Ukraine updates

[OUBubba]

Hey Bubba, take a look at the data.

Corruption Rank by Country | Europe

So you’re telling me that a country that came out of Russia and has splinters or Russians still trying to infiltrate it is almost as corrupt as Russia? I’m not shocked. They also had an election a while back where they voted out the pro-Russian regime. That guy is now living in exile in…Russia.

 

[Musburger1]

56 die as Russian tank opens fire on nursing home.

Oh, good grief. Right up there with the ghost fighter and the FU island defenders.

 

[Chop]

I wouldn't categorize Kadyrov as a Putin lackey. He criticized the Russian tactics just last week. He is a loyal ally of Putin but not a lap dog. Kadyrov wants to go scorched earth. Thus far, the Russians have avoided this.
l
Chechen leader Kadyrov calls on Putin to escalate war against Ukraine

Razman Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who sent more than 10,000 fighters to Ukraine, has urged President Vladimir Putin to step up his offensive against the country. He has previously called for "a large-scale operation" against the Ukrainian army. Now Kadyrov is suggesting that the Russian leader "order" the immediate seizure of places like Kharkov or Kiev "quickly, clearly and effectively".

Both the capital and the country's second largest city have been under heavy shelling for several days, resulting in civilian deaths and an increased flow of refugees fleeing Ukraine.

AP/OLEKSANDR RATUSHNIAK - Ukrainians cross a makeshift road under a destroyed bridge as they flee the city of Irpin, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022. In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows walk over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city.
"I cannot watch my brothers and our soldiers die at the hands of these devils and Nazis," Kadyrov said in a video message to Putin, urging him to ignore the international community's calls for an end to the war. According to the Chechen leader, only an intensive attack can "save" his country and his people, as intensified shelling would force Ukrainian forces to surrender and prevent further losses on the Russian side.

In this regard, Kadyrov again questioned Moscow's military strategy, describing current Russian tactics as "weak". "I am sure that he will make the right decision to take control of Ukraine completely," the Chechen added, alluding to Putin. According to Kadyrov, an attack his way would achieve a victory over Ukraine within a day or two.

So Kadyrov thinks he can end the war “in a day or two” (without dropping nukes)… Overconfidence or delusion? Russia’s bloody grind-it-out and smash them to bits with artillery and rockets tactics will take time. Maybe they’ll be effective, maybe they won’t. But it won’t happen overnight unless they take it nuclear.

 

[TaylorTRoom]

Zelensky just outlawed all political parties except for his. That is a thriving democracy alright. Sounds like a tyrant. He is becoming Putin.

That is not true. He has outlawed political parties with ties to Russia. Illiberal, but I can understand.

 

[Chop]

I wouldn't categorize Kadyrov as a Putin lackey. He criticized the Russian tactics just last week. He is a loyal ally of Putin but not a lap dog. Kadyrov wants to go scorched earth. Thus far, the Russians have avoided this.
l
Chechen leader Kadyrov calls on Putin to escalate war against Ukraine

Razman Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who sent more than 10,000 fighters to Ukraine, has urged President Vladimir Putin to step up his offensive against the country. He has previously called for "a large-scale operation" against the Ukrainian army. Now Kadyrov is suggesting that the Russian leader "order" the immediate seizure of places like Kharkov or Kiev "quickly, clearly and effectively".

Both the capital and the country's second largest city have been under heavy shelling for several days, resulting in civilian deaths and an increased flow of refugees fleeing Ukraine.

AP/OLEKSANDR RATUSHNIAK - Ukrainians cross a makeshift road under a destroyed bridge as they flee the city of Irpin, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022. In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows walk over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city.
"I cannot watch my brothers and our soldiers die at the hands of these devils and Nazis," Kadyrov said in a video message to Putin, urging him to ignore the international community's calls for an end to the war. According to the Chechen leader, only an intensive attack can "save" his country and his people, as intensified shelling would force Ukrainian forces to surrender and prevent further losses on the Russian side.

In this regard, Kadyrov again questioned Moscow's military strategy, describing current Russian tactics as "weak". "I am sure that he will make the right decision to take control of Ukraine completely," the Chechen added, alluding to Putin. According to Kadyrov, an attack his way would achieve a victory over Ukraine within a day or two.

Sounds like Comrade Kadyrov wants to ‘destroy Ukraine in order to save it.’

