Mark Sumner

Thursday’s briefing from the U.S. Defense Department spoke directly to the relationship between Russia’s logistical problems and its slow progress in Ukraine.

In a sea of tanks, armored personal carriers (APC), infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), armored fighting vehicles (AFV), Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles, it can be easy to overlook the vehicles that are most often responsible for getting soldiers where they need to be on the battlefield—Infantry Mobility Vehicles. Also known as Jeeps.

Well, not actually Jeeps.

Over the course of the now more than two-month-long invasion of Ukraine, kos has written several times about the difficulty of integrating unfamiliar weapons systems into an army—especially when that army is already engaged in a life-or-death struggle. Every single one of these systems comes with its own training requirements, not just for the person whose finger is on the trigger, but for all the mechanics, electricians, and support crews needed to keep it operating in the field.

On Saturday evening in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said they believe Russia is positioning its forces for a strike toward Sievierodonetsk. Located near the western edge of the Luhansk oblast, the city of 101,000, and the neighboring city of Lysychansk (population 95,000) are the lynchpins of Ukraine’s eastern defenses.

At Friday afternoon’s Pentagon briefing, Defense Department officials reported that Russia was:

Continuing to bring in additional forces to the Donbas region, including some of those who fought in the losing Battle of Kyiv.
Continuing the kind of probing attacks along the eastern defensive lines they’ve employed since the beginning of the invasion.

Two days into what Ukrainian officials have officially labeled “the Battle of Donbas,” there are reports everywhere … though what they mean is difficult to interpret.

Good

Near Izyum, where Russian forces have been gathering over the last two weeks, and which was expected to be the northern end of a north-south pincer movement, Ukrainian forces have reportedly advanced from the west, retaking some of the small villages on the outskirts of the city.

No matter what “tankie” Twitter has to say, the U.S. Department of Defense has now confirmed that the Russian missile cruiser Moskva (“Moscow”) sank after being struck by Neptune missiles fired by Ukrainian coastal defense. Honestly, the U.S.

News out of Mariupol suggests that many of the remaining Ukrainian fighters are restricted to the Azovstal metal refinery on the southeast of the city. That may make it seem that Russia has these Ukrainian forces backed into a single building, which they can simply level with the next round of artillery.

But that plant is actually an enormous expanse of connected refineries, factories, offices, and shipping facilities.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian government circulated images of a destroyed bridge somewhere in the Donbas region—a bridge that had been taken down by Ukrainian special forces. Not only was the bridge itself destroyed, it was taken down as a Russian convoy was passing over, destroying four large trucks and a Tigr-M (sort of the Russian equivalent of a Humvee).

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden released a statement on his latest conversation with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy. In the call, Biden not only revealed that he was sending an additional $800 million in “weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance” to Ukraine, he provided some exciting details of just what would be heading down the high-speed pipeline between the U.S. and Kyiv.

We seem to be having Russian History Month. There has been the head of the Russian orthodox church reaching back 900 years to claim that neither Ukraine nor the Ukrainian church is “real.” Vladimir Putin has insisted that Ukraine is not a country because it “illegally left” the USSR. And on Tuesday, Russian diplomats insisted that Japan pay them back for gold supposedly stolen in 1920.

When it comes to news out of Ukraine, what the West hears about the progress of the war and what they hear in Ukraine is pretty similar. Or at least it is in places not actively engaged in conflict—people there have more immediate concerns.

In the U.S., the subset of information that we get through most media outlets is shorn of a lot of the detail on troop movements, small actions, and the triumphs—or loss—of individual soldiers.

Since Russia collected what was left of their forces in northern Ukraine and made a run for the Belarus border, almost all of the attention has focused on the Donbas region. Which isn’t surprising, since Russia already announced that it was going to redirect its attention there.

The absolutely best outcome for Russia at this point would seem to be capturing more territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and completing the capture of Mariupol.

Shortly after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began, the Ukrainian military itself began to change. In part, that’s because Ukraine called up hundreds of thousands of people who were in the reserves or part of the territorial defense forces—something like our National Guard. Ukrainians also began to volunteer for service in large numbers, including Ukrainian women.

