An employee at the First Channel station holds up a sign, that says, “Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They’re lying to you.”
This is an incredibly brave young woman. I know the authorities are going to jail her for telling the truth. Russians are good people and they don’t deserve Putin.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Bloomberg News, Surprise interruption
Javelins are portable anti-tank missile. Stingers are portable anti-aircraft missiles.
A Javelin missile costs about $80,000 (Wikipedia) and weighs 49 pounds. It can be fired by one person. It has infrared radiation tracking to locate its target, which can be a tank or low flying aircraft such as helicopters. Per Wikipedia: “The missile system is most often carried by a two-person team consisting of a gunner and an ammunition bearer, although it can be fired with just one person if necessary. While the gunner aims and fires the missile, the ammo bearer scans for prospective targets, watches for threats, such as enemy vehicles and troops and ensures that personnel and obstacles are clear of the missile’s backblast.” Also, Wikipedia notes that the exhaust from firing the missile contains lead. Gunners are instructed to hold their breath during firing. The Javelin is a “fire and forget” weapon as after firing, the team can quickly relocate to avoid enemy fire. See links:
It is unclear how many Javelin missiles and launchers Ukraine currently has as they are actively using up their supply and more missiles are likely being sent from the neighboring countries. Wikipedia states Ukraine has 377 launchers and 1200 missiles. The actual number is likely higher than this as there has been air shipments from Poland.
Stingers are portable surface to air missiles, and similar to Javelins, they can be fired by one person, but usually a team of two is used. A stinger weighs 33.5 pounds, and has IR and UV detectors to track the target. Apparently, adding UV detection increases the reliability of target seeking electronics. The missile is also capable of being deployed from a Humvee Stinger rack, and can be used by airborne troops. A helicopter launched version exists called Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS).
Stingers are also “fire and forget” missiles giving the team an opportunity to relocate after launch.
As shown above, a small ejection motor in located behind the missile. The motor pushes the missile out a safe distance from the operator before engaging the main two-stage solid-fuel sustainer, keeping the gunner safe from the missile thrust. (Wikipedia) The cost of stinger missile is $119,000.
Wikipedia reports that the US has sent 2,000 stingers to Ukraine. It is always difficult to know how many Ukraine has available at any moment, as they are being used and more are being slipped into Ukraine.
More technical details can be found in the links.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
Wikipedia, Javelins
Wikipedia, Stingers
There are many informative websites on these missiles, and their use in the Ukrainian war.
The Ukraine war is a lose-lose proposition. It is a modern war, with cyberattacks and footage of the fighting streaming over the internet. It is an unprovoked and unnecessary war. Every war is bloody and inhumane, in terms of loss of civilian life. I’ve seen the results of war, and it is extremely sad.
This war began with a very wrong assumption from Putin. In view of the vastly superior military force of Russia, he thought Kyiv would quickly surrender. After surrender, a puppet government would be installed. Over time, Ukraine would take their orders from Moscow. It was all in the mind of Putin. He could go back in time, and redraw the borders of Ukraine. This is Putin’s personal and deranged fantasy.
Putin’s justification for invasion is founded on the idea of the redefining Russia along historical borders of the Soviet Union about 30 years ago. A full generation has past. In fact, he goes so far back in time, that he recalls World War II in a very twisted narrative, to somehow paint Russia as a victim for which he must now extract revenge on the grandchildren of those who fought in the great war. Wars should not beget wars. Wars should beget peace.
If the fallen soldiers of decades gone by could speak, they would be begging for peace.
In Putin’s mind, he is correcting the errors of the past when Ukraine won its independence. Peace among nations must be founded on respect of international law and agreed upon boundaries as they exist, no matter how long ago or ill advised they have been drawn. It is the principle that we may not socialize with each other or even like each other, but for our continued survival, we must respect each other, and the territorial boundaries. Otherwise, we return to the law of the jungle.
This perspective was brought forward by the Ghana representative to the UN in the Security Council and later repeated by Fareed Zakaria on CNN. He observed the African continent was subdivided by European colonists, disregarding cultural and linguistic differences. Yet, these border have remained. Respect of territorial boundaries is imperative for peace and disagreements are settled by dialogue not weapons.
