* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As reported by an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Attacks Behind Russian Lines Crippling War Effort" by Howard Altman, 1 November 2022), the war by Ukrainian guerrilla fighters -- "partisans" -- is now proving a painful distraction to Russian occupation forces attempting to control Eastern Ukraine. A recent paper from the Institute For The Study Of War comments:
QUOTE:
Effective Ukrainian partisan attacks are forcing the Kremlin to divert resources away from frontline operations to help secure rear areas, degrading Russia's ability to defend against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives, let alone conduct their own offensive operations. Poor Russian operational security has enabled Ukrainian partisan attacks ...
[Russian forces are unable to] effectively secure Russian rear areas against partisan attacks and simultaneously defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives. The Kremlin still has not effectively countered Ukraine's organized partisan movement, and is unlikely to have the capabilities to do so.
[Ukrainian partisans] have conducted dozens of confirmed attacks across occupied Ukraine and have assassinated at least 11 Russian occupation officials and prominent collaborators as of November 1.
END_QUOTE
The current wave of terror began on 1 March, when Ukrainian guerrillas in fatigues kidnapped Kreminna's collaboration mayor, Volodymyr Struk. His body was found the next day. Incidents continued, notably on 25 October, when a truck bomb blasted a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters building.
According to the ISW, Russian forces have failed to conceal the identities of collaborators and have done little to protect them. The Russians are similarly unable to protect critical ground lines of communication, such as rail line junctures and bridges, particularly in rural areas. Ukrainian guerrillas provide intelligence to conventional Ukrainian military to suggest targets. The Russians are spread too thin to control the territory.
* In other news of the war, the Russians proclaimed, after the drone attack on Sevastopol Harbor reported here last week, that they were withdrawing from the UN-brokered grain shipment deal. Turkish President Erdogan replied that the ships would continue to sail, and they did. The Russians soon announced that they had changed their minds. It appears that, thanks to antiship missiles and the like in Ukrainian hands, the Russian Navy is locked out of the western Black Sea anyway.
On another angle, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty asked Russians on the street if they thought the war was going according to plan. Some were agreeable, a few didn't want to talk, some were not so agreeable. One man said: "It's mostly not going to plan. I realized that right away, but no one asked us for our opinion."
A woman commented: "It's not going according to plan, I'm sure of that. Our troops are retreating, [Ukrainians] are attacking."
Second man: "After we retreated from Kyiv? Our generals have shit for brains, if you'll forgive me."
Second woman: "Yes, if the plan was to destroy Russia. I've just been to a Metro store. Half the products are missing. It will probably be shut down soon. We'll all be shut down, too. It will only be Putin left in his bunker."
Third woman: "I was against the special operation from the very beginning. I think it's illegal. They're killing Ukrainian people. I disagree with it. It was a barbaric and draconian plan. It couldn't go as planned."
There are reports of widespread power outages in Moscow. What precisely is going on remains unclear.
* Back in the USA, tensions over the upcoming midterm elections are growing. One issue is the unbelievably inept campaign of football player Herschel Walker to unseat Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, with one Pastor Jamal Bryant tearing down Walker in top-class black-preacher style:
QUOTE:
Ladies and gentlemen, when the Republican Party of Georgia moved Herschel Walker from Texas to Georgia so that he could run for Senate, it's because change was taken too fast in the post-antebellum South. The state had been flipped Blue, and there are some principalities that were not prepared for a black man and a Jewish man to go to Senate at the exact same time.
So they figured that they would DELUDE Us by picking somebody who they thought would in fact represent us better with a FOOTBALL, than with a degree in philosophy. They thought we were SO slow, that we were SO stupid, that we would elect the lowest caricature of a stereotypical broken black man -- as opposed to somebody who is educated and erudite and focused.
... since Herschel Walker was 16 years old, white men been telling him what to do, telling him what school to go to, where to live, where to eat, where to buy a house, where to run, where to sit down, where to sleep, where to pay for abortions, where to buy a gun -- and that you think they not gonna tell him how to vote in two-thousand and twenty-two.
