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Friday evening, Moscow time, four or five armed men strolled into the Crocus Concert Hall in northwest Moscow and opened fire on the crowd. Before departing the area they had killed at least 40 people and wounded over 100 more. My colleague, Ward Clark, has some good observations; the only one I'd add is that at least two of the attackers had trouble managing magazine changes. While Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council, hinted that Ukraine had been behind the attack and threatened to commit atrocities that the Russians have failed to commit so far should Ukraine...

On September 26, 2022, Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were hit by major explosions that put both pipelines out of operation. I use the term “operation,” advisedly because, due to the diplomacy surrounding Putin’s War in Ukraine, both pipelines had been shut down. It became quickly apparent that the cause of the explosions was sabotage. I covered the attacks on the pipelines in this story; Sanctions and US Opposition Couldn’t Stop Nord Stream and Russian Gas, but Sabotage Might Have Done the Job.The obvious question was, who did it? Four suspects emerged: the United States, Ukraine, an undetermined...

Welcome to my newest update on Putin’s War in Ukraine. We are now 36 weeks — 254 days — since Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. My last update can be found at Putin’s War, Week 35. The Lull Before the Next Storm. There has been some action, but the crappy weather has slowed things down. Also, both sides are somewhat tired after a punishing summer’s campaigning. I look at this period as the break when the fighters have returned to their corners. Two significant items have been covered outside this update. First, the Pentagon is beefing up the...

Here we are, 26.5 weeks into Vladimir Putin’s 3-day cakewalk to Kiev. I haven’t done this in a while (last update Putin’s War. Week 21. New Weapons Change the Battlefield in Ukraine’s Favor but Are They Stronger Than European Cowardice and Stupidity?) because not a lot has been happening if you aren’t in a trench in Donbas hoping to make it through an artillery barrage.The big news today is what might turn out to be a Ukrainian offensive developing in Kherson Oblast. We’ll get to that after the preliminaries.Politico-Strategic LevelA lot of action has taken place at this level, but...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has removed his objections to the applications for NATO membership submitted by Sweden and Finland, guaranteeing those two previously unaligned nations will join the West’s bulwark alliance against Russian aggression.In May, Sweden and Finland announced they would ask to become members of the NATO military alliance. This was an unprecedented step that even the threat of the USSR had not been able to accomplish (Finland Announces It Will Join NATO, Sweden to Follow, While Moscow Makes Its Usual Threats). Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine did accomplish what Joe Stalin couldn’t in no small...

One of the side effects of war is economic dislocation. No matter what Vladimir Putin chooses to call his war in Ukraine, it is a war, and it is dislocating markets worldwide. Most of the attention has been on the potential disruption of Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe, but a more significant problem than cold Euros is looming. Ukraine is one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and sunflower oil. Because of Putin’s War, Ukrainian products can’t pass through the Black Sea to get to market.Fears of a global food crisis are swelling as Russian attacks on...

Just before Easter, the Russians announced that they had accomplished all of their pre-invasion objectives and were beginning a new phase. The new phase required the abandonment of Russia’s attempt to seize control of Kiev and focus the war on gaining control of Donbas and establishing a land bridge from Russia to Crimea (read Ukraine’s Future Depends on These Three Fights That Russia Must Win and 10 Days Into Putin’s ‘New Phase’ of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, There Are Minor Advances but the Clock Is Ticking). That goal eventually expanded to creating Russian-owned territory from Russia to Moldova and stripping...

Tuesday, it became evident that the Russian Army was abandoning territory in Ukraine that it seized shortly after Putin’s War began on February 24 (Russian Troops Retreat From Ukraine to Russia: Planned Redeployment or the Beginning of Collapse?). That withdrawal opened the way for Ukrainian forces to recover previously occupied territory from north of Kharkiv to the border with Russia.What a difference a week makes. Russian positions a week ago on the left; from yesterday on the right. h/t @Militarylandnet pic.twitter.com/5gVye2hQra— streiff (@streiffredstate) May 10, 2022Unconfirmed but solid reports that Ukrainian troops have reached the Russian border to the North-East...

Over the last week, the Russian position north of Kharkiv has collapsed. There are two explanations, and both involve an endgame for Putin’s War.Most commentary on military operations over the last week has focused on what is assumed to be the center of gravity of the Russian campaign in Ukraine, Donbas, and the siege of Mariupol. However, in my opinion, the real activity to watch has been occurring on the Ukraine-Russia border. Kharkiv had been under daily artillery and rocket fire, destroying most of it.When I saw the city center of Kharkiv, destroyed by air bombs, I was shocked. Last...

It is now May 9, and the speculation about what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do on the occasion of the 2022 Victory Day Parade has been answered.Due to the war raging in Ukraine, a lot of SmartSet™ types had been speculating that Putin would use the Victory Day Parade as the catalyst to mobilize Russia for his war in Ukraine, if not declare war outright. Read my coverage of Putin’s possible courses of action at Tomorrow Is ‘Victory Day’ in Russia but Vladimir Putin Is Losing, So What Does He Offer Russia?.The preliminaries of the parade are in the...

