Lots of Russian oligarchs see the war is going poorly; they just want to pull back the troops and reopen for business so they can start making money again. Putin blowing up the NS2 pipeline could be his way of telling these oligarchs that he is committed to this war and that there's no going back now. — _db

This is basically the theory that Branislav Slantchev has proposed: Putin is like the commander who orders the bridge to be blown up so that his troops are not tempted to retreat.

In this case, Putin has two bridges he might have wished to burn, an international and domestic one. On the international side, his signal is that he is irrevocably committed to seeing this war through no matter what the West does. The problem with Western dependence on Russian energy sources actually goes both ways because Europe is also the largest client. While most people focus on Putin’s leverage and blackmail, the Europeans have also had substantial leverage with their threats to limit or stop their buying. One argument was always that Putin can’t really afford to lose that buyer, and so the threats to continue the war or keep the gas off were not credible. (I have made this argument as well.) Turning off the tap does not solve this credibility problem — you can always turn it back on if you are sufficiently incentivized. Blowing up the lines, however, removes this option and so you no longer have the choice. Because the lines have become inoperable for a long time (one of them, I understand, potentially permanently), the Europeans have lost the leverage that their money was giving them.

On the domestic side, this is a move designed to consolidate power. Putin must know about the substantial discontent his policies have created among the elites, and he might be worried about conspiracies against him. One driving force behind any such conspiracy is the hope that with Putin gone, relations with the West can be regularized (I would not say “normalized” or “restored” because even the most optimistic Russians must realized that this is impossible for the foreseeable future.) While the West will remain quite hostile to Russia for a long time, this does not have to mean that business relations of some sort would not be able to resume. And so, potential conspirators might be hoping that replacing Putin could salvage the business relationships with Europe (more generally too, not just in the energy sector), and they may even think that Europe’s loss as a customer is not inevitable. If Putin were merely to turn the tap off, they can simply turn it back on when he’s gone. Destroying the lines, however, means that his potential replacement would not be able to resume delivery through them no matter how much they want to. The massive rift the sabotage will cause with Europe is also going to make resumption of relations a lot harder. This decreases the incentives of potential coup plotters to remove Putin since one of the largest benefits from doing so is now gone. What’s the point of removing him if this will not change anything with respect to the economy? — Branislav Slantchev

Max Reger "Cello Suites" — ThinkOfOne

Max Reger "Sonatas for Solo Violin" — ThinkOfOne

I see you like Max Reger - or just exploring? Like most, probably, I am not very familiar with his quite voluminous output. Hadn't heard these works before. Bach's cello suites and violin sonatas and partitas are my favorites, so I was curious about Reger's take. I liked them a lot, especially the cello suites. But I must say, I like Reger best when he is writing more as Reger and less as ersatz Bach.

On a related note, one of my favorites from the same period:

And its companion piece:

And more early Ligeti:

Here is another map with more detail:

(That pocket in the north of Donetsk Oblast has since been closed.)

György Ligeti: Requiem : II Kyrie

The other movements:


Alfred Schnittke: Piano Quintet


(yeah, I am not in a cheery mood)

Putin today: "People of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhie are now our citizens. Forever."

Putin eight years ago (upon the annexation of Crimea): "Don't believe those who are making a boogeyman out of Russia, who say that after Crimea other regions [of Ukraine] will follow. We are not looking to partition Ukraine, we don't need that."

At least now (with the Baltic gas pipeline sabotage) Gazprom can refer to force majeure and not be worried about fines from not holding up gas deals — ssu

Gazprom already declared force majeure earlier this year, apparently due to its "problems" with turbines. They already turned off Nord Stream 1, with every indication that it would stay off for the foreseeable future. And Nord Stream 2 was under sanctions, although Moscow lobbied hard for it to be turned on, even after it cut off Nord Stream 1. So I find it hard to explain how the catastrophic sabotage of both pipelines (it looks like they are gone for good) could benefit Russia. They have already demonstrated that they could turn the flow of gas on and off at will, using it either as a bargaining chip or a weapon. If they blew it up, they have robbed themselves of this tool, because they no longer have any choice in the matter. Not to mention that they have sunk a very costly investment.

