British long-range missiles ‘could help Ukraine disrupt Russian navy’
Joe Barnes – February 23, 2023
Anti-ship Harpoon missiles, seen here being fired from HMS Westminster, cost £1.2 million each and have a range of around 80 miles – Royal Navy
British long-range missiles would give Ukraine the ability to disrupt Russian logistical chains and push its naval forces more than 80 miles from the coast, say analysts.
As Rishi Sunak urges his Western partners to send longer-range capabilities to Kyiv, discussions are underway in London over whether Harpoon anti-ship missiles or air-to-surface Storm Shadows could be donated to Kyiv.
Ukraine has been gifted US-made Himars and M270 multi-launch rocket systems with a range of 50 miles.
Kyiv’s armed forces have used them to superb effect to force Russian logistics away from the frontline, making it harder for Moscow to supply any advances.
But Mr Zelensky has made the delivery of longer-range weapons a priority in order to hit targets even deeper behind enemy lines as part of his conversations with Western leaders.
Storm Shadow, the RAF’s long-range cruise missile, would deliver that desired effect.
The weapon costs about £2.2 million and can be fired from a fighter jet at targets as far as 350 miles away, although they can be modified to have significantly shorter range.
“The Storm Shadow opens up access to a range of logistics targets not least across the south, dramatically complicating the task for Russian air defenders,” said Justin Crump, of Sibylline, an intelligence and geopolitical risk firm.
“If nothing else, this will force them further to scatter their supply lines and reconsider how best to defend against the threat.”
Ukraine has suggested it could use such a missile to strike Russian targets in occupied Crimea, which some Western governments have privately expressed discomfort at because it could trigger Moscow to escalate the conflict.
Anti-ship missile ‘key’
Another long-range weapon in Britain’s arsenal that could be headed to Ukraine is the Harpoon.
The anti-ship missile could be key in preventing any future amphibious attacks by Russian forces, but also disrupt its Black Sea Fleet from firing their own cruise missiles.
Sea-skimming Harpoons cost £1.2 million each and have a range of around 80 miles when used by the Royal Navy, but some suggest that could be extended to 150 miles.
Mr Crump said: “It remains remarkable that a nation with at best a limited navy has been able to achieve such maritime effects, and Harpoon will further increase the threat to Russian vessels engaged in Kalibr cruise missile launches from the Black Sea.
“This will push Russian surface operations 80 miles offshore – and almost completely close down any potential amphibious operation against Odesa, although that is arguably already a dim and distant memory at this stage.”
Ukraine: Drone footage shows scale of Bakhmut’s destruction
The Associated Press – February 23, 2023
From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment blocks have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost – and the drone’s prying eye. (AP Photo)New video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town. The footage was shot Feb. 13. From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment blocks have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost – and the drone’s prying eye. (AP Photo)New video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town. The footage was shot Feb. 13. From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment blocks have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost – and the drone’s prying eye. (AP Photo)New video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town. The footage was shot Feb. 13. From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment blocks have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost – and the drone’s prying eye. (AP Photo)New video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town. The footage was shot Feb. 13. From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment blocks have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost – and the drone’s prying eye. (AP Photo)
BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Amid the smoking ruins, a lone dog pads in the snow, surely unaware — or perhaps too hungry to care — that death rains down regularly from the skies on the remnants of this Ukrainian city that Russia is pounding into rubble.
But for now Bakhmut stands — growing as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance with each additional day that its defenders hold out against Russia’s relentless shelling and waves of Russian troops taking heavy casualties in a months-long but so far futile campaign to capture it.
New video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town, its jagged destruction testament to the folly of war.
The footage — shot Feb. 13 — shows no people. But they are still there — somewhere, out of sight, in basements and defensive strongholds, trying to survive. Of the prewar population of 80,000, a few thousand residents have refused or been unable to evacuate. The size of the garrison that Ukraine has stationed in the city is kept secret.
Tire tracks on the roads and footprints on the paths covered with snow speak to a continued human presence. In one shot, a car drives swiftly away in the distance. Graffiti spray-painted on the charred, pockmarked outer walls of a blown-out storefront also show people are or were here.
“Bakhmut loves Ukraine,” it reads. Next to that is the stenciled face of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, holding up two fingers in a V-for-victory gesture. “God and Valerii Zaluzhnyi are with us,” reads writing underneath.
A top Ukrainian intelligence official this week likened the fight for Bakhmut to Ukraine’s dogged defense of Mariupol earlier in the war, which tied up Russian forces for months, preventing the Kremlin from deploying them elsewhere.
Likewise, “Bakhmut is also an indicator and a fortress,” the official, Vadym Skibitskyi, said in an AP interview. He said the city has come to represent “the indomitability of our soldiers” and that by holding it, Ukraine is inflicting “unacceptable” casualties on the Russians.
From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment buildings have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost — and the drone’s prying eye.
