Working Out Some Issues in Ukraine

[Yoji]

(poor Old Snake impression)

War... has changed...

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

The mobilization story in Russia got a fair bit grimmer. Conditions in the "training" areas continue to degrade, organization is still non-existent, and today a pair of draftees who were originally native of Tajikistan opened fire on the Russians while their draft group was training at a shooting range, killing at least 11 of them, possibly twice that many.

No idea if it's linked, but this comes one day after a summit where Emomali Rahmon, the president of Tajikistan, ranted (for seven minutes straight!) directly at Putin that Tajiks are not Russians, deserve respect which he says they're not getting, and emphasized that they should not be treated merely as former members of the Soviet Union.

Rahhom isn't anyone to be enamoured of either. He's another Lukashanko - an ancient Soviet-era holdover, a brutal strongman dictator, and the only leader his country's known since the 90's - arguably the worst ex-soviet leader among all formerly Soviet states, and normally a strong Putin ally. That he would embarrass Putin so visibly as such a high profile event, is just abut unprecedented among the leaders of various ex-Soviet central Asian states.

[beatbandito]

The mobilization story in Russia got a fair bit grimmer. Conditions in the "training" areas continue to degrade, organization is still non-existent, and today a pair of draftees who were originally native of Tajikistan opened fire on the Russians while their draft group was training at a shooting range, killing at least 11 of them, possibly twice that many.

11 killed and 15 wounded on attack at Russian training ground

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a YouTube interview that the attackers were from the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan and had opened fire on the others after an argument over religion.

While it is possible that it was about religion, everyone reporting that takes it from the YouTube video of a Ukrainian official and "prominent commentator on the war" without any reason for them to know that I've seen. While independent sources can't even confirm the death count.

Based on the Russian government statement the victims were "volunteers". That is obviously a term that could be used to cover up conscription, and I'm reading translations. But it is generally used by Russian sources specifically for military veterans that are outside the age range for re-enlistment, and offered high-paying and short-term contracts, as well as better equipment.

Being unwillingly recruited from a poor region and housed with racist boomers seems like direct enough reason for me. But no way to know for sure as it stands. That also requires volunteers that are still actually eager former soldiers, and not just people deciding these contracts will be their family's life insurance payout.

[Mongrel]

Volunteers is being pretty broadly applied, so I'm not sure, though in the context of draftees that may be the case. I called them draftees simply because those appear to be the only people being sent to those facilities (at the moment).

As for the reasons, yeah could be anything not just religion (I specifically avoided mentioning that exactly because it's unclear). This is far from the first murder among draftees but most of the previous ones have been one-offs, and many have been beatings rather than shootings (though there have been both). The main thing is the pattern is the same: Large groups of fearful, angry, resentful, frequently-drunk, unsupervised (or undersupervised) men in appalling conditions, who're then all given assault rifles.

Many of them may possibly feel very fatalist as well, as the coffins of draftees rushed to the front are already coming back in numbers large enough that they're making even the Russian news. Everyone outside the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defence can see the absolute pointlessness of sending utterly untrained men to a modern conventional battlefield.

SPECULATION: Kremlin observers have been guessing the plan (if there's a plan at all) is to rush fodder to the front lines to (try and) hold it while the Russian fall conscription cycle generates younger soldiers who will be better-trained ("better") and be used to fight back in early 2023, but Russian training is pretty garbage at the best of times now, never mind how many of their best instructors are already dead in Ukraine, so even that just seems like a total pipe dream. Never mind that people keep setting fire to Russian conscription offices.

[Mongrel]

It's not a shooting incident and contains no violence or arguments, but I'm reminded of this draftee grievance video from a week ago.

What stood out to me was how the talk about their weapons in this particular video is simultaneously a complaint and a threat.

[Mongrel]

Russian commanders are extorting their own troops for rotations away from the front lines

[Yoji]

At the risk of making light of or not taking this war seriously enough... I think the war in Ukraine might have ruined Front Mission for me a little bit.

I found my copy of FM4 during the move and thought "hey, let's watch the opening fight while I'm waiting for the hourglass on my computer to stop turning." Lots of robots shooting each other, all that good stuff. Except I found myself believing it even less than before, and not for the usual "giant robots are silly" reasons.

"Wait, how did an entire platoon of wanzers manage to sneak up on a heavily guarded military base? And on an open field? Don't they have satellites or sensor posts? Or even just some rando with a phone or a drone? Where are the guards and patrols? Don't any of these helicopters have flares or jammers? Where's the counter artillery? Are there any defenses at all? WHERE ARE THE FELLAHS??"

(okay, maybe I added that part about the fellahs)

[Mongrel]

Oh my god, the mechas are called "wanzers"?!

Hahahahahaha

[François]

Fun fact: I was two updates deep in a test run for a FM4 video LP when I remembered how unbearably slow-paced the game is and consequently abandoned the notion.

I suspect I was mostly enamored of the thought of comparing Elsa's French accent to mine for some reason.

[Mongrel]

This took place a few months ago and was just released. No CW stuff.

Guy obviously survived okay which is pretty amazing given how low the ejection was (he clearly pitches up so he's oriented correctly to blast up and away from the plane, which is pretty much textbook). Looks like the (first?) hit is actually before the video starts anyway. Unclear if he was captured or this happened over Russian-controlled territory and he was just picked up; some claims online are that the pilot actually posted this himself on a Russian telegram channel, but no idea if that confirmed or not.

There's no greater implications here or a political subtext or anything like that; it's simply one of the most incredible pieces of combat footage ever published and, AFAIK, this is the only footage of a successful emergency combat ejection from the pilot's PoV to ever be just casually released to the public like this.

