[Scape]

[Scape]

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said in an interview on Sunday that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russia would be a game changer and NATO would have to think seriously about how to respond.

[xerxes]

Scape Scape:

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said in an interview on Sunday that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russia would be a game changer and NATO would have to think seriously about how to respond.

They had better be serious this time. Remember when the "Red Line" in Syria was crossed when they used chemical weapons there....and nothing happened?

[Thanos]

I'd call Russia's bluff and institute a no-fly zone ASAP. Odds are great now that it would trigger a palace coup that results in Putin being deposed/killed and his cronies arrested. With that abysmal performance by the Russian military on display for the world to see there's not much reason to believe that there's anyone diehard enough in the ballistic missile force to launch a nuke on Putin's orders. And all the credible intelligence analysts are saying the same thing, that the Russian military hierarchy is such a mess that no one can be considered a hardcore Putin loyalist anymore, not after three high-rank generals and unknown numbers of other officers have been killed in Ukraine already. It's a risk but one worth taking.

[Scape]

The frost is going to break in the next 2-3 days. Then it will all be mud.

$1:

"Thank you for all the messages, but sometimes I can't write many new things about Ukraine. I'm not a professional, though I've read about the area, and at one time read a bunch of military-tech stuff. And of course I'm on Twitter all day long.

From all that, I see the following (I'm at the capsule coffee machine, so I'm divining primarily from the foam stuck to the side of the mug). The Russians are going in full force right now. First, they exploit the frozen ground/cold weather. Second, they want to prepare for the inevitable next round of talks by winning some new positions.

They do have results, it's impossible to hold back this many tanks. A decisive victory however, is something they couldn't yet achieve (taking Kharkiv or Mariupol, encircling Kyiv). The Ukrainian brass looks at the situation realistically, they aren't attempting heroic tank battles, they let [Russian] armor move about. There is a bit of confusion here, since Bayraktar-videos thought to be authentic for days turned out to be not necessarily so. It seems the Ukrainians' tactics involve not wasting the Bayraktars' rockets and time in the air on tanks, rather they focus them primarily on command posts and supply columns. They don't really have another choice, you'd need to fly hundreds of drones to hit every tank with an anti-armor rocket, and at that point we haven't even considered other vehicles yet.

The Ukrainian tactics can therefore be summarized as not wanting to stop Russian advances, because they can't to begin with. They do want to isolate the areas where Russian forces have advanced to, cutting them off from supplies and their command structure. Meanwhile their [Ukrainian] infantry takes out 6-12 tanks per day in sporadic missions, just enough so that no tanker will feel safe. If I understand the news correctly, they're saving the more advanced Ukrainian units for keeping corridors open to encircled cities. At night they kicked out Russians from Volnovakha, which was taken over yesterday [by Russians], that way keeping some little pathway open to Mariupol.

The long-term effect of such actions (and by long-term we mean 8-10 days now) would be a situation where the Russians' takeover of [strategically] barren territory would come back to hurt them, because they didn't achieve strategic goals (taking over and cutting off cities), but now they have to maintain supply lines to forces dispersed across a huge area. This would deny the obvious strategic Russian goal to attack towards Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro from the areas of Kherson and Melitopol, which would cause East Ukraine to be cut off from the rest of the country.

If Ukrainians achieve that the Russian offensive ends up taking over [strategically] barren areas, then the Russians won't be able to reorganize their forces as to leave smaller forces behind to secure gains, and create a new offensive wedge. It appears Ukrainian tactics are very consciously based on certain mathematical rules about the critical points of networks and processes, also known as "Operations Research". This is the basis of modern logistics, and also the basis of paralyzing any logistics.

On the Ukrainian side, a pre-requisite of this is continuous supplies, primarily of weapons and food, but lots of other things as well (e.g. medevac, medicine). Since West Ukraine can be considered safe aside from sporadic Russian attacks (not in the sense that people can rest easy there, rather that from the 100 tons of supplies you had in the evening, you'll still have at least 99 tons in the morning), the resupply of Ukrainian troops is possible. The Russian strike on the airport next to Lviv wasn't a mistake, the Russian brass is also a bunch of smart guys, who know how to make advancement/resupplying difficult. The thing they need to attack is rather far from them however, and they can only do it with rockets, since if they do it with planes, you'd need to fly right into the center of NATO-AWACS-directed Ukrainian air defense. Oh, and of course if half a wing reaches into Polish airspace... I won't continue this sentence, in any case there are two Patriot batteries sitting at Rzeszow airport.

The thing is, the war isn't decided yet, but it is currently in a very important phase. We're about to find out what the offensive will be able to achieve, after consuming likely the entire Russian offensive potential. That's why they [the Russians] are playing on every instrument now, they're employing brutal methods, kidnap mayors, shelling hospitals, because once this offensive peters out, and its result will be the occupation of swampy fields, then Russians will be left with the choice to pull out, or to commit some insanity. There is 2-3 days of frost left, the mild weather returns afterwards. The situation is critical for both sides, because ammo and supplies are running out on the Ukrainian side as well, even if they have better logistics, and they don't need hundreds of tons of gasoline.

