Ukraine War – Page 32 – The Tarbabys Blog

North Korean Missiles Face Reality Check in Putin’s Battles

Bloomberg

North Korean Missiles Face Reality Check in Putin’s Battles

Jon Herskovitz – January 22, 2024

(Bloomberg) — North Korea’s new arsenal of ballistic missiles is set for their first real-world test on the battlefield in Ukraine. But based on the success of US interceptor systems in that conflict, Kim Jong Un may be worried.

Burning through his stockpiles as the war in Ukraine nears the two-year mark, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned to Kim to provide short-range ballistic missiles and more than 1 million rounds of artillery. The North Korean missiles sent so far are similar in size and flight dynamics to Russia’s Iskander series, weapons experts have said.

A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies showed that the US Patriot air defense system has so far been largely effective in countering Russia’s missiles. In June, when Russia tried to take out a Patriot battery protecting Kyiv, the system shot down all of the 34 Iskander and Kinzhal missiles Russia fired, CSIS said.

That’s a warning to Putin about the KN-23 and KN-24 missiles Kim is believed to be supplying. The systems are designed to be deployed quickly, maneuverable in flight and reliably hit targets with a degree of precision. That might not be enough.

“The Patriot missile defense system should be able to intercept North Korea’s short-range ballistic missiles, given its effectiveness against Russian Iskanders,” said Shaan Shaikh, a fellow in the Missile Defense Project at CSIS, a Washington-based think tank.

Read more: Ghost Ships at Reawakened North Korea Port Put Ukraine in Peril

Kim’s military has fired off about 120 of its missiles in tests since 2019 and is likely aiming to build an arsenal that could eventually run into the thousands. North Korea’s missiles are priced at about $5 million each, according to data compiled by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses and released in 2022 by South Korean lawmaker Shin Won-sik, but the costs to Kim have likely dropped since then as he ramped up production.

That makes sales of the weapons a potentially significant driver of foreign revenue or crucial goods from abroad, something the sanctions-hit North Korean economy badly needs. Yet Kim’s isolated regime, which has long used suspect activity to generate hard cash, isn’t just providing the missiles to Putin for commercial reasons.

The use of the North Korean missiles appears to be quite new, and data is likely sparse on their performance. Any information Kim can glean about his weaponry’s performance in real-world combat could also help his regime refine future designs and attack strategies.

“Russia’s use of DPRK ballistic missiles in Ukraine also provides valuable technical and military insights to the DPRK,” the US State Department said in a joint statement this month that included about 50 countries, referring to North Korea by its formal name.

Wreckage thought to be from North Korean missiles was in the debris from strikes in Kharkiv in early January, when it wasn’t likely under Patriot protection. Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the Kharkiv prosecutor’s office, told reporters the missiles were different in key aspects from Russian models, and he believed they were from North Korea, the Associated Press reported.

The transfer of such missiles from North Korea, with ranges of about 400-800 kilometers (250-500 miles), increases the pool of weapons the Kremlin can draw upon to attack Ukraine as the war grinds on.

“North Korea’s transfer of several dozen SRBMs (short-range ballistic missiles) will be welcomed by Moscow, which has depleted its prewar stockpile despite efforts to increase missile production,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a recent report.

Kim, meanwhile, is trying to modernize his arsenal even more. His regime started the year by firing off a new type of warhead it said moves at high speeds and turns in the air, which is mounted on an intermediate-range missile designed to hit all of Japan and US bases in Guam.

Missile Barrage

South Korea and Japan both deploy Patriot batteries to protect key areas from the likes of North Korea. South Korean forces operate 8 PAC-2 and PAC-3 batteries around Seoul and US forces operate PAC-3 systems in Japan at US military bases, particularly Okinawa, according to a report from the Arms Control Association.

The Patriot system has a powerful radar that is able to track up to 100 targets including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

Nevertheless, Russia has used heavy barrages of missiles to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses. In late December, Russia ramped up its bombardment campaign, firing hundreds of missiles at cities across Ukraine, killing dozens. The US determined Russia probably used North Korean missiles in that attack.

The influx from North Korea will likely draw down the stocks of missiles for Patriot batteries and other air defense systems in Ukraine, in a strategy of attrition that could increase the changes for successful strikes.

As a result, NATO members pledged in January to ramp up production and procurement of 1,000 Patriot missiles to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, at a cost of $5.5 billion.

“Patriot is the only system that can deal with all types of Russian missiles,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in October when Germany pledged to provide a Patriot battery to protect Ukraine. Now he’ll see if that includes the newer North Korean varieties as well.

McCarthy: Freedom Caucus has ‘stopped Republicans from being able to govern’

The Hill

McCarthy: Freedom Caucus has ‘stopped Republicans from being able to govern’

Emily Brooks – January 22, 2024

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused the House Freedom Caucus of preventing the Republican majority from governing.

Speaking to Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo Monday morning, McCarthy the ousted former Speaker who resigned from Congress at the end of December, said questions about why Republicans opted to “kick the can down the road” and avert a government shutdown should be directed at the hard-line conservative group.

The stopgap funding measure passed last week extends government funding levels originally set under Democratic control until March 1 and March 8.

“You really should be asking the Freedom Caucus. They are the ones who have stopped the Republicans from being able to govern,” McCarthy said.