I see you like Vexler. I agree with his argument that the whole 'NATO as a threat narrative' is a scam. It boils down to complaining that they won't let Putin be an asshole without consequences. — Paine

I am skeptical about grand metaphysical explanations of world events, but speaking of 'NATO as a threat narrative', Foreign Policy reports that Russia’s Stripped Its Western Borders to Feed the Fight in Ukraine:

Of an original estimated 30,000 Russian troops that once faced the Baltic countries and southern Finland, as many as 80 percent of them have been diverted to Ukraine, according to three senior European defense officials in the region, leaving Russia with only a skeleton crew in what was once its densest concentration of military force facing NATO territory.

Now, defense officials across the Nordic-Baltic region are questioning how, and when, Russia could ever reconstitute its military forces along NATO’s northeastern flank, particularly as Finland and Sweden stand poised to join NATO.

“The redeployment of ground forces has been necessary because there is a desperate shortage of trained soldiers,” wrote Harri Ohra-aho, an intelligence advisor to the Finnish defense ministry and the former uniformed chief of defense intelligence, in an email. “It has nothing to do with the NATO threat (which hasn’t existed except in the rhetoric of the Russian leadership).”

Germany's Olaf Scholz obtaining a LNG deal with the UAE few days ago — ssu

He looks so anxious! I can't blame him.

Meanwhile, the "partial mobilization" is going well. It was initiated blyatzkrieg-style, much like the war on Ukraine, only this time the target was the Russian people. As with the war, authorities strenuously denied that it would happen the whole time (even just days before Putin's announcement). Then when it was finally announced, they said with an innocent face: oh but this is partial mobilization, not general mobilization (special operation, not war).

It quickly became evident that there is nothing "partial" about the it. This follows from Putin's decree, the actual practice, and statements from some of the local commissars in charge of the campaign. General mobilization doesn't mean that everyone gets called up all at once - the Russian military couldn't handle even a fraction of all eligible people anyway (even though that's much less than the claimed 25 million). The Soviet military reserve system, whatever its shortcomings, was pretty much dismantled in the 2010s, and there is no evidence that any preparations have been taken even after the war started. The military seems to have been taken as much by surprise as everyone else.

Even with the professional ("contract") army we have had plenty of reports about their poor equipment and inadequate supplies in the field. Some of the looting was simply due to the fact that soldiers didn't have enough food and clothing. A typical story was that of a kontraktnik from a supposedly elite division borrowing money to buy his own gear before deployment. Some described the first aid kit issued to them as consisting of a gauze bandage, a rubber band and a bottle of iodine.

This sorry state of logistics will become much worse with the mobilized troops. There are already videos making the rounds showing mobiks being quartered in abandoned barracks with rickety walls and no beds, and being asked to buy their own sleeping bags and mats, and improvise first aid kits from hydrogen peroxide and women's tampons (apparently they work pretty well for stanching the blood flow). Oh, and training? Forget about it, you are going straight to Kherson!

Russia has declared it cannot repair the leaks because of the sanctions. So a bit of hybrid warfare? — ssu

Gasprom just issued an ultimatum to Ukraine's gas operator Naftogas. The likely outcome of this is that unless Ukraine consents to deliver Russian gas to Europe at no charge, this pipeline will be cut off as well, reducing the current amount of Russian gas flow to Europe by half.

I'm skeptical of the NYT and the like. — Manuel

Not sure what you consider to be "the like" of NYT. It has few peers, in my opinion. (That is, if you are after reporting and analysis. I generally avoid opinion columns.)

I am always wary of people in the West (don't necessarily mean you, Manuel) who proudly declare that they don't get their information from mainstream media (spoken with a sneering contempt). You can rightly criticize mainstream media for a lot of things, but what are the alternatives? More often than not, it is trash like conspiracy blogs, misinformation enterprises like RT, Infowars (or thegrayzone), partisan media that cares more about ideology than accuracy and depth, and generally anything that tells you what you want to hear.

NYT, Guardian (which still has an active live stream for the war news), Washington Post all do professional reporting and analysis. BBC is OK for news updates (their Russian studio does good coverage of the war, but of course you need to know Russian). NPR, like much of US media, has scant international coverage. The most complete and timely news can be found in independent Russian and Ukrainian media.

Timothy Snyder's Yale course The Making of Modern Ukraine (ongoing)

Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. What does it mean for a nation to exist? Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both? Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge? Why some and not others? Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive? If so, whose, and how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

I haven't listened to it, but will give it a try when I have time.

