Ukraine outrage and analysis.

[TSherbs]

Wow. Sounds Orwellian. Only makes me sad.

[Chip]

On the anniversary of Russia's unsuccessful invasion, Ukraine issued a postage stamp with Banksy's mural painted on a wall near Kyiv.

[Scrawler]

On the anniversary of Russia's unsuccessful invasion, Ukraine issued a postage stamp with Banksy's mural painted on a wall near Kyiv.

Mr. Putin's disastrous invasion has made me a stamp collector. They have such a sense of humour that it was impossible to resist having these stamps sent over.

[welch]

what?

I asked a fair question: what is the point of your post (which links to a Twitter post)? We know that the US has helped Ukraine. That is a very public fact. I am asking you what your larger point is with that fact.

Not liking or not agreeing with something does not make it false. US comprises 4.25% of the world's population. It would be beneficial to take the views of the rest of the world into consideration. Majority of them are not singing the same song.

https://fournier.substack.com/p/ten-...-about-ukraine

So you love genocide? That is what Putin and his puppets call for. Ukrainians should be exterminated and Ukraine should be folded back into the Russian Empire.

Why do you support this?

[Scrawler]

what?

I asked a fair question: what is the point of your post (which links to a Twitter post)? We know that the US has helped Ukraine. That is a very public fact. I am asking you what your larger point is with that fact.

Not liking or not agreeing with something does not make it false. US comprises 4.25% of the world's population. It would be beneficial to take the views of the rest of the world into consideration. Majority of them are not singing the same song.

https://fournier.substack.com/p/ten-...-about-ukraine

So you love genocide? That is what Putin and his puppets call for. Ukrainians should be exterminated and Ukraine should be folded back into the Russian Empire.

Why do you support this?

I have often wondered what people find admirable about Russia that they put their energies into supporting their position.

[TSherbs]

what?

I asked a fair question: what is the point of your post (which links to a Twitter post)? We know that the US has helped Ukraine. That is a very public fact. I am asking you what your larger point is with that fact.

Not liking or not agreeing with something does not make it false. US comprises 4.25% of the world's population. It would be beneficial to take the views of the rest of the world into consideration. Majority of them are not singing the same song.

https://fournier.substack.com/p/ten-...-about-ukraine

So you love genocide? That is what Putin and his puppets call for. Ukrainians should be exterminated and Ukraine should be folded back into the Russian Empire.

Why do you support this?

I have often wondered what people find admirable about Russia that they put their energies into supporting their position.

Karmachanic, to my memory, has mostly been anti-American myopia (or whatever critical term one might use). I asked him about this above. Maybe they will answer about motivation, interest, etc. Maybe they are Russian.

[karmachanic]

As mentioned higher up the thread, I have no allegiance to any country. I've lived in five for extended periods. I simply pay attention to what is actually happening in the world. Paying attention to which way the wind is blowing. It's changed direction, and you lot haven't noticed. The global South is tired of being bullied, and has had enough.

Take the time to look into what's happening with BRICS and the fact that, Argentina, Algeria, Iran and Turkey are looking in that direction, Look at the International North South Transportation Corridor and the impact that will have in conjuction with BRI. Saudi Arabia is moving away from selling oil in USD. Look at who's in and wishes to join SCO.

Read US Hegemony and its Perils recently published by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and understand that 80% of the world agrees. TSherbs wrote that the US has been 'helping" Ukraine. You won't find another country on this planet that would like that kind of help. Watch Mr Putin's Munich Security Conference speach of 2015 and you'll have better understang of why what is happening is happening. Then read his speach of earlier this week to know what he has planned for the future. No histronics. Not demonising anyone.

No geopolitical power lasts. Rising and falling. Change is a constant. I grew up on a small island. One did not need to be a weatherman to know a storm was coming. One could smell it, feel it. Prepare for it. There's a BIG storm coming. Who's going to suffer? Us

Your collective denigrating vituperative invective betrays you. I won't be returning. Bye https://fpgeeks.com/forum/images/smi...ilies/wave.gif

[TSherbs]

Whose invective?

If you are answering my question, there is no invective in it whatsoever.

Digesting your answers is challenging. I think, basically, you are answering "yes" to my question. You believe that it he anti-Russian point of view here is myopic. You also keep claiming that countries don't want our help. Some don't, for sure. But the elected leadership of Ukraine does. Isn't that all that matters for this thread?

