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

The current open thread for other issues is here.

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

Today the Russian government revealed some numbers and information about its 'Special Military Operation'.

Today's 'clobber report' by the Ministry of Defense leads with this (machine translation):

During the day, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out group strikes using long-range high-precision air-launched weapons at central decision-making points where, under the guidance of specialists from Western intelligence agencies, terrorist acts were planned on Russian territory.

All assigned objects are hit.

'Central decision-making points' are ministries and main headquarters. These had so far not been targets. More to that below.

Defense Minister Shoigu had a conference call with the military command and noted:

"Russian forces continue to inflict an effective fire impact on the enemy. Its losses this month alone totaled over 16,000 troops, 16 aircraft, 5 helicopters, 466 drones, over 400 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, and 238 field artillery pieces and mortars," Shoigu said during a conference call.

He added that 196 HIMARS rockets, 16 HARM rockets and 29 Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles were intercepted and destroyed during the reviewed period.

The numbers are, with the exception of the downed Storm Shadows,  largely consistent with the numbers from the daily 'clobber report' in my spreadsheet. But I have only counted 17 reported Storm Shadow kills over the last month. I do not know where Shoigu's 29 is coming from.

Shoigu also spoke of targets of the recent drone attacks in Ukraine (machine translation):

Cont. reading: Drones Strikes In Moscow – Missile Strikes In Ukraine

On May 26 Amnesty International published one of its usual aggressive accusations against a government the U.S. is hostile to.

Hong Kong: Government must reveal whereabouts of Uyghur student detained at airport (archived)

Hong Kong authorities must reveal the whereabouts and fate of a Uyghur student who has been missing since he arrived in the city from South Korea earlier this month, amid fears he has been unlawfully extradited to mainland China without due process and is at risk of arbitrary detention and torture, Amnesty International said today.

Abuduwaili Abudureheman has not been heard from since he sent a text message to a friend on 10 May. In the message, Abudureheman said he was being interrogated by Chinese police after arriving at Hong Kong airport.

“The unknown fate of Abuduwaili Abudureheman is deeply worrying, given the background of crimes against humanity committed against Uyghurs by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, and its ongoing pursuit of Uyghurs who have travelled overseas,” said Alkan Akad, Amnesty International’s China Researcher.

The accusations seem to be based on claims made by a single anonymous source:

Cont. reading: Egg In Their Face – Two Anti-China Claims The Wall Street Journal Made Last Weeks Were Fake

The Reconnaissance Strike Complex
Lester Grau and Charles Bartles – May 30, 2018

The Soviet Union, and now Russia, have long worked on the development of twin concepts for the detection and assured destruction of high-value targets in near-real time. The Reconnaissance Strike Complex (разведивательно-ударный комплех-RYK) was designed for the coordinated employment of high-precision, long-range weapons linked to real-time intelligence data and precise targeting provided to a fused intelligence and fire-direction center. The RYK functioned at operational depths using surface-to-surface missile systems and aircraft-delivered “smart” munitions.

It took some time for the Russian reconnaissance-strike-complex to improve its reaction time. But it now seems to be quite fast.

First the reconnaissance element:

The Ukrainian Air Force Formed A New Strike Squadron—By Arming Reconnaissance Bombers With British Cruise Missiles
Forbes – May 28, 2023

Working closely with the United Kingdom, the Ukrainian air force has equipped at least some of the recon section—which flies two-seat, supersonic Sukhoi Su-24MRs from the regiment’s base in western Ukraine—with British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
…
All the pre-war bombers and recon planes—as many as 16 of the former and nine of the latter—belonged to the 7th Bomber Regiment at Starokostiantyniv air base.

In a year and three months, the regiment has written off at least 17 Su-24s. Victims of Russian air-defense missiles, mostly.
…
It’s that simplicity [of the conversion] that apparently allowed the Ukrainian air force and its British supporters to form what amounts to a new long-range strike squadron—eight or more Storm Shadow-armed Su-24MRs—inside the battle-battered 7th Bomber Regiment … in just three months’ time.

After reading yesterday's Forbes piece about Storm Shadow launching airplanes stationed at the Starokostiantyniv air base the commanders at the operation center of the Russian Special Military Operation, decided to have them destroyed.