We don't need a WALKER, we need a RUNNER! We need somebody who gonna run and tell the truth about January 6! We need somebody who gonna run and push for the cancellation of student loan debts! We need somebody who go run and make the former president respond to a subpoena!
We don't need a WALKER, we need somebody who will be steadfast -- unmovable -- always abounded knowing that your labor is not in vain. Georgia, I need you to know the slave Negroes y'all are used to don't live here no more. We can THINK by ourselves, FUNCTION for ourselves, and VOTE for ourselves! WHY? Because WE DON'T NEED A WALKER!
END_QUOTE
* As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("Could Super-Sized Heat Pumps Make Gas Boilers Extinct?" by Rebecca Morelle, 18 March 2022), "district heating" is nothing new, large cities having long featured heating of clusters of structures by piping hot water from a central plant. However, traditionally the heating plant has used a fuel-fired boiler, often burning dirty coal.
Now two new plants using electrically-driven heat pumps are being introduced in Britain, in Gateshead and London. Ironically, the Gateshead plant uses an abandoned coal mine as a borehole, reaching 150 meters (490 feet) into the Earth. The mine is flooded, with warm water pumped to the surface, and the heat concentrated via heat exchangers to reach 80 degrees Celsius (175 degrees Fahrenheit). The hot water from the plant can heat 5,000 homes.
Jacqueline Bell had distributed heating installed in her Gateshead home a few years back, saying that installation was troublesome, with pipes being re-routed through the walls, but she's happy with the result: "I think my whole flat is much, much warmer than it used to be. And the cost is much, much cheaper too."
The London plant is hidden in the Port of London Authority building. It's been there for a long time, originally burning coal, then oil, then gas. Now it's tapping into an aquifer beneath the city. District heating, again, only really works in dense urban areas, and accounts for only about 2% of Britain's heating at present. Advocates believe that can be increased to about 18%.
Dr. Fleur Loveridge from the University of Leeds says that the heat pump stations aren't limited to places where there are flooded mines or aquifers, although there are many such groundwater sites found across the UK.
QUOTE:
Anywhere where you can access the ground for the ground source heat will also work, Where you have surface water bodies, like rivers or lakes, that can also be made to work. Sea water has even been used to feed district heating systems. So it's applicable in a lot of places, but not absolutely everywhere"
END_QUOTE
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Project Nexus Aims To Cover California Canals With Solar Panels" by Ben Coxworth, 2 March 2022), one of the problems with solar power is that it can compete with land that might be put to other uses, such as raising crops. California is exploring the possibility of putting solar panels over irrigation canals, which would not only eliminate the competition with other uses of land, but also reduce the loss of water from the canals from evaporation. In addition, the proximity of water would cool the solar panels.
Known as Project Nexus, the effort is a collaboration between the University of California at Merced, California's Turlock Irrigation District, the California Department of Water Resources, and Solar Aquagrid -- Solar Aquagrid being a San Francisco Bay-area company that researched the concept, and is overseeing the project.
Current plans envision a pilot installation, amounting to solar panels over 2,590 meters (8,500 feet) of canal, in three sections, of the Turlock Irrigation District in California's Central Valley. The width of the installations will vary from 6 to 30 meters (20 to 100 feet). UC Merced estimates that if 6,640 kilometers (4,000 miles) of California's irrigation canals were covered by solar panels, they could generate about 13 gigawatts of electricity -- which is about half the amount needed to reach California's goal of full decarbonization by 2030. The panels would also reduce evaporation by over 80%, saving about 238 billion liters (63 billion gallons) of water a year.
