Putin celebrates Victory Day…
…not with a bang but a whimper:
The smaller number of marching units, the absence of the “Z” sloganeering, any air units, and the elite of the Russian Army all gave the parade a more subdued air. It was not a victory or an on-the-cusp-of-victory celebration. Putin’s speech was a departure from previous statements on the war. He seemed reflective on the cost. In light of the propensity of Putin and his lackeys to casually threaten nuclear war, I think the absence of the “doomsday plane” that had been previewed only a couple of days ago and of any mention of nuclear weapons by Putin is a sign that Russia has weighed the “escalate to de-escalate” option and found it to be unworkable.
I sure hope so.
There were bangs plenty yesterday, however, when a school in Ukraine was bombed:
As many as 60 people are feared to have been killed when a bomb struck a village school in eastern Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday while Russian forces continued shelling the last holdout of Ukrainian resistance in the ruined southeastern port of Mariupol.
Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Gaidai said the school in Bilohorivka, where about 90 people were sheltering, was hit on Saturday by a Russian bomb, setting it ablaze.
NOTE: The poetic reference in my first sentence is to this:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar….This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Biden is celebrating Victory Day by “sign[ing] legislation allowing the administration to lend or lease weapons to Ukraine on Monday, which coincides with Russia’s annual military celebration. The White House announced Friday that Biden will sign the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act on May 9 after it passed in the House by a 417-10 vote late last month and passed in the Senate before that.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/biden-to-sign-ukraine-bill-on-russias-victory-day
Note that Biden said nothing about the anniversary of V-E Day on May 8. He’s big on Earth Day, though, calling for a “climate-friendly” military fleet (https://nypost.com/2022/04/22/biden-calls-for-climate-friendly-military-fleet-on-earth-day/), and celebrating Cinco de Mayo (https://news.yahoo.com/biden-celebrates-cinco-mayo-white-225017764.html). Priorities, priorities.
Earlier I had mentioned that after a war starts production means more than inventory. That is, if you fire 1,000 artillery shells a day you need to be able to produce 1,000 artillery shells a day.
Yesterday I saw a YouTube featuring a Russian TV show whose analyst was livid. He guessed they fired 10,000 to 15,000 rounds a day and didn’t think Russia could output that much. He was banging the drum hard that they had to have a ‘special’ production, to match their ‘special’ military operation, where the government took over all of the industries so they could be mobilized to keep pace.
I think it is beginning to dawn on the Russians that they can’t maintain their tempo of operations and all of the arms flowing into Ukraine from the West makes it even worse for them.
At some point last week — or even before that — some senior strategists in the White House and/or Pentagon must have decided it would be a good thing for our Defense Secretary to announce publicly that our goal was to make it impossible for Russia to continue to engage in destabilizing activities anywhere in the world. This is either a foolhardy decision or a very gutsy statement of strategic intent. It remains to be seen which.
Reporting on the May 9th celebrations in Moscow make it seem as if Putin has gotten the message that this is a gutsy strategic statement. Of course Putin has nukes, so the world is still threatened. We shall see how this unfolds.
May have said it before: Thomas Sowell, in his “Intellectuals and War” refers frequently to all the discussion prior to WW II about how Hitler and Germany would act in their own best interests as considered by said intellectuals. That the subjects in question might have a different view of their best interests and goals could not be conceived.
Hence my earlier dismissal of lengthy discussions of history and agreements and persons of consequence informing the present issue.
That said, Putin’s speech might be a view of things he’s going to have to sell to the Russians. Or a method of disarming potential enemies while something else is in the works.
But one lesson might be that such aggression in today’s world will not stand and nations such as supporting Ukraine have figured out how to do it and can be confident. So the potential land-grabber may decide to stay home. If even the Russians, with their nukes no less, can’t make it happen….
Perhaps all old soldiers feel a bit this way, however over 52 years ago when I came back to the USA after four years in the Army, I had been through a bit of stuff with the men who were my brothers. Today I would be cautious thinking about our nation engaging in military conflict with the officers and the menagerie of confused people wearing uniforms, I knew over five decades ago I could trust the MEN serving next to me, but what the heck do I know.