A large wedge tornado, likely a class 4 or 5 storm, cut a path through New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward on Tuesday evening. It was part of a line of storms that cut across the South. The tornado in the Lower Ninth was just one of several tornadoes in the New Orleans area.

Details are still coming in.

@MargaretOrr here is a video of the tornado my husband matthew burke took in chalmette on chinchilla st. you all have permission to use it! pic.twitter.

As of Sunday morning in Ukraine, fighting continues in Mariupol as territorial defense forces struggle to prevent Russia from capturing more of the city. Meanwhile, additional sources have confirmed the story that Russian forces put local citizens on buses and took them out of the area, either to Donetsk or into Russia. For those not already kidnapped or engaged in a firefight, the situation remains dire.

Travelers to China are often surprised by the efficiency of the Great Firewall. For a westerner dropping in, it can be a shock to find that Twitter is blocked. And Facebook is blocked. And even Google searches are blocked.

“Sequela” is a word that few Americans recognize today. Unfortunately, it’s a word that is much more likely to become familiar over the next few years… even decades. A sequela is a long-term pathological effect resulting from exposure to a disease. When the pandemic ends, the damage is not going to be over.

The texts released by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 show that the White House, Republicans in Congress, and Donald Trump Jr. were all terrified about the insurgents breaching the Capitol. Some were terrified for how it would cost them politically. Some for how the insurgents might harm them physically.

Over the last few days, the COVID-19 news has been dominated by concern over the omicron variant. Scientists are worried by the number of changes to the virus, including changes to the critical spike protein. Health officials around the world are nervous because a majority of the planet is still surfing the delta wave, and the idea of something worse coming along at this moment is genuinely terrifying.

Jessica Schneider at CNN is reporting that a federal grand jury has handed down an indictment for Steve Bannon. Prosecutors reportedly presented the indictment along with an arrest warrant to a federal judge on Friday afternoon.

Word that the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial ruled this week that those shot by the 17-year-old could not be called “victims” during the trial brought a swift reaction from Rittenhouse defenders who claimed there was nothing unusual about that order. That includes the part where Judge Bruce Schroeder informed the defense that in their closing arguments, they could call those shot by Rittenhouse “looters,“ “rioters,” and “arsonists.

This week, NASA completed “stacking” the components of the Artemis 1 mission. That mission will fly using the Saturn-V-sized Space Launch System (SLS) and send an uncrewed version of the new Orion crew capsule on a trip around the moon. On a Friday conference call with journalists, NASA put a date on that flight: February 2022.

For a few heady weeks in 2004 and 2005, it seemed a miracle had occurred. The ivory-billed woodpecker—the “Good Lord Bird” known for its startling size, massive white bill, and a call described as being like a “toy trumpet”—had been found living in a national wildlife refuge along the Cache River in Arkansas. Multiple sightings were reported. The sounds of woodpeckers pounding on trees were recorded. A single grainy video was shot.

From early on in the pandemic, there have been two sites that have competed to offer a view of the future, offering predictions of where COVID-19 cases and deaths go over coming months. One of these, the IHME projection from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

In the last two months, we’ve watched two billionaires fly their personal rockets on suborbital flights that they celebrated with lots of self-aggrandizement. On Wednesday evening, another billionaire will launch, not on his personal rocket, but on one he’s renting from billionaire No. 4 for another tourist flight. Which, on the face of it, seems like more of the same.

On Tuesday, Metrópoles reported that Trump advisor Jason Miller was detained while boarding a jet at Brasília International Airport. Miller is being held in connection with an ongoing operation looking into “the organization of anti-democratic acts in Brazil.” That detention came following Miller’s appearance at a CPAC meeting in Brazil.

The best solution to investigating the events related to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol would have been a nonpartisan outside commission, which was used several times to examine critical issues and key events. But Republicans shot that effort down in the Senate, using the filibuster to defeat the proposal.

On Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden stepped in front of the cameras to address the nation on the end of the war in Afghanistan.

“Follow the money” is a handy bit of kit in a lot of situations. When it comes to looking at the events of Jan. 6, it’s good advice. Because, as OpenSecrets.org has revealed, Donald Trump’s various campaign funds paid out over $4.3 million to the people who organized the insurgency warm-up rally on Jan. 6.