Strolling into town

On Sunday I watched the first four half hour episodes of Heartstoppers on Netflix. Charlie is a high school student and gay. He is assigned a seat next to Nick who says he’s straight and is head of the rugby team. They’re at an all boys school in England. Charlie has and almost immediate crush on Nick. Nick asks slim Charlie to join the team. Of course, Charlie knows nothing of the game. There was a bit of confusion at the beginning. Charlie, Tao, and another guy are best friends at this all boys school. The teachers know Charlie – he’s been there a while. Ellie is also part of the group, but now she is the new person at a nearby all girls school, which she says is a better fit. Tao laments the breakup of their foursome and forgets he no longer needs to buy Ellie’s apple juice at lunch. Is she transgender? It is implied, but not clearly state. The art teacher is gay and Charlie uses the art room as a refuge when bullying gets a bit much. The art teacher serves as a confidant. It is good to see the way Nick comes to terms with his love for Charlie (that isn’t a spoiler – we know where this is headed, it’s the reason why we watch). Nick is hesitant, confused, afraid of not fitting in, and not wanting to give the team a reason to bully him. And sometimes life is like that. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data (I get it here), updated yesterday. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 2484, 2486, 1796, 1890. The last one is for two days ago and, yes, a bit of a rise. The data is too recent to make a guess what is coming next. The deaths per day is at the same low level it has been at since mid March. The saga of the nasty guy and the papers he stole to Mar-a-Lago continues. I want to note the next step in the story without bothering to recap what has gone before. In a report from last Thursday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that Judge Cannon gave the nasty guy more of the delay he wanted. In a Ukraine update from Sunday evening Kos of Kos reported Ukrainians are advancing in the area east of Lyman. The big news is that they made significant gains, as in 20Km of gains, on the northeast end of the Russian controlled area of the Kherson region west of the Dnipro River. Russian lines are collapsing and they are scrambling to establish new lines further to the rear, presumably a greater concentration of Russian forces would make the lines easier to defend. And Russians continue to bash themselves trying to take Bakhmut. In a Monday evening update Kos reported more Ukrainian advances both east of Lyman and west of the Dnipro River. Kos added some explanation:

The Russian approach to taking a city is to lay waste to it with artillery, then send cannon fodder ahead in “reconnaissance by fire.” If defenses remain, sure you lose some cheap infantry, but artillery has a better idea of where those defenses remain and it opens up again. Rinse, lather, and repeat until no resistance remains. It’s somewhat effective for a country that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the value of life, and it allowed for advances in the Donbas during that long, painful summer as we waited for Ukraine’s new Western-armed units were spun up and trained. If you wonder how Russia could indiscriminately target civilians, heck, they don’t even care about their own people. Ukraine does it differently. They avoid direct urban warfare, cutting off a town’s supply lines until just one road out is left. This forces Russia to abandon hardened defensive positions lest they remain trapped, a la Mariupol. Thing is, armor is not the best escape vehicle—it breaks down and is slow, using up a great deal of diesel that may already be in short supply. So it’s easier to abandon the heavy stuff, steal some civilian vehicles, and hightail it out of dodge at top speed. Ukrainian artillery can target those roads, and many won’t make it out, but many do. End result, towns like Lyman are liberated with very little damage to their infrastructure. Not only does this encircle-and-starve-out approach save Ukrainian lives, but it moves the front much faster than Russia’s wasteful rinse-lather-repeat approach. And here’s the bonus—Ukraine doesn’t even need to stick around for a town to surrender. It can leave a blocking force behind to pin down the Russian garrison as the spearhead races ahead. In the Kharkiv blitzkrieg, there were towns well in the rear of the advance that Ukraine didn’t mop up for days. There was no need, as the spearhead romped in the backfield.

Kos quoted a tweet by Jack Detsch:

NEW: U.S. has not seen a large-scale movement of Russian forces despite battlefield losses to Ukraine in the east and south of the country: senior U.S. military official.

Kos translates: “Russia is out of forces to move.” But aren’t there hundreds of thousands of men being mobilized? Kos quoted a tweet by Victor Kovalenko who included a video of new recruits spending nights on an open field with only the food and drink they brought. “No command, no uniform, no barracks, no tents, no sleeping bags.” Then Kos mentioned the fighting between the oldtimers and the newcomers over the equipment the new guys had. There is also a problem of the newcomers being forced into prostitution for the profit of their commanders. Finally Kos mentioned one reason why Ukraine is moving so rapidly in the Kherson region is communication problems. In a Tuesday morning update Sumner started with a photo of the cemetery of Bucha, the town known for the atrocities revealed when Russia pulled out from near Kyiv. Sumner wrote the image is “For anyone who thinks Ukraine should negotiate with Russia.” As for recent developments:

In parts of both Kherson and northern Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces don’t seem to be so much fighting their way past Russian defenses, as they are … strolling into town. And if there’s any shortage the Ukrainian army may be facing at the moment, it could be a shortage of Ukrainian flags.

Sumner included a video of soldiers walking along a road who are “astoundingly relaxed.” One factor is playing a major role in how Ukraine is moving so quickly in liberating territory: radios.

There have been astonished reports from the beginning of the invasion that, rather than encrypted high-band military radios, Russia was using consumer-grade equipment—essentially walkie-talkies of the sort you might find at a nearby sporting goods store. Additionally, Russian forces have often been communicating en clair, speaking openly of positions and objectives, rather than using any sort of code. In Kherson, Ukraine seems to have taken advantage of this fact by issuing false orders and reports over these radio bands. Then they reportedly used jammers — readily available for these kinds of radios, but much more difficult for real military communications — to cut Russian forces off from one another. In all the various towns and villages in northern Kherson, Russian forces found themselves receiving a burst of orders, then they were speaking into static. Then a wall of Ukrainian armor came their way. Isolated and confused, they began to pull back. Overall, Ukraine used Russia’s poor command and control structure, and it’s amazingly bad communications, to turn their northern defensive line into groups of frightened, confused, individuals scrambling to find a safe place.

These Russian units didn’t want to be the ones that didn’t pull back and end up surrounded. It looks like Ukraine liberated 2200 sq Km on Monday. As part of a Tuesday evening update Sumner wrote:

Where is the actual front line at the moment? I don’t know. I can only tell you this: The map at the top of this page, like every other map I’ve made today, is already badly outdated. In three days, Ukraine has liberated a third of the territory on the west side of the Dnipro. By the time we get confirmation of the new positions, that could easily be more than a half. For three days, Ukraine has been pushing across a wide front. For three days, Russia has been retreating. Now they both seem set to collide across the river from Nova Kakhovka. What happens here is going to be significant.

Sumner discussed another reason why Russian defenses in Kherson are collapsing: Russia isn’t able to supply their soldiers. “Cold and hungry troops suffering from a shortage of ammunition and fuel don’t lend themselves to an effective defense.” Near Kherson Ukraine advanced tens of kilometers in four days. Along the eastern front Russia’s four day advance is measured in meters. Wallup Daily News, part of CentralMaine.com has an appropriate cartoon. SemDem of the Kos community wrote about ways various groups are getting abortion care to women in red states. Women on Waves are creating clinics on boats so abortions can be done offshore in international waters. A clinic will be opened in Carbondale, in southern Illinois, not far from Missouri and Kentucky. A group is providing bulletproof mobile abortion clinics that can be parked just across the border. There are “underground railroad” networks providing transportation, shelter, and funding. Prescriptions of abortion drugs can be delivered through mail or by aerial drones. Republicans are responding by restricting a woman’s right to travel. Paul Berge’s cartoons appear in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. Here’s a good one about drag queens.