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A Look At Others’ Notes On Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is currently in a rather quiet phase, mostly because of bad weather with heavy rain and snow.
via time and date – bigger
Today's daily report (in Russian) by the Russian Ministry of Defense adds up to only 340 Ukrainian casualties, i.e. dead and wounded. That is the second lowest count since early March when I started to sum up the daily numbers.
The bad weather will continue over the next weeks. It prevents drones from flying and movement across now swampy fields. The level of fighting will thus be low.
Nonetheless the war continues. Recently several bigger pieces, nearly all pessimistic for Ukraine, have come out in the main stream media.
Simplicitus has a long overview of these:
New Raft of Articles Tighten the Screws on Zelensky, Plead for Course Correction
Several non-mainstream writers have also taken a deeper look:
Sergei Witte, aka BigSerge, has published a long overview over the war:
Russo-Ukrainian War: The Reckoning
Russia scholar Gordon Hahn looks at the influence the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine will have on Russia's society:
In Putin’s Russia Politics is War by Other Means and War is Revolutionizing Russian Military Affairs
While comparing the SMO to the totally devastating war on Gaza he writes:
Russia’s war strategy and tactics are designed precisely to avoid and eschew practices that would bring large numbers of Ukrainian civilian and Russian military casualties. The strategy is to destroy Ukrainian military forces and potential. For now, Russia pursues victory in its SVO not for the sake of territorial conquest, contrary to Western delusions, but to defeat the Ukrainian army and Maidan regime force Kiev to acquiesce to its political goals:
(1) accept Russia’s annexations of territories under threat from Ukrainian discrimination, repression, and violence;
(2) renounce membership and close ties with NATO;
(3) and adopt measures to protect the Russian language and ethnic Russians in whatever rump Ukraine remains.
This will amount to Putin’s declared goals of ‘demilitarization’ and ‘denazification’ of Maidan Ukraine.
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism is looking at what may be left or not within a future state of Ukraine:
Ukraine End Game: Putin and Medvedev Discuss Maps, Putting Kiev on the Menu
She correctly notes:
Militarily, Ukraine is approaching a catastrophic condition. That does not mean a collapse is imminent; key variables include whether the Ukraine military leadership revolts against Zelensky and how hard Russia pushes into growing Ukraine weakness. Russia may prefer to go slowly (mind you, it is making a concerted effort to crack the well fortified Avdiivka), not just to reduce losses of its troops, but also to more thoroughly bleed out Ukraine and give the West time to adjust psychologically to Ukraine’s prostration.
I largely agree with all the above pieces. Together the present an excellent and realistic picture of the state of the war and its larger consequences.
Additionally of note is a recent El Pais piece in which members of 47th Ukrainian brigade, trained on and equipped with western weapons, describe their losses, weapon failures and their lack of ammunition:
In the siege of the front of Ukrainian Avdiivka: “The Russians are more prepared for the war and to die” (in Spanish) (archived)
The Bulgarian Military website has some English language excerpts from the above:
Ukrainian officer: My M109 Paladin SPH has an accuracy error of 70m
I can not add much to all of that writing. Just a tiny item from a new New York Times piece of the war:
In Ukraine’s Slowed-Down War, Death Comes as Quickly as Ever
Frederick B. Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe, cautioned that it was misleading to gauge Ukraine’s success simply by the territory its forces had gained. He said he was continually struck by “how linear and land-centric some of the observers” of the war remain.
Indeed – the war is not about territory. It is about defeating the enemy. As Gordon Hahn wrote above:
This will amount to Putin’s declared goals of ‘demilitarization’ and ‘denazification’ of Maidan Ukraine.
As long as the Ukrainian army attacks there is no need for the Russian military to take more territory. It simply demilitarizes whatever comes up its way.
The NYT piece leaves out where Hodges is coming from. Previous NYT pieces noted that was working as a lobbyist:
… Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis.
The Center for European Policy Analysis, or CEPA, is anti-Russian lobby shop in Washington DC that is financed by techno billionaires, weapon manufacturers, the U.S. State Department and NATO.
But what is with Hodges' quote and why do I point it out.
Well, here it is in its entirety:
Frederick B. Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe, cautioned that it was misleading to gauge Ukraine’s success simply by the territory its forces had gained. He said he was continually struck by “how linear and land-centric some of the observers” of the war remain.
“How telling that after nine years of conflict, two years since Russia’s invasion, with all the advantages the Kremlin has on its side, they can control only around 18 percent of Ukraine,” he said.
How does this make sense?
- Sentence 1+2: Accounting for Ukraine's success in the war by looking at the amount of territory it has retaken makes no sense.
- Sentence 3: We should measure Russia's success in the war by looking at the amount of territory it has taken.
Where is the logic in that?
Patroklos @ 42, Bevin @ 47, Exile @ 49, Trubindi @ 56:
Bevin provided the history but not a possible future. Let me try.
I’d want to know if President-elect Javier Milei has the support of the armed forces.
Say what you like about Argentina’s armed forces in the past, when they probably were hotbeds of extreme fascism and harboured more than a few runaway German Nazis who taught their Argentine students how to torture people, but the days of Jorge Rafael Videla may be long past and the armed forces may have changed their culture and politics.
