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Ukrainian Soldiers Tell Of High Losses For Little Gains
Yesterday I linked to a fresh NY Times piece about the horrors of the war in Ukraine.
It has a somewhat uplifting headline and the first few paragraphs describe an Ukrainian 'success'.
Amid the Counterattack’s Deadly Slog, a Glimmer of Success for Ukraine
Recapturing the village of Staromaiorske was such welcome news for the country that President Volodymyr Zelensky announced it himself. But formidable Russian defenses have stymied progress elsewhere.
The piece is accompanied by this staged photo which shows some trashed uniform on a dirt road with two boots put next to it.
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The line below the picture, which I strongly believe is false, says:
The body of a Russian soldier outside a village in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine this month.
Credit… Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
I wonder what the editors thought when they came up with it.
Now onto the first paragraphs of the report:
For 10 days, Ukrainian marines fought street by street and house by house to recapture the southeastern village of Staromaiorske, navigating artillery fire, airstrikes and hundreds of Russian troops.
The Russians put up a ferocious defense but that ended on Thursday when they folded and the Ukrainians claimed victory. “Some ran away, some were left behind,” said an assault commander from Ukraine’s 35th Marine Brigade, who uses the call sign Dikyi, which means Wild. “We were taking captives,” he added.
The recapture of Staromaiorske, a small village that is nonetheless critical to Ukraine’s southern strategy, was such a welcome development for Ukraine that President Volodymyr Zelensky announced it himself.
I have bad news for the NY Times readers. The village Staromaiorske (Staromayorskoye in Russian writing) is no longer in Ukrainian hands but in the gray-zone:
Cont. reading: Ukrainian Soldiers Tell Of High Losses For Little Gains
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-182
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues is here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-181
The Washington Post Is Tarnishing The Courts Of Hong Kong
The Washington Post invents some crude reasoning to explain a new aggressive anti-China move by the Biden administration.
Biden, testing Xi, will bar Hong Kong’s leader from economic summit
SAN DIEGO — The White House has decided it will bar Hong Kong’s top government official from attending a major economic summit in the United States this fall, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter, in the latest test of President Biden’s bid to reset relations with China.
The summit in questions is the yearly meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to which 21 Pacific Rim entities belong. Since 1991 China, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) and Hong Kong are members. The location of the summit rotates through the membership entities.
Chief Executive John Lee, along with 10 other Hong Kong and Chinese officials, was placed under sanctions by Washington in 2020 after implementing a national security law, imposed by Beijing, that enabled the targeting of pro-democracy leaders, tarnished the reputation of the courts and earned international condemnation as leaders sought to silence dissent.
Lee, then Hong Kong’s security chief, was elevated last year to chief executive, handpicked by Beijing to continue what critics say is a broader campaign of repression in the once-semiautonomous city.
Let me first take issue with the description of the effects of the national security law, specifically the claim that it 'tarnished the reputation of the courts'.
Courts do not make laws but use the law to make judgments. How then could a new law or a change of a law have tarnished the courts?
A recent judgment by the a Hong Kong court proves that the Hong Kong security law has not done that at all.
Cont. reading: The Washington Post Is Tarnishing The Courts Of Hong Kong
Washington Post Still Covers Up U.S. War Crimes And Use Of Biological Weapons
The Washington Post is still covering up U.S. war crimes.
Seiichi Morimura, who exposed Japanese atrocities in WWII, dies at 90
His book about Unit 731, a secret biological warfare branch of the Imperial Army, helped force Japan to confront its wartime past
The obituary says:
Seiichi Morimura, a Japanese writer who helped force a reckoning upon his country with his 1981 exposé of Unit 731, a secret biological warfare branch of the Imperial Army that subjected thousands of people in occupied China to sadistic medical experiments during World War II, died July 24 at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 90.
Morimura's book sold astonishingly well even when it was unusual to confronted people in Japan with the imperial crimes of their nation.
Unit 731 was at its time only comparable to some Nazi doctors who widely experimented on humans:
At a time when Japanese textbooks often minimized atrocities committed by Japan during the war, Mr. Morimura interviewed dozens of veterans of Unit 731 and documented in harrowing detail the conduct of the operation, which was established in 1938 near the Chinese city of Harbin by Japanese medical officer Shiro Ishii.
Disguised as an epidemic prevention and water purification department, the unit functioned through the end of the war as a testing ground for agents of biological warfare. Mr. Morimura’s work helped prompt more investigations in the 1980s and 1990s, which in turn led to a court case that further revealed the extent of the atrocities.