No one here has argued that Ukraine is blameless in the conflict that escalated into an invasion across it's borders and has lead to the destruction of some of it's cities and infrastructure and people. No one is "blameless" in war (there is always some sin that can be found).

But really, Karmachanic, this is your last post? I asked several other questions, particularly about the link you posted. Are you that author? If not, do you agree with all of the content?

I still have trouble understanding what your basic criticism is. Is it simply that Americans suck? That Ukrainians are lying assholes who deserve to be invaded, shelled in their homes, and subsumed into Russia?

[Chip]

Your collective denigrating vituperative invective betrays you. I won't be returning.

Thanks.

[welch]

It looks as if the Great Russian 2023 Offensive started a few weeks ago. It has not gone well. In fact, it has gone no where. It is always foolish to predict the future, but maybe this scrambling collection of small battles around Bakhmut is all Russia can do.

In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes

A three-week fight in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.


Andrew E. Kramer
By Andrew E. Kramer
March 1, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
6 MIN READ

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.

The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor.

“We say, ‘Please, don’t let us down in battle,’” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic. “‘Bring us in and bring us out.’”

Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard II tanks.


The sophisticated Western tanks are expected on the battlefield in the next several months. The new Russian armor turned up earlier — and in its first wide-scale deployment was decimated.

A three-week battle on a plain near the coal-mining town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

In the extended battle, both sides sent tanks into the fray, rumbling over dirt roads and maneuvering around tree lines, with the Russians thrusting forward in columns and the Ukrainians maneuvering defensively, firing from a distance or from hiding places as Russian columns came into their sights.

When it was over, not only had Russia failed to capture Vuhledar, but it also had made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks earlier in the war: advancing columns into ambushes.

Blown up on mines, hit with artillery or obliterated by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter farm fields all about Vuhledar, according to Ukrainian military drone footage. Ukraine’s military said Russia had lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battle. That figure could not be independently verified. Ukraine does not disclose how many weapons it loses.

“We studied the roads they used, then hid and waited” to shoot in ambushes, Sergeant Knignitsky said.

Lack of expertise also bedeviled the Russians. Many of their most elite units had been left in shambles from earlier fighting. Their spots were filled with newly conscripted soldiers, unschooled in Ukraine’s tactics for ambushing columns. In one indication that Russia is running short of experienced tank commanders, Ukrainian soldiers said they captured a medic who had been reassigned to operate a tank.

The Russian army has focused on, and even mythologized, tank warfare for decades for its redolence of Russian victories over the Nazis in World War II. Factories in the Ural Mountains have churned out tanks by the thousands. In Vuhledar, by last week Russia had lost so many machines to sustain armored assaults that they had changed tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.

The depth of the Russian defeat was underscored by Russian military bloggers, who have emerged as an influential pro-war voice in the country. Often critical of the military, they have posted angry screeds about the failures of repeated tank assaults, blaming generals for misguided tactics with a storied Russian weapon.

Grey Zone, a Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group, posted on Monday that “relatives of the dead are inclined almost to murder and blood revenge against the general” in charge of the assaults near Vuhledar.

In a detailed interview last week in an abandoned house near the front, Lt. Vladislav Bayak, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 1st Mechanized Battalion of the 72nd brigade, described how Ukrainian soldiers were able to inflict such heavy losses in what commanders said was the biggest tank battle of the war so far.

Ambushes have been Ukraine’s signature tactic against Russian armored columns since the early days of the war. Working from a bunker in Vuhledar, Lieutenant Bayak spotted the first column of about 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers approaching on a video feed from a drone.

“We were ready,” he said. “We knew something like this would happen.”

They had prepared a kill zone farther along a dirt road that the tanks were rumbling down. The commander needed only to give an order over the radio — “To battle!” — Lieutenant Bayak said.

Anti-tank teams hiding in tree lines along the fields, and armed with American infrared-guided Javelins and Ukrainian laser-guided Stugna-P missiles, powered up their weapons. Farther away, artillery batteries were ready. The dirt road had been left free of mines, while the fields all about were seeded with them, so as to entice the Russians to advance while preventing tanks from turning around once the trap was sprung.

