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May 16 • 63 tweets • 45 min read
Thread: 16 May 2022: Day 82 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
#Israel denies the reports that it had agreed to send Blue Spear anti-ship missiles to #Ukraine via Estonia jpost.com/international/…
#France's President Macron has ideas about how to approach #Russia that were self-evidently dangerous to European security half-a-decade ago.
Ilia Chernilevsky, one of many ordinary citizens in #Ukraine who took up arms to defend his country against #Russia's invasion
Oleksandra Anikieva, a student when the #Russian invasion began, took up arms to defend #Ukraine
#Britain has acted correctly in this crisis, and is now matching the rhetoric to the policy for how this must end
The head of the unit from #Belarus fighting for #Ukraine has been killed
"McDonald's ... has started the process of selling its Russian business, which includes 850 restaurants that employ 62,000 people, making it the latest major Western corporation to exit Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February." bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Despite the shenanigans from Rand Paul and the other loonies, Left and Right, the Republican leadership in the #US Senate is determined to ensure the aid bill for #Ukraine goes through this week.
In the beforetimes, it would have been embarrassing for the American Right that *anyone* among their number was being used in Russia's propaganda, and it would have cost that person their standing. All change now, of course.
Two more #Russian helicopters and seven drones brought down over the last 24 hours. Kharkiv front largely frozen as #Ukraine prepares the final offensive. Fighting around Kherson also quieter, and while attacks on Mariupol continue, no airstrikes overnight
A quiet mobilisation appears to be underway in #Russia, though the state's refusal to call what it is doing in #Ukraine a "war" does mean it is "voluntary" for now - people can refuse, though that comes with obvious potential costs.
Another report on the covert mobilisation in #Russia, which seems to be sparking a counter-reaction: four registration and enlistment offices have been burned down across the country in the last fortnight moscowtimes.ru/2022/05/15/v-r…
#France, #Germany, and #Italy are trying to impose a "ceasefire" that would leave #Russia occupying parts of #Ukraine. Kiev rejects this, and is supported by #America, #Britain, and #Poland [and the #Baltics] in this policy. politico.eu/article/wester…
#Putin's governor of #Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is regularly forcing Chechens to go fight in #Ukraine for the Russian army. It seems that not even the disabled are exempt from this conscription. eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/59116/
The entire #Russian army disaster in miniature this attempt to cross the Seversky Donets: bad assumptions, bad execution, catastrophic losses, and not a damn thing learned, just try and try again
A message from #Ukraine's 227th Battalion of the 127th Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces after reaching the #Russian border in the #Kharkiv region, where the Russians are just about to be entirely expelled.
If you missed this from @DrRadchenko, do read: a plea from a #Russian who wants the best for his country that Russia be humiliated in #Ukraine, so there can be no myth this time, no scapegoats, and the lessons of the Soviet experience finally learned. spectator.co.uk/article/why-ru…
#pt: "Ukraine has punctured a big, gaping hole in the narrative of Russia's 'greatness'. Russia is poor, corrupt and authoritarian, and now we also know that it is weak and pathetic. Russia’s 'greatness' has crumbled in an orgy of murder and rape ... in Ukraine."
#pt "Russia needs proper humiliation. It needs a humble recognition of its diminished status, an acceptance of guilt, and a … painstaking effort to rebuild the trust of those it has wronged. … Only then that Russia can, finally, be at peace with itself and with its neighbours."
"'There are about 40 #Jewish heroes protecting Azovstal [in #Mariupol] now,' David Arakhamia, the adviser in charge of #Ukraine's negotiating delegation ... One of the Jewish soldiers [Vitaliy Barabash] released a video last week" timesofisrael.com/senior-zelensk…
A #Ukrainian woman living near Kiev, Vika, 42, describes her ordeal being raped by a young #Russian soldier during the occupation in March. A neighbour, Natasha, 44, simultaneously raped in the same house by a second soldier who shot dead her husband. news.sky.com/story/ukrainia…
#Ukrainian women describe being sexually attacked by #Russian soldiers during the occupation of the Kiev area in March. Both stories have indicators of the systematism and premeditation of the use of rape as a weapon of war, namely the distribution of drugs among the troops.
#pt: Amidst the cruelty of the #Russian soldiers' behaviour, it is notable the shocking indiscipline of the force.
In Dovzhyk, near Chernihiv, the #Russian occupiers abducted three brothers from the Kulichenko family because one had served in the military, tortured them for three days, and then shot them into a ditch. One survived, despite being shot in the face. wsj.com/articles/ukrai…
Great work from @IsabelColes and @WSJ team gathering this story. Has the exact date of the abduction (18 March 2022) and the murders (21 March) and provides photographic guidance to the story: the holding cell, massacre site, and escape route.
Very interesting: #Ukraine has leaked a Telegram group of #Russian soldiers set up three days after the invasion began, and it shows their shock at being sent to war, the disastrous lack of communication and coordination, the heavy losses, and infighting
Hopefully there is at least a moderate course correction, even if nobody in #Germany quite acknowledges that a wrong course was being taken before
That is quite the image from Azovstal, the last holdout of #Ukraine's resistance in Mariupol, a city otherwise occupied by the #Russians
Luhansk is where the #Russians can point to gains since the announcement on 18 April of the Donbas/Eastern offensive in Ukraine. It is poor recompense for the rout of their forces around Kiev in the last few days of March, and the cost has been high.
Re the reports over the last few days of #Germany (and #France and #Italy) trying to force a ceasefire on #Ukraine that leaves their territory under #Russian occupation, #Poland has been complaining about this publicly for more than a month
Hopefully #Turkey is just making a noise about this and doesn't do anything silly, especially since it has so much going its own way at the moment, even in D.C.
#Sweden has formally announced it will seek #NATO membership, ending two centuries of [formal] military non-alignment.