The perpetrators included many respected Japanese physicians. Thousands of people — mainly Chinese, but also Koreans, Russians and prisoners of eight total nationalities, according to Mr. Morimura — endured medical experiments that have been compared to those of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
Victims, referred to in Japanese as “marutas,” or wooden logs, were infected with typhus, typhoid, cholera, anthrax and the plague with the goal of perfecting biological weapons. Some prisoners were then vivisected without anesthetic so that researchers could observe the effects of the disease on the human body.
“I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped,” one unnamed member of the unit told the New York Times in 1995, recalling a victim who had been infected with the plague. “This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.”
Several thousand people, and maybe many more, were experimented to death by the unit.
When the second world war was over Unit 731 members were supposed to be put on trial for the war crimes they had committed. The U.S. military stopped that as it had planned to use what Unit 731 had learned for its own wars:
Cont. reading: Washington Post Still Covers Up U.S. War Crimes And Use Of Biological Weapons
Judge Rejects Hunter Biden’s Dirty Plea Deal
Yesterday Delaware US District Judge Maryellen Noreika nixed a plea deal negotiated between Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark and the prosecutor team from Joe Biden's Department of Justice.
Hunter Biden is accused of two tax misdemeanors and wrongdoing in a gun case.
The deal was constructed in an unusual way that would have given Hunter Biden immunity over additional accusations of not having registered as a foreign agent under the FARA law.
The tax and gun cases were split and the judge would have only been given judicial oversight over the tax issue plea while the immunity part was hidden in the gun case plea deal, a diversion agreement, where the judicial oversight would have stayed with the prosecutor. The wide ranging immunity part would thus have been hidden from the public.
The well explained legal technicalities can be found in this tweet:
Will Scharf @willscharf – 10:35 UTC · Jul 27, 2023
Based on conversations with people who were in the courtroom today, and my experience as a former federal prosecutor, I think I know the full story of what happened with the Hunter Biden plea agreement blow-up this morning.
Bear with me, because this is a little complicated: … Show more:
The results of the dirty deal would have been very generous for Hunter but the judge didn't fall for the trick:
Cont. reading: Judge Rejects Hunter Biden’s Dirty Plea Deal
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-180
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 2023-179
News & views (not related to the war in Ukraine) …
Battle For Robotyne – Ukraine Open Thread 2023-178
It seems that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have had a bad day so far.
Yesterday they made another reconnaissance attack on Robotyne, south of Orkiv. It cost them 2 tanks. This morning they launched a much bigger attack in which at least three motorized battalions with tanks took part. They managed to get to the north-east end east of Robotyne but did not enter the town.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense the attack cost the Ukrainian army 22 tanks, 10 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and one armored combat vehicle. Several of these losses have been confirmed by drone videos from the region.
Over 100 Ukrainians were killed or wounded during that attack alone. The Ukrainian forces are retreating.
Yesterday the Ukrainian forces lost a total 20 artillery pieces. It is only the second time during the 50+ days of the Ukrainian counter-offensive that this level was reached. The losses included 5 2S1 Gvozdika self propelled howitzer, 3 Polish made Krab self propelled howitzer, 3 M-777 howitzer and several other types of bigger guns.
The Ukrainian friendly LiveUAmap shows Robotyne in Ukrainian hand.
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However, even the Ukrainian Defense Ministry made no such claim. According to various Russian sources the town is still in Russian hands.
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Use this thread as open thread related to Ukraine.
An open thread for other issues can be found here.
Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine?
A main question for Ukraine since it became an independent state was who or what could potentially guarantee its security.
In the first years after 1991 the Ukrainian government thought that it could secure itself. It had inherited some Soviet nuclear weapons and it tried to bring those to use. But it failed to circumvent the security locks the Russian engineers had integrated into the nuclear warheads.
There was also pressure from the U.S. to get rid of those devices as the Ukraine at that time was prolific in selling its Soviet era weapons to various shady actors around the world.
Ukraine, together with Belarus and Kazakhstan, was pressed to enter the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In exchange it got the Budapest Memorandum, a weak promise of non-interference:
The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.
Two side notes are of interest:
- Ambassador Donald M. Blinken is the father of the current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
- Formally Russia has not broken the Budapest Memorandum. It recognized the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states. It signed security agreements with them and then entered the war in Ukraine, which had been ongoing since 2014, under Article 51 – common self defense – of the Charter of the United Nations. Jurists will debate that argument for years but it is not dissimilar to the argument NATO used to justify the violent break-up Yugoslavia.
After the Budapest Memorandum was signed the Soviet nuclear weapons weapons Ukraine and others still had were sent back to Russia.