There are issues in the exercise, one being whether the panels would prove cost-effective, and what problems the panels would make for maintenance of the canals. That's why they do pilot projects.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The biggest global news this last week was the recapture of the city of Kershon by Ukrainian forces. Videos showed jubilant citizens stopping Ukrainian Army vehicles, and all but pulling the soldiers out of them in joy. One video of a demonstration included little kids excitedly waving Ukrainian flags, ending with a young woman holding up a sign that translated as: PUTIN HAS A TINY DICK. A babusya, granny, greeted Ukrainian soldiers presented them with a practical gift: a belt of Russian machine-gun ammunition she had scavenged. They returned the favor by showing her videos on smartphone of Russian armor being "bonked" by artillery, rockets, and drones. She was most entertained.
The Russian high command announced just before the fall that Russian forces were performing an "orderly withdrawal" -- but that appears to have been a cover story for a disorderly rout. Russian troops were trapped, with the wide and cold Dnipro River behind them; tens of thousands have been killed or captured. Many have tried to flee wearing civilian clothes, but they are being rounded up. There have been loud recriminations among Russian leadership -- though they weren't very perceptive, calling for getting tougher instead of recognizing the invasion of Ukraine was a botch from the start.
Apparently, Russian assaults continue at Bakhmut in the center of the battle line. They are futile; if under enough pressure, the Ukrainian defenders will just pull back to a rear line of defense, while they slaughter the attackers. Images from the battlefront show trenches in mud and a blasted landscape, with Russian bodies littering the ground in front of machine guns. It is unclear that the Russian invasion force in Ukraine has any effective formations left. The war is all but over, it's just a question of how long Vladimir Putin wants to go on losing.
The question also remains of the possibility of Putin going nuclear in frustration. It doesn't seem likely, since doing so could not win the war, instead merely making it more destructive. A week ago, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was visiting Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear China's distaste for the "nuclear option" -- with an official statement saying the international community should "jointly oppose the use of, or threats to use, nuclear weapons", and that the world "advocate that nuclear weapons cannot be used, a nuclear war cannot be waged, [and so] prevent a nuclear crisis" in Europe or Asia. The statement called for negotiations to end the crisis, but did not condemn the invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy is the hero of the hour. He used to be a popular comedian, with the observation on Twitter that he's still beating up Putin. With the reply: "Zelenskyy's the comedian, Putin is the punchline." The thought is that, after the dust settles, he'll do a spot on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.
The war remains desperate, with the Russians persisting in attacks on civic electrical infrastructure, but the citizens are coping. The joke is going around: "If Russians leave us with no electricity, in nine months there will be more Ukrainians."
* Not all Russians are backing the war against Ukraine. Russian state-run TV had an exchange with a number of academics who were startlingly critical of the war. In response to a query about the need for a "just world order" favorable to Russia, sociologist Alexei Roschin said: "I don't know what kind of just world order we could be talking about, when we are destroying power plants and the infrastructure in Ukraine." When the moderators criticized him, he continued: "This is cruelty and sadism, a war against civilians. This is a war against the people."
Another panelist, Aleksandr Sytin, a political scientist and historian, said Russia had "violated the territorial integrity of a sovereignty nation" when it invaded the country in late February. He continued:
QUOTE:
... So far, there aren't any signs that anyone is ready to make a deal with Russia about anything whatsoever ... For Ukraine, territorial confessions are seen not only as impossible, but as unconscionable ... [it is] pointless to anticipate that the people of Ukraine would surrender ... because they're forced to cook bacon over a candle.
These are former Soviet people. Geography aside, these former Soviet people have survived the siege of Leningrad. They are filled with hatred. For them it is their Patriotic War. So neither us, nor them could be broken this way.
END_QUOTE
[ED: As it turned out, Russian propaganda has an inclination to present "opposing views", just so they can be attacked and discredited.]
* The USA had midterm elections this last week. The Republicans were expecting to score a big "Red Wave", but their gains were modest, and offset by significant losses. Not all the contests have been called yet, so there is some uncertainty about the final score, but it was clearly well below GOP expectations. Trump partisans did particularly poorly, much to the fury of Trump himself, who threw out endless recriminations. Trump isn't in a good place in his life, particularly as the investigations against him ramp up. I wrote on Twitter:
QUOTE:
Trump can't be sleeping well as he sees the walls closing very slowly in on him, as Attorney General Merrick Garland watches impassively. Just like a horror movie: the monster moves slowly, but it's still catching up with him.