The column of tanks becomes most vulnerable, Lieutenant Bayak said, after the shooting starts and drivers panic and try to turn around — by driving onto the mine-laden shoulder of the road. Blown-up vehicles then act as impediments, slowing or stalling the column. At that point, Ukrainian artillery opens fire, blowing up more armor and killing soldiers who clamber out of disabled machines. A scene of chaos and explosions ensues, the lieutenant said.

Russian commanders have sent armored columns forward for a lack of other options against Ukraine’s well-fortified positions, however costly the tactic, he said.

Over about three weeks of the tank battle, repeated Russian armored assaults floundered. In one instance, Ukrainian commanders called in a strike by HIMARS guided rockets; they are usually used on stationary targets like ammunition depots or barracks, but also proved effective against a stationary tank column.

The Ukrainians also fired with American M777 and French Caesar howitzers, as well as other Western-provided weaponry such as the Javelins.

The Ukrainian tank crew that prayed before each battle nicknamed their tank The Wanderer, for its wandering movements around the battlefield. Between missions it remained hidden in trees under a camouflage net, beside a road churned into a panorama of mud by passing tanks, five miles or so from the front line.

During the battle for Vuhledar, Private Hrebenok, the commander, was ordered to drive forward from that spot on dangerous missions, three or four times per day.

Private Hrebenok, only 20 years old, had no formal training in tank combat when the war started. But in the frantic first days of the war he was assigned to a tank, and has fought continuously in them since, picking up tricks along the way.

Training still looms as a problem. Ukraine, too, is losing skilled soldiers and replacing them with green recruits. And many Ukrainian tank crewmen are being trained on Western tanks in countries like Germany and Britain.

“All my knowledge I gained in the field,” he said. The Russian tank crews, he said, are in contrast mostly new recruits without the benefit of any combat to season them.

In ambushes, the crew hides the tank within range of a road that Russian tanks or armored personnel carriers might travel down. Then it waits quietly. As they sit and prepare for ambush, they must keep the engine warm, because restarting it would take too long. Idling would be noisy. Instead, they burn a small kerosene heater beside the motor.

Once, while they were waiting, a Russian armored personnel carrier passed through their sight and they fired but narrowly missed, damaging but not destroying the machine.

In the last major engagement, a week ago, the order came in during the gray pre-dawn to prepare an ambush for a column of 16 Russian tanks and armored vehicles advancing toward the Ukrainian lines. The crew said their prayer, patted their tank and drove forward.

“We hid the tank in a tree line and waited for them,” Private Hrebenok said. “It’s always scary but we need to destroy them.”

In this instance, they stopped about three miles short of the ambush site, just out of range of return fire, and shot in coordination with a drone pilot who called in coordinates on a radio for targets they could not see directly.

The Russian column stalled on mines and, Private Hrebenok said, The Wanderer opened fire. The Russian tank crews had little chance once they were in the kill zone, he said.

“We destroyed a lot of Russian equipment,” he said. “What they did wrong was come to Ukraine.”

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. @AndrewKramerNYT

[Chip]

Here's a drone photo from that piece:

[welch]

From ISW:

he conflict between the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin likely reached its climax against the backdrop of the Battle of Bakhmut. The Russian MoD – specifically Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff General Valery Gerasimov – is likely seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces in Bakhmut in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence in the Kremlin. The Russian MoD had been increasingly restricting Prigozhin’s ability to recruit convicts and secure ammunition, forcing Prigozhin to publicly recognize his dependency on the Russian MoD. Prigozhin, for example, publicly complained that he mailed a letter and tried to send his representative – likely to Shoigu and Gerasimov – with an urgent demand for ammunition, but that the representative was not allowed to present his complaints.[1] Prigozhin had been able to grow his forces by 40,000 convicts likely with the Kremlin’s permission to recruit in prisons in 2022 but lost that permission and access to that manpower pool at the beginning of 2023.[2] Prigozhin has threatened to withdraw Wagner forces from Bakhmut and insinuated that the Russian MoD used Wagner to bear the brunt of the high-intensity attritional urban warfare to seize Bakhmut in order to conserve Russian conventional forces.[3] These threats and complaints indicate that Prigozhin is aware of the gravity of his conflict with the Russian MoD.

