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Mar 22 • 68 tweets • 44 min read
Thread: 22 March 2022: Day 27 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
#Russia continues to hold Brittney Griner, an #American professional basketball player, hostage. Ms. Griner was "arrested" on fabricated charges on Feb. 17, clearly intended as leverage during the invasion of #Ukraine, which began exactly a week later.
At least five #Russian Generals have been killed in #Ukraine because Moscow has no choice but to have them at the front: the communications are not working, and morale/discipline are deeply troubled; without Generals on the spot, things would fall apart. foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/21/rus…
#Russia appears to have no theatre commander for #Ukraine, leading to competition among units for resources, rather than coordinated offensives, compounded by the communications shambles: they're using mobile phones and other unsecured devices in places.
edition.cnn.com/2022/03/21/pol…
#pt: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN the US has "seen a number of missteps" by Russia, which has "struggled with logistics", and there is little evidence of "good employment of tactical intelligence" nor "integration of air capability with a ground manoeuvre."
#pt: The US and European assessment is that the #Russian problems in centralising coordination of the invasion of #Ukraine leading to intra-unit competition and high casualties flow from how this all began: in secrecy, with a few people around Putin, who told the military late.
Important for the #US to continue highlighting that what #Russia is doing in #Ukraine is not and was never intended to be limited to that country:
Positive this is getting through, that #China will try its best to keep #Russia's war machine going against #NATO, though it raises serious questions about how this was handled in the run-up to the invasion when the Biden people were begging CCP for help
#Hungary very much reverting to form after seeming to come back in line with #NATO: undermining the sanctions effort against #Russia. Budapest behaving worse than Germany at this stage, which has at least made efforts to course correct.
The #US seems just not to know whether #Russia is planning an amphibious landing at Odessa, though there is apparent confirmation that anti-ship missiles have been transferred to #Ukraine.
Beyond squalid for Michael Flynn to end his career like this, and dangerous that he has the "credibility" of his former life to spread his craziness now
Uralvagonzavod, #Russia's primary armoured vehicle/tank manufacturer/repairer, and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, have suspended activity because of the sanctions depriving them of foreign parts, right as Moscow needs replacements, according to #Ukraine. unian.net/war/iz-za-sank…
Pentagon neither able to refute nor confirm the #Russian claim it launched a hypersonic missile on 20 March, but is more confused why Moscow would do this. Might be an indication of more troubles. "There's not a whole lot of practicality about it."
Bit weedy from the #US, saying it did not block the transfer of fixed-wing aircraft to #Ukraine - it is fine with others doing this; the US just does not want to get involved in the transfer process.
#Ukraine says nearly 3,000 children have been deported to #Russia from the Donbas, which was occupied by Russia in 2014. All scepticism about the exact figures, but there is an ongoing deportation of Ukrainians into camps in Russia from the occupied zones.
#Russia seen deploying more troops in #Belarus. This is surely for a renewed assault on #Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, but that could be some time away; the *threat* of this assault disrupts any Ukrainian plans to send troops east to alleviate those fronts.
Standard stuff from the #Russian military, sprinkling mines all over the place. Buys some time, while they try to unstick the invasion, which is basically stalled on all fronts, except arguably Mariupol, though even that is a horrific urban grind.
Pentagon assessment of where the Russians are at in this invasion
Seems #Belarus is continuing to keep its own troops out of this. Satellite pictures say more #Russian troops are arriving in Belarus, but even that doesn't seem to be for an imminent strike against Kyiv.
#pt: Been somewhat under-reported the scale of the sabotage operations by people in #Belarus, very much including the lower ranks of the army, who do not want their country drawn [overtly] into #Russia's war against #Ukraine
Again, over the long haul this might not alter the outcome, but for right now #Russia's military has been ravaged in #Ukraine. The key thing will be whether Moscow finds a way to replenish (the sanctions should hinder this), while Kyiv has an open spigot
Mykhailo Podolyak, key adviser to #Ukraine's President Zelensky, openly evasive in a BBC interview about any concessions Kyiv is prepared to give negotiating with #Russia, but firm on territory and not relying on external security guarantees (again). bbc.com/ukrainian/feat…
Problems for #Russia with its precision guided missile inventory
#Lithuania urging Europe to close the loopholes that mean cash is still flowing from the Continent to #Russia's war machine. The main holdouts blocking this are #Hungary and #Germany - engaged in a fierce competition for which can be worse.