END_QUOTE
There is much fussing among Republican politicians over their election failure, but everyone else could see it was the inevitable consequence of the GOP standing for nothing but manufactured controversies. Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski), a "Never Trump" Republican, commented: "Time for Republicans to launch their new winning platform that surely will bring that Red Tsunami home in 2024: HUNTER BIDEN'S LAPTOP!"
Later he said: "I don't know how Republicans didn't win every race, considering the size of Trump's rally crowds." I replied: "You're really feeling snarky today, aren't you?" Another popular Twitterer, Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich), suggested that the GOP now really wants to see Trump go down, but may not be able to get rid of the stain: "Republicans should be forced to carry Donald Trump to term, even it if endangers the life of the party."
Incidentally, Alaska's Sarah Palin -- who blazed the nutjob-Right trail that Donald Trump followed -- ran for a seat in the House of Representatives, but was soundly trounced. Online statements by Palin left viewers puzzled as to whether they were for real. I summed up a lot of other Twitter comments with: "How could anyone watch a video of Sarah Palin yammering on, and not wonder if it's really just Tina Fey making fun of her?"
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("World's First Commercial Sand Battery Begins Energy Storage In Finland" by Loz Blain, 05 July 2022), renewable energy is intermittent, so there's a lot of work on energy storage to keep output constant when inputs are lacking. A Finnish company named Polar Night Energy (PNE) is exploring the use of sand for that purpose, having set up an initial sand storage unit (SSU) at the site of Finnish energy company Vatajankoski.
Some call the installation a "sand battery", but it stores thermal energy, not electricity. The SSU is a big, insulated steel tank -- around 4 meters (13.1 feet) wide and 7 meters (23 feet) high -- full of ordinary sand. When the sand is heated up, using a heat exchanger buried in the middle of it, the SSU can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, at a nominal power rating of 100 kilowatts, with the sand heated to in the region of 500 to 600 degrees Celsius (930 to 1110 degrees Fahrenheit).
Vatajankowski is using this stored heat, in conjunction with excess heat from its own data servers to feed the local district heating system, which uses piped water to transmit heat around the area. PNE says the system is remarkably cheap -- there are no high-pressure vessels, with pipework being the most troublesome element -- and the installation requires minimal ongoing supervision. The company adds that they can scale up the SSU to store roughly 20 gigawatt-hours of energy, with the sand heated up twice as hot.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The biggest non-news of the last week was that [DRUM ROLL] Donald Trump announced he was running for re-election. This created consternation in some places, indifference in others. It was noted that the crowd listening to the announcement at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort complex seemed less than energized, as did Trump. No Members of Congress, no governors showed up for the announcement. When President Joe Biden was asked if he had a reaction, he replied: "Not really."
Rupert Murdoch has turned against Trump, with his NY POST running a front-page leader titled "Florida Man Makes Announcement" linked to a back-pages editorial titled "Been There, Don That":
QUOTE:
With just 720 days to go to the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president. In a move no political pundit saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified-documents library.
Trump, famous for gold-plated lobbies and firing people on reality television, will be 78 in 2024. If elected, Trump would tie Joe Biden for being the oldest president to take office. His cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is charred steak with ketchup. He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a "stable genius". Trump also served as the 45th president.
END_QUOTE
There's some uncertainty as to why Trump finally decided to run -- one of the most plausible reasons being that he wanted to raise money. However, it seems that campaign finance laws will now kick in, and place constraints on his fund-raising. Of course, he's always broken the rules, and unlikely to change his ways now. Another motive may have been that he wants to complicate the Department of Justice's investigations into his actions, and it did get a response from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who promptly appointed a special counsel to determine if Trump should be indicted.