The Russian military leadership may be trying to expend Wagner forces – and Prigozhin’s influence – in Bakhmut. Russian forces’ rate of advance in Bakhmut slowed following the Ukrainian withdrawal from eastern Bakhmut around March 7.[4] ISW assessed on March 6 that Wagner had to commit its elite forces to maintain offensive momentum in Bakhmut but may be running out of these forces during direct assaults on eastern, southern, and northern parts of Bakhmut.[5] Geolocated footage published on February 18 showed 43 buses with Wagner mercenaries moving from Crimea via Melitopol possibly to reinforce positions in Bakhmut.[6] Prigozhin complained on March 5 and 6 that Wagner needed additional reinforcements, and Ukrainian military officials observed that Russian forces were suffering a seven-to-one casualty ratio compared to Ukrainian forces.[7]

Prigozhin likely anticipated that Ukrainian forces would entirely withdraw from Bakhmut out of fear of imminent encirclement and hoped that his commitment of Wagner’s elite forces would be sufficient to generate that effect. Prigozhin even offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to allow Ukrainian forces to withdraw from Bakhmut in two days on March 3.[8] Limited information about the Prigozhin’s pleas likely indicates that the Russian military command is intent on expending Wagner forces within the city. Spokesperson of the Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Serhiy Cherevaty also noted on March 11 that Ukrainian forces may be able to severely degrade Wagner and have already thinned out Wagner’s second prisoner formation over the winter.[9] Ukrainian servicemen noted in a social media video from March 12 that they are holding positions in Bakhmut waiting for Russians to “shoot each other.”[10] Russian military leadership may be allowing the Wagner Group to take high casualties in Bakhmut to simultaneously erode Prigozhin’s leverage while capturing the city at the expense of Wagner troops.

The Russian military leadership is likely attempting to avenge itself on Prigozhin for a conflict that he initiated in May 2022. ISW assessed on January 22 and February 26 that the Kremlin likely lent Prigozhin its support when Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to replenish his forces with volunteer recruits to avoid declaring highly unpopular mobilization.[11] Prigozhin likely convinced Putin that he would be able to seize Bakhmut if given access to the Russian MoD’s ammunition stocks and allowed to expand his existing ultranationalist recruitment campaigns to include regular Russians and prisoners.[12] Putin granted Prigozhin access to those resources as he had likely become increasingly disillusioned with the Russian military command that had failed to capture Kyiv and effectively wasted reserves without achieving a tangible result. Putin likely perceived the Russian military command’s appeals for mobilization as a threat to the stability of his regime and placed his confidence in Prigozhin whose forces had already helped seize Popasna, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk in Luhansk Oblast.[13] Putin’s decision to side with Prigozhin likely angered Shoigu and Gerasimov, who were then tasked with sharing limited equipment and ammunition with Wagner mercenaries.

Prigozhin has also waged a relentless defamation campaign against the Russian MoD and the military command since May 2022 – first covertly via Wagner-affiliated ultranationalist social media platforms. Wagner-affiliated milbloggers began to boast about Wagner’s successes in assault operations and even spread the idea that Prigozhin could replace Shoigu as defense minister in September 2022.[14] These milbloggers capitalized on the increasing criticism among the Russian ultranationalist communities aimed at the Russian conventional military command that failed to maintain the initiative following the exhausting capture of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk. Wagner was able to exploit the greater ultranationalist community because the ultranationalists shared the objective of improving the war effort and saw a common enemy in the Russian MoD and its bureaucracy. The ultranationalist community had also been extremely interconnected over the years prior to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and drew on the same recruitment pools.

Prigozhin overestimated Putin’s reliance on Wagner forces and attempted to replace Russian military and political leadership with Wagner-affiliated figures. Prigozhin exploited the Russian military’s failures during Ukraine’s sweeping counteroffensives in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, and the turbulent reserve mobilization in September-October 2022 to establish Wagner-affiliated personnel in place of disgraced military commanders. Prigozhin made a publicized entrance into the Russian information space in a prisoner recruitment video on September 14, only three days after the Russian loss of much of Kharkiv Oblast.[15] Prigozhin later rode the wave of domestic criticism of the Russian MoD’s inability to properly conduct a reserve call-up on September 21 and used the opportunity to promote recruitment into the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC).[16]

