Targeting civilians, and double tapping first responders is a Russian tactic a Christian like MJ should be rushing to defeat, not running and hiding from.
Thanks for this very sobering assessment. My heart goes out to all those valiant and resilient people still in Kharkiv. It seems now that we shall have to say goodbye to any US aid and hope that Europe can get its act together - and fast ! From what I hear and read, the message is finally getting through. The only question now is how quickly the Czech initiative, for instance, can deliver shells to the front line, when the F16s will finally arrive and, on the Ukrainian side, how soon fresh troops can be effectively mobilised.
Meanwhile, you are certainly right to approve the active defence strategy the Ukrainians are now putting in place. If they can hold out for the rest of this year, step up the campaign to attrit Russian fighting capacity and maybe do something spectacular like take out the Kerch bridge, the situation could look a lot different at year end.
Can’t wait to see Johnson and Trump , but also Scholz, to be shown up for the craven and despicable cowards they are!
Hearing this dual news about Russian tactics in regard to Kharkiv and Johnson's latest duplicitous moves in regard to scheduling a vote on aid for Ukraine, Bush's phrase "evil doers" springs to mind.
I read a lot about the war in Ukraine but it’s getting to the point where I take a pass on any articles about the war from the inane Biden administration or any stories of potential aid for Ukraine from farcical Congress. This newsletter is the exception of course.
I'm wondering if the Biden adminstation's plan is to be ultra cautious and not let Russia lose but to support Ukraine enough to ensure that it cannot win and hopefully runs down its military and economy to the point of being no threat to a NATO country. I don't agree with the policy. Putin is going to die eventually and Russia be at risk of upheaval in the not to distant future and a deciive defeat would serve as an excelent lesson for future empire builders by invasions. But this is the only way I can make sense of the situation.
I Moved to America In January 2011 and became an American citizen in July 2022. Our treatment of Ukraine makes me ashamed to be an American. Between them, the Biden administration and the MAGA GOP have sold out the Free World.
This is all so tragic, not least because it could have been avoided by firmer action.
The Russian strategy is now almost a direct copy of how the weak Syrian regime wore down the oppositions. It couldn't win conventional military battles so preferred to make an early slogan / threat a reality: "Assad or we burn the country".
The direct casualties caused by Russian attacks on Kharkiv and elsewhere are desperate for those involved, but relatively small in absolute terms and are highly unlikely to break the morale of Ukrainians. But cities are complex systems. Systematically destroying power generation, medical provision, education, food production and distribution... sanitation will presumably follow next... Without these systems functioning you can't keep large numbers of humans living in one place even if most buildings physically remain intact. The double-tap strikes on first responders are also reminiscent of Assad regime (and then Russian) tactics in Syria.
I see it's now being reported that Ukrainian troops are reporting the use of chemical weapons against them on the frontline. If confirmed, this would be another lesson learned from Syria: that the use of such weapons will go unpunished by the west.
US policy is a disaster but I still think that most European states are not taking this anywhere near seriously or urgently enough.
Phillips, can you shine any light on the continued reluctance of Scholz to send Taurus, or even backfill the UK with T , to enable more stormshadow to be sent to Ukraine? ( for use against Crimea/ Kerch bridge). What is really going on in your view? Has Gaza completely blinded European leaders to the reality in Ukraine? (An unintended consequence of the attack by Hamas.)
Doesn’t bode well for Europe to step up to cover the massive US gap.
Surely, I say, SURELY the Russian focus on Kharkiv has NOTHING at all WHATSOEVER to do with Pavlo Yakovitch Fuks, bestest friend ever to Rudy Giuliani and originator of ridiculous talking points about the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine. SURELY the FBI whistleblower Johnathan Buma has NOTHING important to say about this in any potential Congressional hearing!
'Perhaps Johnson was always planning on more delay.' There was never a doubt in my mind; he was never going to bring the bill to the floor for a vote because that's the way Republicans have been operating since Newt Gingrich became Speaker in 1994. How many times in the last 30 years have they tried to push the country off a cliff for the sake of their own power? I've said this before, and I'll say it again: they're very much like the corrupt Polish nobility in the Sejm in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who took bribes from foreign powers--Prussia, the Russian Empire, and the Habsburg Empire--the goal of which was to paralyze the Sejm to make it impossible to get anything accomplished, and it worked. I've often compared the Polish nobility to today's billionaire class. Their greed was utterly insatiable. They were never satisfied with what they had; they always wanted more. The P-L Commonwealth collapsed in 1772, and was partitioned by the powers who did the bribing. My fear is that this time around the Republicans may very well succeed in pushing the US off a cliff.
I feel really sorry for Kharkiv. It is such an intriguing and proud city, so interesting culturally, with so many (often tragic) stories to tell. For those who aren’t familiar with it… Kharkiv was always an important centre of Ukrainian culture, especially in the 1920s during the Ukrainian Renaissance (until it became the “Executed Renaissance”) but also in the last two decades. Yet the suffering it has experienced in the last 110 years… Just telegraphically listing it here horrifies me: it was a key battleground of the “Russian” civil war (according to Timothy Snyder, it changed hands at least 12 times!), it was one of the most heavily hit Ukrainian regions during the Holodomor (at least 1.3 million people were starved to death in horrifying circumstances in the Kharkiv oblast), it was particularly strongly targeted during the Great Terror (including a complete wipe out of an entire generation of artists, teachers, leaders and anyone who had anything to do with Ukrainian culture), it was heavily hit by the Holocaust (just one one day, in Drobytsky Yar, the Nazis shot 15-30,000 Jewish and non-Jewish Kharkivans, throwing the children into the pits alive to save bullets), experienced another starvation and bloody Nazi occupation (80,000 died by hunger, cold and disease; 60,000 taken as slaves to Germany, 30,000 shot dead in reprisals), tens of thousand Kharkivans fought and died in the Red Army and possibly tens of thousands were starved to death as POWs by Nazis, while the city itself was utterly destroyed by four battles during the war (70% of the buildings devastated, the population reduced from over a million to 200,000 at the end of the war), Kharkivans were again heavily targeted in the 50s, especially those who would dare to express their Ukraineness, to the point that the city turned from the epicentre of Ukrainian culture to a model of Russification; life there wasn’t exactly a paradise for the rest of USSR’s history and it was particularly badly hit by the economic meltdown after its collapse. It’s particular horrifying if you realise it was the same people who every decade experienced this: my friend from Kharkiv tells me that every family’s history in Kharkiv reads like the history of all 20th century’s worst atrocities. Literally all of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, all of them were as sharp as possible in this large city. Yet it’s striking that most Europeans couldn’t even locate Kharkiv on the map (certainly not before February 2022) and it has no particular place in our shared European memory. And I find it devastating that it seems to be the case again that Kharkiv is experiencing an utter tragedy and most people in Europe don’t even know about it and few people do anything to stop this ruin and death. I fear for Kharkiv very much.
(I’ve been donating from my PhD stipend every month to the Come back alive and Safe Skies initiatives, hoping it would make a difference for people in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities, and I’m trying to stay as brave as the Ukrainians are, but it’s hard not to lose hope with seeing the slowly unfolding catastrophy in the US and the insufficient European response while more and more people in Ukraine are dying every day and our goal for cities like Kharkiv seems to be to let them turn into ruins and mass graves. Yet again.)
I was hoping you would mention the drone attacks on the different Russian airports- they were huge but there doesn't seem to be any visual confirmation of the effect, I hope the confirmation is just matter of time!
I agree with Phillips’s characterization of Biden and his administration as weak. I’m sure they lead courageous lives in many ways and obviously nuclear weapons are not to be taken lightly but compared to JFK, or Ronald Reagan, or John McCain, Biden’s White House is weak.
Congratulations on another clear and concise post, explaining the insanity of demanding that the Ukrainians only engage the invaders withing their borders, and how the US is a fickle and unreliable ally, too caught up in itself to appreciate how dire the situation is and how high the stakes are. Hopefully, this can contribute to a wakeup call to European leaders, so they can realize that they only have themselves to rely on, if they want to extend the longest period of peace and prosperity in European history and shield the continent from Putin's imperial aggression. It will take money and weapons manufacturing and the courage to give the Ukrainians what they need to fight Europe's war with no strings attached. And none of it will come from the US.
Targeting civilians, and double tapping first responders is a Russian tactic a Christian like MJ should be rushing to defeat, not running and hiding from.
