Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[Labster]

The operations appear to be commencing.  In mid-August, hey, that's what was predicted.  We're on schedule, and we've come a long way, baby.  So many Russians smoking near ammunition dumps, you'd almost say it's a Lucky Strike.  The secret?  It's toasted.  I watched a video of stacks of wooden ammo boxes -- all meticulously stacked one a time by orcs --  filmed from a passenger train that passed by.  It only took a few hours after the video was posted for that one to go up in smoke.  It's like the warning label says, "Smoking kills."

A reddit thread already had this summary for me in the proper format, even:
- Explosions at munitions depot, Timonovo, Belgorod
- Explosions at Stary Oskol Airfield, Belgorod
- Explosions in Nova Kakhovka Kherson
- Explosions near Belbek airport Crimea
- Air defence activity near Kerch strait
- Russian bases hit in Luhansk
- FSB base hit in Crimea

And that's just last night.

But, let's talk about the Kerch strait one first.  As you may remember, Russia built a pair of giant bridges across this strait separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov, as a land link to Russia.  The Crimean Bridge is the longest bridge in Europe at 19km, and it's only been open since 2018.  There are two spans -- one automotive, and one for rail which opened a year later.  Now, it's been obvious that Ukraine doesn't want a land link to Russia, and people have been pretty widely speculating that they are going to blow up this bridge.  Today Zelensky said that the bridge will be removed, "willingly or otherwise".  And furthermore, it wasn't approved under Ukraine's environmental regulations.  Ukraine has been a model at removing invasive, non-native organism.

There are two parts of this bridge that should be considered differently.  First, the rail bridge is an obvious target.  All of Russia's military supply comes over the rail, including heavy weapons, artillery, armor, APCs.  They are not going to drive tanks 19km across civilian roads, it's just not happening.  So as Ukraine has worked towards HIMARS range -- or special forces, or even partisans -- this is a juicy target.

The vehicular side is not that great of a target, at least not right away.  And boy, has it been busy with traffic.  Since the first set of bombings, Russians have been fleeing Crimea like orcs leaving a ruined beach holiday.  I'm not sure if the traffic jams are still there, but after the initial wave, Russians started inspecting all the cars crossing to make sure no Ukrainians were trying to sneak into Russia.  After your base blew up, it's not unreasonable, even if it is bad optics.  Anyway, Ukraine wants as many Russians as possible to leave, so why cut off the line of retreat?

So tonight, we got some air defense activity near Kerch.  These are the decoys.  Send up some drones, some little missiles, and see what lights up on American satellites and reports from local spies.  When the next set of strikes happen, it will be to take out the air defenses.  The rail bridge will fall soon after.  Or, it's a feint.  I have no idea.  I just know orcs are running.

And speaking of running, it appears the leadership of the occupiers in Kherson has moved across the Dnipro, leaving their soldiers trapped.  Not entirely trapped, they just can't take their armor and large vehicles with them, because Ukraine keeps blowing up the Russian "road repair".  There's a lot of folks who want blood and retribution, but honestly we just want these invaders to leave, right?  To lose their will to fight.

One of the folks who lost the will to fight was Pavel Filatyev, who wrote a 157 page memoir on his war experience, which is about what you think it is.  This is a paratrooper complaining about how little support they got, how they turned into savages and looters because they could not bathe, or eat, or have shelter for weeks.  It took him weeks to realize that there was no invasion of Russia, and that what the government had said was a complete lie.  This isn't some green recruit, this is a paratrooper, y'all.  Anyway he gave a few interviews in Russia about how bad the war really is, before his friends finally convinced him to get the hell out of Russia, which seems like a good plan.

Meanwhile, someone managed to smuggle footage, taken inside his pocket, from inside the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant, showing about 10 military vehicles on the turbine level of the nuclear power plant.  Yesterday, Rosatom told a lot of workers not to bother showing up today.  Between the threats of an accident, it seems ominous.  Given the weather patterns, if they cause a nuclear "accident" in the next couple of days, wind will blow most of the fallout away from Russia and toward Kyiv... and Poland.

So, we're left with the question: does Putin want to cause a nuclear incident?  On the pro side, it would likely force a cease-fire due to the danger, and anything that buys time for Russia to resupply its beleaguered troops is good for them -- and pushing closer to the winter.  On the con side, Poland would almost certainly trigger Article 5, which would involve NATO directly.  Does this qualify for a nuclear second strike?  I'm doubtful, but conventional forces would definitely move in.  It feels like too big of a gamble.

But honestly I've felt like that this entire war.  I've never understood why Putin didn't just take his gains back in April when everything started going wrong -- or when the Azovstal was captured would have been a great time to declare a propaganda victory.  Whee, we got the Nazis we can go home now.  But nope.  These all feel like sunk costs on an unwinnable war, and just to be clear, those sunk costs are in lives.  Why keep throwing it all away when the damage keeps getting worse? 

I've thought quite a bit about the character Balalaika in the anime Black Lagoon in the context of Russia now.  Her backstory was that she was a top shooter and officer for the USSR -- and she and her unit were treated as useless by the government through their botched invasion of Afghanistan -- and she turned her back on her country.  We have Paratrooper Filatyev above who seems similar.  How many more will turn against the government.

But also they've lost at least twice as many people in six months of Ukraine than in ten years of Afghanistan, with estimates of forty to over a hundred thousand young men deceased.   With more to come.  Putin is bringing back Stalin's old policy of the Hero Mother -- a woman who bears 10 living children gets a medal.  And now, she'll also become a millionaire, with a prize of one million rubles!  So, like $15k, or one semester of college in the US.  Because he's set up a demographic time bomb, as well as the financial damage sanctions have done.

We are still at the stage of the war that Americans would call softening defenses.  If you remember either Iraq War, the first thing they did is to take out supplies, anti-air, communications by air and missile.  All before sending any ground forces in.  Things are going to get really hot in the next couple of weeks.  Thousands of people will die, for a cause that never needed to happen.

I hope and pray that this is one of the last wars of imperialism ever fought.  If things go bad enough for Russia, it could tip the scales towards a world where it's demonstrated that imperial conquest is no longer worth it, and safety and prosperity is best achieved together.  Long live democracy, long live NATO!  Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava!