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:

• Feb 13 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Sunday, February 13, 2022
• Feb 14 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Monday, February 14, 2022
• Feb 15 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Tuesday, February 15, 2022
• Feb 16 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Wednesday, February 16, 2022
• Feb 17 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Thursday, February 17, 2022
• Feb 18 – The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Friday, February 18, 2022

• Feb 14 – Ukraine War – The Upcoming Duel Of Speeches
  Related:
  – What Putin Got Right – Stephen Walt / Foreign Policy
  – Betting on Ukraine victory was ‘suicidal’ – Seymour Hersh / Azerbaycan 24
  – NATO doubles down: Highlights from the Munich Security Conference – RT

• Feb 15 – After Ten Days Of Panicky Hype The Weather Balloon Nonsense Is Finally Buried
• Feb 18 – More Ballooneey News
  Related:
  – Stratospheric balloons for spying from high altitudes – Sacyr
  – Top China diplomat mocks US response to China balloon as ‘hysterical’ – The Hill
  – How a Fog of Questions Over a Spy Balloon and U.F.O.s Fed a Diplomatic Crisis – New York Times
  – U.S. and China Vie in Hazy Zone Where Balloons, U.F.O.s and Missiles Fly – New York Times

> Near space is liminal space, a stratospheric netherworld where no international law applies and no military force holds dominance, where hypersonic missiles and space planes fly and surveillance balloons drift without being picked up by radars. <

• Feb 16 – Media Bullshit About Ugledar
• Feb 18 – Ukraine SitRep – Casualty Numbers, Lack Of Tanks, Something Is Up
  Related:
  – Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America – Alastair Crooke / SCF
  – Hold Out, Bleed Dry, Hope for the Best – Oliver Boyd-Barrett
  – SITREP: Update 2/18 – Major War Confirmed Imminent – Calm before the storm. – Simplicius The Thinker

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-40

On February 18 2022, a Friday, Russia voiced alarm over the sharp increase in shelling in Donbas:

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced alarm on Friday over a sharp increase in shelling in eastern Ukraine and accused the OSCE special monitoring mission of glossing over what he said were Ukrainian violations of the peace process.

Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists have been fighting in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine since 2014 in a conflict that Kyiv says has claimed some 15,000 lives.

Washington and its allies have raised fears that the upsurge in violence in the Donbass could form part of a Russian pretext to invade Ukraine. Tensions are already high over a Russian military buildup to the north, east and south of Ukraine.

Moscow denies planning an invasion.

"We are very concerned by the reports of recent days – yesterday and the day before there was a sharp increase in shelling using weapons that are prohibited under the Minsk agreements," Lavrov said, referring to peace accords aimed at ending the conflict.

Militia of the Donbas republics started to evacuate civilians:

Cont. reading: The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Friday, February 18, 2022

There is some interesting news on the casualty count in the war in Ukraine.

Ivan Katchanovski translated bits from a Russian language BBC report:

"Based on open sources, the BBC managed to establish the names of 14,709 Russian soldiers who died in the war in Ukraine. Throughout 2022, Russian sources typically reported about 250-300 dead each week. In January, these figures doubled." #Russia 1/

"But in just two weeks in February, the BBC Russian Service, together with Mediazona (recognized as a "foreign agent" in Russia) and a team of volunteers, managed to confirm the names of 1,679 dead, which is five times more than the usual weekly numbers." #Ukraine #ukrainewar 2/

The war started in eighths week of 2022. There were thus 44 weeks in the rest of the year. With 300 dead per week the number of Russians killed until the end of 2022 was 13,200. (These numbers likely included the number of Wagner mercenaries killed but probably not those of the Donbas militia.)

The BBC then counts 2,400 killed in January and 1,700 in February.

The total is thus below 20,000 the number Col. MacGregor and others have estimated for the Russian side. The BBC says it estimates that it only catches half of the dead but gives no sound reason why that would be the case.

