In the Mud
The situation in Mariupol on the coast of southern Ukraine is desperate, with water supplies cut after days of Russian bombardment. But further north, there may be cause for hope. A Russian thermobaric bomb launcher got captured by Ukrainians because “it tried to go off-roading … in springtime”, when the ground hasn’t frozen as usual this winter. Meanwhile, poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices implied by a photo of a gun-missile system’s right rear pair of tyres have significant implications for Russia:
When you leave military truck tires in one place for months on end … the side walls get rotted/brittle such that using low tire pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause the tires to fail catastrophically via rips. … The Russians simply cannot risk them off road during the Rasputitsa/Mud season. … Given the demonstrated levels of corruption in truck maintenance … their wheeled AFV/truck park is as road bound as Russian Army columns were in the 1st Russo-Finnish War.
We should take maps that show areas “under Russian control” with a grain of salt: “Every map is a projection of power. … Beware of maps bearing easy lines.”
The news was at first so squarely focused on Kyiv and Kharkiv that I hadn’t heard about Odessa, which isn’t showing on maps yet as a focus of the invasion, but very much is:
[Yuliya] Gorodetskaya was awake when the invasion began—she had been watching the UN Security Council’s deliberations, but switched to watching Vladimir Putin’s national address. She assumed that if he was giving it at night, it had to be something important. “By the middle of his speech I knew Putin was going to attack. As soon as he finished, an explosion boomed outside. I thought it was fireworks—from collaborators celebrating his speech. But there were no fireworks that night.”
That story is from Meduza, the same site that interviewed the Russian sociologist I linked yesterday; it’s based in Latvia, hence still online. Its English-edition editor just posted a chilling tweet:
Russian lawmakers have introduced legislation that would conscript into the military anyone arrested for protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These people would be forced to fight in the invasion itself.
He adds a note of caution, but says, “I, for one, would be scared.” For good reason: there have been many tweets yesterday and today from Moscow-based foreign correspondents, and outsiders with Russian connections, about people leaving Russia being questioned at airports and racing to get out before martial law is declared.
George Monbiot on Putin apologists among the Western left.
War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Now, it must bring him down:
Western sanctions need to target the people who actually enable Putin’s actions: his entire senior security and administrative apparatus. Not just the few dozen people already targeted, but the thousands of second-tier officials in the presidential administration, the military and the security services. These people are not billionaires, but all are multimillionaires, with much to lose. Ruin the lives of these several thousand people, and let them judge who is to blame. … Let them stay in Russia, with no way out and no imported goods to spend their stolen money on. Make the cost a real one, a personal one, and let them see if it is worth the price to maintain a deranged, power-hungry tsar on his throne. Let them decide if they want to follow him into the abyss.
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