Has been very slow going over the last week, but is important to note that there have been territorial changes in #Ukraine, and they are in #Russia's favour. Extremely costly for what they are, yes, but still flowing toward one outcome.
#Japan has been taking an increasingly hard line with #Russia since this began and Moscow has decided to respond in the most outlandish way it knew how
#Ukraine's de facto integration in the #EU proceeding, but with the surreal proviso that her ministers sometimes have to leave online meetings to head to bomb shelters
Far from exact statistics, but an important assessment of #Ukraine's military all the same
Nearly four weeks in and #Ukraine's air defence capacities are forcing #Russia to remain within its own and #Belarus' [same-difference] airspace to keep its planes out of harm's way.
Something to watch: #Israel says it has continued flights to #Russia - in defiance of the Western sanctions and causing a diplomatic spat with #Ukraine - because it is bringing its own citizens and Russian Jews who want to make aliyah to safety
#pt: Reported figures from #Israel of Jews brought in from #Ukraine and #Russia since all this started - about 8,000 from each.
#Biden warns #US businesses that #Russia is likely to begin cyber attacks on them in retaliation for the US refusing to let #Ukraine be conquered without a fight. "The magnitude of Russia's cyber capacity is fairly consequential and it's coming." edition.cnn.com/2022/03/21/pol…
Crucial that the #US/allies remain in front of these things, like the "bioweapons labs". Might not stop #Russia, but have to have our people - excluding the fringe weirdos and contrarians - prepared to understand what has happened.
The #Russians opposing this war have been, as well as stunningly brave, incredibly skilled at making the #Putin state look as stupid as possible, forced to arrest people with blank pieces of paper and so on. The follies of "proper" dictatorship.
#Moldova moving to have the West assist it, an important pre-emptive step: they are #Russia's next target - and if possible, the Russians will absorb them (like #Belarus) under the cover of this war in #Ukraine.
#Britain's public intelligence estimate confirms basically what we can see:

1) #Russia stalled on basically every front in #Ukraine

2) Even the assault on #Mariupol is grindingly slow
Rather a turn around after #Russia tried to take this area and then land troops by flight to take #Ukraine's capital
Footage shows #Russian troops looting Hostomel
Gruesome
#Hungary having to scramble jets against someone's plane coming in from #Ukraine
Interesting to see if the psyops element of this proves to be true. Morale is clearly low in #Russia's army, and #Ukraine has put some considerable effort into telling Russian soldiers there is a way out other than death.
Under the law #Russia introduced on 4 March against the "dissemination of knowingly false information about Russia's Armed Forces", at least seven cases have been opened. Notably, many of these are not within Russia; they're in Crimea and areas even Moscow recognises as #Ukraine.
1) Marina Novikova, 63, Tomsk region
2) Dmitry Gordon: journalist, Ukraine
3) Veronika Belotserkovsky: celebrity cook, France
4) Andrei Novashov: journalist, Kemerovo
5) Employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Crimea
6) Tomsk
7) Moscow
#Russia's military intelligence (GRU/GU) suffering losses in #Ukraine, along with every other branch of the Russian military machine.
Have a feeling it will take more than #China's promise to buy more of #Poland's cheese to make the Poles go soft on #Russia
If I was him I'd deny knowing how to write, having ever heard of Komsomolskaya Pravda, or understanding the concept of a newspaper, too.
Companies in #France resuming activity in #Russia
Very much the standard #Russian methods to destroy food distribution centres in cities: done before in #Syria, now #Ukraine
#pt Predictable and predicted
No doubt there have been some serious changes in #Germany since the Russian war on Ukraine began, but still some way to go.
All the caveats but a potentially significant development around #Ukraine's capital
So long as the Russians are grinding out advances, even at this absurd cost, eventually they prevail. If #Ukraine begins retaking territory, then we can properly say #Russia is losing the war.
He seems nice
Bad as it has gone so far, #Russia nearing the disaster point of the campaign; perhaps it recovers after that, or perhaps the decline is terminal.
