They’re out to be Kings of the Ash heap

I’m usually a day behind in discussing news, so as I did over the last week what Ukraine updates from Daily Kos I write about today are from yesterday. I start with a post from yesterday morning by Mark Sumner. He talked about how easy the takeover of Crimea was eight years ago. Ukraine couldn’t mount a response. Putin assumed this war would be the same. And there were lots of stories of Russian incompetence. But now the world watches “Russia kill civilians by the thousands as they reduce homes, towns, and cities to brick dust. Because barbarism is the one skill Russia retains.” A new definition of cannon fodder? Sumner quoted a tweet from Kevin Rothrock:

Russian lawmakers have introduced legislation that would conscript into the military anyone arrested for protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These people would be forced to fight in the invasion itself. What the f--- is happening to Russia. This is absolute madness.

I wonder how effective those former protesters would be in fighting. And whether they would include Mothers of Soldiers and a grandmother or two. Sumner wrote:

Another round of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian representatives has begun. That the Ukrainians can sit in the same room with these people at this point shows how badly they want the murder of their people to end.

It seems Russian Twitter bots are back at spreading disinformation, perhaps from sites in India. A pending speech to the nation by Putin has Russians worried. Is he going to announce martial law and close borders? That has prompted some Russians to flee while they can. Some big Russian companies are calling for the end of the war for an obvious reason: Sperbank down 99.7%, Lukoil down 99.2%. A bit from Sumner’s noon post:

North of Kyiv, that convoy that looked so fierce (and bizarre) when it left Belarus, is still strung out along miles or road, suffering from lack of fuel, lack of food, and attacks by the Ukrainian Air Force. But the original Russian plan to surround Kyiv, march in, and install a puppet regime seems to have been replaced by the “plan” being executed by Russia at all points today: Break things. Kill people. ... Russia isn’t trying to win the war in the sense of beating the Ukrainian army in head to head combat. It’s trying to reduce Ukraine. To destroy it’s homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses until the Ukrainian army has nothing left to defend. They’re out to be Kings of the Ash heap, just as they were in Syria and Chechnya. Russia is using long range missiles, GRAD systems, artillery, and aircraft to murder Ukrainians en masse. That’s what this is. War without even the pretense of rules. Simply murder.

In an early afternoon post Kos of Kos discussed the various categories of people – Putin’s administration, the Russian political establishment, the Russian military, leaders of countries around the world, and various pundits around the world who attacked Biden for saying war was imminent.

Now, if this entire Russian establishment was caught unaware, and the diplomatic world was caught unaware (including clearly, top Russian ally China), then it’s clear that only a handful of people would’ve known of Putin’s plans. Plus Biden. Biden knew. And you know that’s not driving Putin’s paranoia to most extreme levels, as it should. Wouldn’t be surprising if Putin executed his entire inner circle, just in case an American source is among them.

Kos quoted a tweet from Jennifer Bendery who linked to an article on Huffpost. Bendery wrote:

Zelenskyy says Russians are carrying cremation chambers into Ukraine, allegedly to dispose of their own dead and obscure the true number of casualties they’ve incurred.

Kos, referring to the retroactive dismissals I mentioned yesterday, added:

The darkest interpretation of those resignation letters the Russian military is making troops sign before going into Ukraine — they destroy the bodies, then claim the soldiers were never there.

And what do they tell Mothers of Soldiers? That son is never coming home, not even in a coffin. In a mid afternoon post Sumner wrote about Zelenskyy asking NATO for a no-fly zone over his country and being rejected.

Overall, it’s easily understandable why Zelenskyy would ask for a No-Fly Zone. It’s equally understandable why no one wants to give it to him. Because declaring a No-Fly Zone isn’t enough. Someone has to enforce it. That means the U.S., or Poland, or some other NATO member has to hurry out there when a Russian plane violates the zone and either run them off or shoot them down. A No-Fly Zone doesn’t just tempt the possibility of direct conflict between NATO and Russia, it’s all the way across that line.

The alternative is to give Ukraine more planes, especially old Soviet MiGs that Ukrainian pilots know how to fly. Yet, the West is squeamish about that. And Sumner says they’re being stupid about it. Also in mid afternoon Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the International Criminal Court has started investigations into war crimes committed by Russians. Several incidents are clearly crimes such as attacks on hospitals and schools. Clawson concluded:

Russia rejects the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, so Vladimir Putin is likely to be unmoved by this news. By the time you’re committing war crimes, you’ve probably already decided not to care about little things like international law or being brought to justice for your violations thereof.

