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Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
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Mar 28 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Weirdest story of the day. Which makes most sense.
1) someone in Abramovich's entourage poisoned everyone and got his boss (by accident?)
2) Abramovich tried to poison the Ukrainians and got himself too.
3) Russian intelligence poisoned their own delegation to get the Ukrainians.
Has Abramovich been back in Russia since then? Maybe it was an attempt on him. I remember he flew to Istanbul a while ago. What a strange, strange story.
Reuters reporting it was environmental factors, so the great mystery is maybe not so mysterious.
Long Bellingcat tweet actually makes a stronger case for a chemical weapon of some type.

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More from @PhillipsPOBrien

Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 30
An article that outlines what Russia might be facing in terms of personnel--too few soldiers at hand to reinforce their efforts in Ukraine quickly. Helps put its finger on the heart of the dilemma facing Putin. nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russ…
Having deployed 75% of his best combat troops (BTGs) and maybe 70% of all Russian military power to the stalled invasion, what is left to deploy would certainly not be enough to take Kyiv.(And it must be remembered would basically leave Russia defenceless everywhere else)
It might be enough to try and occupy much of Donetsk-Luhansk, but that would be it. And at that point the Russian army would have been fully deployed. Thats the fundamental reason time is on Ukraine's side.
Read 10 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 29
This might be counter-intuitive, but the mediocre (to be kind) performance of the Russian military in Kyiv means that Europe and the USA do not need to rush out and spend billions more right away on their militaries. It means they have a window to plan for the future.
They should do this properly. Learn the lessons of this conflict, not waste money on systems that could be of questionable value (tanks?), and take advantage of the significant security window Russia is giving them.
There are a number of fundamental questions that need to be analyzed before we rush off to spend billions and billions. Even before looking at the war we need to start with these two:
Read 6 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 29
First Battle of Kyiv looks to be truly over. That is actually momentous. Whatever happens now we are talking about a limited war time and geography-wise--unless we think Russia has the will and resources to conscript, train and arm an entirely new army.
If the Russians are pulling back from Kyiv (which looks likely), coming back will be very very hard without basically societal mobilization. They will probably divert all remaining combat worthy forces to try and consolidate Donbass and East.
Worth noting that this also means Russia is dropping its plan for Odessa--unless something remarkable happens.
Read 16 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 29
New stories that Russia will have to accept Ukraine in the EU if Ukraine stays out of NATO. I hope people understand that if this happens, its a major victory for Ukraine.
There are alot of people saying--but the EU wont let Ukraine in right away. In a pre-Feb 24 world Im sure they are right. However, I wonder if we are underestimating the impact of Feb 24 on Europe. The EU always hedged on Ukraine because they safely knew Russia objected
If the EU turns around now, after what the Ukrainians have sacrificed for the right to join the EU and says no to membership--it will seem extraordinarily petty and a rejection of everything that the EU should stand for.
Read 9 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 29
A thought thread on the most remarkable thing of the war--here we are more than a month in this, and the Ukrainians are openly transporting equipment on major roads under clear blue skies. This represents an almost total failure of Russian airpower.
And as this is a captured Russian piece of equipment, it would have to be relatively close to the place of capture, so we are talking near the war zone.
This cuts both ways, there are pictures of Russian columns operating in the open in clear skies--yes they can get attacked but they can also operate much of the time.
Read 10 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 28
This is all true, but you could write the same story for almost every major European country and the USA.
You have USA (Trump administration), UK (money laundering extraordinaire plus funding of governing party), Italy (huge support for populist movement-Salvini) France (NF, far left), to go along with Germany
Whats weird is that many people seem to delight in pointing out people doing Putin's work in other countries, but they dont spend nearly as much time honestly evaluating their own systems.
Read 4 tweets

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