[Mongrel]

From yesterday's ISW report:

On October 26, Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin denied ISW’s report that Prigozhin confronted Putin and other siloviki factions in the Kremlin regarding the progress of the Russian war in Ukraine.[17] Prigozhin explicitly denied ISW’s October 25 assessment and falsely insinuated that ISW receives classified intelligence. ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. ISW specifically does not receive information from Prigozhin’s deceased mother-in-law, as he (ironically) suggested.

I want to say that the internet makes for a strange war sometimes, but honestly this sort of goofy sniping is something I could envision in WWII as well, only it would have to happen over several days or weeks, instead of the space of a few hours.

[Mongrel]

One of the more interesting developments of the past few days wasn't on the battlefield.

You may have seen that Russia withdrew from the deal allowing Ukrainian freighters to leave port and sell Ukrainian grain abroad (mostly to Africa), which had previously been a rare diplomatic success. Ukraine was able to at least salvage part of a major income source, which they desperately need, and a huge potential famine risk in parts of the world was maybe not removed, but at least solidly mitigated.

So what happened? The only reason for Russia to withdraw in the first place was either as a prelude to attacking Ukrainian civilian shipping or at least to try to keep that as an open threat as an intimidation tactic.

The thing was, the security of the deal was guaranteed by both the UN and Turkey directly. The wording in the agreement is clear and solid - if Ukrainian grain freighters were attacked, Turkey would have to respond with military force against any attacker or else be seen as a faithless partner in international agreements. The implication being that the Turks told Russia in no uncertain terms that they were going to live up to the agreement as written, and the Russians backed down, returning to the agreement in one of those moves they like to call "a show of goodwill".

It may not be splashy, but the Turks have done the right thing again - all credit where it's due.

It also demonstrates that security agreements to force Russia into being peaceable are certainly possible, so long as the guarantees have real teeth and the guarantors have spines. Turkey may not be a nuclear power, but they're a NATO member obviously; and if they didn't outgun the Russian fleet in the Black Sea in January, I bet they do now.

[Büge]

Tangentially related to the war,

[zaratustra]

This took place a few months ago and was just released. No CW stuff.

Guy obviously survived okay which is pretty amazing given how low the ejection was (he clearly pitches up so he's oriented correctly to blast up and away from the plane, which is pretty much textbook). Looks like the (first?) hit is actually before the video starts anyway. Unclear if he was captured or this happened over Russian-controlled territory and he was just picked up; some claims online are that the pilot actually posted this himself on a Russian telegram channel, but no idea if that confirmed or not.

There's no greater implications here or a political subtext or anything like that; it's simply one of the most incredible pieces of combat footage ever published and, AFAIK, this is the only footage of a successful emergency combat ejection from the pilot's PoV to ever be just casually released to the public like this.

Someone managed to pinpoint the location of the crash and it's within Russian territory, but close enough to Ukraine that one of their new toys might feasibly work.

[Mongrel]

Biggest mobik protest yet.

About 2000 mobiks in Kazan effectively went on strike after days & weeks of no shelter, no pay, minimal food, etc. (same as they're facing everywhere), and surrounded their general after he was found blind drunk, as was a colonel, to demand what they're owed/need. Outcome unclear; doesn't seem like there was violence, and regional TV said "concerns have no been addressed" (right, I'm sure), but the pattern of large-scale mobik protests is growing.

The Kremlin is also forcing the regions to pay for a lot of the equipment and salary of the mobilized, which many regions can ill-afford. Even without idle draftees, relatives will harangue local officials for the promised-yet-undelivered pay, and that only adds to the boil. It's also worth noting that only 20 of Russia's 85 federal regions are able to generate revenue surpluses and none have any say in federal redistribution of regional tax funds (typically into Putin and his pals' pockets). With some regions (mostly minority ones, of course) lacking even the ability to keep the lights on, yet asked to pay taxes in blood, regional uprisings or protests become ever more likely, especially given there's no military left to quell anything that might get really out of hand.

Oh and Iran got a new contract for over a thousand more drones & missiles (which, hilariously, they can produce more quickly while having been under sanctions than Russia could when it wasn't). It appears the payment is going to be nuclear program support, so, uh. Then again, the Iranians are becoming ever-more radicalized as the Iranian protests drag on (and worsen), so who the fuck knows how that part of things will end.

Lots of background stuff is up in the air... no idea how it's all going to shake out.

[Grath]

[Mongrel]

I wonder if that was the guy who blessed a newly-repaired railway bridge the day before the Ukrainians blew it up a second time.

[Mongrel]

Interesting. Several Russian political figures, including Putin, made statements today backing well away from nuclear threats (and also saying they never made any nuclear threats, lol) as well as claiming to be in agreement with the premise that nuclear war should never be undertaken lest that escalation be permanent. Big, big U-turn.

Part of this is that nuclear threats just haven't been working (cue the meme of Vlad showing his nuclear missile to the class every week this month), but it seems like there's definitely been something going on behind the scenes too, be it Iran's reported requests for nuclear programme assistance alarming world powers resulting in collective pressure or pressure by specific actors (anti-Iranian Russian allies in the mideast?), China suggesting Russia COOL IT, the US winning the semi-concealed staring contest, Kremlin/Russian DoD power struggles (there's certainly an internal faction which thinks making nuclear threats is absurdly stupid, but no idea if they're coming out on top here) Vlad secretly finding out that their entire arsenal is now a bunch cardboard tubes with "IOU 1 Thermonuke" notes taped to them, or who knows.

Still a few jingoistic bombasts on Russian TV yelling that they should nuke everything, but that's a decades-old tradition on Russian TV now. It's not like there aren't any American TV chyrons guilty of similar bluster anyway.

Huge pullback. Going to be an interesting story someday.

[Crick]

From a dummy's perspective:

The juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Seemed like a desperate last ditch play that didn't make Ukraine stand down and just got them more heat.