Cont. reading: Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine?
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-177
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
The Failed State Effort Of Indicting Trump
The effort Biden's Justice Department puts into preventing the leader of its opposition from gaining another presidency has reached an insane level.
As Inquiries Compound, Justice System Pours Resources Into Scrutinizing Trump – NY Times – Jul 23, 2023
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing criminal investigations into former President Donald J. Trump, employs 40 to 60 career prosecutors, paralegals and support staff, augmented by a rotating cast of F.B.I. agents and technical specialists, according to people familiar with the situation.
In his first four months on the job, starting in November, Mr. Smith’s investigation incurred expenses of $9.2 million. That included $1.9 million to pay the U.S. Marshals Service to protect Mr. Smith, his family and other investigators who have faced threats after the former president and his allies singled them out on social media.
At this rate, the special counsel is on track to spend about $25 million a year.
With that budget and the brainpower of such a large staff one could find fault with anyone and indict any person for whatever without much problems.
If this would happen in a foreign democracy that is not friendly with the U.S. the State Department and various think tanks would be outraged about such anti-democratic behavior. It would be explained as a sign that the state in question is falling apart.
The main driver of all these efforts and their concurrent expenses is Mr. Trump’s own behavior — his unwillingness to accept the results of an election as every one of his predecessors has done, his refusal to heed his own lawyers’ advice and a grand jury’s order to return government documents and his lashing out at prosecutors in personal terms.
That all might be a bit outrageous but what is actual criminal with it? The government documents are back to where they are supposed to be and none were reportedly of any great significance. So why still make such a fuzz about them?
Seen from the outside U.S. internal politics now look like a bad reality show. This is not the self confident behavior of an elite of the sole superpower the U.S. still pretends to be.
There is a theory that the U.S. is undergoing some form of sovietization with a similar accumulation of defects and inefficiencies as occurred in the U.S.S.R. before it fell apart.
I am not sure that it is the case, but many significant factors – transportation, public service, health, education, industry, policies – now look worse to me than I remember them to be.
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-176
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-175
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
> BRUSSELS—When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.
They haven’t. …<
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-175
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-174
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
The U.S. Wars Against Russia And China Have No Economic Logic Attached To Them
The U.S. politician Zbigniew Brzezinski was a hardliner with a (neo-)liberal core. He had a wide influence on U.S. policies:
Brzezinski is the author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, a 1997 book on geopolitics that was based on Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. Brzezinski argued that the US could retain global supremacy only if it prevented the emergence of a single power on the World-Island.
The Brzezinski Doctrine remains influential in the US foreign-policy establishment. His protégés, among them Ukrainian émigré Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, are a powerful voice in the US State Department.
Brzezinski had argued that without Ukraine, Russia would be unable to rule the Asian heartland and could not challenge U.S. power.
But I just learned via a Pepe Esobar essay about Henry Kissinger's visit and a potential great power war with China, that Brezezinski had in later years changed his mind:
“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to "realign the global power architecture".
In a longer piece published in 2016 in American Interest, Brzezinski indeed argued for great power cooperation:
Cont. reading: The U.S. Wars Against Russia And China Have No Economic Logic Attached To Them
Something Amiss
There is a war happening in Europe that is, interestingly, no longer mentioned on the first two screens of the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times.
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The failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and its lack of any viable way to win the conflict seems to be sinking in.
Cont. reading: Something Amiss
Weak Propaganda Talk
From the Ukrainian Pravda, July 20, 2023 (machine translation):
The Ukrainian military in the south is advancing hundreds of meters every day – the National Guard
Every day, the Ukrainian military makes a gradual movement several hundred meters to the south and southeast.
Source: Military Media Center , which cites the words of the director of the department of planning for the use of the Main Directorate of the National Guard of Ukraine, Colonel Mykola Urshalovych
Direct speech: "In extremely difficult conditions of mined terrain and enemy fire… our assault groups, supported by tanks and artillery, continue their gradual movement to the south and southeast, displacing the invaders from Ukrainian land. Our soldiers and officers are literally gnawing through the enemy's defenses.
Every day we advance several hundred meters."
Prehistory:
- Earlier, the commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said that although the counteroffensive is taking place more slowly than it would be desirable, the Defense Forces are still advancing daily with battles at a distance of 500 m to 1 km.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive began on June 5, 2023. The (Ukraine friendly) LiveUAmap on that day looked like this:
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Forty five days have passed since the counter-offensive was launched. Today the map looks like this:
Cont. reading: Weak Propaganda Talk
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-173
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 2023-172
News & views (not related to the war in Ukraine) …
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