Like a caver descending into a chasm, the drone drops slowly into one of the blown-out hulks — all four of its floors now collapsed into a pile of ashes, rubble and rusting metal at the bottom.
Another five-story apartment building has a giant bite torn out of it. A black crow flies through the gap. The drone peers into a kitchen, a once-intimate family place now exposed because one of its outer walls has been torn away. There is still a strainer in the sink and plates on the drying rack above, as though someone still lives there. But the undisturbed dusting of snow on the cloth-covered table suggests they are long gone.
As the drone continues its journey, along streets where crowds no longer walk and past stores where they no longer shop, over parks where children no longer play and where old-timers no longer chew the fat, the names of towns and cities flattened in previous wars spring to mind.
Fleury-devant-Douaumont, France — a village razed in World War I, changing hands 16 times in fighting between French and German troops from June to August 1916. Never rebuilt, it was later declared to have “Died for France” — along with eight other villages destroyed in the fearsome battle for the French town of Verdun.
Or Oradour-sur-Glane, also in France, destroyed in World War II. Its ruins have been left untouched as a memorial to 642 people killed there on June 10, 1944. Nazi troops from the fanatical SS “Das Reich” division herded civilians into barns and a church and torched the village — the biggest civilian massacre by France’s wartime occupiers.
For Ukrainians, Bakhmut also is becoming etched indelibly in the collective consciousness. Its defense is already hailed in song. The track “Bakhmut Fortress,” by Ukrainian band Antytila, has racked up more than 3.8 million views.
“Mom, I’m standing,” they sing. “Motherland, I’m fighting.”
In other developments Thursday:
— The Moldovan government appealed for calm and urged the public to follow only “official and credible” sources of news after Russia alleged Ukraine is planning an “armed provocation” in Moldova’s Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria. Russia maintains about 1,500 “peacekeeping” troops in the region, which is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.
Shortly before the Russian Defense Ministry’s claim, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Herashchenko, said Ukraine and NATO could together return Transnistria to Moldova within 24 hours.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously stated that Ukraine is ready to provide all necessary assistance to Moldova.
Moscow alleged, citing intelligence data without presenting any evidence, that Ukrainian soldiers disguised as Russian troops planned to launch a false flag attack to blame Russia for invading Ukraine from Transnistria that Kyiv would then use as a pretext for an invasion of the territory.
Late Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued another warning of what it described as an impending Ukrainian “provocation,” reporting a massive Ukrainian military buildup near Transnistria including artillery in positions ready for combat.
“The Russian armed forces will adequately respond to the provocation planned by the Ukrainian side,” the ministry said.
— Russian President Vladimir Putin gave another signal he is digging in for a protracted war, saying his government will prioritize strengthening Russia’s defense capabilities. Speaking on Defender of the Fatherland Day, a public holiday, he announced the deployment of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system and the delivery of a massive supply of Zircon sea-launched hypersonic missiles to Russian forces. He added that three Borei-class nuclear submarines would be added to the fleet in the coming years.
— The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Thursday urging Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and to withdraw its forces.
— At least three civilians were killed and eight others were wounded in Ukraine over the past 24 hours, the presidential office reported. Russian forces over the past day launched more than 80 artillery barrages of six towns and villages in northeastern Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders Russia, local Ukrainian authorities reported. Ukrainian forces also repelled about 90 Russian attacks in the country’s east, where fierce fighting has raged for months, the Ukrainian military said.
John Leicester and Hanna Arhirova contributed to this report from Kyiv.
Judge rules New Mexico feral cattle can be shot from helicopters
Clark Mindock – February 22, 2023
A cow that has gotten loose from its pen stands in the middle of Hwy 10 in Winnie, Texas
(Reuters) -The U.S. Forest Service can go ahead with a plan to shoot dozens of feral cattle from helicopters in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness after a federal judge on Wednesday refused a request by ranchers for an emergency order to stop the cull.
Cattle ranchers and local business owners told U.S. District Judge James Browning earlier on Wednesday at a hearing in Albuquerque the four-day hunt of about 150 stray or unbranded cows, due to start on Thursday, would violate federal laws and Forest Service regulations and likely kill cows they own.
In denying the plaintiffs’ bid for the emergency order, Browning said they were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their case and that of the approximately 300 cattle removed or killed over the last several decades “only one has been branded, and it was removed rather than killed.”
Jessica Blome, an attorney for the ranchers, said they are “deeply disappointed that the court green lit” the plan.
The Forest Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Forest Service announced the hunt last week, the second in as many years, saying feral cows were damaging habitats and menacing hikers who visit the vast Southwestern national monument known for its mountain ranges and plunging, rock-walled canyons.
U.S. Department of Justice attorney Andrew Smith, representing the Forest Service, argued on Wednesday that blocking the cull would allow feral cow populations to “rebound, and last year’s efforts would be wasted.”
