Jan 1 The New Year Edition
Day 312: selected posts and readings
Catching up…
EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date- hop over to Scott’s amazing hourly Ukraine up-date page. I’ll fill in with some bits and bobs.
Stories we’re following…
I’m in my kitchen (yes, cooking, cooking, ok?!?) and the lasagne ingredients are staring me down. My culinary secret? I just make it up as I go along. I’m the daughter of a chef and sommelier, and he didn’t think of giving me those flippin genes.
The dogs keep coming in and out- I’ve become the doorman to their wonderlust whims. Once I start cooking, they’ll be milling around, looking up at me with those soft eyes. Oh, there’s a cat too- Gin&Tonic- and a cow- Cindy. I’m not kidding. Yes, it’s a zoo.
My guests are stirring. I can hear feet on the parquet upstairs, heading to the bathroom, so I better get the coffee going, and pull out the pandoro from the pantry. I warm it up a little- it releases the sweet fragrance of butter and vanilla that fills the kitchen.
That’s my morning, this morning, January 1st, 2023.
I’ll be checking the feeds occasionally, hoping and praying no one will die today in Ukraine. I’ll reach out to my work husband and work wife and friends.
On the off chance you had free time today, I put together some readings for this post. Sorry, they aren’t happy go lucky reads. So if you’re not in the mood, keep it for another day- they’re well worth it. Please watch President Zelensky’s midnight address in the previous post: it’s inspiring.
Stanislav Aseyev: Accountability…
Today in Ukraine people will not talk to you if you think that only Putin is to blame for the war. They will not listen to you if you offer them the Russian liberals’ favorite formulation: “not everything is so simple” “there are good Russians”.
For Ukrainians, everything is crystal clear: Russia is to blame - all of Russia, without a list of "good people". Putin? - Of course, there is nothing to discuss here. His entourage and the military elite of the Russian Federation? - Yes, they deserve only hatred.
Russian propagandists who day after day put machine guns into the hands and heads of the new conscripts? - Their responsibility is perhaps even deeper than Putin's. But who comes next on the list?
Next come the “simple and unfortunate Russian people,” “our boys,” as Russian liberals like to call them. In Ukraine, these “boys” do not elicit even hatred, only contempt. They are the ones who carried out unspeakable atrocities in Bucha, Irpin, and Izium.
It was their bomb that fell on the Mariupol Theatre, despite a huge inscription CHILDREN visible even from the sky. These are their wives in the Urals, in Siberia, who allow their husbands to rape Ukrainian women and urge them to "take a mixer in addition to a washing machine".
These are thousands of convicts now fighting in the "Wagner group" - especially dangerous recidivists, rapists, and murderers in whose prison subculture rape is a pervasive fact of social life. These are “our boys” whom “ordinary Russian people” support.
They stayed home and watched the massacre in Ukraine on channel Russia-24 while enjoying their New Years Olivier salad. These “simple people” also include “simple Russian teachers” who are waiting for “our boys” to return from the front with victory and promise to indoctrinate their children in the memory of the “the new holy war.” These are thousands of Russian Orthodox priests who inspire the millions in their flocks with the idea of a war against Satanists and bless Russian soldiers for this war.
Russia will not be able to evade responsibility by hiding behind Putin’s mask and imaginary sociology. You all will have to answer for every exhumed body on Ukrainian land.
Khurshudyan & al, Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war- WaPo
After weeks of fighting for scraps of territory on the war’s bloodiest front, Oleh, a 21-year-old Ukrainian company commander, was summoned suddenly last August, along with thousands of other soldiers, to an obscure rendezvous point in the Kharkiv region.
At his last position, relentless Russian artillery fire had stalked his men’s every step. But here, in a patch of villages, farmland and streams in Ukraine’s northeast, the quiet was deeply alarming. “The silence bothered me the most,” Oleh said. “It seemed off. How could this be?”
Even more unsettling were the orders his superiors handed down: to charge as far as 40 miles into enemy territory at high speed in an audacious, top-secret counteroffensive — directly between the Russian-occupied stronghold of Izyum and Russia’s own Belgorod region dotted with military bases. It seemed preposterous. “Some kind of dubious operation,” Oleh said.
Michael Weiss, End of year thread with @holger_r: Estonian military analyst "Karl" on what to expect in Ukraine in 2023
Karl's assessment: "If current trends continue, Ukraine will have liberated close to all of its territory (including Crimea) by end of 2023."
"Let’s start with an overview of the current situation. No breakthroughs after Kherson but that was predictable. There was a slight hope that Ukraine could have success on the front in northern Luhansk but Russia has managed to hold on there due to its mobilized troops."
"Ukraine is slowly advancing towards Kreminna. The highway to the east of the town is under Ukrainian artillery range but Russian troops can still pass (though at a risk). If Ukraine could pull Kreminna at least halfway into a sack, it would force Russia to retreat."
"On the southern frontline Ukraine has been systematically destroying Russian logistics and supply routes. It’s similar to what they did with the western bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson this summer. But the area in the south is much larger and supply lines are better."
"Railroad connection has been cut off by Ukraine but highways are still open. One truck can carry a tank or at max two armored vehicles. And with all the bumps and conditions on the road, such equipment is already getting worn out while only transported."
"This means the lifetime in the frontline will be smaller. Ukraine’s breakthrough in the south will not happen in the next few weeks but likely late winter/early spring. That’s provided that western help to Ukraine continues at the current level or increases."
"Most of all Ukraine needs armor, tanks and missiles with longer range to hit specific targets. Of course also fighter jets are needed but it takes longer to make them operational."
