There were more rail infrastructure attacks attempting to stop weapons shipments as well as renewed attacks on the Mariupol Azovstal steel works. Ukraine conducted a counteroffensive around Kharkiv and moved the Russians back 40km. More Russian fighters were shot down as the Russians have not gained ground and in some cases, Ukrainian partisans have engaged Russian forces. Russians claimed to have declared a ceasefire even as the escalated their offensive operations in Mariupol. An updated count of deaths in the Mariupol theatre center strike is now 600 people.
Lots of attention today on Russia’s missile strikes in western Ukraine around Lviv. The Pentagon assesses that Russia is trying to take out electrical power needed to operate railroads. “Both sides rely on rail for resupply,” the senior U.S. defense official said.
But the U.S. continues to assess that Ukraine is able to move weapons through the country. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin first said yesterday that Ukrainian forces already has begun to use howitzer artillery that the United States sent them.
As of Wednesday, the Pentagon assesses that 90 percent of the 90 U.S. howitzers pledged (81) already are in Ukraine. It’s unclear exactly where.
Russia continues to launch about 200-300 sorties per day, the senior U.S. defense official said. The number was about 250 in the last day. Most strikes are still concentrated in the Donbas region and Mariupol.
That said: Greater clarity today on the Russian shift out of Mariupol. The Pentagon indicates today that “roughly a couple thousand” Russian troops are left there, supplemented by Chechen fighters. There were previously about a dozen battalion tactical groups there.
“The vast majority” of Russian forces that were in Mariupol have now relocated, the senior U.S. defense official says. Many appear to have paused near the town of Velyka Novosilka, in Donetsk oblast, possibly to refit, senior U.S. defense official says.
Kherson and Izyum remain in Russian hands. Russia’s progress south from Izyum remains uneven and slow, and “stalled, in general,” the senior U.S. defense official says. Ukrainian resistance at play.
• • •
According to revelations by the defense minister of Slovakia, a former member of the Warsaw Pact that is now on the other side of the coin as an integral part of NATO, the country has confirmed that it will outsource the protection of its airspace «in a mutual effort to support Ukraine.»
This effort is being coordinated with its other neighbor, Poland, which is also a NATO member and has agreed to patrol Slovakia’s airspace, provided it stops flying its 11 MiG-29 fighter jets and sends them to Ukraine, reports The New York Times.
Although it did not explicitly say it would provide Fulcrum fighters, which are also used by Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries, it was implied that assistance with fighters could occur.
As reported by our partner site Aeroin, Slovakia has already sent S300 long-range anti-aircraft batteries to Ukraine and sending MiG-29 fighters would not be far off. However, these are the only fighters the country has, which will receive 14 U.S. Lockheed Martin F-16V Fighting Falcon fighters upgraded to Block 70 by the middle of this decade, the fighter manufacturer reports.
www.aviacionline.com/...
Here is why I think a mobilization call makes little sense for Putin
1. Putin doesn’t need to continue major offensives to declare a victory he can sell to domestic audience
Putin can claim that he has
- demilitarized UKR (by destroying a lot of equipment and military-industrial infrastructure)
- “denazified” it (destroyed Azov battalion in Mariupol)
- protected “our people” in Donbas and Crimea by enlarging territory and creating a land corridor
With full control of Russian domestic propagandist media, selling such a win to domestic audience would be a piece of cake for Putin
The truth never needs to stand in the way of a good story the pliable Russian public would be happy to consume
Putin declaring victory does not mean Russian forces would leave or would even stop fighting. Recall that he has declared victory in Syria on multiple occasions and yet operations continue there to this day:
But Putin could end major offensive operations (which he can’t sustain past the fight for the Donbas anyway) and switch to defensive tactics to protect most of his gains against Ukrainian counterattacks
Defending Kherson could be tough but if the Russians abandon it, cross the Dnieper and blow the bridges, they could make it really tough for Ukrainians to retake the rest of the Donetsk to Crimea land corridor
Putin could continue to terrorize Ukrainian cities with occasional strikes and enforce the Black Sea blockade, which is strangling the Ukrainian economy, with subs (Ukraine has no ASW), coastal batteries in Crimea and surface ships (but far off the coast to avoid more Moskvas)
2. Declaring full mobilization is very fraught politically for Putin. As @KofmanMichael pointed out on our last podcast, declaring mobilization also means enlarging current limited war aims and risking suffering a devastating loss he wouldn’t be able to explain away
Declaring mobilization just to help retake Donbas makes no sense from risk vs benefit trade off and is a de facto admission of defeat after feeding the domestic audience a steady stream of Russian supposed victories there and operation going “according to plan”