OldTexan,
Congress, the administration, the Pentagon and numerous experts in the media, along with many on the internet have assured us that concerns about a conflict involving a dictator possessing the largest nuclear arsenal in the world are unwarranted. So rest assured, regardless of how much and far Putin is pushed, he wouldn’t dare employ it.
Old Roosian despots never die, they just feint away.
It’s an existential thing.
Just watched a video of some Ukrainian soldiers using Javelins against Russian tanks. Brutal! (Unfortunately, I can’t get the link to load here.) These smart weapons have changed the game. Yes, Russia can do standoff bombardment and destroy infrastructure. But they can’t get their armor to advance and hold territory while the infantry fills in behind. The tanks and armored PCs are getting wiped. Maybe that’s why Austin and the Pentagon feel so confident.
Ukraine can’t invade Russia, but they sure can keep Russia at bay. The sooner Putin recognizes that his forces are spinning their wheels, the sooner negotiations can begin in earnest. It’s the only sensible courser. But Putin may not ever grasp that. So, the carnage will likely continue.
It’s hard to see what basis there is for negotiations. Russia wants to control all of Ukraine. Ukraine wants to control all of Ukraine. These goals are fundamentally incompatible. There is no common ground between them at all. One (hopefully Ukraine) will have to militarily defeat the other and convince the other to recognize that defeat.
“Russia wants to control all of Ukraine.”
Jeff I’d respectfully suggest Putin wants everything east of the Dnieper River AND a NATO-unfriendly regime in Kyiv. “All of Ukraine” is a bite bigger than he can chew.
Ultimately regaining “greater Russia” is well beyond Putin’s grasp as well. His armies haven’t proved themselves a well-oiled machine & even against the US-led NATO they’d lose more than they’d win. I reckon he needs to keep his other eye pointed toward his backside where China may feel inclined to advance their own interests.
@ OldTexan > “Today I would be cautious thinking about our nation engaging in military conflict with the officers and the menagerie of confused people wearing uniforms,”
Seems to me that is exactly the result being aimed at.
@ ambisinstral > “if you fire 1,000 artillery shells a day you need to be able to produce 1,000 artillery shells a day.”
Barry’s comment & link on the open thread touches on the same kind of concern.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/05/09/open-thread-5-9-22/#comment-2622611
So they just have to crank up and make some more — The Military-Industrial-Political Complex at work.
“Biden” continues to attack Michael Flynn.
And expose him to potential payback from “his” allies in the Kremlin….
“Biden DOD demands Mike Flynn fork over speech fee even though he helped DIA spy on Russians”—
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/feds-still-pursuing-mike-flynn-repay-speech-fee-even
The people who abandoned Afghanistan and are lovey-dovey with the Mullahs are taking perfidy to a new level…as they create yet another distraction to conceal their evil intentions.
“ Jeff I’d respectfully suggest Putin wants everything east of the Dnieper River AND a NATO-unfriendly regime in Kyiv. “All of Ukraine” is a bite bigger than he can chew.”
That may be, John, but you assume a rationality from Putin that may not be there. Putin may not realize that he does not have the means to swallow Ukraine or, if he does, he may not care and try for it anyway, gambling on the weakness of the West. At one point, he was trying to move south from Belarus, probably to cut off the supplies from Poland. He was also trying to link up with the “Transnistria” separatist region of Moldova from the east. Both of these moves were west of the Dnieper. Your calculus of what is rational for Putin may not agree with his calculus of what is rational.
Jeff… we’ll have to wait and see.
As it is right now he may have to address both NATO and China.
The Ukraine mess illustrates the joke , the farce, the scam that is the UN.
Here we have at the UN Russian “diplomats” provided a forum to express their views explaining why their nation’s invasion of another sovereign nation is justified, and maybe why bombing schools is also justified.
If Hitler, Himmler, Geobbels, et. al., were alive today representing Nazi Germany, would they too be given a forum at the UN to explain to the world why their policies are justified?
The Russian’s are engaged in mass murder; it really is that simple. Ukraine has never represented a threat to Russia, unless one believes that Poland does.
