Saturday, April 09, 2022

Today's News: Odds and ends


Tonight's photo: the children's play area at Warsaw's Museum of Modern Art. The Museum has transformed itself to aid Ukrainian refugees

Tonight I don't have much that is "new" in the Russia Ukraine War -- just a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, tweets and stories. 
Overall, Ukraine has been making some more progress, but so has Russia. 
First, Russia is perhaps getting its act together a little better now, compared to the chaos in March. But then again, Russia's military objectives are still being distorted by the political demand that Russia wants to declare Mission Accomplished by early May. So the chaos may continue: This isn't a good sign: But also, this: A month ago, at the end of February, I wrote that Ukraine had to find a way to hold on in Kyiv until more arms could arrive from the US and other countries. Now, I feel that way again -- that once again, Ukraine has to find a way to hold on in the Donbas until more arms can arrive. 
Next, the Ukraine courage plus their grasp of tactics and strategy is making a difference: Markos has a fascinating article today about what is going on in Mariupol -- where Russians keep saying they have surrounded Ukrainian forces and are just mopping up, but they've been saying that for a month and it ain't happening. One of the tweets above shows a Mariupol defender in action. Here's some of what Markos wrote: 
... it looks like Ukraine had found a hole in Russia’s coverage of the city, and then used it for regular resupply and medical evacuation...
...there are the persistent rumors of tunnels/catacombs under the city itself.....
...as of now, Russia still has a long way to go to take the city...
In a city hellscape littered with infinite hiding locations, Ukrainian forces can operate an indefinite guerrilla campaign to continue pinning down Russian forces, preventing them from being redeployed elsewhere. If Russia doesn’t have the forces in the city to prevent loud-ass helicopters from making regular supply runs, what makes anyone think they can actually prevent several thousand motivated defenders from continuing to wreak havoc? 

In other news, Canada is making some progress here, I think: Finally, I thought this was pretty funny: The comments are terrific, too -- I guess this song was used a lot in the 80s and 90s to teach history in public schools.
In case you need a refresher, here it is.  
 And hey, I lived through much of this stuff, but I couldn't tell you all these details either.

No comments: