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.

News & views not related to the war in Ukraine …

The Economist has interviewed the three Ukrainian leaders who manage the war in Ukraine. It summarizes them in an interpretive writeup. I will use that to extract the important points.

Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals talk to The Economist (Paywalled)

The writeup is of course full of propaganda but one can still glean some information from it.

The first interview (transcript) was with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, who is saying nothing new that would be of interest:

“People do not want to compromise on territory,” he says, warning that allowing the conflict to be “frozen” with any Ukrainian land in Russian hands would simply embolden Mr Putin. “And that is why it is very important…to go to our borders from 1991.”

Zelensky wants Crimea back. Good luck achieving that impossibility one might say.

The second interview is with General Valery Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The third interview is with Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces.

All three men emphasised that the outcome of the war hinges on the next few months. They are convinced that Russia is readying another big offensive, to begin as soon as January.

The author writes that "Ukraine enjoyed a triumphant autumn." One wonders how many thousand Ukrainian soldiers have died for that triumph that was in reality a well controlled Russian retreat to shorten its frontlines.

Cont. reading: Ukraine – What Its Military Leadership Says

A new round of Wunderwaffen deliveries to Ukraine is taking place. It is unlikely to change the strategic or even operational picture of the war.

The U.S. and its 'allies' are engaged in a boil-the-frog operation in which they steadily increase the lethality and complexity of arms and other support they deliver to Ukraine. At some point in time this process will cross Russian red lines. That's when it will become really interesting …

The newest gimmick to be deployed is the Patriot air defense system likely soon to be followed by main battle tanks:

The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian missiles, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and be moved from another country overseas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. The Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks.

During a video conference on Monday, Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery, missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.

He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.”

Well, yes, the artillery advantage the Russian army has in the current battle for Bakhmut is nine to one or even higher:

Cont. reading: U.S. To Send More Wunderwaffen To Ukraine

A few days ago a small news item about India and Russia was issued that made some anti-Russian/pro-Indian scribes very happy:

India’s Maddening Russia Policy Isn’t as Bad as Washington Thinks – Foreign Policy, Dec 9
India upholds the rules-based, Western-led international order—but in its own way.

Modi is also skipping an annual summit with Putin, reportedly over the latter’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

That claim sounded strange to me. The author of the FP piece  is Derek Grossman "a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp., an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and a former daily intelligence briefer to the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs."

Hmm. The link he gives goes to a Bloomberg piece:

Modi to Skip Annual Putin Summit Over Ukraine Nuke Threats

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won’t be holding an annual in-person summit with Vladimir Putin after the Russian president threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The relationship between India and Russia remains strong but trumpeting the friendship at this point may not be beneficial for Modi, said a senior official with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Putin had never threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or anywhere:

Cont. reading: When False Claims Are News – Russia, India, Nukes

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 Biden administration is holding a summit with some 40 leaders of African countries. The New York Times headline of its reporting on the summit is revealing:

Biden Is Bringing Africa’s Leaders to Washington, Hoping to Impress

"Bringing Africa's Leaders to Washington"? Why not "invited African leaders to Washington"? Isn't this reminiscent to the millions of Africans who had been "brought to America" in past centuries?

The U.S. is late in fostering better relations with Africa:

NAIROBI, Kenya — In Russia, Africa’s leaders were feted at a seaside resort where military aircraft for sale were parked outside the summit hall. In China, they dined with President Xi Jinping, some of them one-on-one, and received promises of investments worth $60 billion. In Turkey, they won support for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Now they are headed to Washington for a major summit hosted by President Biden — the latest diplomatic drive by a major foreign power seeking to strengthen its ties to Africa, a continent whose geopolitical clout has grown greatly in the past decade.

There is little hope that the U.S. will do better than other nations:

Cont. reading: Biden Opens Africa Summit With Sanctioning African Leaders

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.

Today I unfortunately found nothing of interest to which I could add an original thought.

News & views not related to the war in Ukraine …

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.