Aerial hunting of feral hogs and predators like coyotes is a common practice in the American West but efforts to gun down cattle from above have been met with protest.
The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association (NMCGA), which had filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alongside other ranching, farming and business interests, said aerial shooting puts at risk privately owned cattle that may have strayed through broken fences or to find water. That loss harms an industry already hard-hit by climate change and rising costs, it said.
Ranchers also said helicopter hunting is inefficient and inhumane, causing cattle to run and forcing shooters to pepper cows with multiple rounds before they are left to die, sometimes days later.
NMCGA sued the Forest Service over its last cull, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. The ranchers said that agreement requires the government to give the public 75 days’ notice before it shoots feral cows from helicopters. The government provided just seven days’ notice this year, they said.
(Reporting by Clark Mindock in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Matthew Lewis and Tom Hogue)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A U.S. district judge on Wednesday cleared the way for federal officials to move ahead with plans to take to the air and shoot dozens of wild cattle in a rugged area of southwestern New Mexico.
Ranchers had sought a delay, arguing that the potential mass slaughter of as many as 150 “unauthorized” cows on public land was a violation of federal regulations and amounted to animal cruelty.
After listening to arguments that stretched throughout the day, Judge James Browning denied the request, saying the ranchers failed to make their case. He also said the U.S. Forest Service is charged with managing the wilderness for the benefit of the public, and the operation would further that aim.
“No one disputes that the Gila cattle need to be removed and are doing significant damage to the Gila Wilderness,” Browning wrote. “The court does not see a legal prohibition on the operation. It would be contrary to the public interest to stop the operation from proceeding.”
Plans by the Forest Service call for shooting the cattle with a high-powered rifle from a helicopter and leaving the carcasses in the Gila Wilderness. It was estimated by attorneys for the ranchers that 65 tons of dead animals would be left in the forest for months until they decompose or are eaten by scavengers.
Officials closed a large swath of the forest Monday and were scheduled to begin the shooting operation Thursday.
The New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, individual ranchers and the Humane Farming Association filed a complaint in federal court Tuesday, alleging that agency officials were violating their own regulations and overstepping their authority.
The complaint stated that court intervention was necessary to put an immediate stop to “this unlawful, cruel, and environmentally harmful action, both now and in the future.”
The ranchers had argued that the case could set a precedent for how federal officials handle unbranded livestock on vacant allotments or deal with other land management conflicts across the West.
“There’s a severe danger here, not just in this particular case and the horrific results that it will actually bare if this is allowed to go forward. But it also has long-term ramifications for the power of federal agencies to disregard their regulations that they themselves passed,” Daniel McGuire, an attorney for the ranchers, told the judge.
The Gila National Forest issued its final decision to gun down the wayward cattle last week amid pressure from environmental groups that have raised concerns that cattle are compromising water quality and habitat for other species as they trample stream banks in sensitive areas.
Much of the debate during Wednesday’s hearing centered on whether the animals were unauthorized livestock or feral cows, as the Forest Service has been referring to them.
Ranchers said the cattle in question were the descendants of cows that legally grazed the area in the 1970s before the owner went out of business. They pointed to DNA and genetic markers, saying the temperament of the animals doesn’t mean they cease to be domesticated livestock.
As defined in Forest Service regulations, unauthorized livestock refers to any cattle, sheep, goats or hogs that are not authorized by permit to be grazing on national forest land. The regulations calls for an impoundment order to be issued and the livestock rounded up, with lethal action being a final step for those that aren’t captured.
Despite issuing such an order earlier this month, the agency argued it wasn’t required to follow the removal procedures outlined by the regulations because the cattle don’t fit the definition of livestock since they aren’t domesticated or being kept or raised by any individual.
Government attorney Andrew Smith said the cows have no pedigree.
“So it does make a difference what these cows are. They’re multigenerations of wildness going on,” he said.
The judge agreed.
Smith also argued that Congress has charged the Forest Service with protecting national forest land and that eradicating the cattle would put an end to decades of damage. He said previous gathering efforts over the decades only put a dent in the population but that an aerial shooting operation in 2022 was able to take out 65 cows in two days.
Had the project been delayed, Smith suggested that the population would rebound and last year’s effort would be wasted.
McGuire countered that Congress conferred authority on the Forest Service to make rules and regulations to protect and preserve the forest, not a license for the agency to do anything it wants.
Real estate: US homeowners have lost $2.3 trillion since June: Redfin data
Dylan Croll – February 22, 2023
U.S. homeowners have lost $2.3 trillion since June, according to a new report from the real-estate brokerage Redfin. The total value of U.S. homes was $45.3 trillion at the end of 2022, down 4.9% from a record high of $47.7 trillion in June. That figure signifies the largest June-to-December percentage decline since 2008.
