Putin wants to go down in history as knitting the former Soviet Union back together. Who is going to care 100-150 years from now when there are no countries and everyone is speaking and writing English?
Russian forces escalated their attacks on crowded urban areas Tuesday, bombarding the central square in Ukraine’s second-biggest city and Kyiv’s main TV tower in what the country’s president called a blatant campaign of terror.
“Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed after the bloodshed on the square in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower, which is a couple of miles from central Kyiv and a short walk from numerous apartment buildings. A TV control room and power substation were hit, and at least some Ukrainian channels briefly stopped broadcasting, officials said. …
… Day 6 of the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II found Russia increasingly isolated, beset by tough sanctions that have thrown its economy into turmoil and left the country practically friendless, apart from a few nations like China, Belarus and North Korea.
Many military experts worry that Russia may be shifting tactics. Moscow’s strategy in Chechnya and Syria was to use artillery and air bombardments to pulverize cities and crush fighters’ resolve.
The bombing on the TV tower came after Russia announced it would target transmission facilities in the capital used by Ukraine’s intelligence agency. It urged people living near such places to leave their homes.
Overall death tolls from the fighting remained unclear, but a senior Western intelligence official estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been captured or killed. …
… Unbowed by Western condemnation, Russian officials upped their threats of escalation, days after raising the specter of nuclear war. A top Kremlin official warned that the West’s “economic war” against Russia could turn into a “real one.”
Inside Russia, a top radio station critical of the Kremlin was taken off the air after authorities threatened to shut it down over its coverage of the invasion. Among other things, the Kremlin is not allowing the fighting to be referred to as an “invasion” or “war.” …
The US government has a long history of fun and interesting advice when it comes to imminent death…
Now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has issued updated guidance to its “Nuclear Explosion” readiness public awareness website, which includes tips to avoid Covid!
“A nuclear explosion may occur with or without a few minutes warning,” reads the page, which was updated on Friday. “Fallout is most dangerous in the first few hours after the detonation when it is giving off the highest levels of radiation. It takes time for fallout to arrive back to ground level, often more than 15 minutes for areas outside of the immediate blast damage zones.
FEMA recommends the following steps to prevent ‘significant radiation exposure,’ which include “Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household,” and “If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not part of your household.”
In case of a nuclear explosion, FEMA warns to try to keep 6 ft social distance and wear a mask for covid. You can’t make this up pic.twitter.com/LfxFX1dZoS
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) February 27, 2022
What’s more, “If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 9-1-1 and let the operator know if you have, or think you might have, Covid-19. If you can, put on a mask before help arrives.”
“Many people already feel fear and anxiety about the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). The threat of nuclear explosion can add additional stress.”
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) February 28, 2022
Hazards related to nuclear explosions include:
Bright FLASH can cause temporary blindness for less than a minute.
BLAST WAVE can cause death, injury, and damage to structures several miles out from the blast.
RADIATION can damage cells of the body. Large exposures can cause radiation sickness.
FIRE AND HEAT can cause death, burn injuries, and damage to structures several miles out.
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) can damage electrical power equipment and electronics several miles out from the detonation and cause temporary disruptions further out.
FALLOUT is radioactive, visible dirt and debris raining down from several miles up that can cause sickness to those who are outside.
FEMA also says you have 10 minutes after the shock wave passes to find the “nearest, best shelter location” if you’re outdoors when a nuke goes off, as radiation levels are the highest immediately after the fallout arrives.
But whatever you do, remember to wear your mask and practice social distancing while you hopefully avoid a painful cancerous death.
The reason for iodine tabs is that our bodies naturally take up iodine from whatever we eat or breathe. Strontium-90, a normal component of radioactive fall-out, is chemically identical to iodine and will be ‘taken up’ when it’s plentiful, instead of iodine.
Probably read that somewhere in the past. Thank you for the explanation
This is what I know:
“How does iodine tablets work against radiation?
KI works by blocking radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid. When a person takes KI, the stable iodine in the medicine gets absorbed by the thyroid. There is so much stable iodine in the KI that the thyroid gland becomes “full” and cannot absorb any more iodine—either stable or radioactive—for the next 24 hours.”