The daily losses on the Ukrainian side are much higher. The daily clobber list of the Russian Ministry of Defense mentions about 400 Ukrainians killed every day. This is consistent with the numbers Ukraine's government mentioned last summer and fall.

Over the 358 days of the war the total sums up to about 143,000. The Russian reports do not include the number of those who got killed by the Wagner mercenaries in the Bakhmut area. That number is by likely well above 20,000.

In total the numbers are in the same range that we discussed previously.

Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep – Casualty Numbers, Lack Of Tanks, Something Is Up

More ballooneey news:

Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down By USAF – Aviation Week

A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.

The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing fingers yet.

But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool—the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same general area.

There are suspicions among other prominent members of the small, pico-ballooning enthusiasts’ community, which combines ham radio and high-altitude ballooning into a single, relatively affordable hobby.

“I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down,” says Ron Meadows, the founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), a Silicon Valley company that makes purpose-built pico balloons for hobbyists, educators and scientists.

The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type.

Project Picoballoon

Cont. reading: More Ballooneey News

On February 17 2022, a Thursday, the UN security Council held a meeting about the situation in Ukraine:

Speaking at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed some conclusions of U.S. intelligence in a strategy that the U.S. and Britain have hoped will expose and pre-empt any invasion planning. The U.S. has declined to reveal much of the evidence underlying its claims.

He told the diplomats that a sudden, seemingly violent event staged by Russia to justify invasion would kick it off.

“We don’t know exactly” the pretext — a “so-called terrorist bombing” inside Russia, a staged drone strike, “a fake, even a real attack … using chemical weapons,” he said.

It would open with cyberattacks, along with missiles and bombs across Ukraine, he said. Painting the U.S. picture further, Blinken described the entry of Russian troops, advancing on Kyiv, a city of nearly 3 million, and other key targets.

U.S. intelligence indicated Russia also would target “specific groups” of Ukrainians, Blinken said, again without giving details.

In an implicit nod to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s appearance before the Security Council in 2003, when he cited unsubstantiated and false U.S. intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Blinken added: “Let me be clear. I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one.”

We know today that there was no 'staged violent event'. There were also no cyberattacks and no attacks on specific groups. U.S. intelligence before the war seems to have been as bad as ever.

The increase in shelling that had happened the day before was finally noticed:

Cont. reading: The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Thursday, February 17, 2022

On the even of February 15 the Russian Foreign Ministry released information about a phone call between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. CGTN reported on February 16:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday called on the U.S. to drop aggressive rhetoric in dialogue on security guarantees and demonstrate pragmatic approach to this topic, state-owned Tass news agency reports.

Lavrov held a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which the Russian diplomat stressed the need to continue working together.

"On our part, it was stressed that it is necessary to continue joint work, as was agreed by Presidents [of Russia Vladimir] Putin and [of the United States Joe] Biden during their telephone call on February 12, in the context of the US and NATO proposals on security guarantees," TASS quotes the Russian foreign ministry.

"Lavrov specially stressed the inadmissibility of aggressive rhetoric fanned by Washington and its closest allies and called for a pragmatic dialogue on the entire spectrum of issues raised by Russia, with a focus on the principle of indivisible security."

Russia had previously sent demands for talks on several issues to the U.S. and NATO. The most important point for Russia had been the term 'indivisible security' in the sense that security for one side should not interfere with the security of the other side.

This term is included in several treaties with Russia. It claimed that the expansion of NATO was threatening its security and thereby breaching those treaties. While the U.S. denied this, it is obvious that all NATO expansion were increasing the potential danger for Russia. Russia and NATO were thus put into a classic security dilemma:

In international relations, the security dilemma (also referred to as the spiral model) is when the increase in one state's security (such as increasing its military strength) leads other states to fear for their own security (because they do not know if the security-increasing state intends to use its growing military for offensive purposes). Consequently, security-increasing measures can lead to tensions, escalation or conflict with one or more other parties, producing an outcome which no party truly desires; a political instance of the prisoner's dilemma.

