Or some nice, tall, appropriately photogenic roleplayers

A week has passed since I last wrote about Ukraine. Part of that was because I had other, more urgent, things to write about. Another part is there hasn’t been much change along the front. So for most of the reports I’ve read over the last week there was nothing there I needed to comment on. Even so, my browser tabs had ten reports that I intend to discuss. I may either do that now or decide they’re sufficiently out of date I don’t need to bother. On Saturday, April 30, Kos of Daily Kos reported that Russia is stuck. He compared maps of held territory on April 16 and April 30 and there isn’t much difference between the two. All the action in this first week of May is Ukraine making some gains around Kharkiv. Also on that Saturday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about Russian Filtration Camps.

Russian media is now bragging about the one aspect of the Ukraine invasion where Russia is actually demonstrating an ability to conduct operations on a frighteningly large scale. That thing doesn’t involve standing up to the Ukrainian military; it involves the wholesale processing of Ukrainian civilians for torture, kidnapping, and enslavement.

The numbers they say they can process is much higher than would be needed for POWs. They’re talking about processing citizens. They’re targeting anyone with association with the Ukrainian government or military. The term “filtration camp” dates back to WWII to filter out those who didn’t have “appropriate” beliefs. The idea came back during the two wars with Chechnya. In the first at least 200,000 were held in such camps.

Human Rights Watch published a report on these camps appropriately titled “Welcome to Hell” in which they recorded accounts of widespread torture, beatings, and executions. Many Chechens were simply “disappeared” from these camps, either to be murdered to shipped to labor camps elsewhere in Russia. Another aspect of these camps that was reported to be common was rape and sexual abuse of women and girls. And reports of rape by Russian soldiers were not restricted to women. In case there was any doubt, detention and deportation of civilians is a war crime. But, as with the other war crimes Russia has already committed, punishing the guilty, much less any restitution for those individuals and families destroyed by this process, may be difficult to obtain.

Allie Powers tweeted:

What’s the difference between a filtration camp and a place like Sobibor or Treblinka or Auschwitz? Not a damn thing.

On Friday, April 29 Kos discussed the possibility Russia could call a general mobilization. There has been a lot of discussion that on May 9 Russia holds a Victory Parade to celebrate the end of WWII. A lot of people are expecting Putin to announce something on that day. This would be the time to announce some sort of win in Ukraine, but there haven’t been any (though Putin could easily make something up). Instead, Putin might try to increase his country’s efforts with a general mobilization. Kos discussed some of the difficulties of that. Putin would have difficulties calling for more troops when he has called his efforts in Ukraine a “special operation” and not a war. Needing more troops means he’s failed. The support by Russian citizens for the war may be in the 75% range – as long as someone else is doing the fighting. There is a spring class of 130,000 conscripts and Russia already has difficulty in training, equipping, and keeping them supplied and fed. They wouldn’t be able to handle thousands more. In another post Kos discussed again why a general mobilization wouldn’t help Russia. He repeated that Russian logistics can’t keep the troops already in the field, well supplied. How will they manage 130K more? What vehicles will they ride in? What equipment will they use? If these conscripts are used to replace combat losses that they’re so poorly trained will lower effectiveness and already low morale. They’re just a sacrifice to the war machine. This is a war crime on Russia’s youth. Sumner showed a map with the number of Russian Battalion Tactical Groups in various regions of the war and the number of Ukrainian Brigade Combat Teams facing them. The Russian numbers look a lot larger. But Sumner explains the personnel in the Ukrainian teams are larger in number and much more diverse in what they do. That means they can keep functioning with a loss rate that is higher than what will make a Russian battalion no longer combat functional. Kos included a larger version of the map Sumner discussed. Also, in this post from Tuesday, May 3 Kos explains that Russia is still stuck. We think Russia has the advantage in soldiers and equipment. But it doesn’t. On Thursday, May 5 Sumner wrote about what Russia has to celebrate during their May 9th parade:

With four more days remaining, it’s entirely possible that Putin will get the only peace he wants in Mariupol in time for his parade: the peace of the grave. After all, there is always gas that could be used against the defenders still evading his forces underground. There is always all that rubble available to block all the potential exits. If Putin wants everyone in the complex dead—including the forces that are not part of the Azov regiment, including the wounded who were not allowed to leave the hospital on the site, and including the civilians still trapped there—he can almost certainly have it. On May 9, it’s almost certain that some selected “victors of Mariupol”—or some nice, tall, appropriately photogenic roleplayers—are going to join Putin’s parade. And that really would be appropriate. They can celebrate the butchery of Bucha, the 600 women and children who died in the basement of Mariupol’s theater, the thousands of civilians buried in still-undiscovered mass graves, and the tens of thousands of Ukrainians being enslaved in Russian labor camps a continent away from their homes. They can celebrate the destruction. They can celebrate rape. They can celebrate a second Holodomor. It’s really the only appropriate theme.

My fear is Putin would enjoy it too much. Sumner discussed the latest propaganda from Russia. I’ve mentioned this idea before, so this is just confirmation. The Russian media is redefining Nazi. A Nazi doesn’t have to be anti-Semitic, instead that person could be anti-Slavic or anti-Russian. Wrote Sumner

Anyone who opposes Russia is now, by Russia’s definition, a Nazi. So Zelenskyy is a Nazi. Biden is a Nazi. Chances are good you’re also a Nazi. It’s a very handy thing to be able to use the most vile label in at least the last two centuries against anyone who opposes your will. It allows any action to be justified, and for Russian soldiers to feel good about torturing and killing children in dark basements. Because, after all, Nazi children. Threaten someone, and if they don’t surrender, you can kill them. Because resisting makes them a Nazi. So handy. Of course, by removing all context from the word “Nazi” and turning it simply into a synonym for anyone who opposes Russia, Putin and company have also destroyed even the pretext for justification in their propaganda. If Nazi is simply a term for someone who refuses to do what you say, it hardly justifies starting a bloody war and engaging in actual genocide, complete with industrial-scale murder, mass burials, and tens of thousands being shipped across borders to labor camps.

Kamil Galeev wrote a thread about what Putin might do at the May 9 parade. He might actually declare war on Ukraine. He might declare a mass mobilization. Galeev’s description of what would happen if Putin actually declared war got a bit confusing. It is all wrapped up in Russian bureaucratic process which he discussed (and I mentioned) in one of his previous threads. Bureaucratic process is all. Galeev complained about Western media and when they want a sense of the “Russian people” they talk to Putin’s opponents in Moscow. Galeev says they’re not all that different from Putin. Better to talk to citizens in Khabarovsk or Yekaterinburg. Then Galeev went on to ...

Russia has the capacity to draft the enormous number of recruits via a mass mobilisation. It has no capacity to train them, provide them with required equipment or with officers' leadership. Which means that a mass mobilisation would be a really dumb decision.

That doesn’t mean Putin won’t do it. Galeev went on: Overcrowded barracks full of poorly trained recruits with guns who know they are being sent to Ukraine to be killed is a revolutionary situation. We underestimate the role of people with guns in a civil conflict. Galeev compared this to 1917. The Tsar brought close to a half million recruits to the capital, trained and gave them guns, then told them they were to be sent to war where they would be killed. He just gave them an immediate self-interest and ability to overthrow him. And they did. As we focus all our attention on the Supreme Court and on Ukraine the changing climate is still doing its thing. I saw this then, but wrote about a lot of other stuff. Back on April 27 Eliot Jacobson tweeted a heat map of southern Asia:

No relief in sight. Day after day in range 45-50C, even 10 days out. That's 113-122F. These are temperatures that kill. Pakistan and NW India are being hit hardest, but it is brutal throughout most of India. Although there is little reporting, the death toll must be staggering.

India tends to be quite hot in the summer. But not in April. The CNN staff in Delhi provided more details in a report on May 3. As of that date Jacobabad, Pakistan recorded a high of 47C (116F). New Delhi recorded seven consecutive days over 40C (104F). Temperatures this high test human survivability. The heat stresses the wheat crop in Punjab and reducing yields. It also stresses people who work outdoors. Of course, high heat means more need for electricity. So passenger trains have been canceled to clear the tracks for coal trains.