Mollycoddlers: This Week in Ukraine
Death rays, an entire regiment of Russian armor destroyed, another new type of drone, Russia loses more planes, you know, the usual.
1. Havana Syndrome and the Appeasement of Russia
Sometimes you have to shove it in the government’s face until they can no longer deny their buffoonery. This week, the Insider (including my brilliant friend Mike Weiss), 60 Minutes (video here), and Der Spiegel released a joint investigation, Unraveling Havana Syndrome: New Evidence Links the GRU's Assassination Unit 29155 to Mysterious Attacks on U.S. Officials and their families. It’s an important read, and it’s damning towards Russia and the US intelligence community, both of which have denied and downplayed the origins of the attacks since the very beginning. Even worse than presenting another example of the US intelligence community’s lack of transparency, credibility, and resoluteness, the entire affair is an example of the US government appeasing Putin.
Russia started attacking US personnel with electromagnetic energy in 2016 at our embassy in the eponymous Havana, Cuba. From the report, “Havana Syndrome, itself long thought to be the accrued biological effect caused by a different kind of unique weapon, encompasses a variation of symptoms including: chronic headaches, vertigo, tinnitus, insomnia, nausea, lasting psychophysiological impairment, and, in some cases, blindness or hearing loss.”
Over the past eight years, Russia has attacked over 1,500 US employees, including diplomats and military personnel, with “beam[s] of concentrated energy” suspected to be pulsed microwave radiation. Most of the victims continue to have symptoms, and many have been medically retired because of Havana Syndrome, which the government officially calls “anomalous health incidents.” Because they are so good at “getting out in front of the story,” the Pentagon admitted this week, after the scathing reporting was made public, that a defense official had experienced Havana Syndrome symptoms during the NATO summit this summer in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The intelligence community and the State Department continue to deny the origins of the attacks. According to the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment Of The U.S. Intelligence Community released in February, Havana Syndrome symptoms “probably were the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary.” In 2020, the FBI arrested a Russian electronic warfare specialist in Florida, and shortly thereafter the agent investigating the case, coincidently, came down with Havana Syndrome. Given the number and types of targets, and other classified information I would hope that the US intelligence community is privy to, I deeply suspect that the US government believes Russia is behind these attacks. Publicly, officials at places like Langley and Foggy Bottom are trying to attribute the intense pain, chronic brain swelling, and concussion-like symptoms to some sort of psychosomatic contagion, while privately they are probably hoarding aluminum foil for their brain cases.
The question is why is the US government resistant to calling out Russia for physically attacking our people? I guess the first question would be why are they hesitant to treat Russia as our enemy? We have provided military support, including intelligence and weapons, that is directly killing Russians. Russian state figures, like the Rowdy Roddy Piper of Diplomacy, Dmitry Medvedev, have threatened nuclear war with America and its allies. Russian government-affiliated sources (Wagner, for one) have tampered with US elections. Russia has used electronic means to attack Americans at our embassies and across the globe. Russia is the enemy of the United States.
As our enemy, Russia is considered guilty until proven innocent. The US government was slow in pointing the blame for Havana Syndrome at Russia until they had undeniable proof. This verification is completely unnecessary. The working assumption should be that our enemies are making our diplomats and operatives sick, especially those individuals who have strong ties to Russian operations. The intelligence community’s stated position from the very beginning should have been that the Russians are causing Havana Syndrome.
The failure to outwardly condemn Russia for Havana Syndrome is another symptom of the US government’s mollycoddling of Russia. So is asking Ukraine not to attack Russian oil refineries. So is holding back critical weapons systems and slowly dripping them into the country, ensuring a long, drawn-out war. So is Congress holding up $60 billion in military aid. The US government continues to display a shadow policy of leniency toward Russia. Its conduct of the war in Ukraine and of Russia is one of denial and half-measures.
2. The Smell of Fresh Meat in the Morning
This week the Russians continued their full press, attacking on multiple fronts. During the last weekend in March, one of the largest mechanized assaults since the beginning of the war occurred near Avdiivka on the eastern front near a settlement called Tonen’ke. The Russians attacked with 36 tanks and 12 infantry fighting vehicles, they left with 12 and 8 fewer, respectively. Other attacks took place on the southern front, near the town of Novopokrovka, where the Russians lost 11 vehicles, and near Bakhmut and Lyman. Although the Ukrainians repelled the assaults and Russia probably lost a considerable amount of orc meat, Russia did seem to partially penetrate Ukrainian defensive lines.
These battles probably unfolded just like all the rest in Ukraine. Drone surveillance picked up the moving column twenty or so kilometers away—in plenty of time for the Ukrainian 25th Airborne Brigade to finish their vareniki and cup of kava. Once the column was in the designated kill zone, Ukrainian anti-tank guided missiles hit the lead tanks while FPV drones attacked the rear. Artillery, bless them, also tried to do their part. Cluster munitions attacked those that dismounted vehicles, or retreated on foot. You can watch a video of some of the battle of Tonen’ke here.
What can we surmise from the recent attacks? It would be easy to write off these failed attacks as idiot Russians doing idiot Russian things, but that would be what military strategists call “underestimating your enemy.” As inconceivable as it seems, Russia’s absorption of 450,000 casualties to date has not changed its meat assault tactics. The corresponding political outcry over the losses, ala the late 1980s Russia, has yet to materialize. Russia seems to have sufficiently reconstituted some armored units. This week Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell went as far as to say that “Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.” Although it seems this misinformation fanboy Campbell skipped his Adderall this week, it bears noting that the Russian war machine is driving forward.
This past weekend wasn’t just another data point in the tank-is-dead argument—the Russians may have already started their summer offensive. They may have sensed weakness in the Ukrainian lines. Perhaps they were probing the defenses, looking for soft spots, planning on reinforcing success (yes, I know, “Russia, success,” mutually exclusive). We can expect more of the same in the near term, with Russia continuing to advance on multiple axes. From an operational perspective, that’s exactly what they should be doing, keeping the pressure on Ukraine’s precarious defense and looking for a breakthrough.
3. Look, up in the Sky! It's a Drone! It's a Plane!
Much to the US State Department’s chagrin, Ukraine continued its attacks on Russia’s petroleum industry this week by striking Russia's third-largest oil refinery located in Tatarstan. Impressive, the refinery was over 800 miles away from Ukraine. It appears the Ukrainians outfitted a piper-cub-type prop plane to act as a one-way drone. You can watch the plane’s final descent into Orcoilstain here. After the attack, the head of the Tatarstan region told companies not to rely on the Russian air defense system. No kidding.
4. Look, on Our Airfield! No Planes!
This week, Ukraine used drones to attack at least four Russian airfields, possibly destroying $ millions in orc jets. Part of this attack included Ukraine reportedly destroying six planes in Morozovsk (near Rostov) and damaging eight. The deceased airframes were some of the same fighter-bombers used to drop glide bombs on Ukrainian cities (which I discussed last week). Unfortunately, the vechirka-pooping Institute for the Study of War disputed the damage assessment citing overhead imagery.
5. [Video] Grand Theft Avto
If the Ukrainians think they can get away with it, they will steal Russian tanks off the battlefield instead of destroying them with drones dropping grenades into the open hatches. A mystery of this war is why Russian tankers leave the hatches open on their tanks when they flee. They’ve been doing it from the beginning, they are still doing it, and it’s perplexing. In this week’s video, we find the Ukrainians absconding with one of the Russian FrankenJammer tanks.
Is it possible that our President’s reluctance to confront Russia and China is due to “family” financial concerns or “family” blackmail?