The report comes amid increased mortgage rates as the Fed tries to curb inflation. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate sat at 6.36% in December, about twice what it was at the start of 2022. Though rates fell in early February, they’ve since risen back to December levels to the dismay of buyers.
Consequently, Americans find themselves more reluctant to buy homes and prices have dropped. The median U.S. home sale price was $383,249 in January, which was up just 1.5% from the previous year, according to the report.
Redfin highlighted the Bay Area, noting that the region had seen the biggest drop in real-estate value compared to other parts of the country. For instance, the total value of San Francisco homes fell 6.7% in December, to $517.5 billion, a $37.3 billion decline year over year.
“Three of my listings recently went under contract after sitting on the market for more than a month,” said Ali Mafi, a Redfin real estate agent in San Francisco featured in the note. “They all had a few showings here and there in the fall, but no buyer wanted to pull the trigger. And then suddenly in the new year, we had 10 or 15 people touring each property.”
Meanwhile, the report pointed out, the Florida housing market has remained robust, with the largest increase in real-estate value compared to other parts of the country. The total value of homes in Miami rose 19.7% year over year ($77 billion) to $468.5 billion in December.
“Florida’s housing market is being sustained by folks moving in from the North and as of recently, the West Coast,” said Elena Fleck, Florida real estate agent featured in the report. “People are pouring in from New Jersey and New York, in large part because Florida has relatively affordable homes and no income tax. They can get a lot more bang for their buck here.”
The report noted that U.S. cities are doing much worse than U.S. suburbs. While the value of urban homes increased 2.5% to $10.8 trillion year over year, the value of suburban properties jumped 6.4% year over year, to $25.4 trillion, in December.
“The housing market has shed some of its value, but most homeowners will still reap big rewards from the pandemic housing boom. The total value of U.S. homes remains roughly $13 trillion higher than it was in February 2020, the month before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao in the report.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people were left behind. Many Americans couldn’t afford to buy homes even when mortgage rates hit rock bottom in 2021, which means they missed out on a significant wealth building opportunity,” Zhao added.
Dylan Croll is a reporter and researcher at Yahoo Finance.
Russian mercenary boss escalates row with top army brass with image of dead bodies
Andrew Osborn – February 22, 2023
The founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin is seen inside a cockpit of a military Su-24 bomber plane over an unidentified location
LONDON (Reuters) – Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin took a bitter public feud with the top army brass to a new level on Wednesday, publishing a grisly image of dozens of his fighters he said had been killed after being deprived of ammunition.
Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private military company which is fighting on Moscow’s behalf in Ukraine, has this week repeatedly accused the Russian defence ministry of deliberately starving his fighters of munitions in what he has called a treasonous attempt to destroy Wagner.
The defence ministry, in a statement late on Tuesday, said such allegations were “completely untrue” and complained – without mentioning Prigozhin by name – about attempts to create splits that worked “solely to the benefit of the enemy”.
Undeterred, Prigozhin doubled down on his allegations on Wednesday, taking the unusual step of releasing a picture of dozens of his dead fighters laying prostrate on the icy ground in eastern Ukraine, where Wagner is battling to try to take the small Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
“This is one of the places where the bodies of those who have died are gathered,” Prigozhin told a prominent Russian military blogger in an interview.
“These are guys who died yesterday because of so-called shell hunger. Mothers, wives and children will get their bodies. There should be five times less (dead). Who is guilty that they died? The guilty ones are those who should have resolved the question of us getting enough ammo.”
In another move likely to infuriate the top army brass, he released a copy of what he said was Wagner’s official request to the defence ministry for ammunition with detailed tallies of shells used, requested and received – though he said he had blanked out sensitive data such as the names of the shells.
“They’re still not giving us ammo. No steps to give us ammo have been taken,” said Prigozhin, saying that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, were withholding their signatures from shell approval forms.
Neither man has publicly responded to Prigozhin’s criticism in the past.
Prigozhin, a wealthy catering tycoon and ex-convict, has assumed a more public role since the war started. But he has faced push back from the authorities in recent weeks amid some signs of a move by the Kremlin and defence ministry to curb his growing influence.
On Wednesday, he said he had launched a social media campaign to try to secure the shells and that Wagner had been reduced to begging military warehouses for ammunition, which he said was sometimes successful.
Despite the purported shortage, he said his fighters would keep trying to overrun Ukraine’s Bakhmut.
“Twice as many of us are going to die that’s all, until there are none of us left,” he said.
“And when Wagner are all dead then (Defence Minister) Shoigu and (General) Gerasimov will probably have to pick up a gun.”
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Peter Graff)
‘Putin’s Chef’ Leaks Grisly Corpse Photo in Public Betrayal of Kremlin
Allison Quinn – February 22, 2023
SPUTNIK
If there were ever a time for the Kremlin to worry about an uprising by its most out-of-control private army, now would appear to be it.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has gone from accusing the Russian military of treason to flooding the internet with gruesome photos of the country’s war dead.