I'm not expecting talks in the next 2-3 days, rather further brutal battles, deaths and civilian casualties. In my opinion we are right now on the war's (protracted) lowest point."

[Scape]

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian troops have destroyed seven hospitals that cannot be rebuilt and damaged 104 more. Six health workers have been killed in shelling

Power restored to Chernobyl nuclear plant, Ukrainian officials say

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited wounded soldiers in a local hospital in Kiev to boost their morale and award them medals for their bravery

Lithuanian "Call Russia" campaign aims at reaching 40 million Russians to tell them the truth about the war

China says priority is to stop war on Ukraine from ‘getting out of control’

Intelligence sources: Putin may be seriously ill

[Scape]

Putin braces for coup as 'disgruntled' top Russian generals turn on Kremlin chief

[Scape]

French activists seized Putin's daughter's villa for refugees from Ukraine

Russian oligarch criticizes Putin’s plans to seize assets of foreign companies, saying it will take the country back to the turbulent days of the Russian Revolution

Ukraine's 'hero' President Zelensky set to receive honorary knighthood from UK

[Scape]

Russia's finance minister has admitted the country can't use nearly half its $640 billion foreign currency war chest because of Western sanctions

So many Canadian fighters in Ukraine, they have their own battalion

[Scape]

Canada’s defence minister says Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine

Putin Has Death Squad Killing Troops Escaping Ukraine War, Captured Soldier Reveals

[Scape]

Why Russian army is so weak?

[Scape]

Shit.

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Russia’s disinformation machinery breaks down in wake of Ukraine invasion

For decades now, Vladimir Putin has slowly, carefully, and stealthily curated online and offline networks of influence. These efforts have borne lucrative fruit, helping Russia become far more influential than a country so corrupt and institutionally fragile had any right to be. The Kremlin and its proxies had economic holdings across Europe and Africa that would shame some of the smaller 18th-century empires. It had a vast network of useful idiots that it helped get elected and could count on for support, and it controlled much of the day-to-day narrative in multiple countries through online disinformation. And many people had no idea.

While a few big events like the US’s 2016 election and the UK’s Brexit helped bring this meddling to light, many remained unaware or unwilling to accept that Putin’s disinformation machine was influencing them on a wide range of issues. Small groups of determined activists tried to convince the world that the Kremlin had infiltrated and manipulated the economies, politics, and psychology of much of the globe; these warnings were mostly met with silence or even ridicule.

All that changed the moment Russian boots touched Ukrainian soil. Almost overnight, the Western world became overwhelmingly aware of the Kremlin’s activities in these fields, shattering the illusions that allowed Putin’s alternative, Kremlin-controlled information ecosystem to exist outside its borders. As a result, the sophisticated disinformation machinery Putin spent decades cultivating collapsed within days.

Russia’s network of influence was as complex as it was sprawling. The Kremlin has spent millions in terms of dollars and hours in Europe alone, nurturing and fostering the populist right (Italy, Hungary, Slovenia), the far right (Austria, France, Slovakia), and even the far left (Cyprus, Greece, Germany). For years, elected politicians in these and other countries have been standing up for Russia’s interests and defending Russia’s transgressions, often peddling Putin’s narratives in the process. Meanwhile, on televisions, computers, and mobile screens across the globe, Kremlin-run media such as RT, Sputnik and a host of aligned blogs and “news” websites helped spread an alternative view of the real world. Though often marginal in terms of reach in and of themselves (with some notable exceptions, such as Sputnik Mundo), they performed a key role in spreading disinformation to audiences in and outside of Russia.

But the digital realm is where Russia found the most success in opening new fronts in its disinformation war. Social media, quasi-legitimate blogs, and bots reached ordinary people en masse all the time. With skill and care, Russian operatives tested and retested how best to polarize audiences. Using different platforms, content, and messaging, they built up a profile of users for their targeting purposes and then reflected back to them a picture of the world that would make them angry, frightened, and despairing—a picture that only exists online. For evidence of this, look no further than recent discourse in the West, where the Kremlin has been amplifying everything from climate denialism to the anti-vaxx movement to QAnon. All these things already existed but were the preserve of conspiracy theorists, quacks, and pranksters—now millions believe, in the face of reality, that climate change was made up by Green extremists, that “they” (whether it be Bill Gates, George Soros, or the World Economic Forum) are using vaccines to microchip people, that there's a satanic cabal of baby-eaters in Washington, or all of the above.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -invasion/

[bootlegga]

[Scape]

Parliament of NATO country Estonia calls for 'immediate' establishment of no-fly zone

Musk challenges Putin to ‘single combat’ over Ukraine, Russia responds: "Weakling"

Nato masses 30k troops & 50 warships for huge war games near Russia's borde

China warns of 'worst consequences' for any country that supports Taiwan militarily

It’s carnage in Chinese markets today. These four charts show just how ugly it’s getting.