 

[TaylorTRoom]

About the bio labs (TLDR: the labs have had a very transparent use for a number of years and any allegations of nefarious use by the US or Ukraine are Russian propaganda)
Pentagon’s Work With Ukraine’s Biological Facilities Becomes Flashpoint in Russia’s Information War - WSJ

On his first official visit abroad, the new senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, was taken to a facility in Ukraine where the U.S. helped scientists working with dangerous biological materials. But rather than produce biological weapons, U.S. officials in that ramshackle building were trying to prevent lethal pathogens from falling into the hands of terrorists.

“I removed a tray of glass vials containing Bacillus anthracis, which is the bacterium that causes the anthrax,” recalls Andrew Weber, the Pentagon official who was in charge of the U.S.-funded program that worked with the Ukrainian government. Mr. Weber said he showed the tray “to a very concerned-looking young senator.”


Mr. Obama himself recalled seeing in his 2005 trip to Ukraine “test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded.”

A decades-old Pentagon program that was used to secure biological weapons across the former Soviet Union—and to build trust between Washington and Moscow after the Cold War—has instead become a new flashpoint in an information war between the two countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow has accused the Pentagon of funding weapons work in Ukraine’s biological laboratories. “These were not peaceful experiments,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this month.
China, whose leader Xi Jinping has cultivated a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has echoed those allegations. “Russia has found during its military operations that the U.S. uses these facilities to conduct bio-military plans,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters.

U.S. officials have flatly denied those claims and warned that Moscow could use its allegations to justify its own use of weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.
“We believe that Moscow may be setting the stage to use a chemical weapon and then falsely blame Ukraine to justify escalating its attacks on the Ukrainian people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week. “Manufacturing events and creating false narratives of genocide to justify greater use of military force is a tactic that Russia has used before.”

The allegations have shocked those who are most familiar with the Pentagon’s post-Cold War initiative, called the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. That is because not only has Russia been aware of the Pentagon’s work securing chemical, biological and nuclear facilities across the former Soviet Union, but it had also been its beneficiary for many years.

“They’re outrageous claims,” said Robert Pope, the head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, the arm of the Pentagon in charge of running the program. “We were created 30 years ago to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and Russia knows well we eliminate weapons of mass destruction.”

The program, which dates back to 1991 and continues today, stretches across the former Soviet Union. Since the program started, the Pentagon has spent approximately $12 billion on securing material used in weapons of mass destruction in post-Soviet republics, according to a DTRA spokeswoman. Of those funds, about $200 million has been spent on the biological work in Ukraine since 2005. The funds have supported dozens of labs, health facilities and diagnostic sites around the country, the DTRA spokeswoman said.

Mr. Weber, who was in charge of negotiating the initial agreement with Kyiv to work on securing the country’s biological materials and facilities, said that work expanded to Ukraine after the 9/11 attacks, when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked aircraft and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. U.S. policy makers grew worried about the potential for terrorists to steal biological materials—fears that were heightened after letters containing anthrax were sent in the U.S. mail to congressional offices and media outlets. The FBI eventually concluded that an American scientist employed at a military lab sent the letters.

The president of Ukraine at the time, Leonid Kuchma, concerned about the threat of terrorism in his own country, asked the U.S. for help. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade earlier, Ukraine had been starved of the funds needed to secure its biological facilities.

Mr. Weber put together a team that visited Ukraine’s biological and chemical facilities, which ranged from large laboratories to small veterinary research centers. “We found that a number of them had dangerous pathogen collections left over from Soviet days,” he said. “They were in pretty bad shape.”

Ukraine’s laboratories—unlike some in other former Soviet republics—weren’t directly involved in the Cold War biological-weapons program, but they did have pathogens that fed into offensive work, according to Mr. Weber.

Those pathogens, like anthrax, could pose a threat if released, whether accidentally or on purpose. The focus of U.S. work in Ukraine was to consolidate that biological material, much of it related to agriculture, into secure facilities, which the U.S. would pay to build or upgrade.

Paul McNelly, who from 1995 to 2003 directed the Defense Department’s chemical and biological elimination programs in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, said he was stunned with what he saw inside the former Soviet facilities.
“You would walk into these places and the refrigerators that stored these dangerous pathogens, they had no locks on them at all,” Mr. McNelly said. “There would be vials that were labeled tularemia, plague, different things like that. And these people, most of them, weren’t masked. Their gowns were antiquated.” He added: “It was horrible.”

