's withholding of classified papers as a weapon against him.
Was it the very special content of the classified documents that made this move necessary? Or is there something else that we do not yet know about? Something that led to the judgment that the current limit hangout of some dirty linen is better than to have a real scandal come to the public's knowledge.
The whole thing is puzzling.
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-11
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 2023-10
News & views not related to the Ukraine conflict ...
Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached
Soledar has fallen to Russian troops. Bakhmut (Artymovsk) will follow soon.
This constitutes the breach of Ukraine's second defense line within the Donetzk and Lysichansk oblasts. I will discuss those lines with the maps below.
The first map shows the range of land taken by Russian forces by April 1 2022 (Kiev region not shown).
Russia had invaded with a small force of some 100,000 soldiers supported by some 50,000 soldiers of the Donetzk/Luhansk Republics. The opposing forces were 250,000 regular Ukrainian army troops which quickly grew to 450,000 and then 650,000 by mobilization of reserve forces plus the Territorial Defense Forces. During the first weeks the Russian forces had taken a huge amount of land that they barely had the numbers to hold.
At that point Russia was still hoping that the negotiations held at that time with Ukraine in Turkey would have a positive outcome. As a confidence measure it had already started to pull back from around Kiev. However, after phone calls from and a visit by the British prime minister Boris Johnson the Ukrainian government ended the negotiations by suddenly adding demands the Russia would never agree to. The troops from Kiev were pulled back anyway and moved to the east of Ukraine where they started an attack on the first defense line (yellow) of the Ukrainian forces.
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This first defense line, like later ones, ran along railway and road communication routes that connect major cities. In the map above the cities that constituted the first defense line were, north to south, Siverodonetsk, Lysichansk, Popasna, Svitlodarsk.
Cont. reading: Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached
Ukraine And Russia Agree - Russia Is Fighting NATO
Russia and Ukraine have publicly agreed on a fundamental and important issue.
The question is who Russia is fighting in Ukraine.
During an interview with a Ukrainian TV station the Oleksii Reznikov, the defense minister of Ukraine, answered that the Ukraine has "already become a de facto member of the NATO alliance."
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The interview, given four days ago, is available on Youtube. English language subtitles can be generated by autotranslate. The sentence pictured above comes at about 1:25 minutes in.
Sputnik, which seems to be the only international outlet that has picked up on this, has more (from ~11:05 min):
Cont. reading: Ukraine And Russia Agree - Russia Is Fighting NATO