1 Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian Invasion
2 The Genesis of Nations
3 Geography and Ancient History
4 Before Europe
5 Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State
6 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

On the SCO summit’s first day, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov made Putin wait for him before issuing a joint statement – even though Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military base, and at least one million of its citizens work as labour migrants in Russia. — Al Jazeera

Not just the president of Kyrgyzstan, but the leaders of Turkey, India and Azerbaijan also made Putin wait for them.

And Erdogan has done this to Putin before.



Remember how Putin made everyone wait for him?



How the times have changed!

It may seem a bit childish to gloat like that, but in politics optics matter, and this is an apt illustration of the point made in the article.

One factor pointing toward the status of taking Kyiv being a central goal at the beginning of the invasion is how the failure to do so has greatly diminished the utility of Belarus in the conflict.

One imagines that the situation in that country would be very different if it was now the favored access path to a Kiev ruled by a puppet government. — Paine

If the original plan was a blitzkrieg, as the evidence indicates, then the military utility of Belarus would end with the cessation of hostilities. As it is, although the ground invasion from that direction failed, Belarus still hosts Russian air force, which pounds Ukraine from the safety of its airspace.

The Russian "guests" would not be leaving in any event though. Belarus has effectively ceded its sovereignty to Russia.

The set of mental faculties with which we are born is rather limited, so in a literal sense, the answer to your question is, obviously, no. But in a less literal sense, it is not clear what exactly you are asking. Would we develop the same sort of morals if we were never taught any morals? A feral person's moral development would be very constricted, at best, but it hardly makes sense to talk about the morals of someone who is not even living in a society: where would they exercise their moral behavior? And for a typical person, moral development is impossible to disentangle from socialization, beginning with the family. Most morals are taught not through explicit instruction in moral maxims, but by example and ostension, which is how we learn most things as we grow up.

Perhaps your question concerns so-called moral instincts. But even if there are such instincts (and there is a good deal of research in support of that idea), they won't amount to much if they are not given proper nurture and exercise, and that is impossible without social interaction.

All of which is to say that, no matter how you look at it, morals, as they are usually understood - that is, a matured moral outlook, and not just a potential for developing one - have to be taught, even if implicitly.

That was true once, but nowadays we don't need to wait years or decades for court historians to write their politically correct histories. We can get news and analysis just as events are progressing. We can get a survivor's account of Russian occupation days after it's been lifted. There is no glory there. And the dead - they talk as well, perhaps louder even than the living, because they have no reason to suppress or distort.

I see you mentioned me, but same applies to you as to boethius: I don't read your posts, I don't care what you think, so don't jump up and down trying to catch my attention after I already told you to fuck off - it's undignified.

I made it clear to you more than once that you are not worth my time.

Didn't read any of that.


On a different topic:

In February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing. Now, Xi will meet Putin somewhere in Central Asia just a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. — magritte

Follow-up on that:

We understand your questions and concern about this. During today's meeting, we will of course explain our position, we will explain in detail our position on this issue, although we have talked about this before. — Putin to Xi

Putin in Samarkand is not a happy boy. China has "questions and concerns." So does India:

I know your stance on the conflict in Ukraine and the concerns you constantly express. We’ll do everything to end this as soon as possible. — Putin to Modi

Modi said that "today’s era is not one for war." Xi did not even mention Ukraine in his statement after the talks. I suppose that's as far as he is prepared to go in his support for Russia: not chastising it in public.

Just to put things into perspective:

Just to be clear, the bold, stocky guy seen at the beginning of each clip, is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of the armed forces.


"Failures indicate that success was never intended."

In February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing. Now, Xi will meet Putin somewhere in Central Asia just a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

Meaning what? — magritte

What's more significant is that Xi's first foreign trip since the pandemic began will be not to Russia but to Kazakhstan, and the first head of state he will meet in person will be Tokayev, not Putin. This can't be just a matter of convenience: such moves carry symbolism, not least in Chinese politics. He is putting Putin in his place (pardon the pun).

Still, couldn't they arrest the most negative milbloggers and send them to jail for 15 years? — Olivier5

Good question. I find this puzzling as well. Russian authoritarianism hasn't quite morphed into totalitarianism. I suppose the regime isn't ready to unleash Stalinist purges on its supporters.