The Freedom Caucus opposed the continuing resolution (CR) to extend government funding last week, which Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said was necessary to complete work on regular full-year spending bills.

But McCarthy’s comment was an apparent reference to members of the group and their allies opposing full-year funding deals that House GOP leadership struck with Democrats — such as a debt ceiling deal McCarthy struck last year — and blocking several funding measures from coming to the House floor over the past year, preventing the slim House GOP majority from approving some funding measures sooner.

“What they are doing is they’re locking in the Democratic policies,” McCarthy said. “They’re actually spending more money now than if we go to the debt ceiling numbers. That would mean government would spend less, we could put Republican policies in. But they continue to stymie this majority to be able to do anything.”

The Freedom Caucus opposes the top-line spending number that Johnson struck with Democrats and the White House, which is largely in line with the debt ceiling deal that McCarthy struck with Democrats that they did not think was low enough.

The top-line agreement includes a $1.59 trillion base top line, a number Johnson and McCarthy have highlighted. But it also includes around $69 billion in budget tweaks to plus-up nondefense dollars for most of fiscal 2024, which enraged the Freedom Caucus. Johnson, meanwhile, has touted additional funding clawbacks he secured beyond the original McCarthy agreement.

Freedom Caucus leadership had also made a last-minute pitch to Johnson last week to try to attach border and migration policies to the stopgap measure, which he rejected.

Just more than half of House Republicans voted with Democrats last week to extend part of government funding to March 1 and the rest until March 8. McCarthy, notably, was forced out of the Speakership after pushing through a continuing resolution at the end of September.

“It really comes down to, what’s a true conservative? And I look for Ronald Reagan. A conservative is one that can actually govern in a conservative way,” McCarthy said. “But what you’re finding now is, what they’re doing is doing nothing but locks in Democratic Pelosi policies.”

“I don’t think they should continue to move to CRs. They should actually follow the numbers that was in the debt ceiling, which is lower than what they’re spending today. You get to reform it with Republican policies, because you’re in the majority now in the House. You get to move forward and layout and show the American public why they should give you more seats in the House and actually capture the Senate,” McCarthy said.

Russia is likely using Ukraine’s freezing winter to ramp up its front-line assaults — but its losses are soaring, British intelligence says

Business Insider

Russia is likely using Ukraine’s freezing winter to ramp up its front-line assaults — but its losses are soaring, British intelligence says

Nathan Rennolds – January 21, 2024

Russia is ramping up its offensive operations on the front lines in Ukraine, per the UK MoD.
It’s likely taking advantage of the “freezing ground conditions” to move armored vehicles.
Data from the Ukrainian General Staff suggests these attacks result in huge losses.

Russia is ramping up its front-line offensives against Ukraine, likely taking advantage of the “freezing ground conditions” to move armored vehicles around the country, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in an update on the conflict on Sunday.

In the military intelligence update, the MoD said that data from the Ukrainian General Staff pointed “toward a steady increase in the intensity of Russian offensive activity across the front over the last two weeks.”

But Russia’s mounting attacks are leading to huge losses to its military vehicles and personnel, the MoD said, citing data from the Ukrainian General Staff.

From January 14 to January 18, it said the data suggested that Russian military vehicle losses had climbed 88%, while tank losses had soared 95%. The number of Russian casualties over the period had also increased by 15%, it added.

For example, Russian forces are repeatedly carrying out large-scale infantry “meat assaults” on the city of Avdiivka, a Ukrainian commander said, CNN reported.

“Assault after assault, non-stop. If we kill 40 to 70 of them with drones in a day, the next day they renew their forces and continue to attack,” “Teren,” an artillery reconnaissance commander of Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade, told CNN.

Russia has become increasingly reliant on high-risk frontal assaults, or “human-wave attacks,” which attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian positions.

‘When roads stop existing’

A military vehicle in Bakhmut, February 2023.Marek M. Berezowski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Russian forces may be attempting to make the most of the hard, frozen grounds left by Ukraine’s harsh winter before the spring thaw and mud season, which caught Russia out at the outbreak of the war in February 2022, set in again.

The rapid melting of snow and ice in parts of eastern Europe in spring gives way to thick mud that makes travel extremely difficult. Russians call the period “Rasputitsa,” translated as “when roads stop existing,” The Guardian reported.

The mud season causes problems for Russia and Ukraine, with artillery and military vehicles trapped in the sodden, heavy clay soil.

Butm experts previously told Business Insider that Ukraine’s US-provided Abrams tanks could be key during the mud season fighting.

“The Abrams was made for this environment,” Robert Greenway, a former adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said.

“The mud could become impassable for almost any vehicle,” Greenway said, “but the reality is that the Abrams is best equipped to deal with that environment, far better than any other tracked vehicle in existence.”

What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

CNN – Opinion

Opinion: What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

Opinion by Jade McGlynn – January 20, 2024

Editor’s Note: Jade McGlynn is a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of two books, “Russia’s War” and ”Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more CNN opinion here.

Last month, a new ‘Stalin Center’ was opened in Barnaul, Siberia. Its aim, like its predecessors’ in the Russian cities of Penza and Bor, is to glorify the Communist dictator.

Jade McGlynn - Jade McGlynn — Jade McGlynn – Jade McGlynn

Alongside a marked increase in Stalin statues across Russia — more than 100 since 2012 — the Stalin centers appear to affirm a simplistic story: The Kremlin is rehabilitating the ‘Vozhd,’ or great leader.

But deeper inspection complicates the story. The first Stalin cultural center opened in 2016, in the western Russian city of Penza, with the support of local Communists — but not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

The second such center, which opened in 2021 in Bor, also in the west of the country, was originally a private initiative by a local Communist businessman. It began with a statue of Stalin looming over the Volga River. The mayor of Bor even petitioned for its removal, albeit unsuccessfully.

And now the most recent center, in Barnaul. It was established by the Communists of Russia, a radical and marginal Stalinist party that is separate to the much larger pro-Kremlin Russian Communist Party.

In other words, these centers, like many of the new Stalin monuments, are not Kremlin-imposed but rather grassroots or at least non-state initiatives. Perhaps this should not be surprising. According to the independent Levada Center, Stalin has taken first place in their ‘who is the greatest figure of all times and all people’ survey since 2012.

Students of a military-sponsored school attend the opening of a series of busts of Russian leaders, including Josef Stalin (center), in Moscow, on September 22, 2017. - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP — Students of a military-sponsored school attend the opening of a series of busts of Russian leaders, including Josef Stalin (center), in Moscow, on September 22, 2017. – Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Putin’s pro- and anti-Stalin balancing act

Of course, this favorable view is not uncontested. The Russian human rights organization Memorial worked tirelessly for over 30 years to document Soviet crimes, which were widely discussed during the Gorbachev and post-Soviet era.

More recently, Russian journalist and YouTube star Yury Dud powerfully depicted the horrors and legacy of Stalinist Gulag forced labor camps in his 2019 documentary “Kolyma: Birthplace of Our Fear.” The YouTube video has over 29 million views.

Putin’s treatment of Stalin takes both of these stances into consideration. Rather than a glorification of the Communist dictator, he offers a somewhat equivocating view that strives to placate both pro- and anti-Stalin constituencies within Russian society.

To do so, he glosses over but does not deny the large scale of the Communist dictator’s terror and repressions. In 2017, Putin unveiled Russia’s first monument to the victims of Stalin’s repressions in Moscow: the “Wall of Grief.” During the opening, he asserted: “We must never again push society to the dangerous precipice of division.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) at a ceremony unveiling the country's first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called: "The Wall of Grief" in Moscow, October 30, 2017. - Alexander Nemenov/Reuters — Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) at a ceremony unveiling the country’s first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called: “The Wall of Grief” in Moscow, October 30, 2017. – Alexander Nemenov/Reuters

Over his 24 years in power, Putin’s rhetoric on Stalin has remained reasonably consistent. He does not deny Stalin’s crimes but rather tries to divert attention away from them, admitting the horror of the Gulag and mass repressions but insisting that the memory of these crimes should not overshadow Stalinism’s achievements. In his view, efforts to overly ‘demonize’ Stalin are part of an attack on Russia.

Silencing Stalin’s victims

While Putin has shown little enthusiasm for glorifying Stalin, his government has worked methodically to silence, or at least render abstract, the memory of the Gulag’s victims.

For example, the “Perm-36” memorial complex, Russia’s only remaining intact Gulag, was taken over by local authorities in 2015. When it reopened, individual stories of the prisoners’ lives were replaced by content celebrating the prison guards and the camp’s contribution to timber production during World War II.

Elsewhere, the 2021 shutdown of Memorial — which documented Soviet human rights abuses especially during the Great Terror — and the recent removal of ‘last address’ plaques marking victims sent to the Gulag, were almost certainly state-directed initiatives that seek to erase reminders of the human cost of Stalinist repressions.

Gulag forced laborers of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, are pictured in their living quarters in the 1930s. Thousands of laborers died during the construction of the canal. - Laski Diffusion/Hulton Archive/Getty Images — Gulag forced laborers of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, are pictured in their living quarters in the 1930s. Thousands of laborers died during the construction of the canal. – Laski Diffusion/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

However, their removal cannot be reduced to the question of Stalin’s legacy alone — it can also be seen as an attempt to eliminate evidence of the crimes of the security services, in which Putin’s career and power base are rooted.

After all, thinking about the individual victims leads to thinking about the individual perpetrators.

The Putinist regime

The erasure of personalized reminders of the Gulag and Terror must be contextualized within the Kremlin’s use of history and myth to legitimate the Putinist regime, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the country’s great power status. As the prosecutor at Memorial’s liquidation trial in 2021 argued: “Memorial besmirches our history. It forces us — a generation of victors and the heirs of victors — to justify our history.”

The prosecutor’s comments reveal not an ignorance of the dark spots of history but a desire to ignore them. There are obvious parallels with the present day, when many Russians are trying hard to ignore the devastating war their country is waging on neighboring Ukraine.

Certainly, this is a more pertinent point of comparison than the notion that Putin’s regime in any way approximates Stalin’s. The estimated imprisonment of between 628 and 1,011 political prisoners in today’s Russia is a horrific reminder of the brutal authoritarianism with which the Kremlin rules. But to compare it to the millions worked to death in Siberian labor camps or executed in KGB basements is hyperbolic.

What the West gets wrong about Stalin and Putin

Moreover, these comparisons divert attention from important differences between the Stalin and Putin regimes. Beyond the drastically different scales of repression, the most obvious one is that Stalinism was a deeply mobilizing ideology that sought to remake man and undertook industrialisation with unprecedented scale and speed. That is abundantly not the case in Putin’s Russia, where the government instead encourages a ritualistic patriotism and political apathy.

Such conclusions point to intractable policy and security issues for the West. If Putin was in power solely thanks to the machinery of repressions, then it is not Russia that is a security threat, but his regime. In such a case, the problems posed by his regime would cease to exist when he does.

Likewise, if one argues that Putin is the only driving force behind Stalin’s rehabilitation, then one can also continue the fantasy that, if it weren’t for Putin, Russians would embrace Westernized liberal democracy and stop justifying the sacrifice of thousands of lives for the whims of the state.

These assumptions are flawed and lacking in nuance, no matter how comforting such a shallow understanding of Russian society might be.

The Western tendency to reduce mass-scale crime to an omnipotent leader has always been a misleading one. Even Stalinism was not the work of one man, but of the security services and individuals willing to denounce their fellow neighbors for housing rights or petty grievances, as the Kyiv-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov so mercilessly satires in his short stories of the time.

Likewise, efforts to pretend that Putinism is just the work of one man will lead to myopic thinking and poor analytical predictions regarding Russia’s future. The question of Putin’s position on Stalinism suggests he is far from the all-powerful instigator of a Stalin cult and rather a manipulative manager of divergent, pro- and anti-Stalin societal attitudes, which he tries to balance and fuse into a workable and unifying national narrative.

That a notable section of Russian society exudes nostalgia for a leader who repressed millions illuminates pervasive and troubling issues that should inform predictions and planning for a post-Putin Russia.

The problem is not just one strongman — it is that so many people wanted a strongman in the first place.

Rats and mice swarm trenches in Ukraine in grisly echo of World War I

CNN

Rats and mice swarm trenches in Ukraine in grisly echo of World War I

Christian Edwards and Olga Voitovych – January 21, 2024

The frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine have become infested with rats and mice, reportedly spreading disease that causes soldiers to vomit and bleed from their eyes, crippling combat capability and recreating the gruesome conditions that plagued troops in the trench warfare of World War I.

A Ukrainian servicewoman, who goes by the call-sign “Kira,” recalled how her battalion was beset last fall by a “mouse epidemic” while fighting in as the southern Zaporizhzhia region.

“Imagine going to bed, and the night begins with a mouse crawling into your pants or sweater, or chewing your fingertips, or biting your hand. You get two or three hours’ sleep, depending on how lucky you are,” Kira told CNN. She estimated there were around 1,000 mice in her dugout of four soldiers. “It was not the mice who were visiting us; we were their guests.”

The infestations are due partly to the change in seasons and mice’s mating cycle, but are also a measure of how the war has become static, after Ukraine’s counteroffensive was largely rebuffed by heavily fortified Russian defenses. Amid another harsh winter, mice are foraging along the nearly 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) frontline, spreading disease and dissatisfaction as they search for food and warmth.

Kira said she tried everything to rid their bunkers of mice: sprinkling poison, spraying ammonia, even praying. Nearby shops stocked up on anti-mouse products and made a killing, she said. But, as the mice kept coming, they tried other methods.

“We had a cat named Busia, and at first she also helped and ate mice. But later there were so many of them that she refused. A cat can catch one or two mice, but if there are 70 of them, it’s unrealistic.”

Videos shared on social media by Ukrainian and Russian soldiers showed the extent of the infestations on the frontlines. Mice and rats are seen scurrying around under beds, in backpacks, power generators, coat pockets and pillowcases. One shows mice pouring forth from a Russian mortar turret like bullets from a Browning.

In another, a cat tries to swipe a mouse on an armchair, before a soldier taps the top of the seat and dozens more cascade down. The cat, hopelessly outnumbered, admits defeat and falls back.

A mousetrap in a garbage can tries to stem the swarm of rodents in a trenches near Bakhmut, Ukraine, in October 2023. - Libkos/Getty Images — A mousetrap in a garbage can tries to stem the swarm of rodents in a trenches near Bakhmut, Ukraine, in October 2023. – Libkos/Getty Images

Ukraine’s military intelligence in December reported an outbreak of “mouse fever” in many Russian units around Kupiansk in Kharkiv region, which Moscow has been trying to claim for months. The report said the disease is transmitted from mice to humans “by inhaling mouse feces dust or by ingestion of mouse feces in food.”

CNN has not been able to independently verify the report, but according to the Ukrainian military the ghastly symptoms of the disease include fevers, rashes, low blood pressure, hemorrhages in the eyes, vomiting and, because it affects the kidneys, severe back pain and problems urinating.

The result, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence said, is that “‘mouse fever’ has significantly reduced the combat capability of the Russian soldiers.” It did not say whether Ukrainian troops had been similarly affected.

The Ukrainian authorities did not name a specific condition as striking Russian troops, but there are a range of diseases associated with living near rodents that have similar symptoms, including tularemia, leptospirosis and hantavirus.

The report was reminiscent of those from World War I, where the putrid pileup of waste and corpses allowed “trench rats” to breed rapidly. Rats are nocturnal and are often busiest while soldiers are trying to rest, causing huge stress.

Robert Graves, an English poet who fought in the trenches, recalled in his memoirs how rats “came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly.” When a new officer arrived, on his first night he “heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.”

In World War I, the rat population swelled when the conflict stagnated. And there are fears that Russia’s war in Ukraine has done the same. The head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, told The Economist late last year: “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

Three German soldiers display their winnings after a night of rat-catching in a Western Front trench during World War I. - Hulton Deutsch/Corbis Historical/Getty Images — Three German soldiers display their winnings after a night of rat-catching in a Western Front trench during World War I. – Hulton Deutsch/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

Ihor Zahorodniuk, a researcher at Ukraine’s National Museum of National History, told CNN the mice infestations were partly because rodent reproduction peaks in the fall, but also because of the effects of the war itself.

“The winter crops sown in the fall of 2021 were not harvested in many places in 2022 and gave generous self-seeding. The mice that bred on it survived the very warm winter and went on to harvest a new crop,” he said. The war has also dispersed natural predators, allowing mice to propagate more freely.

As well as causing anxiety and disease among soldiers, mice also ravage military and electrical equipment. When working as a signalman and living separately from other fighting troops in Zaporizhzhia, Kira said mice “managed to climb into metal boxes and chew through wires,” disrupting communications.

“The mice chewed everything: Radios, repeaters, wires. Mice got into cars and chewed on the electrical wiring, so the cars wouldn’t run, and they also chewed on tanks and wheels,” Kira said. “The losses from the mice in our dugout alone amount to one million hryvnia [$26,500].”

Zahorodniuk stressed the damage can be critical, “as lost communication may cost lives.”

Soldiers sleep in the dugout as they hold their positions in the snow-covered Serebryan Forest in Donetsk region, in January 2024. - Libkos/Getty Images — Soldiers sleep in the dugout as they hold their positions in the snow-covered Serebryan Forest in Donetsk region, in January 2024. – Libkos/Getty Images

As Ukraine weathers another winter, the problem will likely get worse before it gets better. “It will get colder and colder, and they will go into the trenches more and more. The situation will not change until they all go through this,” said Zahorodniuk.

In World War I, soldiers could not solve the trench rat problem. Instead, they killed rats for their sport. Trying to spike one on a bayonet became a form of entertainment. The population did not decrease until the war ended. But Zahorodniuk warned Ukraine should not let the same happen again.

“The fight against them should be organized and not rely on soldiers and volunteers who are not imagining ways to fight. This is wrong. After all, this is a matter of the combat capability of the army. We have to take care of our soldiers.”

Thousands without heating as Russian infrastructure buckles amid winter freeze

The Telegraph

Thousands without heating as Russian infrastructure buckles amid winter freeze

James Kilner – January 20, 2024

People gather round a mobile kitchen after dozens of residential buildings were left without central heating due to a housing service accident caused by a cold snap in the town of Klimovsk near Moscow – Reuters/EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA

Thousands of Russians are living without heating through a freezing winter that is breaking the country’s fragile Soviet-era infrastructure.

Hot water pipes are bursting, electricity is failing and radiators are freezing across Russia, triggering complaints from angry locals who have accused officials of incompetence two months before a presidential election.

In videos posted this week from Nizhny Novgorod, 265 miles east of Moscow, residents were evacuating apartments flooded with steaming boiling water.

“The apartment is completely destroyed. The apartment is uninhabitable,” said one man as he filmed water pouring through the ceiling.

In Novosibirsk, Siberia, a major pipe burst on Wednesday, projecting a spout of boiling water high into the air which burnt 13 people and left entire apartment blocks without heating during one of Russia’s coldest winters for decades.

A resident of Novosibirsk said she was upset but was not surprised.

“Of course people are upset. They have been in the cold, with children, since January 11,” she said, declining to give her name. “I wasn’t surprised at all. It would have happened at some point because the pipes that burst were laid back in 1973 and 1963.”

Municipal officials have admitted that the burst pipe in Novosibirsk was laid in 1963 and was last repaired in 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed.

In Khimki, a suburb of Moscow, freezing residents have taken to huddling around a fire on the street to keep warm in temperatures of -25C.

“We haven’t had any heating since January 2. The authorities are aware of the problem,” said a woman in a video of several people holding up ‘SOS’ signs. “Please help us, we are desperate.”

A municipal worker removes snow during snowfall and cold weather in Moscow – YURI KOCHETKOV/EPA

Campaigners have said that chronic underfunding has undermined civilian infrastructure in Russia.

Russia’s centrally controlled hot water systems were built in the Soviet Union and struggle under extreme temperature changes which have been harsh this year.

Analysts said that with an election in mid-March, these failures undermine the Kremlin’s message that Vladimir Putin is the tough and competent leader that ordinary Russians need, although he is still guaranteed to win.

“The heating emergencies around Russia, the result of long-term underinvestment in public utilities infrastructure, complicate that narrative,” said Ben Noble, assistant professor of Russian Politics at UCL.

And civilians’ gripes are unlikely to be smoothed out any time soon.

A couple stands on the Komendantskaya pier of the Peter and Paul Fortress and looks at the frozen Neva River during abnormal frosts in St. Petersburg – Zuma Press / eyevine/Artem Priakhin

Putin has prioritised his army over civilian demands, approving a massive boost in military funding and co-opting everything from shopping malls to bakeries to produce weapons for the war effort in Ukraine.

But fracturing infrastructure is not the only internal problem facing Putin. Although protests are effectively banned, demonstrations in Bashkortostan, a region with a large Muslim population that lies south of the Ural Mountains, against mobilisation have been growing.

People in Dagestan, in southern Russia on the Caspian Sea, have also been protesting since the summer about failing infrastructure and the wives and mothers of mobilized men have been campaigning for the return of their men from frontlines in Ukraine.

Russia’s elite paratroopers and marines are refusing orders to launch ‘human wave attacks,’ Ukraine official says

Business Insider

Russia’s elite paratroopers and marines are refusing orders to launch ‘human wave attacks,’ Ukraine official says

Nathan Rennolds – January 20, 2024

Elite Russian troops are refusing to launch “human-wave attacks,” a Ukrainian official said.
Nataliya Humenyuk said marines and paratroopers are concerned over huge losses in the assaults.
She said former prisoners and poorly trained reservists typically carry out costly frontal assaults.

Russian marines and paratroopers are refusing to launch certain types of assaults due to concerns over the huge losses other troops are suffering, a Ukrainian official said, the Kyiv Post reported.

Nataliya Humenyuk, a press secretary for the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Joint Command South, said that the soldiers considered “themselves ‘elite troops'” and did not “want to go into frontal assaults” that former felons and reservists typically carry out, the outlet reported.

Throughout the Russian invasion, Russia has become increasingly reliant on high-risk frontal assaults involving waves of attacks that probe Ukrainian positions and seize small portions of territory at the cost of substantial casualties.

The leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last August after leading a failed mutiny in June, described the tactic as a “meat grinder.”

Humenyuk cited Russian attacks on Krynky in the Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine, saying that Russian troops assaulting Ukrainian marine positions there were being hit with losses of more than 50%.

“At present in our sector the number of units of the type ‘Shtorm-Z’ [low-grade Russian units made of up older reservists and former felons, often committed to carry out human wave attacks] is falling and we are seeing more naval infantry and paratroopers,” Humenyuk said.

“But they consider themselves ‘elite troops,’ and they don’t want to go into frontal assaults like that,” she added.

One of Russia’s newly formed paratrooper units, the 104th Guards Airborne Division, appeared to be hit particularly hard in its combat debut in the Kherson region late last year, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an update on the conflict in December.

It said the unit “highly likely suffered exceptionally heavy losses and failed to achieve its objectives during its combat debut in Kherson Oblast,” aimed at dislodging Ukrainian positions near Krynky.

Krynky has been the scene of heavy fighting over the past few months as Ukrainian forces have attempted to recapture ground across the Dnipro River.

A group of Ukrainian marines sail from the riverbank of Dnipro at the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023. — A group of Ukrainian marines sail from the riverbank of Dnipro at the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, in 2023.AP Photo/Alex Babenko

Conditions in the region have made fighting difficult for both sides, with marshes, water-filled bomb craters, and mud making it almost impossible for troops to dig in, The New York Times reported.

Despite Ukrainian officials’ claims that the country’s marines had gained ground on the eastern side of the river, soldiers and marines told The Times that this was an exaggeration.

“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” Oleksiy, a soldier who fought in Krynky and only gave his first name, said. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”

“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”

But its success in the skies above the Dnipro bolstered Ukraine’s difficult position on the ground.

Russia appears to be struggling to defend against Ukraine’s drone attacks because of a shortage of electronic-warfare capability in the area, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

Ukraine’s forces have been using first-person-view drones to strike Russian vehicles, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update.

The ministry said that a Russian military blogger estimated that 90% of Russian military equipment deployed around Krynky has been destroyed.

Send Channel migrant boats to Ukraine to help war effort, Government urged

The Telegraph

Send Channel migrant boats to Ukraine to help war effort, Government urged

Danielle Sheridan – January 19, 2024

Boats used by migrants to cross the Channel to the UK should be sent to Ukraine to help the war effort, a volunteer organisation has told the Government.

Since October, British and Ukrainian volunteers have delivered 15 inflatable dinghies and rigid inflatable boats to soldiers fighting along the Dnipro River.

The small boats, which were in relatively poor condition, were driven from the UK to the south of Ukraine, where they were refurbished. This included the installation of new engines and painting the vessels khaki.

They have provided a lifeline to the Ukrainian soldiers holding three established bridgeheads on the occupied eastern side of the river, by carrying vital supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers.

When MissionUkraine, the organisation leading the small boats initiative, initially appealed to the Government for boats used by migrants to cross the Channel to be sent to Ukraine, it was informed by Border Force that this would not be possible.

Officials said: “The majority of boats are not fit for re-sale or to ever go to sea again, because they arrive in very poor condition. These boats also deteriorate and perish over the period, and are therefore often destined for recycling.

“The boat engines might also be sold at auction, but again, over time, they are no longer operational, or require additional funds to bring their condition back to normal.”

A small boat that was taken from the UK to Ukraine, repaired and then delivered to the front line – Alex Kruglyak/MissionUkraine UK

A government spokesman told The Telegraph that while it was “committed to supporting Ukraine” it “cannot donate unsafe and dangerous small boats which will put more lives at risk”.

However, Alex Kruglyak, one of the leaders of MissionUkraine, said poor quality boats were still useful to troops because marine engineers in Ukraine were able to refurbish them to a decent operating standard, meaning they were seaworthy again.

“All of the boats we deliver go through a boat maintenance procedure which is done by marine experts and all the engines go through an engine testing and maintenance procedure done by guys with decades of experience,” he told The Telegraph. “We will pay for all transport and maintenance costs – we are not asking for a penny.”

In June last year, the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was breached, causing widespread flooding that stopped Ukrainian troops advancing via the Dnipro River.

By October, troops had started to cross the Dnipro, but were using rowing boats in order not to attract attention from the Russians.

There are now three established bridgeheads on the occupied eastern side of the river, with the Ukrainian troops at those secured areas dependent on small boats.https://www.youtube.com/embed/viYOh8tkwJY?enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&origin=http://www.telegraph.co.uk&rel=0

To date, MissionUkraine has delivered second hand boats to Kharkiv, Zaporizha, and Dnipro, which have then been transported to soldiers on the frontlines.

Mr Kruglyak, 35, originally from Odesa but living in London, added that it “made sense” for the Government to donate the boats confiscated from migrants, which are currently in a pound in Dover.

His calls were echoed by Paul Watson, 69, from Bridgend, Wales, who has driven to Ukraine’s front line numerous times with his friend Martin Blackwell, 70, to deliver both 4x4s and small boats.

Mr Watson said that the rigid inflatable boats they had transported so far were purchased from private owners for prices ranging between £1,500 and £4,000, with money raised through their local church.

Some of them were “in a very bad state when we first took them out,” he said, adding: “In any time of crisis, people can be very versatile and alter things to become usable. If one boat saved one life it was worth it.”

These voters will pick the next president. They’re frightened about American democracy.

Politico

These voters will pick the next president. They’re frightened about American democracy.

Zach Montellaro – January 17, 2024

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 12: Members of the U.S. National Guard arrive at the U.S. Capitol on January 12, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Pentagon is deploying as many as 15,000 National Guard troops to protect President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, amid fears of new violence. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

NAZARETH, Pennsylvania — Earlier this month, 15 voters in this closely contested area of Pennsylvania convened to discuss the state of American democracy.

To say they were discouraged as the 2024 election gets underway would be an understatement.

Three years after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, half of the voters in the focus group immediately started nodding when asked about the possibility of violence around the election.

Sitting around folding tables in an arts center just off of the small town’s Rockwell-esque Main Street, the voters painted a bleak picture over the next hour: A largely negative view on everything from trusting that their votes and their neighbors’ votes will be fairly counted, the speed it takes to get results and that those results will be accepted by the losers.

“I almost feel numb to it,” Jackie, a younger voter in the focus group, said of the violence on Jan. 6. “We’re going to have another election, could that happen again? I probably won’t even react the same, because I’m like ‘this is what happens.’ … Something’s probably going to happen.”

The focus group was brought together by Keep Our Republic, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that seeks to educate the public about strengthening the democratic system. It was convened in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a swing county in one of the most important swing states in the nation.

The participants’ pessimism encapsulates one of the most pressing challenges in American politics right now — the loss of public trust in democracy itself and the electoral infrastructure that supports it. It is a problem that stretches far beyond just Nazareth; a Gallup poll released the day after the focus group found that a record low 28 percent of American adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in this country.

Their distrust comes at a moment of intense polarization in America — and after former President Donald Trump has spread constant lies about the security of American elections in the three years since the Capitol riot.

“Everybody agreed on one thing: That there’s a very good chance there’s gonna be violence in the next election,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who sits on the state advisory board of Keep Our Republic. “There’s a heightened sense of, or concern about, civil disorder in the next election.”

The voters in the focus group are, in a literal sense, the mythological “Main Street” swing voters that politicians talk about in their stump speeches. Christopher Borick, a pollster and professor at nearby Muhlenberg College, selected them from his neighbors who lived on or near the town’s Main Street.

The group was overwhelmingly white, like both the town of Nazareth and Northampton County more broadly, but was otherwise emblematic of the voters who will decide 2024. They were all registered voters — and those who said how they voted in 2020 during the focus group seemed evenly divided between Trump and President Joe Biden.

Borick asked them to participate because he never saw a political sign pop up on their front lawns. POLITICO observed the focus group under the condition that voters would be identified by their first names only.

The focus group came just a day before Biden gave a speech near Valley Forge, about an hour’s drive away, on the state of the country’s democracy. There, the president cast the 2024 election as a referendum that will decide “whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause.”

But the focus group made clear that much of the distrust in the democratic system is rooted in the broader political polarization of the moment.

Borick often tried to steer the conversation away from the politics of the 2024 election to the mechanics of it, but participants consistently returned to their displeasure in another Biden-Trump rematch.

Almost to a person there was a wariness — and in some cases an outright distrust— of the democratic process in the county. Two voters, distinctly in the minority, repeated conspiracy theories popularized by Trump about mail ballots being used to steal the election from him. And roughly a third of participants said they believed unregistered people were casting ballots.

But more broadly, the participants were confused by the process, with complaints especially about the time it takes to know the winner. Pennsylvania did not allow for election officials to pre-process mail ballots in 2020 — a significant cause of the state’s elongated vote count — and is now an outlier state that hasn’t updated its laws to allow for it in 2024.

“America’s Got Talent can tally 50 million votes in 15 minutes,” Mike, a middle-aged engineer, joked during the focus group. “How can we not elect officials effectively, and not feel confident? Across the board, I don’t feel a lot of confidence here that all of our votes are getting counted properly.”

Northampton voters’ suspicions are fueled by a string of recent election administration failures. In recent municipal elections, election machines have faltered twice: In 2019, initial vote totals showed a candidate who would go on to narrowly win their contest only initially get less than 200 votes across some 55,000 ballots. And just last year, the printout of a person’s ballot would in some cases display the wrong selection on judicial retention elections.

In both cases, election officials stressed that the final outcomes were correct. A paper trail backup was used to count the votes in 2019, and election officials said last year’s erroneous printouts were due to human error when programming the machines and that they were able to correctly tally the final count as voters intended.

“If they tell me they’re working, I am hoping they’re working,” Jimmy, another participant in the group, said of the voting machines. “I try to be optimistic.”

But election officials and groups like Keep Our Republic face a tough climb ahead, even in counties that did not have demonstrable problems like Northampton did.

Keep Our Republic’s theory is that the group can reverse — or at least slow — the declining trust in the democratic process by working with local leaders in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The group has hosted legal education classes for attorneys in Pennsylvania about the state’s election laws, and meetings with local election officials and their community in Wisconsin. The goal of the group, in the words of the group’s executive director Ari Mittleman, is to educate the local “chattering class” — local attorneys, community leaders and regular voters.

“If you look at the climate, I think we should assume that it’s going to be incredibly, incredibly tumultuous,” Mittleman said in an interview over a plate of pierogi and beer at a local brewery. “All we can do is put up speed bumps. And our hypothesis is … who is turned to in these communities in purple America, in these three states? It’s not the president. It’s not the politicians.”

The hope, he said, is that instead of turning to national pundits or politicians, voters turn inward to their community with questions. The theory is that another parent on a child’s Little League team or a church elder would be a more effective messenger about the democratic process than a prominent politician or expert parachuting into the community. And when there are questions over things like election litigation, or problems that do occur, community leaders would be inherently more trustworthy.

“I’ll be the first to say, it’s a total hypothesis that might be proven wrong. People might tune into national news, talking heads and experts who’ve never been to Northampton County or Kent County, Michigan, or whatever,” Mittleman said. “But I have a feeling they’re going to go and say to people in their community, ‘What’s this all about?’”

Tax Us, Daddy?

Reason

Tax Us, Daddy?

Liz Wolfe – January 18, 2024

Taxes are the only way to get rid of excess money? “We ask you to tax us, the very richest in society,” reads an open letter to the world leaders assembled in Davos, Switzerland, penned by 250 millionaires and billionaires who seem to be gluttons for punishment.

“We’d be proud to pay more,” declares their website, which is thusly named. “This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.” Signatories include Disney and Rockefeller heiresses, as well as actor Brian Cox.

Currently, nobody is forcing them to keep their earnings. They have full freedom to do whatever they’d like with their money—including giving it away to charity or coordinating with other similarly rich people to pool money together to tackle specific issues that might be too large for just one billionaire to handle.

“Inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk is severe—and growing every day,” reads the letter, which in no way substantiates how “inequality” has reached this “tipping point” or what exactly happens if inequality continues to grow. (Absolute wealth is infrequently mentioned in these types of calls to action. It’s always relative wealth, which allows signatories to ignore the vast standard-of-living gains that have been made over the last century.)

“If our elected officials refuse to address this concentration of money and power, the consequences will be dire,” warned Cox.

Speaking of concentrations of power: The impetus for the open letter is the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, which is happening now and drawing leaders from across the globe—frequently arriving on their private jets. (“Private jet emissions quadrupled during Davos 2022,” reads a Guardian headline from last year, which put the total number of private jet flights at 1,040. Fascinating that those who are so concerned with climate change still feel comfortable flying private.)

The bright spot, amid the calls for coercive wealth redistribution, was undoubtedly the speech given by newly elected Argentine President Javier Milei, who is so full of fiery takes that he might just singe your eyebrows off.

“Today I am here to tell you that the Western world is in danger, and it’s in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty,” said Milei. “Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.”

But Argentina knows firsthand, he warned, just how bad of an economic situation can arise from state intervention: “We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.”

“Today’s states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals,” he continued. “With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.”

And, later on: “They say that capitalism is evil because it’s individualistic and that collectivism is good because it’s altruistic, of course with the money of others.”

You couldn’t engineer a better response to the taxation-hungry billionaires mentioned above if you tried. People are always free to give their own money away, but it takes a special breed to favor coercion.

“Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges,” Milei added, closing with a forceful defense of value creators: “You [entrepreneurs] are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral.”

After all, “the state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself.”

It’s about time someone went into the lion’s den and forcefully defended free market capitalism.

Oh, and Milei? He flew commercial, saving taxpayers an estimated $392,000.