“Who is to blame for them dying? Those who should have resolved the issue of supplying us with sufficient quantities of ammunition are to blame,” Prigozhin said Wednesday in comments to a pro-war Telegram channel, singling out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. A day earlier, he accused both of trying to “destroy” the Wagner Group by deliberately choking off their ammunition supply.
To drive his point home on Wednesday, he released a photo showing rows upon rows of bloodied and maimed corpses that he said were Wagner fighters killed trying to keep the Kremlin’s grip on Ukraine.
“No steps have been taken to issue ammunition. I am posting a photo below, this is one of the gathering points for the dead. These are guys who died yesterday due to ammunition hunger. There should have been five times less of them,” Prigozhin said.
“Wagner, like a beggar crowd funding, is asking unit commanders to help in some way. We will not leave Bakhmut. We’ll just die twice as much as we already have, until everyone’s gone. And when the Wagernites run out, then most likely Shoigu and Gerasimov will have to take up machine guns,” he said.
While Prigozhin has never been shy about blasting Russia’s top military brass, his outrage is rapidly spreading throughout the ranks of the pro-war military bloggers the Kremlin has relied on to bolster public support for the war.
And it’s threatening to overshadow the “everything is going according to plan and we’re all united” message Putin wants to send ahead of the one-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion, when the Kremlin has only slight territorial gains and a whole generation of young dead men to show for the military conquest.
Even as Putin took to the stage at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium for his pro-war rally Wednesday, Wagner supporters (or bots) flooded the chat of an online livestream of the event with angry messages demanding the military “give ammunition to Wagner!”
Prigozhin–who was known for his role commanding armies of Russian trolls long before he admitted to being the puppetmaster of the mercenary group–was suspected of unleashing the messages. Several pro-Kremlin Telegram channels have also begun conducting polls on who followers would want to see win in the “terrible confrontation”–Shoigu and Gerasimov, or Prigozhin.
Ninety six percent of the more than 15,000 people who responded to one poll on Tuesday voted for Prigozhin.
But anger at the Russian military command has already spread far beyond Prigozhin, and even Wagner.
Igor Bezler, one of the Kremlin’s most well-known proxy commanders from Russia’s first wave of aggression against Ukraine in 2014, called for Shoigu and Gerasimov to be assassinated in an intercepted call with an FSB officer recently, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
“First Shoigu needs to be shot, and then Gerasimov, fuck. And then half of your fucking FSB to be hanged and their asses put on stakes, and then we’ll start to fight,” a man identified as Bezler said in audio of the purported call.
“As long as all these fuckwits are in power … it’s all complete nonsense,” he said, railing against “dumb” Putin and others in power before yelling, “Our leaders are fucking morons!”
Bezler wasn’t the only one to float the idea of putting a “bullet in the head” of the country’s top military brass.
The Wagner-connected Telegram channel Grey Zone on Wednesday shared a missive, apparently referring to unnamed military officials, saying that if they lacked the “honor” to kill themselves for their mistakes, the least they could do is take off their uniforms to stop bringing “shame.”
The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is around 4 hours, an American fighting in ‘the meat grinder’ says
Chris Panella and Jake Epstein – February 22, 2023
A Ukrainian soldier fires toward Russian positions outside Bakhmut, Ukraine, on November 8.Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is four hours, a Marine said.
He said fighting was especially deadly in the war-torn city of Bakhmut, dubbed “the meat grinder.”
Ukraine has resisted Russian advances on the city ahead of the war’s anniversary.
The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours, a retired US Marine fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region told ABC News.
“It’s been pretty bad on the ground, a lot of casualties. The life expectancy is around four hours on the front line,” Troy Offenbecker, the American fighter, said.
Eastern Ukraine’s war-torn city of Bakhmut has been the site of some of the bloodiest fighting since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor began almost one year ago. The battle for the city, which had a prewar population of about 73,000 people, is the longest-running of the war.
Fighting in Bakhmut is so bad, Offenbecker said, that it’s been dubbed “the meat grinder.” In early January, a senior US military official described combat in and around this town, which appears to have limited strategic significance to both Russia and Ukraine, as “really severe and savage.”
“You’re talking about thousands upon thousands of artillery rounds that have been delivered between both sides,” the official said at the time. “In many cases, you know, you’re looking at, you know, several thousand artillery rounds in a day that are being exchanged.”
Bakhmut has been a major target for Russian offensive forces, which include both its regular military and the notorious Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked mercenary organization. Russia has been under “increasing political pressure” to claim some victories ahead of the anniversary of the invasion, according to a Monday intelligence update from Britain’s Defense Ministry.
“It is likely that Russia will claim that Bakhmut has been captured to align with the anniversary, regardless of the reality on the ground,” the update said.
Bakhmut, which is in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region, has been besieged by Russian forces throughout much of the war. Late last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it had been reduced to “burned ruins.”