The strike:

Cont. reading: The Reconnaissance Strike Complex

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:

• May 22 – Media And Politicians Throw So Much Bullshit At Us That It Is Difficult To See Through It
  Related:
  – Most Propaganda Looks Nothing Like This – Caitlin Johnstone
  – Durham exposes FBI role in Clinton's Trump-Russia deception – Aaron Maté
  – FBI misused surveillance authorities to investigate Black Lives Matter protesters – Politico

• May 23 – F-16s To Ukraine
  Related:
  – Post-Bakhmut scenario in Ukraine war – Indian Punchline
  – Latest Headlines Digest – The West's Tone Drastically Shifts – Simplicius
  – 36 Hours in Bakhmut: One Unit’s Desperate Battle to Hold Back the Russians – WSJ via Archive.org

> Over the 36 hours he spent in brutal house-to-house combat in the eastern Ukrainian city, 11 of the 16 men from Malkovskiy’s group of draftees were either killed or captured, according to surviving soldiers and relatives of the missing. <

• May 24 – Mearsheimers Latest Talk On The War In Ukraine
  Related:
  – The EU Is Over-Invested in the Ukrainian War-Project – Alastair Crooke / SCF
  – European Parliament to Join the Militarisation Path – Socialist Project
  – The Economic Suicide Of EU Countries: Data Reveals That Germany Has “Sanctioned” Itself Into Recession– Kolozeg

• May 25 – Why Are These Biden Officials Leaving Their Top Posts?
  Related:
  – US Geopolitics: Believing Impossible Things – Naked Capitalism
  – White House Official: Biden’s Migration Is an Economic Strategy – Breitbart
  – Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice & Neoconservatism – Peace Diplomacy

• May 26 – Closing The Case Of Regime Changer Roman Protasevich And His Ryanair Flight To Minsk
  Related:
  – Belarusian activist accused of informing on former girlfriend Sofia Sapega as he's pardoned – Telegraph

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-128

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.

Two years ago a Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania was diverted after the Belorussian flight control informed the pilot that it had received an email which said that the plane carried a bomb and would explode during landing in Lithuania.

The plane diverted to Minsk. All passengers stepped off board and where bused to the terminal. When they passed through passport control the immigration officers found that two of the passengers had outstanding arrest warrants against them. These were one Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend and co-worker Sofia Sapega.

The 'western' media and politicians were up in arms over the 'unprecedented' incident. But the event was far from unprecedented.

Western media also failed to report that Roman Protasevich had been a western government financed neo-nazi who had fought with the fascist Ukrainian Azov battalion before working for U.S. sponsored regime change media in Poland. He was one of the persons who had directed the failed 2020 color-revolution in Belarus.

Cont. reading: Closing The Case Of Regime Changer Roman Protasevich And His Ryanair Flight To Minsk

Recently several administration official who were working on China and Ukraine policies announced to step back or retire. The people in question were not neo-conservative China hawks like Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. The unexpected loss of top sane hands has me concerned that there is some big move in planning that will damage U.S. relations with China and Russia even more than they already are:

The head of a new US State Department unit tasked to coordinate efforts aimed at countering Beijing plans to step down next month, the department’s second high-ranking official with a China portfolio to announce a departure in less than two weeks.

Rick Waters, head of the State Department’s recently created Office of China Coordination, and known informally as its “China House”, will leave the position just six months after it was established to manage what Secretary of State Antony Blinken called “the scale and the scope of the challenge” posed by the country.

The career State Department official will “rotate out” of the unit and the Office of Taiwan Coordination on June 23 “as part of the Department’s normal summer transition process,” according to a State Department spokesman.

There was no reason given why Waters was moved aside. This comes shortly after an even more important figure suddenly decided to retire:

Cont. reading: Why Are These Biden Officials Leaving Their Top Posts?

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The current open thread for other issues is here.

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News & views (not related to the conflict in Ukraine) …

Yesterday the well known international relations scholar John Mearsheimer gave a talk (video, 1:33h) about the war in Ukraine to the Committee for the Republic.

