Ukraine Notes
Lotsa stuff. Interesting stuff going on.
The online newspaper that posted much more realistic casualty numbers than the Kremlin talks about? Guess what! They were "hacked"! Apparently the article was up for six hours. It has now been three weeks since the official death toll has been updated by the Kremlin.
Two terrible things. First, Biden thinks Russia is getting ready to use chemical weapons. My guess is that spy satellites have seen the movement of army units that specialize in chemical warfare, or units going through the gearing-up preparations done before a chemical offensive.
Second, Belarus may be joining Russia in this war. This would be very tough on Ukraine to have fresh troops coming in from the north. Granted, the Ukrainian military is well-blooded at this point, fresh reinforcements could be very wearying. As has been previously mentioned, the president of Belarus lost his last election, tried to jail the winner and she fled the country. I think this would be a huge mistake for him to do this as he'd be inviting the same level of sanctions that Russia has been hit with, and he is currently fighting his population to stay in power, this could easily see him ripped from office. It would be interesting to see if his troops would revolt and stage a coup - could happen! It's possible Belarusian troops would be no better in the field than Putin's, i.e. rubbish.
Speaking of which, there is talk that Putin is concerned about the possibility of an army coup and it's one reason why he's not sending more Russian troops to Ukraine, rather he's sending Syrian and Chechen fighters plus Wagner mercenaries. Unfortunately the Wagners have been pretty worthless thus far as have the others.
Speaking of idiots, Trump says that if he were President of the USA, he'd threaten to drop a nuke on Russia. Yeah, that's a class act world leader right there.
But let us review Putin's "class act". Not that I'm trying to justify dropping a nuke on him. He explicitly signed a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for them giving up their nukes. He shaved off a large chunk of their south and now part of their east. Now he's leveling the rest of the country. Why anyone trusts his word is beyond me.
A sixth Russian general has been killed in combat, this one a navy commander. More interesting, he was born in Kyiv but renounced his Ukrainian citizenship. Well, regardless of that, he came home to die, sadly in a bad cause.
A depot in Kyiv is taking captured Russian vehicles and munitions: modifying, repainting, and repurposing them and then throwing them back in to the fight. This includes missiles! Recycling and reusing at its finest.
Russian civilians are racing to download the entirety of Wikipedia before it gets banned by Russian censors. Wikipedia makes a dump available that is 87 gigabytes with pictures, 48 gig without. That’s the English language version, which is 6.4 million articles. The Russian language version is 1.8 million articles. The Russian language version has been downloaded ONE HUNDRED FIVE THOUSAND TIMES during the first half of March! That’s going to be a popular Torrent or USB transfer item if/when it goes offline.
President Biden is urging American companies to up their cyber defenses in case Russia goes on the offense against the USA. This is an entirely plausible possibility, especially if the company is in the government, utility, energy, defense, IC, or major computer software sectors. The odds are good that they’ve already been infiltrated and possibly backdoored by the Russians after that massive Solar Winds attack last year.
The United States House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 424-8 - the eight being all Republicans - to suspend Normal Trade Relatoins with Russia and Belarus through 2024. Opposing it were MTG(GA), Boebert(CO), Gaetz(FL), Andy Biggs(AZ), Chip Roy(TX), Dan Biship(NC), Glenn Grothman(WI), and Thomas Massie(KY). I would have no problem seeing Russia lose Most Favored Nation status permanently as long as Putin is in power.
I think I mentioned that someone leaked literally gigabytes of internal documents of the Conti ransomware group? Turns out those docs showed that Conti helped Putin from the shadows. It's long been speculated that a number of these malware groups occasionally worked with the Russian government.
Multiple deepfake videos have been circulating, one of Putin declaring peace, one of Zelensky instructing Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms. They haven't been believed.
I just read that Russia's main tank producer has had to stop production due to lack of parts. I don't know why they would be needing to produce a lot of tanks or replacement parts all of a sudden, unless it's all the Javelin missile testing going on near Russia's western border . :-)
There has been talk about Russia's participation/commitment with the International Space Station. Ars Technica has just posted an excellent article detailing a lot of information on that relationship. It is an international treaty, actually an Inter Government Agreement (IGA) between fifteen countries, that Russia has signed detailing the various rights and responsibilities that Russia has to the ISS, the main responsibility being propulsion, and the main benefit they receive is power from the modules owned/controlled by the USA. Basically, by treaty, they cannot stop fulfilling their duties, and from a technical standpoint they cannot disconnect their modules from the rest of the ISS. The treaty runs through 2024, I would think they may be in the process of starting to get the countries of the agreement together soon so that there's no lapse in it before the expiration. The problem is, these sanctions are utterly crippling the Russian economy, and they're not going to be able to continue playing the 'space race' game anymore. The article describes them as likely to be the first former space power.
Putin or the Kremlin recently said that the not war is going "exactly according to plan." Bombing hospitals, schools, children's centers apparently being part of the plan along with troops breaking under first contact and not being told that they were invading Ukraine. Great plan there. An interview with a person who apparently has some very good intelligence contacts said that troops were carrying their dress/parade uniforms in lieu of extra ammunition and rations. Exactly according to plan. Right.
Keep in mind Putin really wants to attain one goal: prove that democracy does not work. He hates democracy, and he hates the United States. He specifically hates the Clintons as he blames them for the collapse of Russia and their early '90s post-Soviet troubles. I've never said he was entirely rational. And I'm not remotely a "USA Right Or Wrong!" We've made tons of mistakes on the world stage - all countries do. And democracy and capitalism have plenty of flaws - I like Churchill's line about capitalism is the worst form of government - except for all the others. But it beats the hell out of communism and authoritarianism.
