The German chancellor Olaf Schulz is under pressure from local coalition partners and external allies to allow the export of German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Scholz so far rejects doing so because the U.S. is not willing to give its own tanks, M1 Abrams types, to Ukraine:

Germany won’t send or authorize the transfer of tanks to Ukraine until the U.S. agrees to give its own, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told American lawmakers on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

The exchange in Davos, described by three people with knowledge of what was said, was respectful in tone but showed just how far apart Washington and Berlin are on a tank deal.
…
A spokesperson for Scholz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the chancellor hinted at some kind of arrangement with the U.S. during his Davos address.

“We are never doing something just by ourselves, but together with others, especially the United States, which are very important in this common task to defend Ukrainian independence and sovereignty,” he said.

The U.S. has send its secretary of defense Lloyd Austin to Berlin to pressure Scholz into changing his mind:

Cont. reading: Ukraine – Pressing For Tanks

Some people in the U.S./UK government, NATO lobbyists and a number mainstream media writers will end up with egg on their faces.

Here is an incomplete short list of them:

• What If Russia Loses? – Foreign Affairs – Mar 4, 2022
• Blinken: Putin is ‘destined to lose’ war against Ukraine – Politico – Mar 6, 2022
• Russia Has ‘Lost’ Ukraine War, Analyst Says, but Poll Shows Most Blame U.S – Newsweek – Mar 14, 2022
• Gen. Jack Keane says Putin ‘on his way to losing’ the war in Ukraine – Foxnews – Sep 23, 2022
• Battle of Kherson: Russian retreat confirms Putin is losing the war – Atlantic Council – Nov 10, 2022
• ‘Losing is not an option’: Putin is ‘desperate’ to avoid defeat in Ukraine as anxiety rises in Moscow – CNBC – Nov 23, 2022
• Putin is losing against Ukraine, against the West – and at home – CEPA – Nov 23, 2022
• Why Putin can’t give up on his losing war – Financial Review – Nov 25, 2022
• Russia Is Losing the War. Give Ukraine the Weapons to End It – 1945 – Dec 3, 2022
• Russia is losing in Ukraine, says head of UK armed forces – Financial Times – Dec 14, 2022
• Russia is losing in Ukraine and ‘will continue to fail in all its war aims,’ the UK’s armed forces chief says – Business Insider – Dec 14, 2022
• Russia is losing and the world can see that Putin is lying: UK statement to the OSCE – uk.gov – Dec 15, 2022
• What next for the world if Russia loses in Ukraine? – The Week – Dec 16, 2022
• The Long Goodbye: Why Russia is losing the war – Euractiv – Dec 20, 2022
• The war in Ukraine: Convincing Putin he holds a losing hand – CBS News – Jan 1, 2023

There is more than one person who disagree with the above. But only one of them is really decisive:

• Putin: Russian Military-Industrial Might Makes Ukraine Victory ‘Inevitable’ – U.S. News – Jan 18, 2023

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia’s powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production and was one of the main reasons why Russia would prevail in Ukraine.

Putin, speaking to workers at a factory in St Petersburg that makes air defence systems, said overall military equipment output was rising even as demand for it was growing because of what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“In terms of achieving the end result and the victory that is inevitable, there are several things … It is the unity and cohesion of the Russian and multinational Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters … and of course the work of the military-industrial complex and factories like yours and people like you,” said Putin.

“Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it.“

Putin said Russian arms companies manufactured about the same number of anti-aircraft missiles as the rest of the world combined, and three times more than the United States.

Yves Smith asks:

What if Russia Won the Ukraine War but the Western Press Didn’t Notice?

She points to several headlines which, despite decisive Russian victories like its taking of Soledar, present the Ukraine as winning the war:

Nevertheless, Soledar has fallen and the loss of Bakhmut looks baked in, absent horrific Russian errors. The so-called Zelensky line is breaking even before Russia has put its recently-mobilized forces to work in a serious way. Regular commentators are waiting for the Russian hammer to fall, although Russia may simply grind more forcefully by pressing harder at more points along the very long line of contact. Remember one concern on the Russian side is avoiding “winning” in a way that leads to NATO panic and desperate action … not that the Collective West’s fragile emotional state can be readily managed.

With that context, you’d expect some members of the press to have worked out that things are not going very well for Ukraine and the classic cowboy movie rescue of the calvary riding over the hill (here in the form of tanks and artillery) will be too little, too late.