Mearsheimer made two major points:

Ukraine can not win this war because the kill ratio in this war is in its disfavor. Mearheimer estimates that two Ukrainians die for one Russian soldier but says that many of his friends think that the ratio is more like 3:1 or 4:1. The reason for this is the WWI-style static war in which artillery is the most deadly weapon. Russia has an immense artillery advantage. During an offensive the attacker will often have more casualties than the defender. But in this war the Ukraine side has been (counter-)attacked most of the time while the Russians defended.

The Ukraine also has a much smaller population than Russia. The current ratio is about 5 Russians for 1 Ukrainian. With a much smaller population and much higher casualties the Ukraine will run out of able bodies way before Russia does.

Mearsheimer expects that Russia, which already has incorporated four Ukrainian oblast plus Crimea, will take another four oblast from Ukraine. (I predicted this on February 24 2022, the day the war began. Those eight oblast plus Crimea are historically Russian land inhabited by Russian people. During the last thirty years they have consistently voted for pro-Russian candidates while the people in west Ukraine consistently opted for anti-Russian candidates.) Ukraine will end up as a dysfunctional (and poor) rump state.

Mearsheimer says that there will be no peace agreement in Ukraine. The war is seen by both sides as existential. Ukraine insists of regaining territory it sees as part of the country. Ukraine wants security guarantees from the 'west' which Russia opposes. The problem of hyper-nationalism (fascism) on the Ukrainian side also makes peace impossible. Then there is the problem that Russia, after having been lied to over the Minsk agreements, has zero trust in any 'western' word.

A few days ago U.S. President Joe Biden announced the training of Ukrainian pilots for the F-16 multirole fighter aircraft:

President Joe Biden told G7 leaders on Friday that the US would join in efforts to train Ukraine’s pilots on fourth generation fighter jets including the F-16s, a senior administration official told CNN on Friday.

This has obviously been in the planning for some time. The timing of the announcement at the G7 summit was simply chosen to maximize the propaganda value for Biden.

The process we have seen has repeated itself again and again. As pro-Ukrainian blogger (with no military knowledge) describes it:

This has clearly become a proxy war between Russia and NATO, supercharging the political considerations inherent to any war. Ukraine’s goal is to wheedle as much military aid as humanly possibly out of NATO, especially the United States. The United States’ goal is more complex: give enough aid to push Russia back, but not so much that its proxy war with Russia escalates into an actual one.

This dynamic has created a Hunger Games scenario where Ukraine is constantly playing to the cameras to cajole extra gifts from the wealthy sponsors who watch its every move over the internet in real time. I had decided against using this analogy until I saw Ukrainians themselves using it. There is something grotesque and sobering about finding yourself in this position, and writing about it. But it is what it is.

I had assumed that F-16 training had in fact already started several weeks back. The EU blabber mouth Josep Borrell now all but confirmed it:

Cont. reading: F-16s To Ukraine

I find this funny:

Michał Krupa @MGKrupa – 22:12 UTC · May 21, 2023

NATO: We will send F-16's to Ukraine!
Russia: Hold my beer

> In late October a Ukrainian Sukhoi-27 Flanker, Soviet-era fighter, was shot down by a long-range air-to-air missile (LRAAM) – the R-37M. This is not the first Ukrainian aircraft to be shot down since Russia’s invasion commenced in February, but it is nevertheless a significant feat for the Russian Air Force because the R-37M took down the Ukrainian Sukhoi-27 from a range of 217km (about 140 miles). This would make the kill the longest on record. The R-37M is a hypersonic long-range air-to-air missile (LRAAM) reportedly capable of reaching Mach 6 and striking targets up to 400km (250 miles) away.

 The R-37M has become virtually unmatched, with few potential rivals.Furthermore, it is reported that the R-37M was fired from Russia’s fifth-generation fighter the Sukhoi-57 Felon rather than the Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound, Russia’s primary interceptor. The possibility of a fifth-generation Felon executing a target from such a long range is not at all impossible; the Sukhoi-57 has a sophisticated actively electronic scanned arrays (AESA) radar system comprising of the solid state AN/APG-77 – with a range of at least 200km (125 miles); and the N036 Byelka radar which boasts a maximum range just under 400km (250 miles). <

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Western media are feeding us bullshit. It is so strong that even western politicians, like the public, seem to believe in it. The reason is that it is increasingly difficult to detect the bullshit because there is just too much of it.