Prigozhin, alongside Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, used the fall of Lyman to push for and ultimately secure the firing of Commander of the Central Military District (CMD) Alexander Lapin who had reportedly commanded the Lyman grouping of forces.[17] Prigozhin and Kadyrov both served alongside Lapin during the battles of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, and Lapin received credit for seizing Lysychansk with Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergey Surovikin on July 3, 2022.[18] US intelligence officials reported that persistent military failures – likely the loss of Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman, faulty mobilization, and the annexation of four partially-occupied Ukrainian regions on September 30 – had ignited a wave of criticism within Putin’s inner circle.[19] US intelligence later revealed that Prigozhin directly addressed Putin regarding these military failures, likely leading to the appointment of Surovikin as the commander of the Russian group of forces in Ukraine.[20] Ukrainian intelligence linked Surovikin with Wagner, and Prigozhin even offered praise to Surovikin in response to his appointment.[21] Reports of Lapin’s dismissal as the commander of the “central” grouping of forces appeared on November 1, shortly following Surovikin’s appointment.[22]

Prigozhin sought to establish Wagner-affiliated military officials partly to secure greater access to Russian MoD ammunition stores and budget. Prigozhin’s ability to sustain and grow Wagner forces tenuously relied on his ability to retain favor with Putin who would order the Russian MoD and other federal institutions to support these mercenaries. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Prigozhin and Kadyrov sought to undermine Shoigu in order to receive access to the Russian MoD budget to pursue other political goals through the growth of their paramilitary organizations.[23] ISW also observed that Prigozhin had extensively targeted St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov and claimed to have contracted his own advisors to the local administration, likely in hopes of gaining political and commercial power in the city.[24] Prigozhin admitted on February 20 that Surovikin had been assisting Wagner in obtaining ammunition, further confirming that Wagner forces benefited from specific connections within the Russian military leadership that Prigozhin had likely helped rise in power.[25]

Prigozhin’s obvious military-political ambitions likely alarmed Putin in October, when his regime was most vulnerable to public scrutiny. Putin likely warned Prigozhin obliquely on October 5, 2022, in an odd allusion to the Pugachev Rebellion that challenged Catherine the Great’s authority in the mid-1770s, for example.[26] Putin noted that the rebellion occurred because Pugachev “claimed to a be tsar” and because of the “weakening of the central power.” Putin’s bizarre public statement, apropos of nothing, may have been a direct response to Prigozhin’s criticism of the war effort and attempts to enhance his own military and political influence. Kremlin officials also confirmed that Putin has been increasingly preferring loyalty over competence within his inner circle, and Putin may have perceived Prigozhin’s critiques a form of disloyalty.[27] Prigozhin likely did not intend to challenge Putin directly, but Putin likely saw Prigozhin’s aggressive self-promotion at the expense of others who had Putin’s trust as a threat. Shoigu and Gerasimov, after all, have been loyal to Putin and his regime structure for years and likely erred by excessive loyalty – failing to tell Putin what Putin did not want to hear – a trait Putin seems willing to forgive.

Putin is a risk-averse and highly calculating actor who likely sought to manage the emerging threat to his control by gradually reintroducing the Russian MoD into prominence and power. The Russian MoD reportedly started recruiting prisoners in October, which likely cut into Prigozhin’s recruitment efforts.[28] Shoigu was allowed to make high-profile contacts with French, Turkish, UK, and US counterparts on October 23 – establishing a level of authority unattainable for Prigozhin, who holds no official position in the Russian government.[29] Gerasimov made similar calls to his UK and US counterparts on October 24 after having been absent from the public eye since the spring of 2022.[30] Putin continued to appease Prigozhin and his ultranationalist community during this period because he likely recognized that the involuntary reserve call-up could not close the gap between Russian force requirements and available manpower in a timely fashion and thus let Wagner expand its recruitment of prisoners and its operations on the frontline until the mobilized personnel could arrive en masse.[31] Putin likely stopped the Russian MoD from directly attacking Prigozhin but instead created conditions in which the Russian military leadership could reassume more authority. Such conditions likely threatened Prigozhin, who began to intensify his criticism of the Russian MoD and further deepened the conflict between Wagner forces and military leadership.