The leaders of Europe and United States gave Putin full notice that they would do everything within their power to resist the invasion within the law. However they would not escalate the conflict. No boots on the ground was the right policy. Ukraine is not a member of NATO and as Biden said, once Russians and the US are fighting on the same battlefield, then you have World War III.
Weapon systems have increased, and the potential of escalation is really frightening. Cluster bombs are meant to keep on killing long after a bomb has been dropped. Vacuum bombs (“mother of all bombs”) with the intense heat, are similar to nuclear bombs, designed to wipe out entire populations in a large area.
Our planet in the last 20 to 30 years seems to have gotten much smaller. Cyberwarfare is real and powerful. It is a new element of aggressive military action. Drone warfare is also new and lethal. These are both offensive and defense weapons. These are new elements might seem more humane, but the war is still as bloody and brutal as ever.
The invasion of Ukraine was immediately condemn by world leaders, The Secretary-General of the UN Security Council Antonio Guterres said it best nearly a week ago, “Bring the troops back to Russia” – see link. Unfortunately, although countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China still will still find ways to censor the news to create their own alternative facts. It feels like part of our planet is fully illuminated or at least truth is very available and others parts are kept in the dark. Information and misinformation travel fast, at the speed of light. To Putin and others, truth is just another enemy. Anti-war protesters were beaten by the police in the streets of St Petersburg.
Putin’s war further advances the militarization of our planet. It is a huge step backwards. The UN was formed to prevent conflicts like this one. I feel no safer if in the future, the western border of Ukraine is heavily armed by NATO forces against military bases of Russia on the other side. I felt as if when the windows were being blown out of apartment buildings in Ukraine, as if the windows on the UN were also shattering.
I kept thinking of how beautify and perfect our blue planet looked, when we saw it from space without any boundaries. Just water and land. In the words of the late Elijah Cummings, “We can do better.” How to get back to a more demilitarized world, I’m not exactly sure.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
I will not list a long list of links, as these can easily be found on the internet.
Antonio Guterres, Statement to the Press
(Antonio Guterres is the former Prime Minister of Portugal. He has been the Secretary-General of the UN Security Council since 2017. He chooses his words carefully. He was pleading with Russia to reverse course, to no avail.)
Invasions don’t end very well. War is always a “lose-lose” proposition. Putin is discovering that his invasion of Ukraine is not easy to implement. As I see it, there are two “end games” and I hope the second one prevails.
Putin wants to eliminate (murder) the president and all important leaders of Ukraine. With control of Kyiv, he will find someone who will be his puppet president in Kyiv. Then, the puppet president will ask Russia for assistance in bringing order to Ukraine. At that point, Ukraine is effectively controlled by Russia.
The puppet president of Ukraine will, with Putin’s blessing, be as corrupt and uncaring about Ukraine. There is no way that Ukraine will accept Russian rule.
The country may be split, east and west, with Putin firmly in control of the east. This will never be a satisfactory outcome for Putin, who will continue to attack the west. He will reduce Lviv to rubble. He must control the entire country to secure his gas pipelines.
Putin will use the Wagner Group’s mercanaries to carry out the assassinations. The “Wagner Group” operates for profit, benefiting from conflicts around the globe, including Syria, Crimea, Central African Republic and Libya. And of course, Ukraine, initially in the Dunbas region. It is likely that the Wagner Group is or will become just an extension of Russia’s GRU (international intelligence service). It has been reported that the GRU basically hands out Russian passports to members of the Wagner Group. (see links below). The GRU is responsible for the cyberwarfare being conducted against Ukraine.
There can even be elections, like in Belarus, with the puppet president gaining the vast majority of the votes. The Russian government can not control the flow of information, in this day of internet and satellites.
The second end game, is that there is enough pressure from within Russia, to reverse course. Kyiv is not captured. The Russian convoy suffers massive damage, and there is little will to fight an urban war in Kyiv. The armored column can not enter the narrow streets of Kyiv. So, some face saving peace plan is devised for Putin to withdraw his forces. The next few days will be critical.
I am hoping and praying for the second end game.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
Wikipedia, Wagner Group.