One takeaway from Putin and the Ukraine situation he has got himself & Russia into, also Europe, the rest of the ‘Western World’, if not the Rest of the World, period, is not unlike the presumed last-ditch defensive strategy that Israel has: ‘You mess with us, we launch our nukes.’
Or, in this case, ‘You mess with me, I launch our nukes.’
FEMA response: ‘Duck and cover!’ apparently.
(Only aging baby-boomers remember the actual elementary school drills we had which involved crawling under our desks when we heard the alert sirens. Yet another reason for getting kids back in schools pronto!)
… after Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of his European neighbor and threatened the use of nuclear power, questions about the Russian leader’s stability and rationality that have been raised in quiet conversations among global leaders are spilling into public view.
Putin, who gained a reputation on the world stage for coldly and strategically pursuing his interests, has puzzled and unsettled many in Washington’s national security establishment by taking what seem to them to be irrational risks in Ukraine, which has already resulted in punishing sanctions from the West and strategic setbacks on the ground. Some are openly speculating he is losing his grip on reality after two years of deep isolation due to COVID.
“I personally think he’s unhinged . . . I really worry about his acuity and balance right now,” said James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence during the Obama administration, in a television interview this week. “And here’s a guy that really has his finger potentially on the nuclear button right now, and so that, to me really bears close watching.”
The White House has pointedly declined to publicly indulge in any speculation about Putin’s mindset — something experts say would likely be counterproductive. …
Those questioning Putin’s mental state have not put forward any evidence of their theory except to point to his ownbehavior, and the former KGB spy’s relationship to reality has been questioned in the past, as well. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel once said Putin was “in another world” as far back as 2014, a year during which he launched a more limited offensive against Ukraine.
But longtime Putin watchers say there has been an unmistakable shift in his behavior — even if there is no certainty about its cause.
“People who say he’s long had a lot of anger toward the West are right, but what seems to have changed is his senseof proportion, of what he can get away with and what he should risk,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a former State Department official and a professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, in an e-mail.
Sestanovich noted that Putin used to downplay his international efforts; he annexed Crimea bloodlessly, while the Russian invasion of Georgia quickly resulted in a ceasefire and withdrawal. He now “amps up the stakes” instead. …
the same question occured to me. what does he expect to gain by killing the people of Ukraine? their undying affection? or does owning a country of resentful slaves seem normal to a Russian leader?
Come to think of it, it looks like it may be normal to leaders in other countries. Though those other leaders put more effort into winning the hearts and minds of at least a noisy fraction of their worker-consumer units.
Certainly things have seemed insane around here for quite a while now. Maybe that’s just the way it has always been, and I just didn’t notice.
slightly more rational (attempt to) answer my own question: i think i hve been noticing for a while that people fall in love with an abstraction .. so that for example “a glorious empire” or “free enterprise” or “justice” becomes more real to them than human beings or “a” human being.
somewhat related…there has been more anguish in some quarters over the bombing of a memorial to victims of a past war/regime than to the deaths of actual people in the same location.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Unfortunately, spot on in your own rambling fashion. We were lucky to have come along in the one brief interval of republican quasi-democracy in which reality might be considered a bit abnormally sane from the PoV of ordinary working people, but it did not last.
I am glad I have achieved “rambling” which used to be reserved for dictators’ speeches and insane defendants acting as their own attorneys.
It has occured to me that the guys who came back from WW2 and remembered the Great Depression were determined to change things so that “never again…” They succeeded in doing good things, until the forces of evil got their legs under them again. There are still remnants of their work and their hope, but times are getting scary.
China is “extremely concerned” about the harm to civilians in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Ukrainian counterpart in a call, in the latest indication of Beijing’s desire to prevent the war’s further escalation.
Wang said the world’s second largest economy also “deplores the outbreak of conflict between Ukraine and Russia,” according to a statement posted on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. The remarks were published after a call between Wang and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, the most senior exchange since Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched the invasion Thursday.
Wang also acknowledged the conflict was a “war,” rather than a “special military operation” as described by Russia. Kuleba said Ukraine was willing to strengthen communication with China and that it looked forward to China’s “mediation for the realization of the ceasefire,” according to the statement. …
Many countries fear that the Russian leader’s efforts to turn back the clock and reclaim a sphere of influence lost at the end of the Cold War could spell disaster for them.