The special counsel, Jack Smith, once prosecuted Kosovo war crimes. The SC will insulate the DOJ from charges that it is going after one of Biden's political rivals. There were complaints that involving a special prosecutor would add further delay to the investigation, but cooler heads pointed out that Smith would obtain a staff of DOJ investigators already involved in the case. They will continue their investigations and bring Smith up to speed.
Republican politicians have denounced the SC, but "Never Trumper" Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) suggested there was less there than met the eye:
QUOTE:
Many Republicans pretending to be outraged by the Special Counsel are privately relieved. The fact is that many Repubs know they have a Donald Trump problem. Short term, long term, all terms. They also know they are unwilling and/or unable to solve it themselves. So they need a 3rd party like DOJ to solve it for them. They will be the first ones popping the champagne.
END_QUOTE
* In the meantime, Trump's advocates in the media, such as Tucker Carlson of Fox News, are keeping the Trump beat turned up to 11. Member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) sees Carlson as a personal threat, saying in an interview:
QUOTE:
I can tell you 110% one of the largest sources of death threats that I get is Tucker Carlson. There is a major media outlet out there, a major news channel, that is fueling political violence in this country and we are acting like it is normal. It is not normal.
Every time that [Carlson] puts his name in my mouth, the next day, this is what stochastic terrorism is. It is like this indirect, it is like when you use a very large platform to turn up the temperature and target an individual until something happens -- and then when something happens, because it is indirect you say: "Oh, I had nothing to do with that!" Tucker Carlson ... plays a massive role in political violence, like it comes on his doorstep specifically.
END_QUOTE
I wasn't familiar with the term "stochastic terrorism", but it fits. Trump has often made use of the trick, inciting hate against his enemies and standing back to see what happens. AOC has a reputation for being far to the Left and proud of it, but in this case she's speaking the absolute truth.
* In response to the recapture of the city of Kershon by Ukrainian forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, targeting their electrical power infrastructure. The Ukrainians have been able to intercept a high percentage of the missiles -- the German IRIS-T interceptor missile has been a particular star of the defense -- but too many are still getting through.
The Russians have also obtained Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to support their air offensive. The drones are not hard to shoot down; they fly low and slow, and are noisy. It's just a question of detecting them in enough time to take them down.
A mobile phone app has been developed by Ukrainian volunteers to allow civilians to report sightings of incoming Russian drones and missiles The app, named "ePPO", relies on a phone's GPS and compass; a user only has to point their phone in the direction of the incoming object and press a button to report the drone to the country's defense network. There have been tens of thousands of downloads. For security reasons, the ePPO app only works along with the established Diia ID app, which allows adult Ukrainians to store their identity card, driving license, and other official documents on their phone.
The idea of using a civilian spotter network is not new. During the Battle of Britain, the Royal Observer Corps, a network of volunteer spotters, helped to warn of German aircraft flying over the UK. In any case, use of the Shahed-136 appears to have greatly declined, due to the high rate of interceptions, with the German Gepard (Cheetah) -- a tracked "flakpanzer" with radar and twin fast-firing 35-millimeter cannon -- becoming a star as well.
It is hard to see that Putin's missile blitz is going to win the war for him, or that it accomplishes anything but to increase Ukrainian suffering and hatred. Putin, however, is showing no signs of giving up; he chose to ride the tiger, and now he dares not dismount.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Tiny Dandelion-Inspired Sensors Can Be Dispersed By The Wind" by Nick Lavars, 16 March 2022), there's nothing new about the idea of cheap, tiny sensor elements that can be widely dispersed, but there are new takes on the idea. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle have been working on microsensors that can be dropped by a small drone and then disperse like dandelion seeds in the breeze to create wide-area environmental monitoring networks. The UW team evaluated 75 designs before settling on and refining a solution. Vikram Iyer, one of the study leads, says:
QUOTE:
The way dandelion seed structures work is that they have a central point and these little bristles sticking out to slow down their fall. We took a 2D projection of that to create the base design for our structures. As we added weight, our bristles started to bend inwards. We added a ring structure to make it more stiff and take up more area to help slow it down.
