The enemy of my enemy is my friend – for now

My Sunday video watching was Young Royals, episodes 3 & 4. I don’t want to describe these episodes because I’d have to issue a big spoiler alert. I had mentioned this is about the Swedish royal family and, of course, the actors all spoke Swedish. However, most what I’m watching is dubbed in English. That can be weird as the lip movements don’t match the words I hear. There are some bits that aren’t dubbed, mostly when Simon is with his family, and there are subtitles for those moments. Since Simon has slightly darker skin than most of the other students I now wonder when he’s with his family if they aren’t speaking Swedish. But the other lapses into Swedish make me wonder if the original Swedish actors are also supplying the English dubbing. This series is modern – the students all have smart phones and use them to text each other. The texts are in Swedish and subtitles are given for them. The phone has also played a big part in key scenes. This boarding school Wilhelm is attending is, of course, a place where the aristocracy sends their children. At one point he is asked whether he will support the other aristocratic families. As son of the queen of course he agrees. Those at the top of the social hierarchy have to stick together. Episode 3 is 40 minutes, episode 4 is 50. the credits of each episode takes about 5 minutes. I would have had time to watch one more episode this evening, but that would have meant watching only one episode next week. So I’ll save both of them. What I have next isn’t so much a Ukraine update – the state of the battle – as it is commentary about the war. Kos of Daily Kos wrote about the fighting along the Russian flank northwest of Kyiv just before the Russians pulled out. The news was about Bucha and Irpin, towns close to Kyiv, yet the NASA fire map (meant for forest fires but also good at showing battle fires) shows action all along the Russian flank. Now we see it isn’t so odd that when Russia left there were hundreds of destroyed Russian vehicles. That shows Ukraine attacked those positions before the Russian retreat. Mark Sumner provided a couple updates. One includes a tweet saying mass graves of 700 people were found near Chernihiv. Russia also had this city close to surrounded, then retreated shortly after they left the Kyiv region. There is also a thread discussing the destruction of Mariupol. Kos also asks why Mariupol – surrounded, cut off, and mercilessly shelled for six weeks – is still in Ukrainian hands. Kos thinks it is because of the Azov Battalion. They are an extreme far-right paramilitary force that was created when Russia annexed Crimea. And President Zelenskyy has decided that the enemy of my enemy is my friend – for now. A lot of people are saying the West should give Ukraine the most modern weapons. Kos says that won’t work. Some of these modern weapons, such as the M1 Abrams tank, require a large staff to maintain them and that staff takes six months to years to train. Other systems, such at the Patriot missile system, require up to a year of training to use. Another reason why not is that Ukraine has pushed back Russia without that stuff. So let’s concentrate on supplies that will help Ukraine do that – like several 100K sets of body armor and the Switchblade drones that are on their way. I’ve heard another thing that works – give those high maintenance tanks and planes, and the missiles that need lots of training to the eastern NATO countries so they can give their Soviet era equipment to Ukraine – stuff Ukrainians are familiar with. Sumner discussed the Russian equivalent to the Switchblade drone system. It doesn’t work very well. In that post Sumner wrote that the EU is fast tracking Ukraine’s admission to the Union. This won’t help with the military but it will improve economic ties. Charles Jay of the Kos community discussed the extensive training the Ukraine military got after Russia stole Crimea. Some of that training was supplied by the US. Former Ukraine president Victor Yanukovich, a Putin lackey, hollowed out the military. Massive protests removed him from office and Petro Poroshenko became president. His big goal was to adequately train the military, to bring it above the level of the graft filled Russian forces. We can see he succeeded. Another part of that was to stop exporting arms (made in Soviet factories now under Ukraine control) and keep those weapons for home use.