The U.S. had responded to the Russian paper by conceding on some minor points that Russia had long demanded but not on any of the big questions of which the most important one was 'indivisible security'.

On February 2 2022 I had described the process in detail:

[I]n mid December Russia started to counter the U.S. move. It published two draft treaties, one with the U.S. and one with NATO, that included stringent security demands:

• No more NATO expansion towards Russia's borders.
• Retraction of the 2008 NATO invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.
• Removal of foreign NATO forces from east Europe.
• Legally binding guarantee that no strike systems which could target Moscow will be deployed in countries near to Russia.
• No NATO or equivalent (UK, U.S., Pl.) 'exercises' near Russian borders.
• NATO ships, planes to keep certain distances from Russian borders.
• Regular military-to-military talks.
• No U.S. nukes in Europe.

Russia requested written responses and threatened to take 'military technical' measures should the responses be negative. Russia also planned for and launched new military exercises.

The responses were received but, following a U.S. request, Russia refrained from publishing them. They were leaked to El Pais, published today and can be downloaded here (pdf).

The U.S. response to Russia's draft treaties is professional. While it rejects Russia's main demands, especially a neutral status for the Ukraine, it concedes on minor issues and offers additional talks on them. The NATO response is in contrast highly ideological and rejects all of Russia's points while making new demands towards Russia which are designed to be rejected. (Future negotiations are now likely to exclude NATO.)

Russia has yet to officially respond to the received letters. During a news conference after talks with the Prime Minister of Hungary the Russian President remarked on the letters:

[W]hile ignoring our concerns, the United States and NATO are referring to the right of states to freely choose specific methods to ensure their security. But this is not only about providing someone with the right to freely choose methods to ensure their security. This is only one part of the well-known indivisible security formula. The second inalienable part implies that it is impossible to strengthen anyone’s security at the expense of other states’ security.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has send a letter to several NATO countries in which it requests their official opinions on several agreements they have signed which include clauses on the indivisibility of security:

The very essence of the agreements on indivisible security is that either there is security for all or there is no security for anyone.

How is the signing of those treaties and indivisible security for all compatible with the aggressive NATO expansion aimed at Russia? 'Western' foreign ministries will find it difficult to answer that question.

France 24 listed some of its relevant headlines of the day:

• Ukraine crisis: Moscow announces end of Crimea drills, NATO unconvinced
• Russia's parliament asks Putin to recognise breakaway east Ukrainian regions
• Ukraine crisis: Russian pullout meets Western allies scepticism
• 'Day of Unity': Ukrainians raise flags to defy Russia invasion fear
• NATO says Russia appears to be continuing military escalation in Ukraine
• NATO chief says Russia appears to be continuing military build-up around Ukraine

The OSCE Special Observer Mission at the ceasefire line in southeast-Ukraine reported of February 16 that the number of ceasefire violations had suddenly jumped to above average. Artillery exchanges took place on many parts of the front.

In Donetsk region, the SMM recorded 189 ceasefire violations, including 128 explosions. In the previous reporting period, it recorded 24 ceasefire violations in the region.

In Luhansk region, the Mission recorded 402 ceasefire violations, including 188 explosions. In the previous reporting period, it recorded 129 ceasefire violations in the region.

On February 16 the observers noticed several self propelled howitzer (2S1 Govzdika, 122 mm) in violation of withdrawal lines. Four were seen on the Ukrainian government side and two on the non-government side.

After three days that had been more or less quite the sudden jump in fighting was particularly noticeable.

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The map shows explosions, the small black dots, on both sides of the ceasefire line.

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A typical New York Times propaganda piece is demonstrating how it intentionally misleads its readers:

Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City

As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Russia’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults.

The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus.

The piece claims that the Russian attack on Ugledar (Vuhledar) has failed to achieve its purpose. But that is wrong.