Despite a months-long attempt by Russian forces to encircle the city, Ukrainian troops have provided a stiff defense that has prevented the Russians from capturing it. Meanwhile, Western intelligence estimates that Russia may have suffered as many as 200,000 casualties while fighting in Ukraine, including up to 60,000 troops killed.
“They have, in some categories, lost more than half of their military equipment in this war, and more than a million of the brightest and best Russians have left the country,” Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, said earlier this week. “So what is this war bringing the average Russian? Nothing.”
Donald Trump, who rolled back rail safety regulations and slashed environmental protections, donates Trump-branded water to East Palestine residents
Erin Snodgrass – February 22, 2023
Former President Donald Trump heads out of the East Palestine Fire Department next to his son, Donald Trump, Jr., as he visits the area in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023. In the background is a pallet of personalized Trump water he donated.AP Photo/Matt Freed
Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, following a disastrous train derailment.
The 2024 Republican candidate donated pallets of Trump-branded water to residents.
Trump’s visit raised questions about his administration’s rollback of rail safety regulations.
The former president’s visit to the northeastern village preempted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s arrival by one day, and Trump relished every opportunity to castigate his Democratic successors, saying Buttigieg “should have already been here,” and commanding President Joe Biden to “get over here,” according to local reports.
While assuring East Palestine residents that they had “not been forgotten,” Trump managed to tout his own presence in the besieged community and brush off questions about his administration’s noted history of rolling back regulations on both rail safety and hazardous chemicals.
Trump started his day by briefly visiting with local leaders, according to WKBN-27, before conducting a small press conference at a fire station, where, donning his signature “Make America Great Again” hat, he handed out a flurry of red baseball caps to attendees.
During his speech, Trump pledged to donate thousands of bottles of cleaning supplies, as well as pallets of Trump-branded water bottles to members of the community, many of whom have expressed continued concern over the safety of the town’s water supply following the derailment.
“You wanna get those Trump bottles, I think, more than anybody else,” Trump said, while flanked by state and local leaders, including Republican Sen. JD Vance.
The former president dismissed questions about his administration’s rollback of Obama-era rail safety regulations saying he “had nothing to do with it.”
The Department of Transportation under Trump justified the rollback with a 2018 analysis arguing the cost of requiring such brakes would be “significantly higher” than the expected benefits of the update.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Following his Wednesday news conference, Trump visited a local Ohio McDonald’s where he handed out more MAGA hats and bought meals for firefighters.
San Francisco holds its breath to find out how much it will cost to protect its waterfront from sea level rise
David Knowles, Senior Editor – February 22, 2023
San Francisco’s waterfront. (Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO — On a brisk February morning, a portable orange traffic sign set up near the intersection of Mission Street and Embarcadero shuddered in the wind, blinking a warning to passing drivers: “Caution: King tides.”
Waves from San Francisco Bay now regularly breach the pier and spill into the streets at this spot during tidal surges and helped convince city officials that sea level rise caused by climate change is no longer a problem that can be ignored.
“It was into my second year that I realized that my whole job and the organization was going to do this work,” Port of San Francisco executive director Elaine Forbes, who was appointed to her position in 2016 by then-Mayor Ed Lee, said beneath the Ferry Building’s broken clock tower, its hands fixed to either high noon or midnight as it undergoes repairs. “You’re on the line of defense.”
A semi-independent entity, the port oversees 7.5 miles of the city’s coastal facilities along the bay, leasing out a wide array of properties, including landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, the Ferry Building, a cruise ship terminal and Oracle Park, where the Giants play baseball. Its revenues are crucial to the city’s bottom line, and in 2018 Forbes mobilized her office to help ensure the passage of Prop A, a voter initiative that raised $425 million in taxpayer funds to begin addressing repairs and seismic upgrades to a 3-mile section of the city’s crumbling, more-than-100-year-old sea wall in anticipation of sea level rise.
“We said at the time, this is really a down payment for the problem,” Forbes recounted.
Since then, projections for how bad that problem will get have only become more dire. In 2020, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal and policy adviser to the California Legislature, issued a report stating that under a scenario of continued high greenhouse gas emissions, San Francisco could see as much as 7 feet of sea level rise by 2100.
A graphic from a 2020 report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.
In response to that grim new estimate, Forbes and the port’s commissioners announced last fall that they were partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a comprehensive yearlong study examining how best to protect the vulnerable waterfront. Doing nothing, everyone seemed to agree, was not an option.
“The increased frequency of flooding that you’ll see as the bay comes up and you have more frequent tidal flooding, the numbers are in the billions in terms of the damages that will accumulate from that,” Brian Harper, a director of planning with the Army Corps, told Yahoo News.
But just as significant increases in sea level will result in monumental damages, adequately protecting communities from the additional rise will also become much more expensive. Complicating San Francisco’s efforts, the pandemic has badly diminished revenues from tourism and financial district foot traffic, forcing port officials to go hat-in-hand to city, state and federal entities in search of money to use to harden the coastline against rising waters.
