In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

There's been a flurry of leaked or blurted reports from the Russian side on its actual casualties in Ukraine. According to the UK Daily Mail , Russia has lost almost 10,000 soldiers in less than four weeks in Ukraine, according to its own figures. The death toll – an incredible tally for a war that the Kremlin believed would be over within days – was published by a pro-government website, but quickly taken down. There was speculation that it was uploaded by a pro-Ukrainian employee. Russia had previously admitted to 498 deaths – but that was on March 2. Although this estimate is at least deniable, this still exceeds the estimates of "more than 7,000" that have been the consensus in US media, apparently based on information from the Pentagon. However, another Russian leak gives an even bigger total. A former internal affairs minister of #Ukraine @AvakovArsen shared the intercepted Russian military summary for March 18: Rus. Army troops killed 12,814. Private co...

This piece at Breitbart reports on remarks by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on the Ukraine conflict: “The use of weapons is never something desirable, because it always carries a very high risk of taking the life of people or causing serious injury and terrible material damage,” Cardinal Parolin told the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva when asked whether European nations should be sending weapons to Ukraine. “Nonetheless, the right to defend one’s life, one’s people and one’s country sometimes also involves the sad recourse to arms,” the cardinal recognized. “At the same time both sides must refrain from the use of prohibited weapons and fully respect international humanitarian law to protect civilians and non-combatants.” “On the other hand, although military aid to Ukraine may be understandable, the search for a negotiated solution, which silences weapons and prevents a nuclear escalation, remains a priority,” Parolin added. The piece then draws an un...

The Institute for the Study of War site, which appears to be the most prestigious commentator on the Russo-Ukraine war, has made what strikes me as a meaningless pronouncement : Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. I've noted on YouTube for the past week or two references to Clausewitzian "culmination" as a point where an attack exhausts itself. But that can take place either before it achieves its objective, in which case it's a victory for the defender, or after, in which case it's a victory for the attacker. But in either case, it leaves open the question of what happens next. Clausewitz himself seems to have recognized the problem : The success of the attack is the result of a present superiority of force, it being u...

Something's up. A comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings published by the New York Times on Wednesday night confirmed the existence of the first son’s infamous laptop. The puzzling thing is although the New York Post broke the story in October 2020, and other outlets have since acknowledged the laptop is authentic, that the New York Times would belatedly report it is clearly big news. But nothing has changed about the story at all, except that the Times now says it's a story. Trump's reaction is understandable : Former President Trump said the New York Times has admitted being a part of an effort to 'rig' the election for Joe Biden with their report confirming the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents. Trump said in a statement on Friday, 500 days after the November 2, 2020, general election: 'The New York Times just admitted that it participated in an effort to rig the election for Joe B...

The video above doesn't look like it was produced by the Ukrainian government. It may or may not have been released with their approval. I find it particularly interesting, though, because it was taken by two women driving in a civilian car along the length of what must have been a Russian battalion tactical group some days afer it had been attacked by the Ukrainians. Around the third time I watched it, I realized that between the occasional remaining burned-out trucks, there are large patches of bare roadway without snow. This says to me that there had been no snow on the ground before the battle, but it did snow soon afterward. Over a day or two following the battle, the Ukrainians were able to drive or tow away most of the Russian armored equipment, which explains the rectangular bare snowless patches in the road where the tanks and so forth had been. That's a lot of tanks. And if, unlike in some videos, there weren't a bunch of burned-out tanks, trucks, and personne...

Although Ann Coulter is some years past her sell-by date, having veered from Trump is the Messiah to Never Trump in the meantime, her current take on Ukraine is representative of all too many on the right: Until the war in Ukraine, the Democrats were facing midterms after having spent the previous two years mandating masks and an endless series of vaccinations — even for the vaccinated or previously infected. , , , What could even Stalin’s media do with that record? . . . By now, the media have whipped the public into such a frenzy over Ukraine that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to start shooting down Russian planes, starting World War III with nuclear armed power. A small price to pay for Democratic dominance. I'm not sure where to start with this. The media was reporting on the war for the first two weeks, when the narrative was universally about the 40-mile column about to close in on Kyiv. Once Ukraine began to demonstrate success, as far as I can tell witho...

BTG wipe out The video above gives an idea of the challenge in trying to sort through what's going on in Ukraine. Its title is fairly straightforrward, "Ukraine War: 15.03.2022 Aftermath of battles in Kherson region", but you definitely can't trust the date: that appears to be when it was uploaded, and possibly even about when the drive-by video was taken, but that doen't say much about when the battle took place. It looks like the photographer was able to pass over the road in a truck, so this suggests that rubble had been cleared, bodies and body parts removed, and Ukrainian forces had already scrubbed the scene for usable trucks, supplies, ammunition, and intelligence, -- a day or more earlier, I would think. For now, I'll trust them for the location, near Kherson. This would suggest it was a Russian thrust north from that city toward Mykolaiv along the axis in the map below: Media accounts generally imply that this is part of an effort to reach Ode...