… Eastern European countries fear a catastrophe of their own could be in the making, as Mr. Putin seeks to turn back the clock and reclaim Russia’s lost sphere of influence, perilously close to their frontiers. Even leaders in the region who have long supported Mr. Putin are sounding the alarm.
Warnings about Moscow’s intentions, often dismissed until last Thursday’s invasion of Ukraine as “Russophobia” by those without experience of living in proximity to Russia, are now widely accepted as prescient. And while there has been debate about whether efforts to expand NATO into the former Soviet bloc were a provocation to Mr. Putin, his assault on Ukraine has left countries that joined the American-led military alliance convinced they made the right decision.
A Russian attack on Poland or other former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact that now belong to NATO is still highly unlikely but Mr. Putin has “made the unthinkable possible,” warned Gabrielus Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, Poland’s neighbor to the north.
“We live in a new reality. If Putin is not stopped he will go further,” Mr. Landsbergis said in an interview. His country, bordering both Russia and its ally Belarus, has declared a state of emergency.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland gave his own warning of perhaps worse to come. “We should be under no illusions: this could be just the beginning,” he wrote in the Financial Times. “Tomorrow Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Poland, could be next in line.” …
A miles-long convoy of Russian military supply trucks and attack vehicles that has come within 20 miles of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, “has made little discernible progress in over three days,” according to an intelligence assessment released by Britain’s defense ministry on Thursday.
The convoy, seen in a number of satellite images taken this week, had raised alarm among military strategy experts who saw it as an indication that Russian forces were preparing for a potentially new phase of unrestricted warfare. But so far the convoy has appeared to stall in place.
Analysts believe that it includes food supply trucks for soldiers, fuel for vehicles and heavy artillery.
The bulk of the convoy remains about 18 miles from Kyiv, “having been delayed by staunch Ukrainian resistance, mechanical breakdown and congestion,” according to the British assessment. …
… John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, in a Tuesday briefing gave a similar assessment from American intelligence, noting that the convoy and more broadly the push toward Kyiv from the north had “remained stalled.” However, he cautioned that it was difficult to know precisely why.
He noted that in general the Russian forces appeared to be “deliberately regrouping and reassessing” after experiencing logistical challenges in their initial invasion and after meeting resistance from Ukrainians.
There have been a number of other theories as to why the convoy is not moving. Military experts have said that Ukraine’s difficult off-road terrain at this time of year may be partly to blame, pointing to images of heavy military vehicles stuck in quagmires of mud elsewhere. In early spring and late fall, parts of Ukraine experience a messy damp season — known as “Rasputitsa,” or “season of bad roads,” in Russian — that makes movement of heavy military vehicles across open terrain especially difficult. …
(AP) — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said Wednesday for the first time that its evidence suggests crimes may have been committed by former President Donald Trump and his associates in the failed effort to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College, the House committee said in a court filing. Trump and those working with him spread false information about the outcome of the presidential election and pressured state officials to overturn the results, potentially violating multiple federal laws, the panel said.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
The 221-page filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear. Lawmakers do not have the power to bring criminal charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year’s riot, but it has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.
The committee made the claims in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman, a lawyer and law professor who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election. Eastman is trying to withhold documents from the committee. …
In a court filing, the panel said there was enough evidence to suggest that the former president might have engaged in a criminal conspiracy as he fought to remain in office. …
… The evidence gathered by the committee “provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated” the obstruction count, the filing, written by Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, said, adding: “The select committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
The filing said that a “review of the materials may reveal that the president and members of his campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”
Representatives of Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment. …
We’re headed into the second week of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Russian forces have escalated their assault on Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv. With its ground forces bogged down by logistical failures, Moscow has turned to aerial bombardment of civilian targets across Ukraine.
Refugee agencies estimate over 600,000 people have fled to nearby European countries. In his State of the Union address, President Biden promised that Russia would face more pain for its actions. But has the West reached the limits of what it can do with economic measures?
Yara Bayoumy, the world and national security editor for Times Opinion, and the columnists Thomas L. Friedman and Ross Douthat joined Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a Times Opinion podcast host, to discuss what could happen next. … (Opinions at the link.)