The online newspaper that posted much more realistic casualty numbers than the Kremlin talks about? Guess what! They were "hacked"! Apparently the article was up for six hours. It has now been three weeks since the official death toll has been updated by the Kremlin.
Two terrible things. First, Biden thinks Russia is getting ready to use chemical weapons. My guess is that spy satellites have seen the movement of army units that specialize in chemical warfare, or units going through the gearing-up preparations done before a chemical offensive.
Second, Belarus may be joining Russia in this war. This would be very tough on Ukraine to have fresh troops coming in from the north. Granted, the Ukrainian military is well-blooded at this point, fresh reinforcements could be very wearying. As has been previously mentioned, the president of Belarus lost his last election, tried to jail the winner and she fled the country. I think this would be a huge mistake for him to do this as he'd be inviting the same level of sanctions that Russia has been hit with, and he is currently fighting his population to stay in power, this could easily see him ripped from office. It would be interesting to see if his troops would revolt and stage a coup - could happen! It's possible Belarusian troops would be no better in the field than Putin's, i.e. rubbish.
Speaking of which, there is talk that Putin is concerned about the possibility of an army coup and it's one reason why he's not sending more Russian troops to Ukraine, rather he's sending Syrian and Chechen fighters plus Wagner mercenaries. Unfortunately the Wagners have been pretty worthless thus far as have the others.
Speaking of idiots, Trump says that if he were President of the USA, he'd threaten to drop a nuke on Russia. Yeah, that's a class act world leader right there.
But let us review Putin's "class act". Not that I'm trying to justify dropping a nuke on him. He explicitly signed a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for them giving up their nukes. He shaved off a large chunk of their south and now part of their east. Now he's leveling the rest of the country. Why anyone trusts his word is beyond me.
A sixth Russian general has been killed in combat, this one a navy commander. More interesting, he was born in Kyiv but renounced his Ukrainian citizenship. Well, regardless of that, he came home to die, sadly in a bad cause.
A depot in Kyiv is taking captured Russian vehicles and munitions: modifying, repainting, and repurposing them and then throwing them back in to the fight. This includes missiles! Recycling and reusing at its finest.
Russian civilians are racing to download the entirety of Wikipedia before it gets banned by Russian censors. Wikipedia makes a dump available that is 87 gigabytes with pictures, 48 gig without. That’s the English language version, which is 6.4 million articles. The Russian language version is 1.8 million articles. The Russian language version has been downloaded ONE HUNDRED FIVE THOUSAND TIMES during the first half of March! That’s going to be a popular Torrent or USB transfer item if/when it goes offline.
President Biden is urging American companies to up their cyber defenses in case Russia goes on the offense against the USA. This is an entirely plausible possibility, especially if the company is in the government, utility, energy, defense, IC, or major computer software sectors. The odds are good that they’ve already been infiltrated and possibly backdoored by the Russians after that massive Solar Winds attack last year.
The United States House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 424-8 - the eight being all Republicans - to suspend Normal Trade Relatoins with Russia and Belarus through 2024. Opposing it were MTG(GA), Boebert(CO), Gaetz(FL), Andy Biggs(AZ), Chip Roy(TX), Dan Biship(NC), Glenn Grothman(WI), and Thomas Massie(KY). I would have no problem seeing Russia lose Most Favored Nation status permanently as long as Putin is in power.
I think I mentioned that someone leaked literally gigabytes of internal documents of the Conti ransomware group? Turns out those docs showed that Conti helped Putin from the shadows. It's long been speculated that a number of these malware groups occasionally worked with the Russian government.
Multiple deepfake videos have been circulating, one of Putin declaring peace, one of Zelensky instructing Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms. They haven't been believed.
I just read that Russia's main tank producer has had to stop production due to lack of parts. I don't know why they would be needing to produce a lot of tanks or replacement parts all of a sudden, unless it's all the Javelin missile testing going on near Russia's western border . :-)
There has been talk about Russia's participation/commitment with the International Space Station. Ars Technica has just posted an excellent article detailing a lot of information on that relationship. It is an international treaty, actually an Inter Government Agreement (IGA) between fifteen countries, that Russia has signed detailing the various rights and responsibilities that Russia has to the ISS, the main responsibility being propulsion, and the main benefit they receive is power from the modules owned/controlled by the USA. Basically, by treaty, they cannot stop fulfilling their duties, and from a technical standpoint they cannot disconnect their modules from the rest of the ISS. The treaty runs through 2024, I would think they may be in the process of starting to get the countries of the agreement together soon so that there's no lapse in it before the expiration. The problem is, these sanctions are utterly crippling the Russian economy, and they're not going to be able to continue playing the 'space race' game anymore. The article describes them as likely to be the first former space power.
Putin or the Kremlin recently said that the not war is going "exactly according to plan." Bombing hospitals, schools, children's centers apparently being part of the plan along with troops breaking under first contact and not being told that they were invading Ukraine. Great plan there. An interview with a person who apparently has some very good intelligence contacts said that troops were carrying their dress/parade uniforms in lieu of extra ammunition and rations. Exactly according to plan. Right.
Keep in mind Putin really wants to attain one goal: prove that democracy does not work. He hates democracy, and he hates the United States. He specifically hates the Clintons as he blames them for the collapse of Russia and their early '90s post-Soviet troubles. I've never said he was entirely rational. And I'm not remotely a "USA Right Or Wrong!" We've made tons of mistakes on the world stage - all countries do. And democracy and capitalism have plenty of flaws - I like Churchill's line about capitalism is the worst form of government - except for all the others. But it beats the hell out of communism and authoritarianism.