“We’re not even at a scale to pretend to be able to pay for this project,” Forbes said. “We have a $114 million balance sheet, maybe a little higher. If we’re lucky, we have a $25 million capital budget that we squeeze out of our net revenues.”
While noting that any estimate on how much a fix will cost depends on what the Army Corps recommends in its report, Forbes speculates that the range could end up between $10 billion and $30 billion. Other experts, however, believe that guess could be too low.
Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. (Getty Images)
“Projects like this have never, ever been built for the initial cost estimate,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and the founder of Oakland’s Pacific Institute, which in 1990 conducted California’s first-ever report on how sea level rise would impact the Bay Area. “It’s not just sea level rise. It’s the big storm in addition to sea level rise that’s the issue. Seven feet of sea level rise is devastating, and then on top of that you have the extreme storm and then the king tides on top of 7 feet. That’s when the real damages are felt, and they’re felt long before they reach 7 feet.”
While many Americans still doubt the existence of climate change or whether climate change represents a threat serious enough to spend billions to address, coastal communities across the country have already begun heeding the wake-up call issued by scientists. San Francisco is just one of several U.S. cities to seek help from the Army Corps of Engineers in recent years. Others include Charleston, S.C., Miami and Boston. As the reality of the situation and the costs associated with it continue to sink in, more and more cash-strapped communities will no doubt seek federal assistance.
“Our standard cost sharing for flooding coastal projects is 65% federal, 35% local,” Harper said.
But federal money for projects designed and proposed by the Army Corps is by no means guaranteed.
A king tide washes up along the Embarcadero in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 2022. (Brontë Wittpenn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
“Each step of the way, we need an authorization from Congress and we need appropriation of funding to move to the next step,” Harper said. “Our steps are: Study it, design it, construct it and then operate it. So in each of those stages we would be going back to the Congress with an updated status of where we are and request for appropriation to move to the next stage.”
With the GOP back in the majority in the House of Representatives, it’s unclear how future requests for climate adaptability from the Corps will be received. Not a single Republican, after all, voted in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, and many lawmakers who abhor large federal outlays have already begun looking for ways to kill its climate provisions. Yet much of the funding for hardening ports and waterfronts was allocated in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Harper notes that the Corps continues to get approval for large projects.
“The administration incorporated authorization for all federal infrastructure agencies to specifically address climate resilience across the country, but [also] in urban settings like San Francisco and other large cities,” Harper said. “Some of this is still evolving and developing as federal agencies and their local and state counterparts figure out how to make those partnerships come together. The climate resilience aspect is continually evolving.”
Seeing the future
Kevin Costner in the 1995 movie “Waterworld.” (Ben Glass/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Of all the consequences of climate change, sea level rise has so far remained something of an abstraction for many in the general public. While the oceans have indeed risen by an average of 8 to 9 inches since the 1880s, that difference can seem laughable when compared with Hollywood’s dystopian portrayal of what the future will look like. “Waterworld,” set in the year 2500, envisioned a world in which the polar ice caps and glaciers have completely melted away and sea levels have risen by 24,000 feet.
Since the 1995 debut of that film, the U.S. Geological Survey has released its own estimate of what an ice-free world would mean, concluding that “global sea level would rise approximately 70 meters (approximately 230 feet), flooding every coastal city on the planet.”
Given the swift transition to renewable sources of energy over the past few years, that outcome may also turn out to be too pessimistic. But until we dramatically slow the burning of fossil fuels, the planet will almost certainly continue to warm, causing the seas to keep rising. Though today’s 8 to 9 inches of sea level rise may not seem headline-worthy, almost half of the amount (3.8 inches) has occurred since 1990, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The pace of that rise, scientists predict, is poised to increase dramatically in the coming decades.
To better understand what multiple feet of additional sea level rise will mean for the nation’s coastlines, NOAA created its Sea Level Rise Viewer tool. When one toggles up to 7 feet of rise in San Francisco, Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf, Oracle Park and the $1.4 billion Chase Center, where the Golden State Warriors play basketball, are all shaded light blue, meaning they will be submerged in water. Forbes’s office on Pier 1, the Ferry Building next door and a good chunk of the financial district would also be permanently flooded, with access to multiple underground BART and Muni stations needing to be sealed off.
A screengrab from NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer tool showing the San Francisco area with 10 feet of sea level rise.
But how seriously should people take the Legislative Analyst’s Office upper-end prediction?
“It’s based on very sophisticated model assumptions,” Gleick said. “There’s a range of estimates. We don’t know how fast the big ice masses on Greenland and Antarctica are going to destabilize, but 1 to 2 meters by 2100 is not out of the bounds of reality and what we can expect.”