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Dec 5 – Ukraine – Crimea Bridge Repaired, No Ammunition, Drone Attacks In Russia
• Dec 6 – U.S. No Longer Supports Fight For Crimea
• Dec 9 – 'Minsk II Was Agreed On To Arm Ukraine' – Did Merkel Really Say That?
• Dec 10 – Ukraine SitRep – Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation
  Related:
  – The ADL declares Ukraine’s Azov Battalion no longer ‘far-right’ – Alex Rubinstein
  – The Predictable Resurgence of Fascism and Nazism On Both Sides of the North Atlantic and Its Consequences – Counterpunch
  – How Everything Became ‘Fascism’ – Compact

  – Demons creep up from Europe’s attic – Indian Punchline
  – The Americans Started the US War with Russia – Counterpunch

• Dec 7 – China Shifts Covid Policies As Previously Announced – NYT Falsely Claims Protesters' Victory
• Dec 8 – Green-washing The Trade War With China
  Related:
  – Fearmongering Pentagon steps up its threat inflation of China – SCMP
  – Xi Jinping’s Visit to Saudi Arabia and the overthrow of Atlanticism – The Cradle
  – Xi, the dollar slayer – Gilbert Doctorow

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2022-221

The Russian military is still integrating most of the mobilized 300,000+ men and volunteers. According to Putin 25% of the mobilized forces are in combat units, 25% in rear positions, while 50% train in Russia. It does not look like an imminent all out attack on the Ukrainian front lines is in the cards. The expected large winter attack may not be coming at all. Instead the new forces will rotate through the frontline and only attack locally whenever they see an opportunity.

The Russian do not need to attack. Their task is to demilitarize Ukraine. As long as the Ukrainians come to the front lines and attack the Russians their is no need to launch a large attack on them.

The map from a months ago versus today shows only a few small changes of the front lines.

November 10 2022

Source: LiveUAmap – bigger

Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep – Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation

Helmholtz Smith, Andrew Korybko and Andrei Martyanov have some thoughts about a recent interview the former German chancellor Angela Merkel gave to the German weekly broadsheet Die Zeit.

Smith says it shows that the 'West' is not trustworthy. Korybko thinks the interview will prolong the conflict in Ukraine. Martyanov says that Merkel is stupid. She isn't.

In the interview Merkel seems to claim that the Minsk agreements between the Ukrainian government and the Donbas region, which she negotiated and co-signed as guarantor, was never meant to be fulfilled. It was only meant to give time to build up the Ukrainian military.

I however think that such an interpretation is wrong. Merkel is under very harsh critique not only in the U.S. but also in her own conservative party. She is now out to justify her previous decisions as well as the current bad outcome in Ukraine. My hunch is that she is making things up. Unfortunately she also creates serious damage.

The relevant passage of the interview is longer than the one paragraph Helmholtz Smith and other cite. The context is important. Here is my translation of it:

ZEIT: Do you ask yourself if the years of relative calm were also years of omissions and if you were not only a crisis manager, but also partly the cause of crises?

Merkel: I would not be a political person if I did not deal with that. […some stuff about climate action …] Let us look at my policy towards Russia and Ukraine. I come to the conclusion that I made the decisions I made back then in a way that I can understand today. It was an attempt to prevent just such a war. The fact that this was not successful does not mean that the attempts were wrong.

I think the above is genuine. The Minsk agreements were a serious attempt to prevent war by reintegrating Donbas into a federalized Ukraine.

Cont. reading: ‘Minsk II Was Agreed On To Arm Ukraine’ – Did Merkel Really Say That?

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.

News & views not related to the war in Ukraine …

Under the Trump administration the U.S. launched a trade war against China. It started with various tariffs on Chinese products. The Biden administration topped that by using the flimsy pretext of alleged 'forced labor' in Xinjiang to make it more difficult to import goods from China. This contradicted Biden's plan for climate change as nearly all solar panels are made from raw materials found in Xinjiang. The trade war continued with the chip war against China's technological progress.

The tariffs and restriction run counter to the World Trade Agreement which the U.S. is increasingly willing to ignore.

The administration has now developed a new scheme that will use the pretext of climate change to wage an economic war against China's and other countries' steel and aluminum industries. To be more effective it is trying to get the European Union on board:

The Biden administration on Wednesday sent a proposal to the European Union suggesting the creation of an international consortium that would promote trade in metals produced with less carbon emissions, while imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and elsewhere, according to a copy viewed by The New York Times.
…
The proposed group, known as the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum, would wield the power of American and European markets to try to bolster domestic industries in a way that also mitigated climate change. To do so, member countries would jointly impose a series of tariffs against metals produced in environmentally harmful ways.