So if Putin declares mobilization, it would be to have another go at Kyiv and/or Odesa and establishing a pro-Russian puppet regime there. But he would be foolish to think that Shoigu and Gerasimov could succeed where they had already failed once
More untrained manpower doesn’t solve bad tactics, logistics and training - in fact, it makes it all much worse - all the things that had doomed Russia’s first assault on Kyiv
And mobilization would take many months. So his current offensive, if it fails, would stall regardless
More importantly, Putin has now seen how difficult it is to control occupied areas even without significant organized resistance (Kherson) and how challenging it is to take cities that resist (Mariupol) and the destruction it would cause (which he would be stuck rebuilding)
He has surely lost faith by now in what FSB has been telling him about Russian agents in Ukraine that could quickly run the occupied country, so even if he were somehow to take Kyiv, establishing a puppet government that would actually run the country would be near impossible now
Finally, the political risks of mobilization are substantial. Putin knows it and that’s why he has repeatedly declared (falsely) that conscripts don’t fight in Ukraine. His popularity is high now and he would be risking it, especially if he fails
Russian public currently supports the fake version of the war they are seeing on their TV screens. Most families don’t know anyone who is fighting and dying (many soldiers are from poor villages and ethnic minorities). A huge mobilization would change all that and is very risky
Putin has certainly gambled big on this war but so far he has not gambled his hold on power, which remains quite secure. Calling for a full mobilization could put that at risk for little benefit
Lastly, he could hope to force concessions from Zelensky even without major new offensives
If Putin keeps Ukraine from taking back most of occupied territory, continues to terrorize population with air raids (although depleting missile stockpiles will be an issue) and strangles Ukraine’s export-driven economy with a blockade, he might believe he could get concessions Unroll available on Thread Reader
I am not saying he would necessarily succeed at all if these objectives - war is highly contingent as @KofmanMichael likes to say - but it would certainly not be crazy for Putin to think that he would
Putin could be right or wrong on Zelensky making any concessions and pushing the West to drop Russian sanctions as part of the deal, but the odds are much better for him with this course of action than mobilization and another huge offensive
This is why I don’t think it’s likely that Putin declares full mobilization
But he could easily call for more patriotic volunteers, increase contract signup payments, etc. That I don’t rule out at all. Though, it won’t make a substantial difference for the Russian military
If I am proven wrong on this call, it will be most likely because Putin has been completely isolated from reality and has no idea what is truly happening in this war since no one is telling him the truth. The degree to which this is the case is impossible to currently know
END
• • •
The Russian famine of 1921–1922, also known as the Povolzhye famine, was a severe famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which began early in the spring of 1921 and lasted through 1922. The famine resulted from the combined effects of economic disturbance because of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, the government policy of war communism (especially prodrazvyorstka), exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently.
This famine killed an estimated 5 million people, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions,[1] and peasants resorted to cannibalism.[2][3]
One of Russia's intermittent droughts in 1921 aggravated the situation to a national catastrophe. Hunger was so severe that it was likely seed-grain would be eaten rather than sown. At one point, relief agencies had to give food to railroad staff to get their supplies moved.[4]
Before the famine, all sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918–1921—the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities—had provisioned themselves by seizing food from those who grew it, giving it to their armies and supporters, and denying it to their enemies. The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. The rich peasants (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain to sell on the black market.[7][8][9]
Aid from outside Soviet Russia was initially rejected. The American Relief Administration (ARA), which Herbert Hoover formed to help the victims of starvation of World War I, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.[5]
Lenin was eventually convinced—by this famine, the Kronstadt rebellion, large scale peasant uprisings such as the Tambov Rebellion, and the failure of a German general strike—to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy on 15 March 1921. The famine also helped produce an opening to the West: Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid this time. War relief was no longer required in Western Europe, and the ARA had an organization set up in Poland, relieving the Polish famine which had begun in the winter of 1919–1920.[10]
en.wikipedia.org/...–1922