Wikipedia, Russia’s GRU
Fox News – Mike Baker, former CIA
It is rare that I include the very biased Fox News station as a source. I note Fox News contributor (former CIA officer, Mike Baker) added valuable information on the connection of the GRU and the Wagner Group. The Wagner Group was battling ISIS in Syria and then in Libya in support of the Tobruk faction. His views on Chechnya’s involvement and use of these forces as “plausible deniability” for war time atracities is also consistent with other experts in the area. Kennedy’s glib remarks were annoying but I guess that’s her style.
The invasion of Ukraine is such a blantant unproked act of aggression, that is would seem no country on our planet would support Putin’s war. But, three countries have, Belarus, Iran and Chechnya. And I suspect others will follow, such as Syria and North Korea. Other countries will simply look the other way, such as India, China and UAE, which abstained when a vote was taken in the UN Security Council.
Chechnya and Belarus are essentially corrupt puppet regimes of Putin. Currently, Chechnya is now under the rule of its Russian-appointed dictator, Ramzan Kadyrov, with no respect for human rights and will plunder his country just like multi-billionaire Putin (see links). Belarus president . Alexander Lukascheko won his sixth term in office in 2020 in a rigged election (links below).
No need to go into detail on Syria’s and North Korea’s presidents. They have little respect for international law. Iran is a supporter of terrorism, in Iraq and Lebonon.
We shall see after the General Assembly votes today, which other countries support the invasion of Ukraine and which ones would prefer to look the other way. As members vote, the war will rage on.
The news is filled with the 40 mile long convoy of Russian tanks and armored vehicles, all headed to Kyiv. Today could be the bloodiest day of all. My prayers go to the brave Ukrainians as they defend their country.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus
Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechbya
The Russian Military Leader Wears Prada (Ramzan Kadyrov)
Ukraine wipes out ‘bloodthirsty’ Chechen special forces sent to assassinate Zelensky (other sources state that there have been some causalities, so wiped out may be an exagerration)
Iran’s Khamenei: ‘Mafia regime’ of US created Ukraine crisis
The potential of Russia to invade Ukraine is red hot news. Experts speculate the first wave of attacks from Russia will be “cyber attacks” which I really had to do some research on this topic. Computers have always had some vulnerability to outside interference. What changed in the last two decades, is that everything is very interconnected, so the network security has real vulnerabilities. It really is machine verses machine, but because humans both code software to attack network servers and to defend them, it is all about people in countries openly violating international norms supported by their government.
A website can be flooded with requests and this can cause time-outs, or denial of service (DoS). It happened to me when I was trying to get an appointment for the first Covid vaccine. This was unintentional and the result of requests greatly exceeding the capacity of the overall system. It can happen intentionally also, and an individual website can be disabled. Frequently, this is called a “distributed denial of service” or DDos attack.
Wikipedia (see link below) states:
“In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.[1] In a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources. This effectively makes it impossible to stop the attack simply by blocking a single source.[2]
A DoS or DDoS attack is analogous to a group of people crowding the entry door of a shop, making it hard for legitimate customers to enter, thus disrupting trade. Criminal perpetrators of DoS attacks often target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks or credit card payment gateways. Revenge, blackmail[3][4][5] and activism[6] can motivate these attacks.”
The DDos attacks have many different forms of attack and defenses. Attacks are meant to disrupt normal communications. The more technical details are provided in the Wikipedia summary as provided below.
As I prepared this post, cyber attacks by Russia had begun. Ukraine’s banks and Ministry of Defense reported the attacks. The impact is not considered serious. Hopefully, the international community is helping keep Ukraine’s cyber defenses in a high state of preparedness. See links.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
Threatpost, “Ukrainian DDoS Attacks Should Put US on Notice–Researchers“, This is reporting from 2/16/2022 and the situation is highly fluid. There are US laws against cyber attacks, and European accords, but this is really very limited.
Wikipedia, Denial-of-service attack, There are many sites covering the cyber attack and defense issues. The summary goes into detail how network attackers look for any means to disrupt internet services through examining potential vulnerabilities. The cyber-extortionists profit by demanding payment in the form of bitcoins to call off the attack. Russia, North Korea and China may be training the next generation of these criminals. The cyber attacks can cause major disruption the telecommunication system, and weaken defenses. I am hoping that the NATO countries have already helped Ukraine to prepare for these attacks.
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