Nov 26 — Day 276 — Power to the people, MiGs and Swamps, NATO knock-off

Hi FB!

The fighting line seems pretty static across the board for the last 48 hours so instead of just repeating the same places and saying “artillery exchanges”, I’ll spare you.

The lead image today is a history test question, the hint is “more light”. I look forward to your comments.

I would say the big news today is that 72 hours after the big missiles strikes against Ukraine’s power grid the situation is back to “war normal”, meaning most people in most places have access to electricity but within the framework of rolling shutoffs. In other words, the lights are on about 4–5 hours, they’re off for about 4–5 hours, and so on.

People living in older apartment buildings are usually better off because they could be next to a metro line, a hospital or government offices, and those places are priority for power supply.

The Kyiv metro, for example, kept on working following the strikes but train frequency went from about every three minutes to every ten minutes.

It seems like most people in most cities were completely without power for 40–48 hours, and in a few cases 60+. There are outliers still without power but the authorities say they’re working on that. The building I’m writing this in, for the record, was without power, water, and heating for about 50 hours. I have a great view from the 15th floor but it gets a little old climbing those stairs in the dark…

The national power company Ukrenergo says in Kyiv about 130,000 people are still without power. The slow pace of getting people back onto the grid, they say, was connected (get it?) mostly to the three atomic power stations that got taken off line as a precautionary measure as the strikes went in.

As I understand it (glad to be corrected) if your nuclear station keeps on making power when transmission equipment down the line is blown up by Russian missiles, then you run the risk of overloading lines and equipment upstream, because you can’t just dial back electricity output from a nuclear power plant. Whatever is generated goes into the grid, whether the grid can handle it or not, basically.

Three plants got taken off line on Wednesday to keep big downstream overloads from happening. Between fixing the lines and substations and slowly reconnecting still-operating reactors back to the grid, again as I understand it, it has taken a while to get enough juice into the grid to service all of us consumers wanting to use washing machines and waste time on the internet and so on.

This is very worrying considering Russia by all accounts can launch 3–4 more big strikes. But it’s not like the West is going to fix things by sending fighter jets to shoot down the Russian cruise missiles. There are promises of generators but a generator you deliver by truck is not going to power a city block. So the Ukrainians will just have to suck it up, it looks like.

Image attached of Ukraine superimposed on a map of Europe: this is the scale of the blackouts caused by the last Russian bombardment.

Also, worth noting, the national power company announced they had reconnected Kherson to the grid, albeit only parts. So it took just over two weeks to accomplish that following the retreat of the Russians who, according to all accounts, systematically destroyed power generation and transmission equipment when they left. Video of that even attached.

Kherson

It’s worth noting that the Kremlin’s overall strategy more and more obviously is to create a frozen conflict and negotiate a ceasefire until it can attack again, and as a subset of that strategy, as we have seen, the goal is to cause as much pain and misery for Ukrainian civilians as possible. I’m sure it makes the majority of Russians who support the war feel good but from where I sit it just makes the Ukrainians madder at the Russians and so, logically, works against the Russian strategy of forcing Ukraine’s national leadership into talks.

But Kremlin spokesmen tell us everything is going to plan and the objectives of the Special Military Operation will be reached, because Putin and Russia.

So, over the last three days, the Russians have been firing artillery and Grad rockets into Kherson off and on almost continuously, and it really does look like the point is to cause civilian casualties. Two days ago some Grads rockets hit an apartment building, along with strikes elsewhere ten dead and 54 wounded.

Image of the apartment building attached, and an image of buildings damaged elsewhere on the riverfront also attached. Kherson officials say they’re evacuating hospitals and schoolchildren. By way of fairness I should record that Kremlin spokesmen tell us Russia only shoots at military targets.

Belarus

Over the past 48 hours there has been all manner of rumors and noise that real soon and maybe in December Russia will re-invade Ukraine from the north and this time with the Belarusian army. Things got so bad that this morning Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS), which usually doesn’t comment on rumor-mill/blogosphere noise, put out a statement saying no, there are no indications of that, and if they want attack Ukraine is ready.

