Perceived as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave

I take a couple days off from blogging and browser tabs accumulate. So a lot of the Daily Kos Ukraine updates will get just a brief mention (if I haven’t closed the tab already). In an update from Monday (2/28) Kos of Kos discussed how human interactions are defined by myths. There is a story about a Russian fighting force that won a lot because they had a myth they were invincible. Then they ran into fighters that didn’t know about the myth and the Russians fled. Yes, the parallels between that story and the fight in Ukraine are intentional (though Russia hasn’t fled yet). And now the Ukrainians are building their own myths. Also on Monday Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Russia appears to be replacing competency with brutality. He also reported there’s a new thing – videos on TikTok by Ukrainians that explain how to operate abandoned or captured Russian military vehicles. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, included the news that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said his government will more than double its military investments. Prof Talmadgs responded:

It's beyond ironic that Russia's supposed effort to create a neutral buffer zone against foreign attack through Ukraine is now prompting huge increases in GERMAN defense spending. Talk about causing the thing you've spent 77 years fearing.

In another Monday update Kos included a tweet by Christo Grozev. There was a meeting between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators hoping to work out a cease fire. The Russians showed up in suits. The Ukrainians showed up dressed for battle. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that Lev Ponomaryov, a prominent Russian human rights activist launched a petition for Russians against war with Ukraine. As of last Friday it has more than than a million signatures. In a Tuesday update Sumner listed the status of the fight. Some of it: A Russian missile took out the Kyiv TV tower, cutting off a vital channel of communication. Russia is already filling the void with lies. Shelves in Kyiv stores are bare. But Russia is no closer to toppling Kyiv. Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, frequently at odds with the Stalin and the Soviet regime, outlived that tyrant. His symphonies 7 through 13 say a lot about the WWII years. The 9th was supposed to be this big victory celebration. It comes across more of a jocular tease. The 13th is titled Babi Yar and the text for the soloists and chorus (I think men only) describe the site near Kyiv, Ukraine where over two days during WWII the Germans massacred 34,000 Jews. One reviewer described it as something everyone should listen to once in their life but probably can’t bear to listen to a second time. I’ve heard it twice and lived to tell about it because the text is Russian and I really don’t know what they’re singing about. And at least the second time I wasn't paying close attention. All of Shostakovich symphonies have something important to say. A few depict the Russian revolution. The 5th, a good place to start in listening to them, was written to return to the good graces of the Soviets and the last movement is either a good Stalinist victory hymn or a dark parody of one. Hard to tell. The second movement of the 10th is reportedly a frightening depiction of Stalin. The WQXR website has a page set up to listen to all 15 symphonies. I highly recommend his music. I took that diversion into Shostakovich because Sumner reported that Putin’s forces have bombed the Jewish cemetery next to Babyn Yar Holocaust Museum in Kyiv. The name refers to Babi Yar, though I don’t know how the two spellings relate. I’ve heard the museum is undamaged. This bombing shows Putin’s claim of wanting a “deNazification” of Kyiv to be a lie. In a Tuesday (yesterday – 3/1) update Sumner included a video of unarmed Ukrainian civilians blocking a Russian convoy – that didn’t result in mass casualties. There have been at least three of these types of incidents. Sumner says that means many Russian troops identify with the Ukrainians and don’t want to engage in the brutality that was seen in Chechnya. Sergey Lavrov was the name I heard when US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held meetings with a Russian. He’s also the guy Michael Flynn kept informed when the nasty guy was transitioning into the White House. Sumner included a video showing when Lavrov rose to speak at the UN Human Rights Council, many UN representatives, including the US Ambassador, walked out. Also in an update yesterday, Sumner noted how little Russians are hearing about the news. Access to social media has been limited by the state and news outlets appear to have decided there is no news worth reporting. Which means Ukraine is winning the propaganda war, causing gnashing of teeth by American conservatives. That prompted David Frum (quoted by Sumner) to tweet:

Everything they wanted to perceive as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave; everything they wanted to represent as fearsome and powerful has revealed itself as brutal and stupid.

Putin’s block of Twitter, and Twitter’s block of Putin, has another effect. Troll bots have disappeared. Conversations have become intelligent. Wrote Sumner:

Posts that would have generated an almost immediate denigration of President Joe Biden, or praise for Donald Trump, are generating surprisingly reasonable responses.

In this morning’s update Kos talked about his time in the military keeping the supplies coming for his unit. He wrote:

In total, the battery had 64 vehicles. Or 55 vehicles to support the nine vehicles actually shooting anything. In terms of troops, the battery had around 300 soldiers. just 27 of them sat in those nine MLRS launchers. ... VoteVets’ Jon Soltz actually was a logistics officer during the Iraq invasion, and said the U.S. struggled to support one axis of attack, from the south. Russia right now has four major axes, and those are splintered into 15 different fronts. Suddenly, 180,000 troops doesn’t seem so daunting. And remember—not all of them actually fire stuff. The bulk of them are stuck in those bizarre supply columns, seemingly waiting for ambushes to put them out of their misery.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported on Hillary Clinton visiting Rachel Maddow and discussing that Putin seems different now. From a transcript of Clinton speaking:

I think the reports coming out suggest both his temperament, his paranoia, seems to have increased dramatically. His vindictiveness, his dictatorial approach to the people around him, including his own military leadership, seems to have gone further and deeper than anybody had ever seen before.

This is not going to end well. Brandon Friedman, a former soldier in Iraq, talked about what happens to Russian soldiers if they manage to overthrow the Ukraine government and be an occupying force. It will be a living nightmare. In Iraq most of the locals either welcomed and helped the Americans or ignored them. But in Ukraine everyone will hate the Russian occupiers. The soldiers will get no help or warning of a looming attack. They will become paralyzed with fear. Most importantly, they won’t be able to effectively govern. I had an email exchange with Nephew, who pays close attention to what is going on in Ukraine (even more than I do). I’ll summarize a couple things he said. Nephew is quite impressed with President Zelensky of Ukraine. He has instructed his country to slow down the enemy and damage their equipment, but take life only when absolutely necessary. Zelensky has spoken in Russian to Russian troops, saying he does not see them as the enemy, but as pawns of the real enemy, sent to die. Nephew is impressed with the integrity of a man who, while in a war, will not preach hate of the enemy soldiers. I had said the yellow in the Ukrainian flag represents wheat. Nephew says it represents sunflowers. So as a reminder of this time plant some sunflower seeds. Perhaps later this year the seeds will fall and grow again next year – that is good because healing in Ukraine will take a long time. Marissa Higgins of Kos reminds us that it is OK to log off when you need to. She suggests ways to do that: Switch to viewing cute animals or people baking bread. Get away from the computer screen and take a walk or call a friend. Keep your mind busy with something else, like doing any type of puzzle. Schedule your news consumption, such as not starting until after breakfast. Doomscrolling may make you fell helpless, so help in ways you can, such as donate or volunteer with a local charity – even if it has nothing to do with Ukraine it is still valuable. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a clip of Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. Following a clip of a young Ukrainian man and his grandmother going off to fight Colbert does a short riff on how the grandmother might be useful in battle.