Paying Russian soldiers to destroy the Russian army is cost effective

I downloaded the Michigan COVID data, updated yesterday. The numbers for the last few weeks have been adjusted, as they frequently are. The peaks in new cases per day for the last four weeks are: 1374, 940, 746, 915. Yes, that is a bump up in the last week. It is still too soon to tell whether this is a wiggle in a new plateau or the start of another variant surge. I’ve heard news reports saying cases are up in Europe due to an omicron variant. And over the last couple years cases rising there are followed two weeks later by cases rising here. Deaths per day for March 6-13 have been in the 11-20 range. That’s good news! My task for today was to snake out the drain under the kitchen sink. It isn’t a hard job with PVC pipes with connectors that can be loosened by hand. But it sure is a messy job. I searched my blog posts and see I wrote about snaking the drain back in March 2017. It went a lot more smoothly today and didn’t need trips to the hardware store. Snaking the drain once every five years – not bad! About the time Biden was talking to Xi of China Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the role China might play in Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the one-month mark, day to day events are still unpredictable, but the ultimate outcome is clear — Russia has lost. The combination of hard resistance from the Ukrainian military, refusal to accept Russian domination by the Ukrainian people, and the world uniting to both provide defensive weapons to Ukraine and punish Vladimir Putin for starting this brutal war of aggression, makes it impossible for Russia to come out of this on top. The cost on every level: economic, diplomatic, military, leaves Russia hugely diminished from it’s standing on the day before the tanks rolled in. No matter what form the end of the invasion takes, for Russia it has been an absolute disaster whose effects will impoverish and isolate the country for decades. There is really only one possible place that Putin can turn for help: China.

China has questions to ponder. Does allowing a partner to fail, militarily and financially, harm China’s ability to form alliances? Might China prop up Putin to prolong the war to drain NATO resources? Other than that advantages of taking Russia’s side are quite small. I mentioned the big rally Putin held in a stadium. The BBC was there. While there were great images of cheering, attendees talked about being forced to be there and not supporting the war. Sumner discussed the way various kinds of Russian missiles work. Then he noted Russia may be running out of them. A thousand missiles fired into Ukraine in three weeks sounds like a lot – though when the US invaded Iraq it used 3,000 in two days. Sumner also included a brief summary of the phone call between Biden and Xi. Looks like they covered the expected topics. Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed a video that Arnold Schwarzenegger created to talk directly to the Russian people. Arnold spoke of his admiration of them, then said this is Putin’s war, not theirs. And it looks like he was able to get it past Russian blocks on social media. Einenkel included the nine minute video if you want to watch (I didn’t). Kos of Kos summarized the status of the war. The US media should not say Russia is doing a “strategic pause” – Russia is just stuck. Also, Ukrainians are pushing Russian’s back. Part of that is Ukrainian soldiers defending places like the interior and Odesa are seeing Russia won’t get that far. So they are available to go to where the fighting is. Kos linked to another thread by Kamil Galeev who discussed demographics as a bottleneck to Russian war efforts. Syria’s demographic chart is a pyramid, wide at the bottom, narrow at the top. The average age is young. But the Russian demographic chart shows the generations getting smaller under 40, which is the average age. Ukraine also has a high average age. The demographic charts at the time of the Russian revolution and WWII were pyramid shape. They had the young people who could fight wars – though only 3% of the men in the high school class of 1941 survived the war. That means Russia doesn’t have a big population of fighting age men. Those in the army are mostly conscripts. Those with any talent or means dodged the draft. So those in the army are not the best the country had to offer. The men are frequently from poor circumstances or from an ethnic minority. The army is much less Russian than before. Given a way out, these conscripts will take it. Such as offering a couple thousand bucks and a way to somewhere warm to put the wrong kind of oil into a military vehicle. Paying Russian soldiers to destroy the Russian army is cost effective. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article from Bulwark that included a tweet from Dmitri Alperovitch. First the tweet:

Zelensky to Russian parents: “There are phone numbers you can find online that you can call and find out what is really happening to your children. We did not plan to take thousands of prisoners” Zelensky with powerful message to Russian soldiers’ parents: “We do not need 13 thousand or more dead Russian soldiers. We do not need that. We didn’t want this war. We only want peace. And we want you to love your children more than you fear your government”

And commentary from Bulwark:

What’s notable about this appeal is that you can only talk like this from a position of strength. Zelensky does not have to posture and pretend to be tough; he does not have to boost morale at home by talking about unleashing hell on evil Russian soldiers. Ukrainian forces have been so successful that he can attack Putin’s regime by going directly to the Russian people and position himself as their ally.

Kos reported that around Kyiv the Russian forces are digging in – creating berms of dirt to protect and hide their heavy equipment. This is not something an attacking army does. It’s what an army under attack does. Kos included a tweet from Nexta TV. Their subscribers report that Lithuanians donated their SUVs to the Ukraine defense force. There is a 45 second video of a long convoy of car carriers full of these SUVs. And each vehicle is filled with humanitarian aid. There was also a convoy of Spanish taxis that brought 100 refugees to Madrid. And a convoy of 22 firetrucks from Britain full of fire fighting and rescue equipment heading to Ukraine. Commenter randym77 quoted an image tweeted by Antti Hyttinen of a proposed LEGO kit of a Ukrainian tractor pulling a Russian tank. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

Yesterday Russia announced that they're hitting Biden, Blinken, and other top U.S. officials with sanctions. Oh, that's adorable—they're doing their own sanctions. It's like when you give your kid a bubble lawnmower and they're like, “I'm a world power, too!” And you're like, “You sure are, buddy, you're doing a great job.” —Stephen Colbert