One example of the traffic that got the AGS’ attention was a report from the Belarus opposition National Resistance Center (NRC), from Friday, reporting that “the Russians have deployed about 63 tents in the area of the village of Babunichi (Gomel Oblast). In total, up to 12,000 conscripted Russians have already been deployed on the territory of the country.”

Then news item cropped up ultimately linked to a Norwegian outlet called Faktisk which published satellite images from Machulishchy airfield showing Russian MiG-31 jets on the tarmac. Some in the blogosphere interpreted this as hard proof of major RF air force reinforcement to the region, because the MiG-31 can carry the “hypersonic” Kinzhal missile. Scary image of that aircraft and scary missile attached.

Those of us in Ukraine with an interest knowing what is airborne and nasty in the neighborhood know, that MiGs take off almost daily from Mashulishchy airfield, there are usually 1–3 three of them, sometimes they’re reported carrying Kinzhals and sometimes not, and that if we dumb civilians are that well-informed, then probably the Ukrainian air defense network has a way better fix on those planes. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s been more than a month since any guided weapon came into Ukraine from Belarusian air space.

The NRC report says the Russo-Belarusian force deployed in west Belarus is under a Russian commander which, NRC argues, increases chances of it being sent south to try and capture Volyn and Lviv.

Today a pretty entertaining scare story surfaced that actually Russia’s secret police the FSB are planning to assassinate Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko because he’s too unenthusiastic about invading Ukraine, so the plan is to replace him with someone more pliant.

Other sources even have predicted a D-day from 25–29 November, i.e., it could have already started. Maybe it has, but I sure am not seeing any reports of anything on the Belarusian frontier.

As I have stated several times before, anyone who thinks the terrain north of Kyiv is bad for major military invasions needs to take a look at Ukraine’s western Rivne and Volyn regions, which are not only the heartland of the Ukrainian partisans from the 40s and 50s, but the good terrain is bad roads through pine forest, and the bad terrain is Europe’s biggest swamp, the Pripiat Marsh. I’m inclined to think the GCS knows what it’s talking about.

As to the Lukashenko assassination by Russian secret services plot, it’s too bad there aren’t better adjectives than words like “absurd” and “laughable” to describe it. Belarusian citizens have full access to international media, the social contract between Lukashenko and the Belarusians is, basically, he gets to be a dictator as long as he keeps the country peaceful and out of conflicts, and were the Kremlin to attempt forced regime change in Minsk, well, surely even the Kremlin is not so idiotic as to have forgotten about the Maidan.

Also, and most important, by all accounts the Belarusian army has zero interest in invading Ukraine and fighting Ukrainians, not least because the other half of the Pripiat Marsh, and longstanding partisan and smuggling traditions, are in Belarus.

Image of Lukashenko attached, and also, an image of the Latvians knocking down a food bridge inbetween their country and Belarus. Note the source: Belta News. This is the Belarusian state newswire service, meaning, this unpleasant event was not repeat not concealed from Belarusian media consumers. Big difference from Russia, and just the kind of thing to give a Belarusian military guy thinking about going to fight in Ukraine, reason to reconsider — assuming of course he watches the news these days.

Gray Lady and Guns

Many of you will have seen the NYT report that one out of three western howitzers sent to Ukraine is broken and being repaired or off the line for maintenance.

Me, I’m not surprised. The bulk of the US/British M777 howitzers got into country in May and June, it’s now November, the Ukrainians have run through probably close to two million (seriously) 155mm howitzer shells, and the M777 is a great weapon but barrel life is barrel life.

I haven’t done the math but frankly if a big chunk of those weapons WASN’T needing overhauls, after that kind of use, I would have been a lot more surprised. This is not to say I know the Ukrainians aren’t breaking M777s due to poor handling, I don’t, but I am saying that you can’t fire that intensely for that long and expect the weapon to work forever.