As part of the program, the Pentagon spent $1 billion to build the Russians a facility in Shchuchye, Siberia, to demilitarize some two million chemical weapons. By the time it was done in 2009, ties with Moscow were growing tense. The price of oil was going up, giving Russia more revenue to wean itself off foreign assistance. At the same time, Mr. Putin was consolidating power.
As a result, the Russian government became a less-willing partner to the Pentagon’s drive to secure the deadly materials, according to James Tegnelia, who served as the head of DTRA from 2005 to 2009. “They wanted our money, but they didn’t want to admit that we built the facility,” Mr. Tegnelia said. “You could see that they were getting ready to pull back.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry had in the past praised the program. But by 2012, Moscow declined to renew cooperation, saying it could pay for the work on its own.

In 2014, the year Moscow illegally annexed Crimea and began backing separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region, the program in Russia drew to a close.

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Pentagon program.

Yet even with that chapter of its cooperation over, the Russian claims about the Pentagon conducting secret weapons work in Ukraine came as a surprise not only to those who have worked on the program but also to other Western officials. The Kremlin has in the past used such charges as cover for its own actions, they say.

“We are concerned that Moscow could stage a false-flag operation, possibly including chemical weapons,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Does the war in Ukraine put at risk efforts to reduce the threats posed by pathogens? Join the conversation below.

U.S. officials have declined to discuss what specific intelligence, if any, they have to indicate Russia might be preparing to deploy chemical or other unconventional weapons to Ukraine. But they say Russia has a history of using chemical weapons, including against Mr. Putin’s domestic political opponents, and it has encouraged their use in Syria by President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The Russian government shot back against the U.S. allegations, denying plans to use chemical weapons. In a post last week on its official Telegram channel, the Russian Defense Ministry said the units fighting in Ukraine “do not have chemical munitions.”

Mr. Tegnelia, the former DTRA director, views Russia’s allegations as a path to an even more dangerous escalation. “If you see them using chemical weapons in Ukraine, watch out,” he said, “because they’re only one step away from nuclear weapons.”

Warren P. Strobel and William Mauldin contributed to this article.

 

[Monahorns]

There are 349 political parties in Ukraine. I’m sure many of those are inactive. However, rest assured there are significantly more than 12. The largest of the one’s just banned had about 10% of seats in parliament. He also did not ban them. He suspended them temporarily as they are thought to be kremlin associated.

I didn't know about the number of parties. After I posted this I saw it was 11 parties banned. I heard banned. But you can't claim a functioning democracy and then have the executive banning (temporarily?) parties. You just can't.

 

[Monahorns]

So you’re telling me that a country that came out of Russia and has splinters or Russians still trying to infiltrate it is almost as corrupt as Russia? I’m not shocked. They also had an election a while back where they voted out the pro-Russian regime. That guy is now living in exile in…Russia.

How do you say you don't understand the subject you are talking about while not saying it? Just kidding.

Facts are facts though. Just take the L.

After removing the Russian speakers from the process they voted out the more Russian leaning guy. Makes sense, but I am not sure you are making a real point.

 

[Monahorns]

That is not true. He has outlawed political parties with ties to Russia. Illiberal, but I can understand.

All of Ukraine has ties to Russia. Half of Ukraine has very strong ties to Russia.

But the point is that Bubba said that Ukraine was a real democracy and then the President removes his opponents from the democratic process. It might be necessary in the current situation. But the fact remains Zelensky is consolidating power in non-democratic ways. Ukraine is also very corrupt with deep ties to Biden, his family, and the US military industrial complex. Russia is more corrupt, okay.

These are the two bottom feeders. Why would the US want to ally with such company? For me, I prefer to follow the example of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.

 

[OUBubba]

How do you say you don't understand the subject you are talking about while not saying it? Just kidding.

Facts are facts though. Just take the L.

After removing the Russian speakers from the process they voted out the more Russian leaning guy. Makes sense, but I am not sure you are making a real point.

Good point. L taken.

 

[OUBubba]

I didn't know about the number of parties. After I posted this I saw it was 11 parties banned. I heard banned. But you can't claim a functioning democracy and then have the executive banning (temporarily?) parties. You just can't.

349>12. Temporarily banned during an invasion by a country they support. Just take the L.

 

[Monahorns]

I over stated the issue. L taken.

 

[Musburger1]

Kiev shopping mall

 

[Musburger1]

From Donbass Insider... More on the Kiev mall...