Gilbert Doctorow takes on the Western disinformation campaign especially with regards to the fall of Bakhmut:

[I]t is these censorious states and the mass media that carry their messages with stenographic precision into print and electronic dissemination who are the ones that day after day feed disinformation to the public. It is cynically composed and consists of a toxic blend of ‘spin,’ by which is meant misleading interpretation of events, and outright lies.

The many months long battle for the provincial Donbas city of Bakhmut, or Artyomovsk as it is known in Russia, has been described variously from on high in Washington, London and Berlin. When the likely outcome was unclear, the defense of Bakhmut was called heroic and demonstrative of the brave fighting spirit of the Ukrainians.

Casualty figures issued by Kiev and then trumpeted from Washington suggested that the Russians were stupidly throwing away the lives of their fighting men by using WWI style human waves of attackers who were decimated by the defenders. Russian lives are cheap was the message. The fact that Russian artillery on site outnumbered and outperformed Ukrainian artillery by a factor of five or seven to one was freely admitted by the Western propagandists as they pleaded for increased supplies to Kiev. They, nonetheless, issued casualty reports for the Russians that inverted the force correlation. It was assumed, obviously with reason, that the public was too lazy or too uninterested to do the arithmetic.

I had earlier taken on the nonsensical casualty claims:

Cont. reading: Media And Politicians Throw So Much Bullshit At Us That It Is Difficult To See Through It

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:

• May 15 – Ukraine SitRep: Explosion in Khmelnytsky – Bakhmut Evacuation – Longer Range Missiles
• May 16 – Ukraine – Air Defense Lessons (Updated)
• May 20 – Bakhmut Has Fallen – Artyomovsk Has Been Liberated
  Related:
  – It’s Not Enough for Ukraine to Win. Russia Has to Lose. – Atlantic
  – Why Ukraine Must Lose to Save the World – Armstrong Economics
  – SITREP 5/20/23: Bakhmut Falls, Artemovsk Rises. What's Next? – Simplicus
  – Ukraine is in a real pickle. – Xymphora

• May 17 – A Minus And Plus For The Debt Ceiling Crisis
  Related:
  – As Biden Weighs Paring Public Assistance in Debt Limit Talks, Liberals Balk – NY Times
  – Impasse continues in negotiations over debt ceiling crisis – CBS News
  – All Part Of The Plan – Eschaton

• May 19 – The Arabs Are Reunited And Israel Is Out
  Related:
  – Israel avoided a “great war”: The ‘Axis of Resistance’ was about to attack. – Elijah Magnier
  – Jeddah declaration: Intensifying efforts to help Syria overcome crisis in line with Arab interest – SANA

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-121

The so far largest battle of the 21st century ended today.

Bakhmut has fallen. Artyomovsk (the Russian/Soviet name of the city) has been liberated. This was announced today by the titular leader of the Wagner forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a video posted on Telegram.

Why the Ukrainian leadership had decided to hold onto the city even months after the situation there was already in its disfavor is beyond me. The fight was decided by the numerical superiority of Russian artillery fire and the Ukraine had never a chance to top that.

The losses there for the Ukrainians amounted to 300 to 500 men per day over that last 5 months. That sums up to a total of 60,000 casualties. Ten days ago Ukrainian units, including the fascist Azov brigade, rolled up the Russian flanks north and south of Bakhmut to allow the Ukrainian troops in the city to flee west. That attack alone, only one or 2 kilometer deep, cost them some 1,600+ men and some 50+ armored vehicles.

On the Russian side the fighting in the city was largely done by Wagner troops. But they were never able to do it on their own. Russian military intelligence, artillery and logistics all played an important role in the fight.

The city has been destroyed but it will continued to exist as it is an important logistical hub with several rail and road connections running through it.

Mariupol, which fell/was liberated a year ago, is already being rebuild. In a month or two, when the frontline has moved away from Artyomovsk, rebuilding will start there too.

For a moment now the front line in Ukraine seems all around relative quiet.

It is not clear to me when or where a new operational move will start.