Putin had ultimately allowed the Russian MoD to retake control of the Bakhmut direction from Prigozhin in January as Wagner forces failed to deliver the promised victory over Bakhmut by the end of 2022. Putin appeared in several meetings with Gerasimov and Shoigu in late December 2022, likely indicating that he was not confident that Prigozhin would achieve the promised victory before the end of the year.[32] The Russian military leadership may have also been successful in convincing Putin that Wagner forces were not a good investment of resources as Russia began to run low on shells around the same timeframe.[33] Putin ostentatiously demoted Surovikin and appointed Gerasimov as the theater commander in Ukraine on January 11.[34] Putin similarly appointed Lapin as the Chief of the Russian Ground Forces on January 10 and reshuffled the Russian military command in Ukraine.[35] The Russian MoD claimed responsibility on January 13 for the capture of Soledar and deliberately failed to acknowledge Wagner in the success.[36] Putin himself failed to credit Prigozhin for the capture of Soledar in an unusual TV interview on January 15 and instead attributed the victory to the Russian MoD and General Staff.[37] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also indirectly accused Prigozhin of deliberately manipulating the information space to expose the conflict between Wagner and the Russian MoD.[38] Putin also met with Prigozhin’s long-standing nemesis Beglov on January 18, likely in a deliberate attempt to further marginalize Prigozhin.[39] The Kremlin had cut off Prigozhin’s access to prisoner recruitment since the start of 2023.[40]

[welch]

Concluding section from ISW. References are in the article.

Putin and the Russian MoD may use Prigozhin as a scapegoat for the costly drive on Bakhmut once the offensive culminates. ISW assessed on February 5 that Putin relies on a group of scapegoats to publicly take risks in his place and shoulder the blame for Russian military failures and unpopular policies.[41] Putin will likely use Wagner’s high casualties, reports about poor morale, and war crimes to deflect from likely equal or possibly worse problems within the Russian Armed Forces. Kremlin-affiliated milbloggers have ambushed Prigozhin with interviews that exposed numerous Wagner controversies regarding the ineffectiveness and mistreatment of the Wagner convict force – likely in an effort to set conditions in the Russian information space to discredit Wagner.[42] Much of the Russian and Western coverage of Bakhmut already focuses mainly on heavy Wagner losses, allowing the MoD to cover up or downplay other losses suffered by Russian conventional forces. The revelation of high losses among Wagner convicts and mercenaries would not cause as much societal outrage as ongoing reports of casualties and mistreatment of involuntarily mobilized servicemen.

Prigozhin is unlikely to regain Putin’s favor to the same extent as he had between May and October 2022. Unnamed Kremlin officials stated that Putin has been increasingly tightening his inner circle and is unlikely to offer the benefits Prigozhin once had regardless of the severity of the Russian military failures on the frontlines.[43] The Russian MoD still apparently retains favor with Putin despite devastating military failures around Vuhledar in early February.[44] The Kremlin is creating new armed formations under state energy companies likely in an effort to replace Wagner while possibly retaining a counterbalance to the Russian MoD.[45] Prigozhin’s fall from grace will likely scare other Kremlin officials such as Kadyrov into scaling down their ambitions to avoid experiencing Prigozhin’s fate.[46] Putin has likely not decided yet whether he will spare Prigozhin, and Wagner’s fate likely depends on Prigozhin’s ability to convince the Kremlin of his loyalty.

Prigozhin is also unlikely to reach his previous heights regardless of his renewed efforts to recruit mercenaries from 42 different cities in Russia.[47] Prigozhin had earned a bad reputation for the treatment of his forces as cannon fodder and had drained ultranationalist communities of recruits.[48] Prigozhin’s public pleas for ammunition and supplies are also unlikely to make service with Wagner attractive to recruits. Prigozhin has fractured and polarized the previously interconnected ultranationalist community which had aided him in the recruitment of forces earlier in the war and in prior conflicts worldwide.[49]

The conflict between the Russian MoD and Wagner shows that different parties in Putin’s inner circle are competing with one another in potentially zero-sum games that do not further Putin’s overall objectives. The Russian MoD is currently prioritizing eliminating Wagner on the battlefields in Bakhmut, which is likely slowing down the rate of advance in the area. Prigozhin saw Bakhmut as an opportunity to gain leverage on the Russian MoD and likely in the Kremlin in pursuit of his own commercial and political aspirations. Putin used Wagner to protect his regime from detrimental societal ramifications of mobilization, which also continues to inhibit his war efforts in Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/bac...-march-12-2023

[Chip]

Read a piece (don't recall where) that described negative reactions by regional governments and local authorities to having the Wagner convict soldiers who serve their enlistments returned to the communities from which they were sent to prison. Committing war crimes is probably not the best sort of rehabilitation.