(In truth, the Swedes were a generally reliable Cold War ally, including in the effort to prevent the Bolshevization of Vietnam.) apnews.com/article/russia…
#Russia "reportedly sent 550 servicemen ... to cross the Siverskyi Donets River ... #Ukrainian artillery destroyed the Russian pontoon bridges and ... on May 11, which reportedly resulted in 485 casualties and damages to over 80 pieces of equipment" iswresearch.org/2022/05/russia…
Current situation
#pt: Possibly the most telling of @Nrg8000's maps: everything in yellow is territory #Ukraine has pushed the Russians out of; what's in red is what #Russia holds, large parts of which they have had since 2014.
Looks like the Azov Regiment is about to surrender Azovstal, the last point of #Ukrainian resistance in #Mariupol, after months under #Russian siege. Implication from Denys Prokopenko that the orders came from Kiev, some kind of safe passage worked out.
#pt: Does look like it is over in Mariupol. President Zelensky is apparently to give a national address soon.
Video message from a few hours ago, from President Zelensky, who is obviously pleased, thanking the #Ukrainian soldiers around Kharkiv who reached the #Russian border yesterday.
#pt: This is what President Zelensky congratulatory video today is responding to
Nearly half of #Kherson's million inhabitants have reportedly fled since the #Russian invaders took over and installed their collaborationist Kirill Stremousov, who began Russification policies. Russian soldiers are reported to be raping & killing at will. moscowtimes.ru/2022/05/10/pol…
The most popular figure in the poll in the #US was #Ukraine's President Zelensky - by a long, long way: the next one down had about half as much, and nobody else had a majority
What a surreal situation. Underlines #Ukraine's is a genuine national (or "people's", if you prefer) war.
The signs of support for Zelensky across the West are so widespread
A #Russian soldier tells his wife to warn a comrade wounded at the front not to spend the 3 million rubles ($35,000) in injury pay yet, because the state will reassess at some point and if he was not sufficiently wounded will retake half or more
Mikhail Khodaryonok says #Russians must not take "information tranquilisers": #Ukraine's morale is high, they have no problem with mobilisation, and with #US Lend-Lease about to come fully online, the Ukrainians will be able to equip these soldiers
#pt: Mikhail Khodaryonok says on #Russian state TV a "dogma" has taken hold among Russia's elites that contract soldiers are professional: "Far from it!" What matters is morale and the skill of the trainers, and #Ukraine has NATO help and is ready to "fight until the last man".
#pt: Mikhail Khodaryonok says on #Russian state TV it is pointless for the Kremlin to saber rattle about #Finland: "It actually looks quite amusing. ... We are in full geopolitical isolation ... However much we would hate to admit this, virtually the entire world is against us."
Very intrigued to know who signed off on Mikhail Khodaryonok being on Olga Skabeyeva's show on #Russian state television. Khodaryonok gave an entirely frank view of the situation, including Moscow's isolation and #Ukraine's high morale, as they must have known he would.
Yup. A devil's trap.
#pt
Three of the eleven Mi-17 helicopters transferred to #Ukraine; one already used against #Russia.
Pentagon reports on the #Russian troop levels in #Ukraine and their dispersion across the southeast, not all in the Donbas, stretching Kherson round through Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Mariupol, and up to Izyum, with some still left around Kharkiv.
The Chabad Hasidic movement is thrilled by the #US recognising #Russia's VEB bank as a state entity, gives them footing to seek a collection of Jewish holy books confiscated by the Nazis and then looted as the Soviet army conquered its former ally jta.org/2022/05/16/glo…
Incidentally, Mikhail Khodarenok - the man on #Russian state TV tonight being brutally honest about the disaster in #Ukraine - was also plainspoken about #Syria.