This is clearly not a policy to mitigate climate change but to limit free trade to the advantage of domestic industries.

The target of this effort is obviously China:

Cont. reading: Green-washing The Trade War With China

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

The current open thread for other issues is here.

Yesterday I noted that Sec State Blinken had blinked with regards to Crimea. The State Department spok more or less confirmed the shift:

It was unclear whether Mr. Blinken’s mention of the Feb. 24 lines was deliberate. Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on that date, Russia already occupied much of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, as well as Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.

Asked on Tuesday whether Washington drew any distinction between Ukrainian land seized by Russia after its Feb. 24 invasion of the country and territory it was occupying previously, Mr. Price demurred.

“It’s a question for the Ukrainian government. It is not a question for the U.S. government,” he said.

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

When the New York Times predicted doom for China over some 'western' directed Covid protests I noted that China had already released new Covid guidelines and would further open up while keeping the pandemic under control:

China can, as Peter Lee predicted, modify its current policies.
…
Two weeks ago the Chinese National Health Commission had already announced 20 new guidelines.

What it can further do to avoid more demonstrations and unrest is to apply sensible zero-Covid measures in a less restricting way.

Today the Chinese government did exactly that:

China rolled back rules on isolating people with COVID-19 and dropped virus test requirements for some public places Wednesday …

The move adds to earlier easing that fueled hopes Beijing was scrapping its “zero COVID” strategy, which is disrupting manufacturing and global trade. Experts warn, however, that restrictions can’t be lifted completely until at least mid-2023 because millions of elderly people still must be vaccinated and the health care system strengthened.

In total the new control measures can be characterized as less of everything:

Cont. reading: China Shifts Covid Policies As Previously Announced – NYT Falsely Claims Protesters’ Victory

The U.S. seems to have changed its position with regards to Crimea.

Blinken in August 2022:

Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken – 16:46 UTC · Aug 23, 2022
United States government official

In my remarks to the Crimea Platform Summit, I urged the international community to keep raising the costs and pressure on President Putin and his enablers until all Russian troops leave Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine. That was our position in 2014, and it remains in 2022.
Embedded video

Same dude, yesterday:

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Editor in Chief Matt Murray At The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Our focus is on continuing to do what we’ve been doing, which is to make sure that Ukraine has in its hands what it needs to defend itself, what it needs to push back against the Russian aggression, to take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24th, to make sure as well that it has the support economically and on a humanitarian basis to withstand what’s happening in the country every single day. That’s our focus.

"Territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th" obviously does not include Crimea which Russia 'seized' in 2014. This then is a significant shift in the position Blinken had earlier underlined.

On October 8 a Ukrainian bomb destroyed the southern part of the car bridge to Crimea. The northern part was also slightly damaged, a passing train on the rail bridge next to it burned out. Some people in Kiev were quite happy about it:

Syricide @Syricide – 8:33 UTC · 10 Oct 2022 #Kiev yesterday.

bigger

But the train traffic resumed a day later. The northern part of the car bridge was checked and car traffic in both directions was allowed. Repair preparations for the broken southern part immediately began.

Two days later the Russian military responded to the attack with the first intense strike against Ukraine's electricity infrastructure.

Now, less than two month later, the work is already done. Four damaged bridge spans have been replaced and a new tar cover has been laid on them. Today the Russia president drove a car over it:

Putin, accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, was shown on state television behind the wheel of a Mercedes, asking questions about where the attack took place.

"We are driving on the right hand side," Putin said, as he drove across the bridge. "The left side of the bridge, as I understand it, is in working condition, but nevertheless it needs to be completed. It still suffered a little, we need to bring it to an ideal state."

Putin also walked along parts of the bridge, Europe's largest, to inspect sections that are still visibly scorched.

Bidirectional traffic will now run on the southern span while the slightly damaged northern span will be repaired. This is likely to be finished before the end of the year.

Cont. reading: Ukraine – Crimea Bridge Repaired, No Ammunition, Drone Attacks In Russia