Instead, the media seems to be trying to integrate snippets of facts on the ground with the heroic tale of inevitable Ukraine victory.

That is certainly correct for the wide majority of the stories, which claim that Soledar and Bahkmut, are irrelevant towns, but some pieces are creeping up that differ. A few days ago the Washington Post headlined:

Bloody Bakhmut siege poses risks for Ukraine

Ukraine faces difficult choices about how much deeper its military should get drawn into a protracted fight over the besieged city of Bakhmut, as Kyiv prepares for a new counteroffensive elsewhere on the front that requires conserving weapons, ammunition and experienced fighters.

Russia has escalated its assault in the area in recent days, unleashing savage fighting that has underscored the high cost of the battle. Russian mercenaries and released convicts from the Wagner group pushed into the neighboring salt-mining town of Soledar and inched closer to Bakhmut, the capture of which has eluded them for months despite an advantage in firepower and the willingness to sacrifice troops.

The piece quotes several Ukrainian soldiers which speak of huge losses on their side. But the U.S. is still egging them on:

Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep – Media Ignorance, Counter-Artillery War, Three Lost Armies

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.

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 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

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-14

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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, 2023

Emmanuel 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

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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.

U.S. attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden's vice presidency found at Biden think tank

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.

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The current open thread for other issues is here.

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News & views not related to the Ukraine conflict …

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.

April 1 2022

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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

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

Even at 50% off, from whatever price, …

bigger

… it's still too expensive.

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The current open thread for other issues is here.

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Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:

• Jan 2 – Are There Any U.S. Red Lines?
• Jan 3 – Critical Infrastructure Intercepts All Exploding Drones
• Jan 4 – Ukraine – The Big Push To End The War
• Jan 5 – Christmas Cease Fire
  Related:
  – Ukraine Humiliated Western Propagandists After Its Defense Minister Admitted It’s A NATO Proxy – Andrew Korybko
  – Russia’s Rebound – How Moscow Has Partly Recovered From Its Military Setbacks – Barry R. Posen / Foreign Affairs
  – Why History Matters: the Left and Ukraine – Rob Urie / Counterpunch
  – What Have We Bargained for in Ukraine? – National Review(!)

• Jan 6 – Twitter Files Show How The Deep State Conquered Social Media
  Related:
  – Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal – Jacobin
  – Elon Musk, eager tech salesman to the Deep State – Yasha Levine
  – Under Musk, Twitter Continues to Promote US Propaganda Networks – FAIR
  – Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign – Intercept

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-07

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.

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.

Matt Taibbi provides a summary of the recent revelations of Twitter manipulations in service of partisan government entities. The publication of the 'Twitter files' came in several Twitter threads from writers, left and right leaning ones, who had been given access to the files and internal Twitter communication.

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary

There have been 12 threads so far. Some of these are of special interest:

Twitter Files Part 1: December 2, 2022, by @mtaibbi

TWITTER AND THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

Recounting the internal drama at Twitter surrounding the decision to block access to a New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden in October, 2020.

Key revelations: Twitter blocked the story on the basis of its “hacked materials” policy, but executives internally knew the decision was problematic. “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” is how comms official Brandon Borrman put it. Also: when a Twitter contractor polls members of Congress about the decision, they hear Democratic members want more moderation, not less, and “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.”

We will later learn that it was the FBI, which had the Hunter Biden laptop material and knew it was real, which pushed Twitter to censor the story by claiming that it was 'Russian hacked' material.

Twitter censorship:

Twitter Files Part 2, by @BariWeiss, December 8, 2022

TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS

Bari Weiss gives a long-awaited answer to the question, “Was Twitter shadow-banning people?” It did, only the company calls it “visibility filtering.” Twitter also had a separate, higher council called SIP-PES that decided cases for high-visibility, controversial accounts.

Key revelations: Twitter had a huge toolbox for controlling the visibility of any user, including a “Search Blacklist” (for Dan Bongino), a “Trends Blacklist” for Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and a “Do Not Amplify” setting for conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Weiss quotes a Twitter employee: “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.” With help from @abigailshrier, @shellenbergermd, @nelliebowles, and @isaacgrafstein.

The above one is of special interest to me.

Cont. reading: Twitter Files Show How The Deep State Conquered Social Media