Do read all of this, one of my favourite pieces; lays down truth as only Russians can capx.co/assad-is-in-a-…
All over in Mariupol. Just logistical wrangling now as the #Ukrainians try to evacuate the last of Azovstal. It seems a prisoner swap has been agreed to prevent #Russia annihilating the wounded, but we shall see. independent.co.uk/news/world/eur…
#Estonia has been the most clear-eyed about #Russia for many decades, and at long last the West is listening.
Incidentally, #Estonia's Prime Minister, @kajakallas, in her denunciation of this Western fetish of "peace", echoes Solzhenitsyn, who wrote 45 years ago against this idea that peace's opposite is "war"; mass violence and repression are not "peace"
Putin, with and through his chief of the general staff General Valery Gerasimov, is micromanaging the war, making tactical decisions usually taken by a colonel or brigadier for units of the Russian army with as few as 700 men, according to Western sources. thetimes.co.uk/article/270977…
This is why the excitement bubble a couple of weeks ago over #Putin appointing a theatre commander for #Ukraine was so misplaced: other than the fact the Russian army and its equipment don't work, it makes no difference when command runs through one man
Highly significant finding from #Ukraine's police: of the 1,000 civilians killed by the #Russian army in Bucha, the town near Kiev, most were not killed by shellfire or airstrikes: 650 were shot dead, many of them after being bound. bbc.com/news/world-eur…
Whatever one thinks about #Russia's "rules of engagement" and its "tolerance" for civilian casualties from stand-off fire and airstrikes, it is a category difference for an army to murder civilians individually on a scale of this kind.
Great piece by Peter Jennings for @ASPI_org: the lessons of #Ukraine are not only for #Taiwan but #Australia and the West: set aside the flashy systems; our weapons need to be simple and not so expensive we won't risk actually using them if it comes to war aspistrategist.org.au/australia-must…

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More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton Profile picture
May 16
Leaked documents show that in one county of a quarter-million people, Konasheher, in southern Xinjiang, nearly 5% of the Uyghur Muslim population has been imprisoned by #CCP for "terrorism" and "extremism" charges. The rate is 30 times the norm in #China. abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS…
#pt: Pure notably Stalinism: China sets "arrest quotas for local police [in the Muslim areas], in some cases resulting in the men from entire villages being rounded up and whole families uprooted ... [C]amp detainees were forced to confess their 'crimes' in group sham trials"
#pt: "Although China makes legal records easily accessible otherwise, almost 90% of criminal records in Xinjiang are not public."
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May 15
Thread: 15 May 2022: Day 81 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
#Britain and #Finland deepening relations ahead of Helsinki's accession to #NATO
About an hour ago, #Finland's President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin held a press conference formally announcing the country will submit its application to join #NATO, explaining [as is self-evident] that this was a direct result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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May 14
Thread: 14 May 2022: Day 80 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
It might not be completely finished yet—#Russia still has positions in the area—but as of 13 May #Ukraine has clearly defeated the Russians around #Kharkiv, and the complete eviction of Russian troops retreating toward the border is only a matter of time.
Reports that #Israel will send Blue Spear anti-ship missiles to #Ukraine (via Estonia)
Read 37 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
May 13
One of the defensive responses to #Germany's policy on #Ukraine has been: "Look at how many refugees we have taken". God bless those who shelter refugees. The problem with this as a policy metric, though, is that it doesn't register success, but very nearly the opposite.
Should say: in conversation with someone from #Britain, this is usually a not-so-subtle counter-attack on our policy in this area, and there is a point. But it doesn't alter the fact: taking refugees from #Ukraine is not a measure of how this is going.
Taking in refugees is something that has to be done when a country has been devastated - or during the process of that happening. Most people who flee would like to go home; many #Syrians certainly would, and the fact so many cannot is a measure of our failure since 2011.
Read 5 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
May 13
Thread: 13 May 2022: Day 79 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
The BBC doing in #Russia the kind of journalism its "impartiality" doctrine often keeps it from doing at home
- Russian airstrikes in the south, inc Mariupol, but hesitant beyond that in bad weather
- Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian-held zones
- Russian force around Izyum showing signs of strain
- Ukraine pushing back in Mykolaiv
- Some explosions north of Kherson
Read 23 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
May 12
Protais Mpiranya, the most-wanted war criminal in Africa, leader of #Rwanda's presidential guard during the genocide, has been found, buried in Zimbabwe under a false name. He has been there since 2006 courtesy of a tuberculosis-induced heart attack. ft.com/content/1cbe90…
Protais Mpiranya fled into Cameroon and then the Congo, where he fought against Kagame's Rwanda after it invaded in 1996 to uproot the genocidaire encampments like Goma, and fought under Mugabe's sponsorship during the African World War (1998-2003).
With Mpiranya's death confirmed, there are now five of #Rwanda's genocidaires who are wanted by the UN Tribunal, though their prosecutions would take place in Rwanda itself:

1) Fulgence Kayishema, a Judicial Police Inspector from Kibuye
Read 6 tweets

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