In 1978, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan took over that country in what was called the Saur Revolution and immediately imposed a harsh crackdown on opponents and established one-party rule. The government they overthrew had taken power in 1973 in a coup and … immediately launched a harsh crackdown on opponents and established one-party rule.
Back in August, Bloomberg carried a piece titled “welcome to Europe’s dark, cold winter.” It warned that even if countries were able to find gas to fill their storage facilities, it might not prevent a winter filled with blackouts, business closures, and an economy in freefall. That’s because prices were soaring and “replenishing storage and reducing demand still may not be enough.
Those days when a Russian position is clearly crumbling? Those are the best days.
On Saturday evening in Ukraine, Russia has once again targeted electrical production and transmission facilities with missile and drone attacks, causing blackouts that involve a large percentage of the population, including the majority of Kyiv. However, this appears to be about the only “good news” on Russian state media and Telegram channels.
Every time more information appears about just what was in those documents that Donald Trump stole from the White House and illegally held at Mar-a-Lago, the worse it seems. The latest information comes from The Washington Post, which reports that, among other things, the documents Trump is trying to claim were personal property contain, in part, information about Iran’s missile program, as well as secrets involving “highly sensitive intelligence work” involving China.
This is a reminder: We do not know what’s happening in Ukraine.
That fog of war doesn’t just obscure the details of what’s happening right this second along the road between Kuzemivka and Nyzhnia Duvanka (which is something I would very much like to know this morning), that fog creeps in everywhere.
For the past three days, the big story out of Ukraine has been about Russia getting out of Ukraine—or at least, out of a key part of it. The area of Kherson Oblast west of the Dnipro River has been a key location for Russia since the start of the invasion. Now it seems they may be leaving that entire area, which would include the only regional capital Russia has managed to capture during the invasion.
On Wednesday, Federal District Court Judge David Carter handed down another blunt ruling, stripping away attorney-client privilege from communications between Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman. These documents relate directly to claims that Eastman made before the Georgia state senate in an effort to justify reversing the results of the 2020 election and to support a scheme to halt the final certification of electors on Jan. 6.
Former National Security Counsel director Fiona Hill became a household name during her deposition for Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Her fearless, straightforward, no-nonsense testimony on both Trump’s actions and diplomatic issues has made Hill one of the nation’s most respected experts on international relations, especially when it comes to all things Russia.
UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 18, 2022 · 10:31:34 PM +00:00 · kos
Russia continues to react hysterically to something in Kherson:
In a late-night address posted on Telegram, Russian-installed Kherson official Kirill Stremousov calls for people to “evacuate the city as quickly as possible” and says Ukraine “will begin an offensive on the city of Kherson very soon” pic.twitter.
On Tuesday afternoon, Judge Raymond Dearie, who is acting as “special master” in Donald Trump’s attempt to claim ownership over documents seized in an FBI search at his Mar-a-Lago club, conducted a conference call that was supposed to be restricted to dealing with a small portion of the documents.
The 15 boxes of material that Donald Trump grudgingly returned the the National Archives in January was clearly missing many of the documents that should have been there. Even after the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club over the summer, it’s not clear that well-known documents have been returned, including the letter President Barack Obama left for Trump and the correspondence between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Russian sources on Telegram are reporting that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Army Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov have both been removed from their roles. According to the channel for the Wagner mercenary group, this is directly related to the explosion which heavily damaged the Kerch Bridge connecting the Crimea Oblast in Ukraine with Russia.
This may or may not be true.
Vladimir Putin is 70 today. The best gift that Putin could give to the world would be his retirement, either in the usual or the intelligence agency meaning of that word. However, that seems unlikely. So we’ll just have to hope that this is the last birthday Putin ever celebrates in a position of power, and check to see what presents the Russian army has brought to him this day. If we all keep Putin in mind today, maybe we can achieve a Scanners moment.
On Wednesday, two men sailed into the port at Gambell, Alaska, on the tiny island of St. Lawrence. The population of Gambell is under 700, and over 95% of the people who live there are Native Americans of the Yupik peoples. As might be expected, it’s one of those everybody-knows-everybody places … but nobody knew these guys, because they were Russians.
On Tuesday evening, Russia was trying to establish a defensive line across their holdings in the Kherson area that stretches between the town of Bruskynske on the west and Mylove on the east. This is designed to halt the rapid Ukrainian advance in northern Kherson. It’s unclear if this effort has been in any sense successful, but it does seem to have temporarily halted the “take a village as fast as you can reach it” parade that has gone on for the last three days.