Thanks to the analysis of OSINT and GEOINT specialists who assist the Rybar team, we were able to confirm the fact that the Ukrainian MLRS was operating from the territory of the Retroville shopping center in the Podolsky district of Kyiv.


CCTV footage recorded rocket launches from the Ukrainian side at 22.07 local time. At 22.46, the firing position and ammunition point in Sport Life were destroyed by a strike by the RF Armed Forces.

At the same time, @topwar_ru sources on the spot confirmed to us that both cannon and rocket artillery were regularly operating from this area.

The version now being dispersed by the Ukrainian side that the RF Armed Forces struck “to nowhere”, disabling civilian infrastructure, does not stand up to scrutiny. The RF Armed Forces worked on a long-term firing position of Ukrainian artillery.
https://t.me/swodki/47056

 

[Chop]

Our gov't should just shut up about the Biolabs. Our national leadership got caught in a lie. The best thing to say at this point, other than saying nothing at all, is something along the lines of: "Yeah, there's some Biolabs--big deal, so what? That doesn't justify one sovereign nation invading another sovereign nation, then committing all sorts of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

 

[Musburger1]

A mass protest of farmers in Spain due to the rise in the cost of fertilizers and rising fuel prices resulting from sanctions against Russia.

 

[Monahorns]

"Yeah, there's some Biolabs--big deal, so what? That doesn't justify one sovereign nation invading another sovereign nation, then committing all sorts of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

That would be Seattle Husker level deflection there.

 

[Chop]

Sounds like it's bogging down and possibly entering into a stalemate, for now at least...

“If we’re not in a stalemate, we are rapidly approaching one,” said the NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military assessments. “The reality is that neither side has a superiority over the other.”

"Amid Russia’s likely frustration over its meager battlefield gains, Russian forces have also shifted to using less discriminate weapons that cause more significant destruction with little ability to avoid civilian casualties."

Put another way, Russia's underperformance on the battlefield is causing them to revert back to classic Red Army tactics of just blasting everything and everybody with overwhelming numbers of artillery shells and rockets.

It's just getting worse and worse...

NATO sees Russia war entering stalemate: "Neither side can win"

 

[Chop]

Ukraine will NOT surrender Mariupol. The Russians will probably raze it to the ground and kill 10s of thousands more in the process. The city's defenders won't go down easy though, and ultimately Russian troops will have to go in there rubble pile by rubble pile.

Kyiv refuses demands to surrender Mariupol

 

[Chop]

A rather obvious observation:

The UN is all but worthless. 2 of the world's worst human rights violators sit on the permanent security counsel and can veto anything like the UN's defense of South Korea in the Korean War. A real paper tiger. All they can do is issue strongly-worded condemnations by Sec'y General Gutters. And before this war, the UN had devolved into little more than an anti-Israel debating club.

 

[Chop]

It appears that their Odessa is even better than our Odessa.

Odessa, Ukraine on the Black Sea looks like a beautiful city--probably the best in the Ukraine. Hate to see this place get blasted to rubble. The world will be a worse place if that comes to pass.

 

[Musburger1]

Translation basically says:
Ukrainian mines threaten all ships in the Black Sea, potentially even the Bospherous. Map shows currents.

 

[Chop]

So where is the proud and mighty Spetznaz in all of this? They were supposed to be world class bada$$es, roughly on par with our Green Berets or arguably even (on a really good day) the Navy Seals. Maybe they’re now just as undertrained and undersupplied, and full of poor morale, as the rest of the remnants of the Red Army.

 

[Statalyzer]

Hey Bubba, take a look at the data.

Corruption Rank by Country | Europe

Which countries lower on that list should we be invading? Maybe Russia, China, and us can divide those 50 or so between us evenly and save them all from themselves?

 

[Statalyzer]

Japan reacted angrily on Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks with Japan and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril Islands because of sanctions imposed by Tokyo over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Japan have still not formally ended World War II hostilities because of the standoff over islands just off Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. The islands were seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II.

Seems simple to me - Russia thinks that land should go back to whoever used to own it, so they should give Sakhalin back to Japan.

 

[Musburger1]

The Daily Beast goes after Gonzalo Lira.

 

[Chop]

 

[Chop]

Well...

We no longer have to explain to our kids what the Cold War with Russia was like...

 

[Chop]

 

[Chop]

Yep, as anticipated, the Red Army has their Political Commissars back in action again:

Political officers return in Russia’s military - Romeo Squared