Putin wants to go down in history as knitting the former Soviet Union back together. Who is going to care 100-150 years from now when there are no countries and everyone is speaking and writing English?
Russian forces step up attacks on Ukraine’s crowded civilian areas
AP via Boston Globe – March 1
FEMA has issued new guidance on how to survive the coming nuclear war:
Hazards related to nuclear explosions include:
Get some Iodine tabs
The reason for iodine tabs is that our bodies naturally take up iodine from whatever we eat or breathe. Strontium-90, a normal component of radioactive fall-out, is chemically identical to iodine and will be ‘taken up’ when it’s plentiful, instead of iodine.
Fred:
Probably read that somewhere in the past. Thank you for the explanation
This is what I know:
“How does iodine tablets work against radiation?
KI works by blocking radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid. When a person takes KI, the stable iodine in the medicine gets absorbed by the thyroid. There is so much stable iodine in the KI that the thyroid gland becomes “full” and cannot absorb any more iodine—either stable or radioactive—for the next 24 hours.”
Zinc is another good one. If you can get it in the cells with an ionophore it blocks Covid.
kind of like a tinfoil hat?
Sigh . . .
In case of nuclear attack then bend over, put your head between your legs, and…
One takeaway from Putin and the Ukraine situation he has got himself & Russia into, also Europe, the rest of the ‘Western World’, if not the Rest of the World, period, is not unlike the presumed last-ditch defensive strategy that Israel has: ‘You mess with us, we launch our nukes.’
Or, in this case, ‘You mess with me, I launch our nukes.’
FEMA response: ‘Duck and cover!’ apparently.
(Only aging baby-boomers remember the actual elementary school drills we had which involved crawling under our desks when we heard the alert sirens. Yet another reason for getting kids back in schools pronto!)
‘I personally think he’s unhinged’: Analysts question Putin’s mental state
Boston Globe – March 1
the same question occured to me. what does he expect to gain by killing the people of Ukraine? their undying affection? or does owning a country of resentful slaves seem normal to a Russian leader?
Come to think of it, it looks like it may be normal to leaders in other countries. Though those other leaders put more effort into winning the hearts and minds of at least a noisy fraction of their worker-consumer units.
Certainly things have seemed insane around here for quite a while now. Maybe that’s just the way it has always been, and I just didn’t notice.
slightly more rational (attempt to) answer my own question: i think i hve been noticing for a while that people fall in love with an abstraction .. so that for example “a glorious empire” or “free enterprise” or “justice” becomes more real to them than human beings or “a” human being.
somewhat related…there has been more anguish in some quarters over the bombing of a memorial to victims of a past war/regime than to the deaths of actual people in the same location.
Coberly,
Unfortunately, spot on in your own rambling fashion. We were lucky to have come along in the one brief interval of republican quasi-democracy in which reality might be considered a bit abnormally sane from the PoV of ordinary working people, but it did not last.
Ron
I am glad I have achieved “rambling” which used to be reserved for dictators’ speeches and insane defendants acting as their own attorneys.
It has occured to me that the guys who came back from WW2 and remembered the Great Depression were determined to change things so that “never again…” They succeeded in doing good things, until the forces of evil got their legs under them again. There are still remnants of their work and their hope, but times are getting scary.
Coberly
You do not know what is wanted?
run
guess not.
‘What does Putin expect to gain?’
Moldova is next. Tucked in between Ukraine & Romania, I believe.
the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. (Wikipedia)
Going forward, adjacency to Poland, maybe.
The Nazis called this ‘Lebensraum’ – living space.
China Holds Talks With Ukraine, Further Edging Away From Russia
Bloomberg – March 1
Putin’s War to Bring Ukraine to Heel Unites Eastern Europe in Alarm
NY Times – March 2
The miles-long Russian convoy headed for Kyiv has stalled, intelligence officials say
NY Times – March 3
Read the full Jan. 6 panel court filing alleging Trump, allies engaged in ‘criminal conspiracy’
Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump
NY Times – March 2
(This means he’s sticking with Plan A.)
Four Times Opinion Writers on War in Ukraine: ‘It Is Very Clear Putin Has No Plan B’
NY Times – March 2