"Russia's efforts are still concentrated around Bakhmut but their success there is even more limited than that of Ukraine in Kreminna. Occasionally they advance a few kilometers and then lose that ground. It’s positional warfare."
"The only realistic development over the next weeks can be in Kreminna. If Ukraine takes control of it, it will open up the way to the triple towns of Rubizhne, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk."
"Ukraine is also very close to Lysychansk from the south. The frontline there is between the villages of Verkhnokamyanske (under Ukrainian control) & Verkhnokamyanka (under Russian control). When Ukraine gets control of that village, Lysychansk will be just 10 km away."
"Ukraine has all prerequisites to achieve success both in the south and in northern Luhansk in the next 6 months, maybe even sooner. Getting the three towns would mean being very close to Feb. 24 lines in Luhansk."
"Russia is numbering between 600-700 KIAs a day, the same in wounded. Without mobilization they’d already been broken. Such losses equal 2 BTGs per day."
"In 1-2 months they will run out of troops and will need to run another wave of mobilization or change the law and mobilize all under conscription."
"It’s not in any way realistic to compose a larger strike force from the first mobilization wave. It is not possible that they’d still have 150k mobilized troops in training."
"The max number that they managed to mobilize was 250k and more than 150k out of them have already been deployed in Ukraine. Their max reserve is 50-75k men."
"If the U.S. supplies Ukraine with some heavily needed things -- tanks and missiles -- Kyiv will be able to liberate close to all of its territory by end of next year. That includes Crimea. Only some areas of Donbass might stay under Russian control."
"The U.S. is very close to supplying Ukraine with Bradley fighting vehicles. They're not ultra powerful, but modern, fast and effective. They would open up a way to provide heavier equipment."
"The U.S. is really cautious in taking next steps but that cautiousness also means the prolonging of the war."
"It doesn’t seem like Ukraine itself will be militarily in a critical situation. They might run another mobilization wave but only to recruit for very specific tasks/jobs. Ukraine hasn’t sent all of the reserves that became vacant from Kherson into battle again."
"They are rotating their units quicker than Russia and can allow them to have rest. The strategic risk for Ukraine is when the frontline really freezes; they won’t have another breakthrough for months to come. Then the pressure for talks (from the West) will increase again."
"Right now everyone understands that there will be no talks. Putin has lost more than half of the territory that Russia gained in the beginning of the war but they still have under their control much more than before Feb. 24. Peace talks now would mean a win for Russia."
Editorial Board, Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children are a genocidal crime- WaPo
War is chaotic, inexplicable and devastating to children caught up in it. But war is not an excuse to abduct children from parents and their nation, as Russia is now doing in Ukraine. This is specifically prohibited by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia — and attempts to brainwash them, removing their language and culture — is a genocidal crime that calls for prosecution.
The seizure of these children appears to violate the treaty, which seeks to outlaw acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The treaty prohibits “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Some international law experts have argued that the genocide convention also prohibits acts to destroy a protected group’s culture, language and religion” — including that of children. The facts Ms. Lvova-Belova and Mr. Putin have acknowledged about assimilating the Ukrainian children into Russia and eradicating their culture provide evidence of intent to commit genocide as defined by the treaty.
The provision in the genocide treaty was adopted in the shadow of Nazi atrocities, including a scheme directed by Heinrich Himmler to snatch children from Poland and place them in German orphanages or with German families to be raised as Germans. The first convictions at the Nazi war crimes trials were for child abductions. Prosecutor Harold Neely declared that “it is no defense for a kidnapper to say he treated his victim well,” noting that “these innocent children were abducted for the very purpose of being indoctrinated with Nazi ideology and brought up as ‘good’ Germans. This serves to aggravate, not mitigate, the crime.”
Andy Greenberg, Russia’s Cyberwar Foreshadowed Deadly Attacks on Civilians- Wired
FOR EIGHT LONG years prior to Russia's disastrous and brutal invasion of its neighbor in February, the Kremlin instead waged a limited war in the east of the country, throwing that eastern border region into a state of turmoil, all while raining down cyberattacks on Ukraine's critical infrastructure far beyond any war zone. Many military and cybersecurity observers around the world warned that Russia's scorched-earth hacking was demonstrating a playbook that would, sooner or later, be used outside of Ukraine too—a warning that soon proved true, with cyberattacks that struck everything from American hospitals to the 2018 Winter Olympics.
But looking back on nearly a year of Vladimir Putin's full-blown war in Ukraine, it's now clear that Russia's earlier cyberwar in the country also served as a different sort of harbinger: It foreshadowed exactly how Russia would carry out its full-scale physical attacks on Ukraine, with a vastly greater human cost. In 2022's war, just as in that earlier digital blitz, Russia's real playbook has proven to be one of ruthless bombardment of civilian critical infrastructure, with no tactical intention other than to project its power and inflict pain hundreds of miles past the war's front lines.
Dan Sabbagh, GCHQ chief: western spy agencies must ‘pre-bunk’ disinformation- The Guardian
Western spy agencies should use intelligence to “pre-bunk” narratives pushed by Russia and other authoritarian states, the head of GCHQ has said while guest editing BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Jeremy Fleming, who leads the largest of Britain’s three main intelligence agencies, said on Thursday the war in Ukraine had prompted a significant opening up, in a Christmas broadcast co-produced by a serving spy chief for the first time.
But Fleming – who was interviewing one of his US counterparts, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence – acknowledged the new public outreach effort had had more impact in western countries than elsewhere around the world.
“You’ve put a lot of effort into getting secret intelligence, but I always think it’s no point collecting it unless you use it,” Fleming said. “The sea change we’ve seen during this conflict of getting the intelligence out there and using it to ‘pre bunk’.”