[TSherbs]

thaks, again, welch, for the interesting updates

[welch]

From today's Institute for the Study of War:

Prominent Russian milbloggers are reamplifying a longstanding Russian information operation that seeks to weaponize religion to discredit Ukraine. The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture issued a decision on March 9 stipulating that the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Reserve will terminate its lease agreement with the Kremlin-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), meaning that the UOC MP will need to vacate the premises of the lower Lavra by March 29.[1] The Ukrainian government did not renew the UOC MP’s expired lease on the upper Lavra and allowed the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) to hold Christmas services at the Lavra on January 7, as ISW previously reported.[2] Two prominent milbloggers responded on March 14 to the latest decision requiring the UOC MP to vacate the lower Lavra by March 29 and exploited the story to accuse Kyiv of repressing freedom of religion within Ukraine.[3] Former Russian officer and convicted war criminal Igor Girkin claimed with no evidence that Kyiv will likely stage a military takeover of the Lavra because Ukrainian authorities are bent on “bloodily pitting the Russians on both sides of an artificial border” against one another.[4] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) commander and former DNR Security Minister Alexander Khodakovsky accused Ukraine of causing a “church frenzy” to divide the UOC MP and OCU dioceses and encouraged Ukrainian authorities to see past Ukrainian and Russian distinctions and exercise “restraint and Christian patience.”[5] Khodakovsky’s comment is remarkable because it is Russia’s rejection of the validity of seeing any distinctions between Russians and Ukrainians that was one of the justifications for the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in the first place.

Both Girkin’s and Khodakovsky’s renewed exploitations of the Lavra issue are based on a misrepresentation of events and disingenuously seek to portray Kyiv as attacking religious liberty in Ukraine. The UOC MP is the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church’s subordinate element in Ukraine and provided material support for Russia’s illegal invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014.[6] The UOC MP is not an independent religious organization but rather an extension of the Russian state and an instrument of Russian hybrid warfare.[7] By misrepresenting the Ukrainian government’s decision to reduce the Kremlin-controlled UOC MP’s influence in Ukraine, Russian milbloggers are amplifying a known information operation attempting to delegitimize the Ukrainian state and turn international public opinion against Ukraine.

[welch]

Read a piece (don't recall where) that described negative reactions by regional governments and local authorities to having the Wagner convict soldiers who serve their enlistments returned to the communities from which they were sent to prison. Committing war crimes is probably not the best sort of rehabilitation.

I read the same piece, probably from the NY Times. However, very few Wagner convict soldiers survived long enough to win discharge.

[Chip]

Arrest Warrant From Criminal Court Pierces Putin’s Aura of Impunity

A highly symbolic move by the International Criminal Court, which accused President Vladimir V. Putin of war crimes, carries moral weight.

By Mark Landler
March 17, 2023

LONDON — The International Criminal Court accused the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest on Friday, a highly symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a year ago.

The court cited Mr. Putin’s responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children, thousands of whom have been sent to Russia since the invasion. It also issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers the children out of Ukraine.

There is little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime soon. The International Criminal Court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia, which is not a party to the court, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.” Yet the court’s move carried indisputable moral weight, putting Mr. Putin in the same ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader imprisoned for abuses during the Balkans war; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility,” said the court, which was created two decades ago to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Both Russians, the court said, bore “responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

As a practical matter, the warrant could restrict Mr. Putin’s travels, since he could face arrest in any of the 123 countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court — a list that includes virtually all European countries and several in Africa and Latin America, but not China or the United States.

Human right activists and Ukrainian officials hailed the warrants as proof that Mr. Putin and his lieutenants could no longer act with impunity in Ukraine. For Mr. Putin, who already operates with a tight circle of advisers in the Kremlin, it makes the world a smaller place, even as he plans to welcome President Xi Jinping of China, perhaps his most powerful ally, to Moscow next week.

The warrants also shine a light on one of the most harrowing, poignant subplots of Russia’s brutal war: the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children and teenagers to Russia or Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine. Many are orphans, but Ukrainian officials say that others were separated from their parents or legal guardians. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 children; Ukrainian officials say they have confirmed 16,000 cases.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/w...e=articleShare

[TSherbs]

Yeah, the WC. We're not even a signatory nation.

[Chip]

I think there were fears that Baby Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other leading chickenhawks might be indicted.

Justly so. . .