The attack on Ugledar was a diversion operation. Ugledar was originally defended by two territorial brigades. The Ukrainian command pulled two artillery brigades, one motorized infantry brigade and parts of one tank brigade from other front lines to hold onto Ugledar. The Russian attack thus did what it was supposed to do. It allowed for Russian breakthroughs at the northeastern Kharkiv front and in Bakhmut because Ukraine had moved forces away from those fronts. The fighting around Ugledar has cost Russia some, but not big losses.

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The Times itself admits that the Russian effort in Ugledar put the Ukrainian army into a bad situation:

Cont. reading: Media Bullshit About Ugledar

News & views NOT related to the war in Ukraine …

After the 2014 coup in Kiev the dully elected President Yanukovich had fled the country. His supporters in parliament were afraid and would no show up for further assemblies. The incoming U.S. selected government immediately set out to suppress the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine. The first move of the rump parliament, now dominated by right-wing people from west Ukraine, was to prohibit the Russian language for official business.

The ethnic Russian population in the east and southeast was opposed to the coup and rebelled against it. The new government tried to oppress it by military means. But a lot of soldiers defected to the rebels and soon those won the upper hand. The Ukrainian government troops were decisively defeated, twice. Each time the French, German, Russian and Ukrainian governments set down to come to agreements on how to proceed:

The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.

The agreement failed to stop fighting, and was thus followed with a revised and updated agreement, Minsk II, which was signed on 12 February 2015. This agreement consisted of a package of measures, including a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government. While fighting subsided following the agreement's signing, it never ended completely, and the agreement's provisions were never fully implemented.

The Minsk II agreement, a "Package of measures for the Implementation of the Minsk agreements", was endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2205. It is available here. The package includes clearly numbered tasks. An immediate ceasefire is task 1. The 'Launch of a dialogue' about legislation measures the Ukrainian parliament would have to take to recognize a special status for Donbas is step 4.  Step 9 is the reinstatement of full control of the state border by the government.

Cont. reading: The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Since February 4 I have dismissed the 'Chinese weather balloon' panic:

The paranoid style applies to internal U.S. politics as well as to foreign policies against this or that favorite enemy of that time.

It makes the story below, which otherwise is just laughable, somewhat dangerous.

Furor Over Chinese Spy Balloon Leads to a Diplomatic Crisis
The Pentagon called the object, which has flown from Montana to Kansas, an “intelligence gathering” balloon. Beijing said it was used mainly for weather research and had strayed off course.

As some 80+% of all Pentagon intelligence comes from open sources the 'intelligence gathering' statement may well include a weather research system. Weather research and weather prediction are important for all kinds of military operations. But they are also important for many civil operations from agriculture, food availability prediction to drainage planning in cities.

I pointed out that this was by far not the first Chinese weather balloon that drifted in unexpected directions. That is normal. The winds at the level where such balloons fly are very strong. There is no real way to control their flight path.

It soon became obvious that the balloon which was drifting over Alaska only crossed into the lower United States because a strong low pressure area over west Canada pushed it southward. Still, the media kept hyping the issue until the air force took the balloon down. Things got even worse when the air force in the aftermath started to shot down harmless small research balloons.

• Feb 4 – Blinken's Travel Canceling Adds To China Hate
• Feb 6 – NYT Plants False Claims Over China's Balloon Communication
• Feb 8 – China Rejects "Shoot First, Talk Later" Attitude
• Feb 11 – Airforce Spent Millions To Shot Down A Failed U.S. Weather Balloon – Biden Is Happy It Did So

Only now is the whole hype dying down helped by sudden explanations of the obvious.

U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path – Washington Post

Cont. reading: After Ten Days Of Panicky Hype The Weather Balloon Nonsense Is Finally Buried

Next week will see a speech duel between President Putin and President Biden.