Hunter of Kos reported on the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This plant generates a significant chunk of Ukraine’s power. Russian troops have taken it over, though Ukrainian workers are the ones running it. No major radiation leaks have been detected, though there is always some radiation around a plant and this fighting would have stirred it up. In an update to the post Sumner added:

I can think of no way in which this attack makes sense. If Russia wanted to cut off the power from the plant, they could take down the high voltage lines miles from the plant itself. The plant is out of the way, controlling it doesn’t give them better control of the area, or control of any important corridor. It makes no sense. Why would someone attack a nuclear power plant? Why take even a slight chance? There is just no valid military objective in doing this. None.

In a late evening summary post Hunter wrote:

The lack of preparedness and seeming tactical incompetence of Russia's forces remain a major story, but Russia's forces remain large enough to potentially achieve their objectives through simple destruction—and that is the strategy Putin's generals have now clearly adopted. Ukraine is bracing for untold civilian casualties as weapons and supplies continue to stream into the country. It remains difficult to imagine any scenario in which Ukraine can repel the Russian invasion outright—but it continues to inflict heavy casualties on Russian forces, making Putin's attempt at conquest a perilously costly gamble even in the absence of the unprecedented regime of international sanctions that have now shuttered large parts of the nation's economy.

In today’s early morning post Sumner discussed more about that nuclear reactor attack:

Russia didn’t just attack a nuclear plant, it went out miles of its way to attack a nuclear plant that isn’t near any major city, along a road that forms a major access route, or close to any critical bridge. The nuclear plant wasn’t an accidental recipient of stray bombs. It was the focus of the attack. However, there is one group of people who won’t be worrying about that this morning. They won’t be wondering if there has been a radiation leak (not so far, says the IAEA) or fretting about what would happen if one or more of the six reactor cores was breached (not Chernobyl, but also not good) and they won’t be pondering why Russian leadership would instruct the military to engage in an act both ISIS and al Qaeda thought too heinous to carry out. That group is: Russians.

Sumner quoted a tweet from Martin Millnert:

I did not have "Watching livestream of mechanized battle at Europe's largest nuclear power plant" on my 2022 bingo card.

Sumner and others also discussed the Russian people and their thinking since the only news source is Russian state news. Their thinking is similar to those in America who watch only Fox News. Russian citizens are saying such things as Russia wouldn’t actually attack civilians – it must be Ukrainians bombing their own people. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a tweet by David Rothkopf:

The two big stories tonight-about Russia's attack on Ukraine and Trump's attack on democracy-are the same story, part of an extended, global effort by Russia to attack democracies worldwide. Their techniques differ. There is no equating the suffering Ukraine is going through with what we have experienced in the US or has been experienced in other western democracies in which Putin has invested time and assets to try to weaken. But denying the connections, not acknowledging the bigger picture, will make it that much harder to defeat Putin's efforts.

Dworkin also quoted a tweet by Tom Nichols:

Putin is going to try to hermetically seal Russia off from the world, as if it's the USSR in 1982. He doesn't want Russians to see what's happening in Ukraine. The first time I was in the Soviet Union was 1983. Entering the USSR was like walking into an isolation chamber. No Western news. Nothing but The State, 24/7. Putin is going to try to do that again. He can't. And that's why this is going to get much, much worse.

Though at the moment Putin seems to be doing a decent job of it (see above). Speaking of Fox News ... Hunter reported Russian state TV is quite appreciative of the job the American network is doing.

Russian government figures have slid uncannily toward the same talking points that Fox News itself uses to push public opinion. It's been done so crudely that it's not clear which direction the propaganda is flowing, but you'll be unsurprised to learn that Russia's top intelligence officer is almost comically familiar with the language of both Fox hosts and super-for-real-American internet trolls.

Hunter was referring to Fox News as he wrote:

None of these people can help themselves. They cannot help but see every last thing as a manifestation of one of their own imagined culture wars—even in wartime, they grouse that the enemy state is being "canceled," as if they were talking about the latest podcast host dust-up. They don't even have the ability to distinguish between partisan and non-partisan thought. Are the Ukrainian defenders hurting Russia by teaching them Critical Race Theory? Are Ukrainian troops trying to religiously oppress their Russian opponents by getting mad when Russians bomb Holocaust sites? Tune in any given weeknight to learn the answers to these and other questions, either on Fox News or on the Russian state broadcasts using them to defend Russia's war.

From a post a few days ago Laura Sue of Kos reported stories of black and brown people in Ukraine fleeing the fighting. These are such people as students from Africa and India attending Ukrainian schools. They are finding that trains, buses, and taxis taking refugees to the border are reserved for white people and they will have to walk – a journey that might take days in extreme cold. Some aren’t allowed through checkpoints. And at the Ukraine side of the border white Ukrainians are prioritized. There are international laws against such racism and UN officials are trying to stop it. It happens anyway. Bishop Talbert Swan tweeted “Anti Blackness is global.” In a post for today Sue that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it is great there is so much effort to welcome Ukrainian refugees into the US. But we should be doing that for Syrian refugees too.