Analysts are trying to guess Russia's response to the rout in the Kharkov region. Some fear the worst, reminding us (as @ssu has done in the past) that Russian military exercises often involve simulated nuclear attacks as a means to "deescalate." Until recently, it seems that Putin wasn't quite ready for that last step, although the crazy brinkmanship with the shelling of the largest nuclear plant in Europe came pretty close. But that was more characteristic of the Russian style than a direct escalation: acting stupidly dangerously while denying everything and blaming it on the other side.

The new form that escalation seems to be taking now is attacking Ukraine's critical civil infrastructure, especially its energy system. This is something that Russian war hawks have advocated for a long time. With the heating season coming, such attacks could become deadly. Earlier Ukrainian authorities have warned Donbass residents in cities that have been devastated by Russian bombardment that they had to evacuate or else face freezing temperatures with no light and heating. This could become the reality for Kharkiv and other cities even farther from the frontline.

The strikes on power and transformer stations in the recent days put the lie to the notion that the reason that Russia expends most of its "high-precision" munitions on civilian housing, schools and hospitals is because they are just that inaccurate, or else Russian military lacks up-to-date targeting data. That's not entirely false, but clearly, they can "do better" when they make an effort.

Khodarkovsky, the exiled former Russian oligarch, posted a supposedly leaked government document that refers to internal MOD data and gives the number of Russian dead at 48,759 as of August 24.

Khodarkovsky has connections and resources, and as far as I know, he has not been implicated in disinformation, but I am skeptical. Not only is the figure staggering by itself, it is very close to official Ukrainian military estimates, which one assumes are exaggerated, and much higher than recent US intelligence estimates (70-80k casualties, which probably means about 15-20k dead).

Since the context is compensation payments, this would include only confirmed (and officially admitted) dead, which means that the real number would be higher still. The number would not include those conscripted in the breakaway "republics," but it may include at least some of the dead mercenaries: it is said that the military gets them to sign official contracts to avoid complications.

One wonders why the Telgram platform isn't shut down or "policed". Maybe Putin too relies on them for info... :smirk: — Olivier5

They tried to block it a few years ago. Succeeded only in breaking some innocent sites, as Telegram actively evaded blocking. Eventually they gave up.

Putin explained the reasons for the "special military operation" to some schoolchildren yesterday, saying that an "anti-Russian enclave" is forming in Ukraine and is threatening Russia. An interesting choice of a word - enclave, but it makes sense in light of his oft-stated belief that Ukraine is an integral part of the "Russian world," whether they want it or not.

Ukrainian fighters say that generally they have enough manpower, although many volunteers from the TDF are not ready for combat. Sometimes entire detachments collapse and leave long stretches of the frontline undefended. Tanks are precious, and they send them out sparingly. Ammo for Soviet guns is running out. They get enough ammo for the new Western guns, but those are few and far between, and getting worn out from intensive use.

On the opposing side it's the other way around. Russians have a seemingly endless supply of tanks, guns and ammunition, but nowhere enough men to go with them. They are still losing a lot of armor, but they are not as careless and undisciplined as they were at the beginning of the invasion.

Yes, I saw that too. Igor Mangushev is a mercenary who is currently fighting in Ukraine. He is said to be the founder of the mercenary company Yenot (Raccoon). Yenot mercs were there right from the start of the invasion, before Wagner got involved.

On a related note, here is a recent opinion piece by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent in Foreign Affairs: The World Putin Wants:

Vladimir Putin is determined to shape the future to look like his version of the past. Russia’s president invaded Ukraine not because he felt threatened by NATO expansion or by Western “provocations.” He ordered his “special military operation” because he believes that it is Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, to wipe out the country’s national identity, and to integrate its people into a Greater Russia.

This merc clearly had the right idea:

We are not at war with people of blood and flesh. We are at war with an idea: with an idea of Ukraine as an anti-Russian state. There can be no peace. We must de-Ukrainize Ukraine. The Russian land of Malorossia must be returned back to Russia...

This is why the tragedy for the Ukrainian soldiers is that we are fighting with an idea, and we don't give a shit how many of them we have to kill and how we have to kill them... Since we are fighting with an idea, all who share this idea must be destroyed like this poor sucker."

Experts Debunk Viral Post Claiming 1,100 Scientists Say ‘There’s No Climate Emergency’

But despite its measured tone and its list of supporters with impressive-sounding titles like professor or doctor, the declaration isn’t what it appears to be, several career climatologists and disinformation experts told Inside Climate News.