On February 21 the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin will hold his State of the Nation Address in the Federal Assembly:

The president delivered his previous address to the country’s parliament in April 2021. Putin explained that there had been no State of the Nation Address in 2022 because the situation was unfolding very quickly and it was difficult "to fix the results at a specific point, as well as specific plans for the near future." However, crucial messages were included in other presidential speeches.

Before the speech Putin will have a talk with leaders of the opposition parties. Another meeting with the president of Belarus, Lukashenko, is also planned. Russian analysts expect that some serious announcements will be made.

The speech will come exactly one year after the speech that announced the recognition of the Luhansk and Donetsk republics as independent states.

While Putin will be speaking U.S. president Joe Biden will be in Poland where he will also hold a major speech:

Cont. reading: Ukraine War – The Upcoming Duel Of Speeches

February 14 2022 was a relative quiet day. The U.S. knew that the Ukraine would soon launch a large attack on the renegade Dontezk and Luhansk republics. To protect the Russian people living there the Russian Federation would have to invade Ukraine. The White Hose continued to warn of a upcoming 'Russian invasion' that the upcoming Ukrainian actions would provoke.

The Washington Post reported on a war planing group in the White House. The preparations had been going on for quite a while:

As fears grow of potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, a “Tiger Team” led by the White House is quietly gaming out how the United States would respond to a range of jarring scenarios, from a limited show of force to a full-scale, mass-casualty invasion.
…
The Tiger Team was officially born in November, when national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Alex Bick, the NSC director for strategic planning, to lead a planning effort across multiple agencies. Bick has brought in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development to look at a possible humanitarian crisis.

The intelligence community is also involved, gaming out various courses of action the Russians might pursue and the risks and advantages of each, officials said.
…
This planning has been underway even as other agencies push ahead with their own preparations. The Treasury Department has crafted potential sanctions packages and the Pentagon has planned for additional troop deployments at the same time the White House was finalizing its playbook.

Among the Tiger Team’s top concerns is a Russian effort to promote the false narrative that it is Ukraine, aided by the West, that is preparing to launch an offensive in eastern Ukraine, and that Russia is the victim.

We will see over the next days who really launched the attack.

The Kremlin was still not convinced that a war would come:

Cont. reading: The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Monday, February 14, 2022

In early 2022 Ukraine had finished the preparations for an overwhelming attack on the renegade People Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LNR).

Half of the Ukrainian army, some 120,000 men recruited and trained during the last 7 years, were stationed near the ceasefire line and ready to go. On the opposing side only some 40,000 men were under arms. They would have little chance to withstand an onslaught.

Russia could not let a Ukrainian attack happen. If Ukraine could regain the renegade provinces it would have been able to join NATO. Russian public opinion was decisively on the side of the Russian speaking DNR and LPR. It would surely demand an intervention. Since the 2014 coup in Kiev some four million Ukrainians had already moved to Russia. There are lots of family ties between the two countries. In sight of this Russia had put some of its own forces on alert and had moved weapons and munition to assembling points near the Ukrainian border.

The U.S. had for months warned of an upcoming Russian attack on Ukraine. It could do that because it knew the Ukraine would attempt to regain the republics by force. It knew that Russia would have to respond. On January 12 2022 CIA director Bill Burns had secretly met Zelensky in Kiev. Burns often carries messages from President Joe Biden.

On Sunday February 13 2022, after a phone call with U.S. president Joe Biden, the Ukrainian president Zelensky gave the final order for the planned Ukrainian attack.

That the decision had been made was immediately leaked in London as well as in Kiev.

In its summary of the day the Guardian listed a lot of activities that were consistent with the imminent start of a conflict. Diplomats and foreign military were moving out of Ukraine. Weapons flew in.

Tipped off by its government the British insurance conglomerate Lloyd stopped reinsurance services for anything Ukraine:

Anatoliy Ivantsiv, head of Ukrainian insurance firm Expo, told Interfax that British reinsurance giant Lloyds announced it would temporarily cease all conflict risk insurance over Ukrainian airspace from Feb. 14.