Map of where things are at
An awful crime
Pentagon still not seeing #Russia moving #Syrians into #Ukraine on any scale
Biden is preparing to sanction 300 members of the Russian Duma (Parliament) wsj.com/articles/biden…
US preparing contingencies with Allies for a possible Russian use of a nuclear weapon
Have been a lot of comments like this from Ukrainians
Peskov looks like he does the job on sufferance at the best of times, but this was particularly uncomfortable
This seems much more like it. One of the stranger bits of #US messaging has been claiming to see no steps towards #Belarus - a combatant in this war in nearly every way that counts - getting involved in #Ukraine
One of many ways the Putin government is doing grievous social harm to Russia: keeping up a steady flow of this nonsense to people who rely on television for the news
#pt: Should be noted: the viewing figures for Russian state TV "news" are a little deceptive because, yes, some people watch and believe, but quite a number watch these channels because they perceive the state as the biggest threat to them and want to know what it is up to.
Weapons-grade copium
Putin's refusal to recognise Ukraine as a real state is the key reason the peace talks will fail. And of course making a distinction of any kind in terms of the weapons we send to Kiev should have stopped a long time ago; send everything, immediately.
Intercepted call shows the cluster mess of the #Russian invasion in #Ukraine
#pt: DoD today gave an assessment that matches quite closely with the leaked call of a Russian soldier

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More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 23
Thread: 23 March 2022: Day 28 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
#Poland is throwing out nearly fifty #Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover at the Embassy
"The evidence of Putin's chosen path was never concealed"
Read 37 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 22
This has been a depressing aspect of this war. Small, in the grand scheme, sure, but notable and lasting: there are a number of people now who one admired or at least found interesting before this war that have to be written off as terminally unreliable.
There are different streams of the "anti-woke" failure over #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine, with the wilful contrarians who just cannot stand consensus on one side, and the ideologists who hate the liberal West and thus either by conviction or default admire Putin on the other.
Some of the "anti-woke" lunacy over Ukraine has revealed certain people to be quite stupid, but simple stupidity would produce "takes" all over the map and these reliably go in one direction - namely, anti-Ukraine and/or pro-Russia. Kremlin agitprop was pushing at an open door.
Read 5 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 22
From Putin's July 2021 essay: "I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe."
More from Putin's July 2021 essay: "These territories were referred to as 'Malorossia' (Little Russia). The name 'Ukraine' was used more often in the meaning of the Old Russian word 'okraina' (periphery) ... , referring to various border territories ... "
"... And the word 'Ukrainian', judging by archival documents, originally referred to frontier guards who protected the external borders."
Read 10 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 19
#Syria's nominal ruler #Iran/#Russia dependent), Bashar al-Asad, was greeted in the #UAE on 18 March 2022, in Dubai by its emir, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. This is Asad's first visit to an Arab state since the uprising began, exactly eleven years ago. reuters.com/world/middle-e…
The @DXBMediaOffice released pictures of the visit by #Syria's tyrant, Bashsr al-Asad, to the #UAE, including this one [from left to right]: Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad; Asad; Dubai's ruler, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum; and Dubai's Crown Prince, Hamdan ("Fazza").
#Syria's tyrant, Bashar al-Asad, met #UAE's de facto overall ruler, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (#MBZ) [left], and "was also photographed with the owner of Manchester City Football Club, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan" [right]. bbc.in/36rbiJA
Read 4 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 14
Catherine Shakdam, a French-British journalist who wrote numerous articles for the website of #Iran's Supreme Leader, is of Jewish ancestry (which they didn't know) and wrote an article for The @TimesofIsrael, led her being accused of being an #Israeli spy iranintl.com/en/202203136114
#pt: Catherine Shakdam, a Jewish French-British journalist who was a propagandist for #Iran, says she "realize[d] ... there was a ... great hypocrisy" in the regime, and in combination with its call "for genocide of an entire people", it turned her against the theocracy.
Catherine Shakdam, who converted to Khomeinist Islam, about five years ago reconnected with her Jewish roots, but continued working for #Iran's media and interacting with the regime's senior officials, until she "came out" in November 2021. timesofisrael.com/im-no-mossad-s…
Read 4 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
Mar 13
Nobody - not one single person on this earth - knows with any accuracy what the state of #Russian public opinion is about #Putin's war on #Ukraine, so arguments and commentary that blame for this on the Russian people are analytical junk, as well as morally suspect.
There's no reason to deny there *is* support for Putin's war in Russia: some of it positive/ideological (pan-Slavists, Orthodox believers, regime loyalists), some of it "negative", from people who cannot support the killing of Russian soldiers and/or the nation being defeated.
Note, however, there are severe penalties in #Russia for the expression of dissent against this war, and *even so* there have been mass demonstrations across the whole country, with thousands of people arrested, and open elite dissatisfaction even on the main propaganda channel.
Read 8 tweets

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