END_QUOTE
Each sensor seed could carry up to four sensors, measuring light, temperature, and pressure, and relay the data to a receiver up to 60 meters (200 feet) away. Instead of batteries, the micropower sensor seeds were given a capacitor and a solar cell to charge it; they landed upright 95% of the time. The sensors were 30 times heavier than a dandelion seed, but still dispersed readily, particularly if there were minor variations in their structure. Shyam Gollkota, another study lead, said:
QUOTE:
Our prototype suggests that you could use a drone to release thousands of these devices in a single drop. They'll all be carried by the wind a little differently, and basically you can create a 1,000-device network with this one drop. This is amazing and transformational for the field of deploying sensors, because right now it could take months to manually deploy this many sensors.
END_QUOTE
The researchers are considering improvements on the design, in particular working towards biodegradable versions to keep from scattering electronic waste.
* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Fossils of Giant Marine Reptiles Found High in the Swiss Alps" by Will Dunham, 28 April 2022), during the Mesozoic Era, or the Age of the Great Reptiles, the ichthyosaurs -- dolphin-like marine reptiles -- cruised the seas. They could grow to great size, as demonstrated by three fossils that have, counterintuitively, been found on top of three mountains in the Swiss Alps in the 1970s and 1980s, at up to 2,740 meters (8,990 feet) above sea level.
Paleontologists found rib and vertebrae fossils from two ichthyosaur individuals: one about 21 meters (69 feet) long and the other about 15 meters (49 feet) long. The remains are too sketchy to definitively determine their species, but likely belong to an ichthyosaur family called Shastasauridae. This family includes the biggest-known ichthyosaur: Shastasaurus, with a specimen from Canada indicating a length of 21 meters (69 feet).
They also found an ichthyosaur tooth that is the biggest ever found, with a base 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) wide and an estimated length of 15 centimeters (6 inches). The tooth was found on top of Chrachenhorn Mountain near Davos. An 18-meter (59-foot) long ichthyosaur described in 2021 had a tooth with a base 2 centimeters (0.8 inches) wide. A simple extrapolation would suggest a tooth 6 centimeters wide could have come from an animal 54 meters (177 feet) long. It seems unlikely it was really that big, but it was big in any case.
The fossils date to around 205 million years ago near the end of the Triassic Period, the first component of the Mesozoic. The giant ichthyosaurs disappear from the fossil record after the mass extinctions at the end of the Triassic, about 201 million years ago. There is, of course, nothing strange about finding sea creatures high in mountains; the shifting plates of the Earth elevated them to the heights.
The Alps have a complicated structure, with giant slabs of rock consisting of former seafloor, called "nappes", piled on top of each other by the African plate pushing into the European plate. The nappe that the ichthyosaurs come from is the highest in the pile. This piling up happened roughly in the last 35 million years.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Retired US Army General Mark Hertling, referenced here in the past, decided to write a status report on the war in Ukraine, reproduced here in a heavily-edited form:
QUOTE:
Competent military units will conduct "after action reviews (AAR)" many times during the conduct of training & operations, to assess what's happened, and to determine what to do next. The war in Ukraine has gone through three phases in the nine months since it started, and is now entering "Phase IV". It's worth reviewing where the war has been and where it is going.