The same year San Francisco voters passed Prop A with 82.7% of the vote in order to “protect $100 billion of assets and economic activity,” a poll from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that 84% of area residents said they believed global temperatures were rising and would continue to do so, the highest number of any community in the U.S.
“It does help when they’re able to see the change. With flooding during a king tide they say, ‘Hey, this is different,’” Harper acknowledged. “But that doesn’t really capture the severity of what they’re going to see over a longer time frame.”
Like NOAA, the Army Corps has turned to visual aids to help residents understand what they will be up against, posting its own sea level rise viewer that overlays flooding depictions onto photos of urban areas.
“Here’s your downtown area. Here are buildings you should recognize because they’re in your community, and here’s what that future tidal event is going to look like,” Harper said.
If “Waterworld” was too fantastical, another sci-fi film, “Blade Runner 2049,” offered viewers a glimpse of something less abstract in scenes that featured a massive sea wall that shields Los Angeles from the encroaching ocean. That kind of utility-over-aesthetics approach has, despite the obvious drawbacks, been suggested in San Francisco to replace and dwarf the existing sea wall.
“We don’t just want to build a vertical wall. We could do that and just solve it, but that’s not good for anybody,” saidKevin Conger, president and founding partner of CMG Landscape Architecture, a San Francisco firm the port has hired to begin drawing up ideas for what a fortified sea wall would look like. “In order to adapt and hold the water back we need to elevate portions of the waterfront, but that causes another problem, which is inland flooding, because all the stormwater that’s running down by gravity is no longer going to be able to run out to the coast because you’ve elevated that edge.”
An aerial view of the Port of San Francisco shrouded in fog. (Getty Images)
Conger, Forbes and Harper all agree that whatever the final plan that emerges following the release of the Army Corps report, it should prioritize community access to the waterfront while preparing it for what’s ahead. To address the varying needs and limitations of the waterfront, the designs will include a mixture of solutions, including reinforcing and raising the existing sea wall; creating new parks that will help channel floodwaters; adding pumping stations; upgrading stormwater systems; elevating roadways, light rail tracks and even some buildings, and floodproofing the lower floors of many others; and, quite possibly, retreating from some areas altogether.
“Fundamentally, it’s looking at maintaining the line of defense, managing water, adapting with water or allowing water,” Forbes said. “There’s various alternatives that will work best in different locations along the waterfront.”
Despite the immense scale of the project, Conger stresses the long view.
“We get so sort of locked into a fear of change. But we’re always tinkering with our cities and changing things. For us to work on these projects, it’s not like we build them and walk away and we’re done, especially as landscape architects,” he said. “Our designs change constantly.”
In November, the Army Corps will present its draft to the public, inviting comments from a range of stakeholders before incorporating that feedback. Assuming congressional authorization follows suit, Harper said, the budgeting for design could come as soon as 2026.
“Depending on what the project is, design can be two to five years. Construction, again, can be two to five years. It will depend on what the specific project recommendation is coming out of the report, and it’s all subject to congressional action and administration support,” Harper said.
Calculating the final costs could itself be a years-long project. In surveys conducted by the port, for instance, San Francisco residents have prioritized elevating the 1898 Ferry Building to keep it above the rising waters. But lifting a three-story building that contains more than 200,000 square feet of office and commercial space and a 15-story clock tower won’t be cheap. Nor will be addressing possible groundwater contamination at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, now an 866-acre federal Superfund site. Last June, a civil grand jury released a report that stated, “As the sea level rises, shallow groundwater near the shore rises with it, and can cause flooding, damage infrastructure, and mobilize any contaminants in the soil.” While the cleanup of buried radioactive soils is being overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials, the city is “poorly prepared,” the report said, for how sea level rise could cause the problem to spread into nearby lower-income neighborhoods.
San Francisco’s Ferry Building. (Getty Images)
All the coastal challenges facing San Francisco could become much more difficult depending on the precarious fate of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. In 2021, a study was published that concluded that the Florida-size glacier was at risk of collapse in the following five years. Already, Thwaites accounts for roughly 4% of global sea level rise annually, and its collapse would, in the short term, translate into 2 more feet of rise. Because Thwaites helps hold other glaciers in place, however, its destruction would result in a cascading catastrophe resulting in an additional 10 feet of sea level rise.
Of course, the contiguous 7.5-mile stretch operated by the Port of San Francisco is just one small part of the Bay Area coastline that will be impacted by sea level rise.
“You’re going to have to build sea walls around the Oakland airport, the San Francisco airport, and sea walls around San Jose,” Gleick said. “When we did our study there were 29 wastewater treatment plants that were vulnerable to a meter of sea level rise.”
Though Gleick notes that San Francisco has plenty of options when it comes to combating rising seas, many poorer and less well-situated places aren’t as lucky.
“I guess the whole point is, this is just a little hint of the huge costs that are going to be associated with climate change in general and sea level rise in particular if we don’t slow these [temperature] changes,” he added.