Another hour, another map of the northern area of Russian occupation in the Kherson area. Over the course of Tuesday, and into the evening, Ukraine has continued to press southward, bringing the area liberated since Sunday, in this one part of this one oblast, to an astounding 1,600 square kilometers.
Ukraine has now reclaimed about a third of the formerly Russian occupied area on the west side of the Dnipro River.
On Monday, the public learned that Donald Trump packed up the classified documents himself, tried to get an attorney to lie about returning everything, and that some of the items the National Archives was most interested in—including the letter from President Barack Obama and Trump’s correspondence with Kim Jung Un—are still missing.
On Saturday evening in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are moving block by block through the city of Lyman, looking into houses, checking IDs of any residents still there, and accepting the surrender of any Russian forces willing to lay down arms. Russian casualties north of the city, and along the highway to the east, are reported to be horrendous, and it’s probably going to be some time before any since of the true scale of the carnage becomes clear.
On Friday, in a widely condemned speech in which he laid claim to territory of a neighboring country, Vladimir Putin only spent about 15 minutes talking about Ukraine. In the rest of his speech, Putin spent his time attacking the West for “perversions” that have “completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family.
Right now, Russian sources on Telegraph are evenly divided. Half of them are convinced that Russia is sending, or has already sent, massive reinforcements that will keep Lyman in Russian hands forever.
Just because Judge Aileen Cannon gifted Donald Trump with a special master, and let him pick who he wanted to serve in that role, does not mean she’s done with stepping in to provide Trump another damn the law, full-speed ahead gift of a ruling.
Tuesday was one of those days when things changed so quickly that a map of the battlefield in some areas in the evening barely resembled that of the same areas in the morning. In two different areas of northeastern Ukraine, towns and villages were liberated, the area under Russian occupation was diminished, and remaining Russian forces in the region were placed at a sharply higher risk.
On Monday, leaks were discovered in the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines. The gas within the 750-mile-long pipeline is boiling to the surface, and there have been warnings that this could represent a serious threat to efforts to reduce spills of greenhouse gases. However, the Danish Energy Agency reports that most of the gas is already depleted as the damaged pipeline fills with seawater.
Almost immediately, U.S.
Hurricane Ian is turning east sooner than earlier projections expected, and will hit the western coast of Florida this afternoon, striking near Ft. Myers and Port Charlotte, carrying winds on the borderline of a devastating Category 5. Worse, storm surge as great as 16’ is now being projected in the entire Charlotte Harbor area. This is a catastrophic storm. If you are in a solid location above the level of projected storm surge, stay put.
On Tuesday, buses began to arrive in Crimea carrying Russian conscripts called up during the mobilization. For some of these soldiers, training is apparently going to consist of a couple of days sleeping on cots, and whatever tips they could pick up in transit. Those troops immediately got a ceremony—a “departure ceremony”—as they were directed to the front lines. There are other reports of similar troops arriving in the Donetsk area.
The counteroffensive in Kharkiv that kicked off in the first week of this month set a pace that’s hard for the Ukrainian army, or any army, to match. In a matter of days, they blasted through the Russian line that had held for months at towns like Balakliya, and drove over 60km straight across Kharkiv Oblast.
Not one document has been sorted, but Donald Trump has already lost everything he gained when Judge Aileen Cannon appointed a “special master.” In the last week, rulings from that special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, and from a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, have drained the entire process of any value to Trump. That process will continue. But everything Trump hoped to achieve, is gone.
The fight over how to deal with the classified documents that Donald Trump stole from the White House and hid away in Mar-a-Lago is continuing with rulings both from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and in the courtroom of “special master” Judge Raymond Dearie.
On Saturday morning, the news from the front is … pretty much what it was yesterday. At Bakhmut, Russia has launched a series of new attacks from the south, all of which have apparently been repelled. Same as always. At Lyman, there are reports that Russian forces have withdrawn and that Ukraine is preparing a final push into the city. Same as pretty much every day this week.
As always, right click on the map and open in another tab to see a larger image.
On Friday, the majority of the action when it comes to a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces is along the Oskil River. But while attention has lately been focused on the city of Lyman and Ukrainian forces maneuvering to encircle the Russian forces there, it’s far from the only location east of Oskil seeing action.
Ukraine is pushing across the Oskil River in at least four locations.