The Russian ammunition dump in Tomorovka, Russia, was wracked by explosions on Sunday morning. Tomorovka is just west of Belgorod and barely 40 miles north of the Ukrainian strongpoint city of Kharkiv. This ammunition dump would be critical to sustaining the Russian offensive in Donbas. There is no claim of responsibility, so it might be another of those mysterious fires plaguing Russian strategic installations and those installations supporting the Donbas operation. Video of the explosion and aftermath are posted below.There have been a series of explosions and fires at military logistics and storage points inside #Russia that are used to...

Putin’s War, the invasion of Ukraine, is about to enter its third month. What was widely expected (at least by Western experts) to be a 72-hour romp ending with Volodymyr Zelensky in exile, another Putin puppet in Kiev, and a victory parade in Kiev is turning into a slugging meatgrinder.The map below depicts the war on a day-to-day basis since February 24. Gray areas reflect areas that are not firmly under the control of either side.The Russian army invaded Ukraine 57 days ago. This timelapse shows the movement and control of Russian forces across Ukraine over those 8+ weeks. Please...

A month ago, as it was evident that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian adventure started to unravel, a funny thing happened even though his fanbois were still predicting imminent victory. Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, was rumored to have been arrested (Trouble in Paradise: Putin Arrests Senior FSB Officers Over Ukraine Fiasco). The FSB is the domestic component of the old KGB; most foreign intelligence is the province of the SVR or GRU, the sandbox of the foreign intelligence branch is the independent states that were part of the USSR.The rumor at the time was that...

According to the Jerusalem Post, Belarus faces an organized sabotage campaign aimed at railroad lines carrying Russian troops and supplies into Ukraine.The General Prosecutor of Belarus opened a criminal case into what it called an act of terrorism carried out by an organized group against infrastructure of the Belarusian Railway, according to TASS.The general prosecutor added that signaling facilities and other transport equipment were rendered “unusable.”The BYPOL group, which consists of former security officers who support the opposition in Belarus, said on Tuesday that a series of sabotage actions had targeted the railway system in Belarus, disrupting the movement of...

On Wednesday, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was touting a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ to the war in Ukraine (see Proposed ‘Fifteen Point Peace Plan’ in Russia-Ukraine War Is a Total Defeat for Putin, but Zelensky Is Biding His Time), President Vladimir Putin gave a speech that did not indicate that he had any intention of settling for less than total victory in Ukraine and signaled a crackdown on elements of his own society.<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>The first part...

Multiple sources report that Vladimir Putin has ordered the arrest and detention of General Roman Gavrilov, the deputy director of Rosgvardiya, or the National Guard of Russia. This National Guard is not to be confused with anything like our National Guard. The Rosgvardia is composed of internal security troops, from police to paratroops and special forces, that report directly to Vladimir Putin and whose responsibility is the stability of the state.In 2016, President Putin signed a decree that created the National Guard, known in common parlance by its Russian name Rosgvardiya. This did not entail whole new organizations or the...

On Wednesday, the Financial Times ran an exclusive story on the ongoing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Those negotiations started only four days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was little progress until March 10, when Turkey announced it was hosting a “high level” meeting between the two parties. On Monday, I posted how the Russians and Ukrainian peace delegations were making pleasing noises about “progress,” see Russians and Ukrainians Say Peace Talks Show Progress but ‘Getting to Yes’ Seems Very Far Away.Today’s news comes in a story titled Ukraine and Russia explore neutrality plan in peace talks.IMPORTANT...

There are reports in British papers that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the arrest of at least two senior officers in the Russian Federal Security Service or FSB. The FSB is the successor to the KGB but without the overseas portfolio. However, it does operate within the now-independent states that comprised the former Soviet Union, which by Russian law (lolol) is forbidden territory to the foreign intelligence service or SVR.A Russian spy chief is said to have been placed under house arrest in a sign that President Putin is seeking to blame the security services for the stalled invasion...

The Russian terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians continues unabated even as its military operations resemble something dreamed up by the Three Stooges. On Wednesday, the Russian Air Force bombed a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol. They claimed that a very pregnant wounded woman, who happens to be a Ukrainian beauty blogger was a “crisis actor” (Alex Jones needs to demand royalties for this) before deleting their tweet. The Russians are claiming, without a shred of evidence, that the hospital was used for military purposes, that they had notified the UN (apparently in secret) that the hospital was...

As a rule, few things are less likely to be the source of humor than court decisions. Sometimes there are excellent puns or low-key snark, but you don’t find belly-laugh material. Usually. Last Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit published a decision on a complaint arising from Ventura, California, that covered both the COVID panic and the Second Amendment. During the height of the COVID panic, that county ordered firing ranges, and gun shops closed. Presumably, this is because the Wuhan virus has a particular affinity for recreational venues. Several groups and individuals sued to overturn the order as...