Thanks for this very sobering assessment. My heart goes out to all those valiant and resilient people still in Kharkiv. It seems now that we shall have to say goodbye to any US aid and hope that Europe can get its act together - and fast ! From what I hear and read, the message is finally getting through. The only question now is how quickly the Czech initiative, for instance, can deliver shells to the front line, when the F16s will finally arrive and, on the Ukrainian side, how soon fresh troops can be effectively mobilised.
Meanwhile, you are certainly right to approve the active defence strategy the Ukrainians are now putting in place. If they can hold out for the rest of this year, step up the campaign to attrit Russian fighting capacity and maybe do something spectacular like take out the Kerch bridge, the situation could look a lot different at year end.
Can’t wait to see Johnson and Trump , but also Scholz, to be shown up for the craven and despicable cowards they are!
I hope there's a special place reserved in hell for the people delaying the aid.
Hearing this dual news about Russian tactics in regard to Kharkiv and Johnson's latest duplicitous moves in regard to scheduling a vote on aid for Ukraine, Bush's phrase "evil doers" springs to mind.
I read a lot about the war in Ukraine but it’s getting to the point where I take a pass on any articles about the war from the inane Biden administration or any stories of potential aid for Ukraine from farcical Congress. This newsletter is the exception of course.
I'm wondering if the Biden adminstation's plan is to be ultra cautious and not let Russia lose but to support Ukraine enough to ensure that it cannot win and hopefully runs down its military and economy to the point of being no threat to a NATO country. I don't agree with the policy. Putin is going to die eventually and Russia be at risk of upheaval in the not to distant future and a deciive defeat would serve as an excelent lesson for future empire builders by invasions. But this is the only way I can make sense of the situation.
I Moved to America In January 2011 and became an American citizen in July 2022. Our treatment of Ukraine makes me ashamed to be an American. Between them, the Biden administration and the MAGA GOP have sold out the Free World.
This is all so tragic, not least because it could have been avoided by firmer action.
The Russian strategy is now almost a direct copy of how the weak Syrian regime wore down the oppositions. It couldn't win conventional military battles so preferred to make an early slogan / threat a reality: "Assad or we burn the country".
The direct casualties caused by Russian attacks on Kharkiv and elsewhere are desperate for those involved, but relatively small in absolute terms and are highly unlikely to break the morale of Ukrainians. But cities are complex systems. Systematically destroying power generation, medical provision, education, food production and distribution... sanitation will presumably follow next... Without these systems functioning you can't keep large numbers of humans living in one place even if most buildings physically remain intact. The double-tap strikes on first responders are also reminiscent of Assad regime (and then Russian) tactics in Syria.
I see it's now being reported that Ukrainian troops are reporting the use of chemical weapons against them on the frontline. If confirmed, this would be another lesson learned from Syria: that the use of such weapons will go unpunished by the west.
US policy is a disaster but I still think that most European states are not taking this anywhere near seriously or urgently enough.
Phillips, can you shine any light on the continued reluctance of Scholz to send Taurus, or even backfill the UK with T , to enable more stormshadow to be sent to Ukraine? ( for use against Crimea/ Kerch bridge). What is really going on in your view? Has Gaza completely blinded European leaders to the reality in Ukraine? (An unintended consequence of the attack by Hamas.)
Doesn’t bode well for Europe to step up to cover the massive US gap.
Two important typos
However, all the while he might have been planning to delay a vote when the time game.
Should be CAME.
It also points out that it is always wise to think the Republican Party has the ability to do anything but serve Donald Trump.
Should be UNWISE.
Surely, I say, SURELY the Russian focus on Kharkiv has NOTHING at all WHATSOEVER to do with Pavlo Yakovitch Fuks, bestest friend ever to Rudy Giuliani and originator of ridiculous talking points about the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine. SURELY the FBI whistleblower Johnathan Buma has NOTHING important to say about this in any potential Congressional hearing!
'Perhaps Johnson was always planning on more delay.' There was never a doubt in my mind; he was never going to bring the bill to the floor for a vote because that's the way Republicans have been operating since Newt Gingrich became Speaker in 1994. How many times in the last 30 years have they tried to push the country off a cliff for the sake of their own power? I've said this before, and I'll say it again: they're very much like the corrupt Polish nobility in the Sejm in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who took bribes from foreign powers--Prussia, the Russian Empire, and the Habsburg Empire--the goal of which was to paralyze the Sejm to make it impossible to get anything accomplished, and it worked. I've often compared the Polish nobility to today's billionaire class. Their greed was utterly insatiable. They were never satisfied with what they had; they always wanted more. The P-L Commonwealth collapsed in 1772, and was partitioned by the powers who did the bribing. My fear is that this time around the Republicans may very well succeed in pushing the US off a cliff.
I feel really sorry for Kharkiv. It is such an intriguing and proud city, so interesting culturally, with so many (often tragic) stories to tell. For those who aren’t familiar with it… Kharkiv was always an important centre of Ukrainian culture, especially in the 1920s during the Ukrainian Renaissance (until it became the “Executed Renaissance”) but also in the last two decades. Yet the suffering it has experienced in the last 110 years… Just telegraphically listing it here horrifies me: it was a key battleground of the “Russian” civil war (according to Timothy Snyder, it changed hands at least 12 times!), it was one of the most heavily hit Ukrainian regions during the Holodomor (at least 1.3 million people were starved to death in horrifying circumstances in the Kharkiv oblast), it was particularly strongly targeted during the Great Terror (including a complete wipe out of an entire generation of artists, teachers, leaders and anyone who had anything to do with Ukrainian culture), it was heavily hit by the Holocaust (just one one day, in Drobytsky Yar, the Nazis shot 15-30,000 Jewish and non-Jewish Kharkivans, throwing the children into the pits alive to save bullets), experienced another starvation and bloody Nazi occupation (80,000 died by hunger, cold and disease; 60,000 taken as slaves to Germany, 30,000 shot dead in reprisals), tens of thousand Kharkivans fought and died in the Red Army and possibly tens of thousands were starved to death as POWs by Nazis, while the city itself was utterly destroyed by four battles during the war (70% of the buildings devastated, the population reduced from over a million to 200,000 at the end of the war), Kharkivans were again heavily targeted in the 50s, especially those who would dare to express their Ukraineness, to the point that the city turned from the epicentre of Ukrainian culture to a model of Russification; life there wasn’t exactly a paradise for the rest of USSR’s history and it was particularly badly hit by the economic meltdown after its collapse. It’s particular horrifying if you realise it was the same people who every decade experienced this: my friend from Kharkiv tells me that every family’s history in Kharkiv reads like the history of all 20th century’s worst atrocities. Literally all of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, all of them were as sharp as possible in this large city. Yet it’s striking that most Europeans couldn’t even locate Kharkiv on the map (certainly not before February 2022) and it has no particular place in our shared European memory. And I find it devastating that it seems to be the case again that Kharkiv is experiencing an utter tragedy and most people in Europe don’t even know about it and few people do anything to stop this ruin and death. I fear for Kharkiv very much.
(I’ve been donating from my PhD stipend every month to the Come back alive and Safe Skies initiatives, hoping it would make a difference for people in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities, and I’m trying to stay as brave as the Ukrainians are, but it’s hard not to lose hope with seeing the slowly unfolding catastrophy in the US and the insufficient European response while more and more people in Ukraine are dying every day and our goal for cities like Kharkiv seems to be to let them turn into ruins and mass graves. Yet again.)
I was hoping you would mention the drone attacks on the different Russian airports- they were huge but there doesn't seem to be any visual confirmation of the effect, I hope the confirmation is just matter of time!
I agree with Phillips’s characterization of Biden and his administration as weak. I’m sure they lead courageous lives in many ways and obviously nuclear weapons are not to be taken lightly but compared to JFK, or Ronald Reagan, or John McCain, Biden’s White House is weak.
Congratulations on another clear and concise post, explaining the insanity of demanding that the Ukrainians only engage the invaders withing their borders, and how the US is a fickle and unreliable ally, too caught up in itself to appreciate how dire the situation is and how high the stakes are. Hopefully, this can contribute to a wakeup call to European leaders, so they can realize that they only have themselves to rely on, if they want to extend the longest period of peace and prosperity in European history and shield the continent from Putin's imperial aggression. It will take money and weapons manufacturing and the courage to give the Ukrainians what they need to fight Europe's war with no strings attached. And none of it will come from the US.