5/24/22, “Flag Abuse And Other Bits On Ukraine,” Moon of Alabama
“The Pentagon reports about the continuing efforts to sell new U.S. weapons to those nations which discard their old ones in Ukraine.
Austin Hosts Ukraine Defense Contact Group to Continue Support for Beleaguered Country
To express the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine the Pentagon decided to hoist Ukraine’s blue-above-yellow flag upside down. [image]
Hanging a flag upside down
is a sign of either dire distress or cultural ignorance. Given that
this was a Pentagon event the later is the more likely to be the
case.The Baltic nutters have a another great and of course completely impractical idea.
to lift [alleged] Russian blockade of Ukraine grain
“Britain has backed in principle a proposal by Lithuania for a naval coalition “of the willing”
to lift the [alleged] Russian Black Sea blockade
on Ukrainian grain exports.
The Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, proposed the plan during talks
with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, on Monday in London.
“Time is very very short. We are closing in on a new harvest and there is
no other practical way of exporting the grain
[Map: Ukraine’s ethnic divide, State Statistics Service of Ukraine, 2001 Census]
except through the Black Sea port of Odesa,” he told the Guardian.
“There is no way of storing this grain and
no other adequate alternative route. It is imperative that we show vulnerable countries
we are prepared to take
Landsbergis proposed that a naval escort operation–not run by NATO––could
protect the grain ships as they headed through the Black Sea and past Russian warships.
He suggested that, apart from Britain, countries that were affected by the potential loss of grain
such as Egypt could provide the necessary protection. …
He said Ukraine needed to export 80m tonnes of wheat alone this year and
the only option was through Odesa.”
Let me help Mr. Landsbergis
with some facts:
is blocked by Ukraine, not by Russia.
*Ukraine does not have 80 million tons of wheat to export. In a good year the total grain production in Ukraine is 80 million tons. Some 50% of that is corn and some 40% wheat.
Only two-third of that will be exported.
*The Ukraine is currently exporting 1.5 million tons of grains per month.
Most of that is going through Romania.
*Given that this years planting did not go as planned the Ukraine will hardly have any wheat to export later this year.
Still some know-nothing falls for Landsbergis’ scheme:
“After meeting Landsbergis,
the UK would want British naval ships to join the escort
if the practicalities could be sorted, including demining the harbour and
providing Ukraine with longer-range weapons to defend the harbour
from Russian attack. The UK is in discussions with allies about the plan and it would probably need US agreement to be activated.
Truss said: “What we need to do is deal with
this global food security issue
and the UK is working on an urgent solution to get the grain out of Ukraine”.”
The Ukraine is only number 5 of the largest wheat exporters with some 8% market share.
Russia, the global wheat exporter no. 1,
will have a record crop this year.
The global food security issue is
thereby a question of price and accessibility,
not of the globally available quantity.
I find Liz Truss’ point of “providing Ukraine with longer-range weapons to defend the harbour” quite interesting.
Didn’t the Ukraine claim that it hit the Russian ship Moskva
with two Ukrainian made cruise missiles?
If it really did so it already has the longer-range weapons to hit Russian ships. Is Truss leaking that the Ukraine lied about those missile hits?
The whole idea of sending an armed escort convoy and
long range weapons
is just nuts. What Ukraine would need are not only missiles but targeting data and radar with which that can be acquired. Unfortunately radar does emit electromagnetic waves which makes it detectable and vulnerable. Russia has already knocked out several radars in and around Odessa. What is Truss’ plan to avoid that?
And don’t get me going about Russia’s submarines which are completely sufficient to sink anything in the Black Sea that Russia does not like to be there.—
Meanwhile the war is progressing in Russia’s favor. I do not have time to show detailed maps of what is happening but there are two reasonable Youtube channels which provide good daily reports based on multiple sources. These are Military Summary and Defense Politics Aaaaasia.
In the north Lyman has fallen with reports of Ukrainian troops withdrawing after a short fight. In the east the Ukrainian held city Severodonetsk is mostly isolated and now under fierce attack. Several more towns around the Popasna bulge have been taken by the Russian side. South of it the city Svetlodarsk has fallen after the Ukrainian tried but failed to destroy a nearby dam. The Ukrainian troops retreated without a fight.
Instead of holding the lines by all means Ukrainian units now seem more interested in running away. That is more healthy for them and also solves their serious supply issues. Like other supply lines the Bakhmut-Lisichansk road is now under Russian fire control. This video shows what that means.
What we are seeing now are the effects of
nearly three months of Russian artillery war.
The Ukrainian troops at the frontline have been ground down and those who are left are moving out before being destroyed too. The front begins to move at several points. When those points merge we may next see the tactical deep battle phase of a classic Russian deep operation:
“Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy’s forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy’s logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible, or indeed irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.”…
It feels insane when Henry Kissinger is the only sane man in the room.
Henry Kissinger: Ukraine must give Russia territory
[Image: “Vladimir Putin and Henry Kissinger shaking hands in 2007 Credit: EPA/Sergei Chirikov”]
“Veteran US statesman Henry Kissinger has urged the West to stop trying to inflict a crushing defeat on Russian forces in Ukraine, warning that it would have disastrous consequences for the long term stability of Europe.
The former US secretary of state and architect of the Cold War rapprochement between the US and China told a gathering in Davos
that it would be fatal for the West to get swept up in the mood of the moment and
forget the proper place of Russia in the European balance of power.
Dr Kissinger said the war must not be allowed to drag on for much longer, and came close to calling on the West to bully Ukraine into accepting negotiations on terms that fall very far short of its current war aims….
He told the World Economic Forum that Russia had been an essential part of Europe for 400 years and had been
the guarantor of the European balance of power structure at critical times.
European leaders should not lose sight of the longer term relationship, and nor should they risk pushing Russia into a permanent alliance with China.”
It is likely too late to reverse the Russia-China alliance but I otherwise agree.”
Posted by b on May 24, 2022 at 13:59 UTC | Permalink
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Among comments
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From comments: Turkey will remain neutral regarding access to its waterways, will continue to observe 1936 Montreaux Convention:
“The outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine has once again shined a spotlight on the Montreux Convention, the 1936 treaty which regulates the transit of merchant and navy ships between the Black Sea and Mediterranean through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits.
The convention guarantees unhindered access to merchant ships, but
gives Turkey discretion on allowing the passage of warships during times of war.
Turkey exercised this discretion during WWII, the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and during the current 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
The Montreux Convention was signed on July 20, 1936, between the states bordering the Black Sea—Bulgaria, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Turkey—as well as Britain, France, Greece, Japan, and Yugoslavia. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Georgia also became independent littoral states of the Black Sea.”…
Feb. 28, 2022
Invoking the The 1936 Montreux Convention,
Turkey is to prevent all naval ships from
entering the Black Sea through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits
during the Ukraine ‘war’.
The 1936 Montreux Convention enables Turkey to prevent naval ships not based in the Black Sea from entering during war or other specific circumstances. However, ships returning to their registered bases will be exempted.
Both the Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis and Liz Truss, UK Foreign Secretary are incompetent.
Posted by: Douglas Houck | May 24 2022 15:16 utc | 30″
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