On 24 February, the first night of the conflict, I wrote about what I thought would happen -- based on assessments of Russian Forces (RuF) and Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU), along with elements obtained from intelligence reports from my time in command of US Army Europe in 2011:2012. Those comments also reflected on a handy formula:
Military_Capability = Resources x Will
When one uses that formula, one must also consider the size of each force & their missions. In any case, it is obvious now that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to extinguish Ukraine. My guess was that Putin's strategic objectives included:
None of it worked, Phase I of the conflict proving a complete failure for the Russians. While the RuF had 190,000 troops around Ukraine's borders, they were a hollow force: too much territory, too many cities to secure, while the invasion force proved poorly equipped and supplied, badly trained, and very badly led, with little unity of command. The AFU proved far more competent in all respects, even though they were under-armed and, on paper, out-gunned. The US and NATO rushed light weapons to the theater, notably the US Javelin and British NLAW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and the US Stinger infantry-portable surface-to-air missile (ISAM). Strong US-NATO military support was matched by economic sanctions against Russia of unprecedented severity.
In six weeks, RuF leadership knew they had to scale back their objectives, shift their forces, improve command & control (C2), and fix logistics. In my view, this started "Phase II" of the war, from 2 April to 30 July. Unfortunately for them, RuF could not effectively adapt. For an army to make battlefield adjustments requires good leadership, competent C2, maneuver, logistics, and high morale.
RuF had none of those things, while the AFU had all of them, plus new precision weapons -- particularly HIMARS rocket launchers and M777 howitzers -- to complement the precision shoulder-fired weapons employed in Phase I. Although there were many comments that the fight in the east was a "stalemate", it was much more a slugfest.
The AFU went on the defensive, playing "rope-a-dope" with the RuF -- setting up a defensive line, then working on another line behind it. When RuF pressure on the first line became too great, the AFU pulled back to the second line, to begin work on a third. The RuF was able to inflict pain on the AFU, but only at much greater pain to itself, with its forces not having recovered from their mauling in Phase I. They advanced, but only at a creep.
The introduction of HIMARS changed the equation, allowing the AFU to target and destroy RuF ammunition dumps and command centers in their rear. The AFU had excellent intelligence on enemy dispositions, both from US-NATO surveillance systems and from Ukrainian guerrillas, coordinated by AFU special operations forces (SOF) in the occupied territories. The RuF advance, already slow, ground to a halt.
Phase III of the war began in July, with a drive in the northeast, relieving pressure on Karkhiv and ultimately capturing the city of Izyum. The RuF was off balance and was quickly evicted from the region. The focus then shifted to the southeast, with a push on Kershon near the mouth of the Dnipro River. It was more time-consuming than the offensive in the northeast, but equally successful in the end.
In the meantime, Russia underwent a hasty mobilization of forces, grabbing as many bodies as they could off the streets, to send them into battle with little training and poor equipment. Many surrendered immediately. The RuF conducted a series of desultory offensives in the center of the line, around the town of Bakhmut -- it seems to reassure Putin that something was being done, the offensives being costly but doing nothing but piling up bodies.
Winter weather is now setting in. The Russian objective in Phase IV is now to stall the war, to create another "frozen conflict" in eastern & southern Ukraine that mirrors Transnistra, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia/Abkazia. Russian propaganda has been pushing a "peace offensive", the goal of which is obviously to buy time to allow the RuF to recuperate, for further aggression against Ukraine. They can't get the time, and further mobilization is not likely to do them any good.
The RuF has been able to obtain useful assets from Iran, including kamikaze drones and tactical ballistic missiles. With Iranian assistance, they have continued attacks on Ukraine's cities, in particular targeting civic infrastructure -- but the pain inflicted on Ukraine's citizens has no prospect of breaking national resistance, instead increasing the will to resist.
Winter makes difficulties for the AFU, but more for the RuF. The AFU is receiving winter gear, in particular from the Nordic countries, while RuF troops have little protection against the cold weather. Indications already show many are dying of exposure. The AFU is presented with more difficult terrain and an enemy falling back on its supply lines, both of which complicate an advance. However, at the same time, the RuF appears to be growing weaker, while the guerrilla struggle in their rear appears to be intensifying -- in pace with Russian war crimes against Russian citizens under their control.