Suppose Milei carries out what he has threatened to do – completely privatise education from university level right down to kindergarten and preschool levels, abolish universal health care, remove laws allowing abortion and same-sex marriage, and return Argentina to a state that might even horrify long-time Francoist supporters in Spain – and on top of that announce that Argentina is going to send forces to assist Satanyahu in his annihilation of Gaza and the West Bank, and then go on to invade southern Lebanon to grab the Litani River and Bekaa Valley.
Will the armed forces of Argentina stand for that? Or will Milei and his equally odious vice-president Victoria Villarruel be signing their death warrants as leaders and politicians?
Milei’s denialism of the dictatorship fails to garner support in Argentine barracks (Federico Rivas Molina / El Pais, 16 November 2023)
The current military, trained under democracy, has distanced itself from the rhetoric promoted by the far-right presidential candidate and his running mate Victoria Villarruel
Javier Milei, the presidential candidate of Argentina’s ultra-right wing, has turned the consensus that has kept Argentina’s democracy afloat for 40 years on its head. He intends to end public education and health, defund universities, and opposes abortion and egalitarian marriage laws. Part of this “cultural war,” as he terms it, involves a condescending re-reading of the country’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and state terrorism. At the forefront of this denialism is Milei’s vice-presidential candidate, Victoria Villarruel, the granddaughter, daughter and niece of military personnel who has campaigned for what she calls a “complete memory” that includes the victims of guerrilla actions against the dictatorship and the shelving cases for crimes against humanity that are still open in Argentina. Her discourse, however, has not gained the backing she anticipated in the barracks. The new generations of military personnel, some of them born in democracy and all of them educated in it, consider that putting the issue of illegal repression on the agenda goes against years of efforts to clean up their image.
The Armed Forces controlled Argentine politics for more than 50 years. In 1930, with the first coup d’état, it initiated a long series of attempts to repress first the Radical Civic Union (UCR), and then, from 1955 onwards, Peronism. By the time power was handed over in 1983, the military had forcibly removed five democratic governments from the Casa Rosada, not counting changes of command within the presidential palace. The president of the transition, the radical Raúl Alfonsín, tried the dictatorship’s leaders in 1985. In 1991, a Peronist, Carlos Menem, pardoned them. However, under Menem, a process of de-financing the Armed Forces and the withdrawal of troops to the barracks also began. Today, the Argentine military wants nothing to do with politics. And the democratic consensus around “Never Again” neutralized any attempt to rewrite history or politically glorify state terrorism. Until now.
When Milei was questioned about the dictatorship during the first presidential candidates’ debate, he repeated the words of Admiral Emilio Massera during the trial of the leaders of the military junta. He said that in the 1970s there was “a war” in which “excesses” were committed, but never an illegal systematic plan of extermination. He was the first presidential aspirant who dared to say as much, and the first who did not lose votes as a result. Villarruel goes further still. She intends to put an end to the trials for crimes against humanity, to turn the Museum and Site of Memory that stands on the location of the largest detention and torture center of the dictatorship, the ESMA, into a place for the enjoyment “of all Argentine people” and to purge the pension program received by the victims. Villarruel also denies that the number of disappeared people under the dictatorship was 30,000, as human rights organizations claim, but “only” the 8,961 recorded by the Truth Commission set up by Alfonsín at the beginning of his administration.
Villarruel’s discourse resonates among retired military officers, who held positions during the dictatorship and many of whom were convicted of crimes or have open proceedings against them for crimes against humanity. But not among current officers, trained in democracy. “We are another generation and we are upset,” says a navy source on condition of anonymity, as military personnel are prevented by regulation from expressing any political opinion. “Those from that era [the dictatorship] have already paid, they were convicted. Why return to a discourse that continues to work against you after 40 years?”
The same question is asked by Argentine political scientist Victoria Murillo, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. “Parties like [Marine Le Pen’s] National Rally in France initially sought to influence the public policy agenda. Once the public policy agenda changes, it is easier for them to accumulate votes. When an issue becomes normal, the extreme party becomes less extreme,” she explains.
Villarruel, in fact, has crossed several red lines, such as proposing that the Argentine Armed Forces carry out internal security tasks on a par with the police or the gendarmerie. Today, they are forbidden from doing so by an Alfonsín-era law that guaranteed the submission of the military to civilian power. “The Armed Forces, after the dictatorship, do not want to get into that game, which made us lose credibility, funds, properties”, says the same navy source. The government also considers that the military does not want to get involved in the fight against drug trafficking or common crime. “There is a lot of rejuvenation, with batches of young professionals. Nobody wants to get involved in national security issues, because they consider it a problem and know they are not prepared for it,” says an official source familiar with the sector. For Villarruel, the reluctance makes sense, because in the cases in which the army has been involved in internal security “corruption has increased.”
“And who are the military officers who publicly support Villarruel? They are early retirees who do not collect retirement benefits, individual cases with little internal ascendancy,” say government sources. This reticence, however, did not prevent many of them from voting, eventually, for Milei. Villarruel has promised this sector of the military a significant increase in the budget if she and Milei reach the Casa Rosada. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to gain support in the barracks.
If the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo are outlawed by the new Milei government, that just might tip the Argentine public and the armed forces into a revolt. Would Villarruel be so cruel and so stupid to do that? My guess is that she is.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Nov 21 2023 1:47 utc | 81
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