The League of Nations was useless in preventing WWII and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
The UN has been helpless in preventing the several military attacks upon Israel, the Korean War, Vietnam, a couple of Iraq Wars, the Falklands War, etc.
The UN is a waste; it merely provides a forum for folks like a Castro, the Russians, and other assorted POS to play the “nice” diplomat, while they engage in their nefarious deeds.
The USA should get the hell out of the UN and kick their ass out of the USA.
It would be agreeable if the net result of this escapade was to persuade the Russian political class to be content with the territory they have.
I keep thinking of a possible Putin offer to have peace, and newly guaranteed borders that let Russia keep Crimea and the Donetsk & Luhansk (Donbas) regions. Zelenskyy rejects this and keeps fighting, while Russia controls far more land including Mariupol.
How many Ukrainians have to die before you believe “too many” have died for the territory gain to be worth it? (Putin has a similar question, how many Russians have to die before he’s willing to pull back to pre-2014 borders?) 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? At 100 per day, it takes a thousand days to get to 100k, almost 3 years.
As far as wars go, this one seems to have a lot less loss of human life as compared to the amount of property damage.
The Ukrainian survivors of this experience are likely to be far more patriotic, even Ukrainian nationalistic, plus more trusting of each other. A “high trust” society is usually far more economically productive than a low trust society.
It would be nice if, after this invasion, the trade and financial flows were such that all globalized elites had the same agreeable thought that invading another country was too costly. Borders won’t be changed by violence.
I don’t quite think we’re there, but we might be after this – tho we won’t ever live without the fear of a possible violation by one country choosing to invade.
@ambisinistral @AesopFan
It’s so much worse than that. If you fire 1,000 artillery shells a day, you have to produce significantly more than 1,000 per day, because 100% efficiency and combat use is impossible. So for every shell you fire, you have to produce somewhere North of that to account for ones lost in transit, stolen by some embezzler, that turn out to be duds, or so on.
It’s one reason why almost every military enters a war hugely underestimating their consumption and production.
Indeed. On some level the issues with the “Special Military Operation” are seeping their way through, and Russia needs to rejigger how it goes at this or lose.
Kellogg-Briand (sic) Pact, signed by League of Nations (?) after WWI suggests that national leaders are quite willing not to learn from history. Fog of war is a very bloody, uncertain, and dangerous place to enter into.
Another feint?
Time will tell. It’s existential actually?
https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/05/10/russian-troops-retreat-from-ukraine-to-russia-planned-redeployment-or-the-beginning-of-collapse-n562608
Russia *has* to take all of Ukraine. Whatever they don’t take will effectively be a part of NATO even if it doesn’t formally join. No, it won’t have Article V rights, but it will have top-notch NATO weaponry. If Russia stops at the Dnieper, in five years they’ll be looking across the river at a Ukraine armed with M-1 tanks, Apache helicopters, and F-16 Fighting Falcons all protected by Patriot and Iron Dome missile defense systems.
And then Ukraine might decide to take back its lost territories.
But, but, but NATO bites Vlad in the but. Poor boy.
Where is Colonel MacCrickets?
Time will tell.
Like a cross to a vampire
https://babalublog.com/2022/05/10/desantis-signs-legislation-establishing-victims-of-communism-day-teaching-evils-of-communism-in-florida-schools/
Who is the greater enemy at home. Razing or warping every institution
Magnificent, hilarious short video w/voiceover: https://mobile.twitter.com/ItsBorys/status/1523664324950036480
English subtitles are essential (and available) if you don’t speak German.
“Krieg in der Ukraine: Die Schlacht um den Donbass”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJiuc4KWmQo
https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/
Saturday I went to “Total Wine and More” and saw a small gray sign with elegant calligraphy in the vodka section declare:
______________________
Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we do not carry Russian vodka.
______________________
I oppose the Russian invasion myself, but after seeing US corporations take aim so often at conservatives, I’d just as soon corps just do their jobs building and selling things, and leave making the world a better place to others.
Besides, it’s a mostly a symbolic move — little Russian vodka is sold in the US.
I really don’t trust much of the outrage over Ukraine. It *is* outrageous but I sense deeper motives of self-interest.