Nonetheless, there is no immediate prospect of an end to the war. Circumstances can change abruptly, of course, but the expectation must be that the war will continue until the RuF is driven out of Ukraine. That means more military and economic aid from the US and the West. Extreme Right-wing American politicians have been calling for an end to the aid, but public sympathies are against them, and support remains strong. Ukraine, with help, will win this war, but it's not over yet.
END_QUOTE
* At present, the biggest problem faced by Ukraine is the ongoing missile attacks on civilian infrastructure. Ukraine's allies are shipping electrical generators in numbers to provide facilities with power, while the Ukrainian government has set up relocatable "invincibility centers" to provide electricity, mobile phone connections, heat, water, and first aid to the citizens. 4,000 have been established and more are planned.
An image of the lights of Europe seen from space, with Ukraine gone black, made the rounds on Twitter, which was dismissed as obviously a photoshop job. One "@pharmasist_son" replied: "If you look REALLY closely at Denmark, you can see my garden lights, spelling: F U C K R U S S I A."
I replied in turn with a GIF of Hugh Laurie as Dr. Greg House saying: YOU ARE GOOD -- and added: "The Danes, always punching above their weight." I got a number of LIKES, I suspect from Danes.
* As mentioned here last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, John L. "Jack" Smith, to determine if Donald Trump should be indicted. There were complaints among the Woke Left that Garland was "stalling" by appointing Jack Smith, but there was no reason to think the investigation slowed down at all.
One Twitterer named Jack E. Smith (@7Veritas) exploited his similar name by grabbing John L. Smith's impressively stern image for an avatar, and fantasizing about being the special counsel:
QUOTE:
19NOV: I know what everyone wants for Christmas. I'm working on it.
21NOV: I've taken on tough lawyers before, but I've never had to face lawyers who needed their own lawyers.
21NOV: Trump watched President Biden pardon two turkeys today. That will be as close as it gets.
21NOV: Despite appearances, I am a happy person. You're at peace when you find your calling. I was 8 years old when I won my first conviction. I knew then it's what I was meant to do.
21NOV: Long-standing DOJ policy is that a sitting President cannot be charged with Federal crimes. Trump is not a sitting President. It's open season.
21NOV: Let's make a deal. I'll clean up this mess, and you vote for better people so we don't have to do this again.
21NOV: The hardest thing about prosecuting Trump for stealing classified documents, claiming he never had them, then claiming he declassified them, then hiding them all over the place in plain sight ... is doing it with a straight face. I think it's why they brought me in. I haven't laughed since 1996.
22NOV: Sent Merrick a first draft of the indictment this morning. He said "FOREVER" wasn't an appropriate sentencing recommendation. Killjoy.
23NOV: Merrick is a good boss. He leaves me encouraging notes all the time, like "follow the facts" or "let the law light the way". Today, it was: "Enjoy carving that turkey." I'm not sure it was a Thanksgiving message.
23NOV: People are asking why Mike Pence would talk to the DOJ after he refused to talk to the January 6 Committee. It's simple, really. A congressional invite is like being asked to a tea party -- they don't get too upset if you bail. A DOJ invite is like your wife asking you to take out the trash. It's not really a request.
24NOV: Happy Thanksgiving! A day to nourish your soul with the warmth of friends and family. Laugh, love, and be kind to each other. DISCLAIMER: This message does not apply to anyone I will be indicting later.
24NOV: They said I would "slow things down": [official letter from the special counsel to an appeals court curtly dismissing Trump claims] Translation: Jack is loaded on sugar cookies and ready to rumble.
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* In the meantime, the GOP having taken control of the House of Representatives, there's confused activity on selecting the new House Speaker. The matter's not worth much comment until it's resolved, but it is worth noting that Kevin McCarthy, the current House minority leader, is by no means guaranteed the job. When Nancy Pelosi, the current Speaker, was asked by CNN if McCarthy "had what it takes" to be Speaker, she replied: "Why would I make a judgment about something that may or may not ever happen? No, I don't think he has it."
Pelosi is an expert at throwing shade.
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