When the news of the attack order leaked in Kiev, its 'elite' oligarchs and some parliament members were ready to leave. On February 13 and the following days they fled the country:

Cont. reading: The Buildup To War In Ukraine – Sunday, February 13, 2022

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:

• Feb 6 – NYT Plants False Claims Over China's Balloon Communication
• Feb 8 – China Rejects "Shoot First, Talk Later" Attitude
• Feb 11 – Airforce Spent Millions To Shot Down A Failed U.S. Weather Balloon – Biden Is Happy It Did So
  Related:
  – Weather Balloons (U.S.: 75,000 per year!) – National Weather Service
  – US jet shoots down ‘unidentified object’ over northern Canada – CNN
  – New unidentified ‘cylindrical’ object shot down over Canada – Washington Post
  – Multiple F-35s shot down in 3-hour dogfight with Chinese balloon – Duffelblog
    The Air Force is said to be 'encouraged' by the outcome

• Feb 6 – Earthquake Damage In Syria Must Lead To Sanction Relief
  Related:
  – Turkey-Syria earthquake: Aid gap reveals western double standards – Elijah J Magnier / MEE
  – Turkey earthquake opened 190-mile-long fissure, satellite images show – Yahoo
  – As Anger Swells Over Quake, Turkey Detains Building Contractors – NY Times

Trollstoy @Trollstoy88 – 10:55 UTC · Feb 11, 2023

A new fault formed in Turkey after the earthquake.

The depth of the fault is ~30 m, and the width is ~200 m.
Meanwhile, the number of victims in Turkey and Syria has exceeded 23 35 thousand and the number of injured is already about above 100 thousand.
Embedded video

• Feb 7 – NYT On Ukraine – Real Reporting, Propaganda For Balance, Ominous Warning
  Related:
  – Zelensky is Getting Desperate – Newsweek
  – Zelensky takes credit for derailing Minsk agreements – RT
    The Ukrainian president claimed he personally refused to implement the deals for peace in Donbass
  – Olaf Scholz furious after minister ‘went behind back’ over Ukraine tanks – Yahoo
  – Setting the Record Straight; Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine – M. Whitney – UNZ
  – Ukraine’s rocket campaign reliant on U.S. precision targeting, officials say – Washington Post
  – Russia blocks access routes for Western arms supplies to Ukraine: Moscow defence ministry – SCMP
  – The 3rd world war has begun: Escalation in Ukraine will change everything- Emmanuel Todd
    (vid, 1:45h, English subs) – Elucid – Must view!

• Feb 8 – Hersh: "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline"
• Feb 9 – Some Small Corrections To Seymour Hersh's New Nord Stream Revelations
  – Craig Murray: Sy Hersh & The Way We Live Now – Consortium News
  – Ray on Sy Hersh’s Article on Blowing Up Nord Stream (vid, 20m) – Ray MavGovern
    Ray makes an important point about shocks effects of incidents like the Reichstag fire and the Nord Stream destruction
  – Nord Stream pipeline & sabotaging peace w/Jeffrey Sachs (Live) (vid, 30m) – The Duran
  – Washington owes world an explanation of Nord Stream explosion: Global Times editorial – Global Times

• Feb 10 – Twitter Censorship And The Crapification Path Of Social Media
  Related:
  – The FBI’s Most Controversial Surveillance Tool Is Under Threat – Wired
  – Disinformation Inc: Meet the groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news – Washington Examiner
  Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly "nonpartisan" groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online "disinformation." These same "disinformation" monitors are compiling secret website blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech, according to sources familiar with the situation, public memos, and emails obtained by the Washington Examiner.
  – Freelancers Wanted: Help Knock Out the Mainstream Propaganda Machine – Matt Taibbi

> State-directed censorship is scary, but the more disturbing activity we’re seeing inside companies like Twitter involves what you might call “offensive” information operations, a type of aggressive official messaging that all governments practice but is supposed to be restricted by law in the United States.
…
The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation. Disinformation “labs” cast themselves as independent, objective, politically neutral resources, but in a shocking number of cases, their funding comes at least in part from government agencies like the Department of Defense. Far from being neutral, they often have clear mandates to play up foreign and domestic threats while arguing for digital censorship, de-platforming, and other forms of information control. <

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-37

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.