As to the NATO-standard self-propelled howitzers sent Ukraine, clearly, they have proved even less resilient, as reported earlier all 18 of the PzH2000 howitzers are apparently in Lithuania or Poland being fixed, at least for barrel wear and possibly for other issues. The Norwegians just sent the Ukrainains a big batch of spare parts for M109 howitzers the Ukrainians are operating, which is another indicator, I think, that if you fight a modern war involving hundreds of thousands of men, and hundreds of howitzers firing millions of shells, either you are going to deal with wear and tear or you are going to have less howitzers to shoot with.

I’ll hand over the last word on the New York Times and howitzers to Ukraine to reader Andreas Biermann, whom I have have known for years to be a solid military historian and researcher:

”There’s no such thing as normal maintenance in this scenario as ‘normal’ has been defined as peacetime since the end of the Vietnam war I suspect.”

Image of a 203mm Soviet-era Pion attached. Point being that it’s not how old it is, it’s probably how often you fire it.

The CSTO — A less uptight NATO

Most of you may have missed it but Vladimir Putin’s treaty group that supposedly is the Kremlin’s response to NATO, a mutual defense alliance called the “Collective Security Treat Organization” (CSTO), met in Yerevan on Thursday and Friday and the upshot was more diplomatic egg on the Kremlin’s face.

First, local host Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s Prime Minister, flatly refused to sign a joint declaration of supporting peace and hating the West, as did Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Instead he made a speech accusing members of breaking their commitment to defend each other because when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia recently, killing Armenian soldiers and taking more territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Armenia asked its allies for help, and the general response is that’s not the CSTO’s problem.

Since Russia runs the organization and says what goes, this was not exactly a vote of Armenian confidence in Russian leadership in regional security. Considering Armenian citizens turned out in the streets, not in huge numbers but still, to protest Putin’s presence in Yerevan because generally average Armenians support Ukraine against Russia, probably didn’t help Putin’s image.

Then, during the group photo, literally, Putin had trouble getting someone to stand close to him. Image of that damage to, er, Putin’s image, attached.

And afterwards, when a reporter asked Lukashenko whether the CSTO had a future, Lukashenko said it depends on how Russia’s war with Ukraine ends and how Russia will look after that, which is not exactly the kind of talk you want to hear from the leader of a country where you have your troops deployed and from which you are flying, among other things, MiG-31 jets possibly armed with Kinzhal missiles.

Mobilization

Putin met with a bunch of women in a propaganda event yesteday, they all effectively were military family members who had lost a husband or son dead in Ukraine. Putin told them he appreciated the sacrifice. Video of one lady saying how proud she was to give up the life of her son to Russia, attached.

However, in the part of Russia where state propaganda can’t monopolize the information feeds, that is privately-operated, smart-phone accessible Telegram channels, more and more content is appearing which pretty much validates the theory that actually, Moscow could care less about the men it sends to war. Attached is a video about armor vests, basically the cost of a good one has now jacked up on the open market to the equivalent of an entire month factory worker’s salary, in part because the Russian army issues either bad armor vests or none at all.

Lies, tanks, and tank-sized lies

A video showed up this morning, on pro-Russia “news” platforms, of an extremely nasty and dangerous-looking column of modern Russian tanks in winter camouflage, reportedly rumbling into southern Kherson region preparatory to a major attack on the Ukrainians or at least to back up the Russians’ powerful defenses in that sector. Video attached.

It took the Ukrainian blogosphere less than 30 minutes to debunk the video and identify it as recorded last February, and the funny part is, the posts and news reports about how the Russians (again) lied, are much more widely spread, than the scary news item. This might well be called, in hybrid war terms — and we know how clever the Russians are at hybrid war — the hearts and minds equivalent of “stepping on a rake”.

Finally, if you’ve read this far, image attached of a German Mars artillery rocket system, in the mud, doing its job, which is another reason why this review led off the way it did.