Horrified that you forgot to order Mom flowers? Here's something else to worry about, to take your mind off your sins as a child
/
with a woke, all-green military, we’re ready for anything
Don't Be Surprised if Putin Tries to Make May 9 a Day That Will Live in Infamy
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin might be about to play a very dangerous game of his own.
May 9 is the day Russia celebrates its hard-won victory over Nazi Germany, 77 years ago this Monday. With the Ukraine War continuing to be a long, hard slog, Putin is expected to take one of perhaps three actions during or soon after Monday’s massive festivities.
By most accounts, the original hope was to have some kind of big victory in Ukraine to celebrate on the WWII anniversary. Clearly, that’s not going to happen, but as the men of Delta House could tell you, “This situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture.”
Or a possibly Earth-shattering one. In the literal sense.
Yesterday I covered two possibilities:
Some analysts believe Putin might announce some kind of victory. Putin could “officially” annex the occupied areas of Ukraine, and wind down the war to something much quieter and more like the low-intensity fighting that’s been going on since 2014.
Others argue that Putin will declare an official war. Under Russian law, that’s far more serious than the current “special military operation.” The difference is that a declaration gives Putin the authority to call up the reserves and mobilize the economy.
But there’s always this thought to ruin your weekend:
But there is a third, courtesy of the pseudonymous “Laughing Wolf,” an author who earned his Masters doing open-source spying on the Soviets:
If Vladimir and his clique have an ounce of sense, they will keep any and all attacks conventional. I’m not confident enough to place a bet they will. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on tactical use of special weapons.
Russia really very quite seriously needs to get NATO weapons to stop flowing into Ukraine. NATO members have vowed only to increase shipments. The Ukraine War, as it stands now, doesn’t look good from Moscow’s position.
Let’s hope this is all histrionics, and Vladimir will just throw up his hand and admit defeat. If he does, though, he’ll disappoint someone in our own government:
Someone in Washington is trying to goad Putin — who, and why?
According to the Times:
The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.
Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.
The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.
The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. …
U.S. intelligence support to the Ukrainians has had a decisive effect on the battlefield, confirming targets identified by the Ukrainian military and pointing it to new targets. The flow of actionable intelligence on the movement of Russian troops that America has given Ukraine has few precedents.
Stephen Green: The real question is why “senior American officials” are talking about this at all. What benefit does this deliver to the US to have this publicly known, to the extent that it happens at all? It’s a question that Thomas Friedman asked the day before in the same newspaper:
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” he [Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] said. “So, it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”
Please tell me that this statement was a result of a National Security Council meeting led by the president. And that they decided, after carefully weighing all the second- and third-order consequences, that it is in our interest and within our power to so badly degrade Russia’s military that it will not be able to project power again — soon? ever? not clear — and that we can do that without risking a nuclear response from a humiliated Putin.
Have no doubts: I hope that this war ends with Russia’s military sharply degraded and Putin out of power. I’d just never say so publicly if I were in leadership, because it buys you nothing and can potentially cost you a lot.
Loose lips sink ships — and they also lay the groundwork for overreach in warfare, mission creep, a disconnect between ends and means and huge unintended consequences.
There has been way too much of this from the Biden team, and the messes have required too much mopping up.
Green:
This leak is arguable worse. It practically dares Putin to use it as a pretext for some sort of attack on NATO that would produce a response in kind. The only real reasons for rubbing Putin’s face in this with a leak to the media about this program are either (a) they want a war with Russia, (b) they need to bolster Biden’s standing with voters by making him look tough, or (c) both. The more these leaks keep springing up, the more it looks like (b) or (c), and (c) mainly for the same purpose as (b) — attempting to shore up Biden and Democrats ahead of the midterms.
When Stephen Green can find common ground with Thomas Friedman, well, there’s trouble in the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the White House.