Yesterday the U.S. airforce shot down another weather balloon:

The Pentagon said it shot down an unidentified object over frozen waters around Alaska on Friday at the order of President Biden, less than a week after a U.S. fighter jet brought down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic in an episode that increased tensions between Washington and Beijing.

This 'unidentfied object' was much smaller than the previous balloon.

Three U.S. officials said that as of Friday evening, the government did not know who owned or sent the object seen above Alaska, which, like the Chinese balloon last week, was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet using a Sidewinder air-to-air missile.

Several officials said they believed the object shot down Friday was a balloon, but a Defense Department official said it broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea, which added to the mystery of whether it was indeed a balloon, a drone or something else.

Mr. Kirby said that the object was “much, much smaller than the spy balloon that we took down last Saturday” and that “the way it was described to me was roughly the size of a small car, as opposed to the payload that was like two or three buses.”

The Chinese weather balloon taken down earlier had likely nothing to do with spying. The crazy disinformation and policitics around it are just propaganda. There were antennas on Chinese weather ballon but all weather balloons are carrying radiosondes to send down whatever they find.

After their measuring tasks are done weather balloons are supposed to fly higher until the pressure within the balloon is much higher than the thin air surrounding it. In consequence the balloon will rip open and its radiosonde and debris will come down on a small parachute. There is usually an address on these and a request to send them back for reuse. In case you find one please do so.

Sometimes the mechanism sending the balloon higher will fail. The balloon will then just follow the winds until something happens that brings it down.

That may well have happened to the Chinese weather balloon  as well as the the weather balloon sent up by the National Weather Service from its measuring stations in Kotzebue or Noma in northwest Alaska.

Dan Satterfield @wildweatherdan – 21:41 UTC · Feb 10, 2023

I back forecasted the latest "Balloon" shoot down in AK. Based on the location and time, it tracks back to near the Kotzebue NWS Rawinsonde site. Did we shoot down an NWS Weather balloon?? There is no data for the 12Z launch from that site and all the rest worked. #Chinaballoon

If not, then it goes back to the Bering Sea and then to NE Russia.

Also possible they did not launch a balloon at Kotzebue this morning at 12Z.

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A rawinsonde is by the way a combination of wind sensors and radiosonde:

Cont. reading: Airforce Spent Millions To Shot Down A Failed U.S. Weather Balloon – Biden Is Happy It Did So

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.

On January 6 I wrote about the Twitter files:

Twitter Files Show How The Deep State Conquered Social Media

Part of the quoted reporting by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and others was about 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.

This was of special interest to me as my account, @MoonofA, was throttled:

Until late 2021 my Twitter account @MoonofA, which I mostly use to promote my writings here, was not allowed to grow beyond 19,500 followers. There were also signs that tweets by me were not shown to users who were following me. After my account was released from the growth prison it rapidly grew to 47,500 followers in the fall of 2022. It then again went into growth prison for no discernible reason and without me getting any notice of it. Now anytime my follower count increases by 100 or so it will automatically be slashed back to 47,450 followers. There are also again signs that tweets from my account are again 'shadowbanned'.

Someone at Twitter must have read the above. One or two days after I published the piece my account was again allowed to grow. It has since gained more than 2,500 new followers for a total of more than 50,000.

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I do not know though to what degree I am still shadow banned or not.

Cont. reading: Twitter Censorship And The Crapification Path Of Social Media