Rather, they said, the post seems to be the latest iteration of a broader disinformation campaign that for decades has peddled a series of arguments long discredited by the scientific community at large. Furthermore, the experts told me, the vast majority of the declaration’s signatories have no experience in climate science at all, and the group behind the message—the Climate Intelligence Foundation, or CLINTEL—has well-documented ties to oil money and fossil fuel interest groups. — Inside Climate News

The first and the second paragraphs in your Kelly quote seem to offer different takes on "is." But there are still more moods and nuances. We can report, insist, offer, suppose, pretend, etc.

The problem you are talking about seems not specifically related to the verb "to be" but to any verb and any statement that is not formulated as uncertain. — Babbeus

Exactly, only we don't even need to expressly qualify statements as uncertain - we only do that occasionally for emphasis. Otherwise, language norms, context and tone do the job for us.

(Not all languages even employ "to be" the way English does. In Russian, for example, you would say something like "Floor - hard.")

Today marks half a year since the start of the invasion, and by coincidence (or not?), today is also Ukrainian Independence day. So, many specials and retrospectives in various media.

Big WoPo article: Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian valor, Russian blunders combined to save the capital

According to several Ukrainian officials, on the day of the invasion they were contacted on Russia's behalf with an offer of surrender. (The Minister of Defence says he made a counter-offer to accept Russian surrender.)

The fundamental problem with “is” seems to be the person using that word seemingly speaks with a god-like authority — Art48

Not to any competent language user.

We forget just what have been the real military victories of Russia and Soviet Union after World War 2. The really successful large military operation was in 1968 the Occupation of Czechoslovakia. Such large attack that the Czech army didn't raise it's finger and not even the Czech people dared to fight with against the tanks as had the Hungarians in 1956. There wasn't any war, just a surrender, basically protests. — ssu

And before WW2 there were the three Baltic states that USSR occupied without a fight. The disastrous Winter War that preceded this didn't discourage the Soviets - and the gamble payed off. They installed puppet governments, which promptly held "elections," followed by a vote to become new Soviet Socialist Republics (with 90+% voting in favor).

So yeah, they've learned all the wrong lessons from history, if they learned at all.

I don't think people generally think of Putin as mad insane.
At least, outside of the usual (sociopathic) authoritarian strategizing/manipulation.
Anyway, so, what's the simplest coherent explanation? (Or a coherent simpler explanation?)
Attempting to push Russia up the food chain? — jorndoe

Insane - no. Isolated, poorly informed, surrounded by a small circle yes-men who tell him only what he wants to hear - much more likely.

Continuing the FSB theme, here are a couple of articles in a Russian investigative publication. The first is an OP by a journalist who has been covering Russian security services for many years, written in May (English version):

How Putin Decided to Go to War

Why was the war destined for failure from the very beginning, what sources of information did president Putin rely on before starting it, and why did nobody in the Federal Security Service [FSB] of the Russian Federation tell him the truth about the real situation in Ukraine

"As ridiculous as it sounds, the decision to go to war was made by the most uninformed person that could possibly have taken it. The president," my source sneers.

And a follow-up of sorts, published today and not yet translated:

Who controls Russian troops in Ukraine

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is out of favor with Vladimir Putin. The president confers directly with commanders charged with the conduct of the military operation.

The fact that the leadership is poorly informed is admitted even by the ex-Minister of State Security of the DPR, former commander of the Vostok brigade Alexander Khodakovsky. “One of the main problems with a closed system that took shape over decades and that is permeated by competing interest groups is an abject fear of being the bearer of bad news. Some highly placed generals who are capable of admitting certain issues in an intimate setting, when asked why they don't report them, reply: 'I'd be sacked if I did...'”

You are still on mute

This is a common tack among demagogues and propagandists: emphasize (or fabricate) uncertainty, throw up not one but many alternative narratives. Anything is possible, there's too much propaganda on both sides, we will never know the truth, it's all so confusing... When your position is weak, just upset the board.

You're on mute.

As I've repeated many times throughout this thread — boethius

I really don't know why you bother

Even the FSB personnel don't seem happy to go to Ukraine — ssu

Speaking of FSB, here is the next installment of WoPo's investigative articles on pre-war intelligence: FSB errors played crucial role in Russia's failed war plans in Ukraine

An agency whose domain includes internal security in Russia as well as espionage in the former Soviet states, the FSB has spent decades spying on Ukraine, attempting to co-opt its institutions, paying off officials and working to impede any perceived drift toward the West. No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.

And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.