Ukraine War: Kursk, Pokrovsk, And Another Attempt to Kill Trump
It's a matter of time before the Ukraine War's technological innovations spread; in the meantime, Ukraine has breached russia's border... again. Glushkovo looks likely to fall.
Weekly Overview
Ukraine’s Kursk Campaign is now six weeks old, and Moscow finally managed to launch a sizable, coordinated counterattack. It appears that 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade was hit by a two-pronged attack from Korenevo and Glushkovo that converged on Snagost. Heavy airstrikes hit the brigade’s forward drone unit, leaving the ground troops without cover.
For about a day the talk was that Ukraine was finally being forced onto the defensive across the entire Kursk Front. Then Kyiv unleashed a counterattack it has clearly been preparing for whenever Moscow made a big move. In other words, Ukraine just sprung a nasty trap.
That isn’t to imply the 103rd was supposed to get hit so hard; whether the air strikes forced operators into cover or actually destroyed their positions is unclear. Just because you know broadly what the enemy will do doesn’t mean they can be stopped cost-free. It does seem the brigade was able to withdraw its elements south towards the border mostly in good order.
And Ukraine’s reply punch came promptly. Though the orcs are in control of Snagost, efforts to push east toward Sudzha appear to have been torn apart by 22nd Mechanized and 82nd Air Assault Brigade, with 36th Marine in the mix and some separate battalions acting in support. They hold a ridge overlooking the valley of the Seym, and the enemy rushed right into their positions. If this wasn’t bad enough for the orcs, Ukraine then dispatched troops to breach the border about twenty kilometers east of Snagost, just south of Glushkovo.
Poor David Axe over at Forbes is one of the pundits who comes off looking terrible throughout this war. Axe fired off a piece talking up Ukraine’s supposed failure to exploit the breach only to have Ukraine’s Khorne drone group, serving with 116th Mechanized, post footage of a major advance beyond the border. Over the weekend reports started to emerge of Ukrainian troops active well beyond where observers have seen.
Part of the reason I do weekly updates and don’t tend to jump on news as it emerges is that the first batch of data is usually a biased sample. The first stuff out is often released to try and control the narrative, a common russian propaganda tactic being to make a defeat look like a victory by presenting a limited amount of footage in a positive light. Then the Ukrainian side emerges, and the picture sharpens.
I also don’t pay attention to the Institute for the Study of War’s updates because I discovered a few months into 2022 that ISW mostly passes off open source information as its own after sanitizing it for broader media consumption and applying an editorial filter tuned to present contemporary American military science as the global norm. I much prefer and highly recommend the Ukraine-based Centre for Defence Strategies.
Ukraine is not only advancing in the Glushkovo district center, but also the far western edge. In another interesting development, Ukraine also apparently sent a probe into russia well north of Rylsk. It seems some Ukrainians drove to a major highway junction and back intact near a part of the border where Ukraine previously ordered civilians to evacuate -and now Moscow is too, on its own side. My suspicion is that Ukraine is making a deliberate feint to threaten carving off the whole Rylsk area from Muscovite control, as I and a few others have suggested might be the plan.
However, I don’t see a full-on offensive of this magnitude as being probable now, though I would be happy to be proven wrong. Glushkovo south of the Seym will likely represent Ukraine’s last big seizure of territory in Kursk. With 70,000 soldiers now in the area, Moscow has the bare minimum needed to consider a general counteroffensive.
A large proportion are likely conscripts, with a smaller cohort of experienced contract troops drawn from other fronts leading active operations. The force is probably insufficient to clear Ukrainian forces from Free Kursk, as the past few weeks have given Ukrainian troops a chance to dig deep into advantageous defensive positions on the road to Sudzha. But it’s big enough to grind slowly forward, which means that Ukraine is unlikely to want to expand the area under its control unless this serves an immediate purpose.
Glushkovo counts for the very reason Moscow has demonstrated with this attack: it gives ruscist troops a chance to hit Ukrainian forces at the base of their penetration across the border. Other orc units have intensified attacks on the opposite flank, near Borki. There they’ve got to get through some marshy and densely forested country while pushing against their own former border defenses, though. The ground is more open towards Glushkovo.
I also suspect that Moscow was forced into this course of action by Ukraine’s ongoing destruction of the Seym river crossings the orcs keep setting up. You can certainly move a pulse of supplies soon after one is established, but several thousand soldiers eat up a lot of butter and bullets.
Moving southwest from Korenevo could well be a sign of desperation on the part of orc commanders who feared their troops might surrender. If so, the effort is likely to cost as many soldiers as it saves. And in the meantime, Ukraine is still on the road to securing its hold on the Kursk-Sumy border.
To turn Kursk into a massive sink of combat power that continues to weaken Moscow’s offensive in Donbas, Ukraine needs to establish defensive lines on the most favorable ground. Once Glushkovo falls, any ruscist force trying to push towards Sudzha will face a threat on its flank. The Snagost river, which passes just south of the town presumably named after it, should prove an excellent barrier.
Ukraine’s Intelligence chief Budanov recently stated that offensives only last six to eight weeks, which seems about right. Kursk is now to the point where it has to transition fully to a defensive operation, as the element of surprise is long gone and ruscist reinforcements are on hand to stall any breakthrough. The job of the Kursk Front is now to absorb enemy power as efficiently as possible.
The ruscist border defenses between Glushkovo and Sudzha should all soon belong to Ukraine, giving it space to construct its own closer to its side of the border. If Moscow wants to spent fifty thousand lives over the next five months slowly pushing Ukraine back to a ten kilometer buffer along the border, only for Ukrainian forces to do exactly this all over again in Bryansk or Belgorod, fantastic.
Donbas remains the focus of Moscow’s offensive efforts, though these have visibly waned as resources flow to Kursk. In what I have to see as an effort to test Ukrainian defenses where brigades may rotated into the reserve, Moscow has launched more attacks than usual of late in the Dnipro delta, Siversk, Kupiansk, and Terny Fronts, but have taken a few treelines at best. Pischane, near Kupiansk, continues to see slow orc progress along a canyon leading to the Oskil. Despite reports of troop concentrations on the Kharkiv fronts Moscow isn’t making much visible progress there, either.
The story is different primarily along the Vovcha, southeast of Pokrovsk, where Ukraine is slowly withdrawing from the east bank to consolidate a shorter defense line anchored on the Kurakhove reservoir. It appears that the redeployment of the endangered brigades is complete, with Moscow’s troops slowly advancing to secure vacated ground under heavy fire.
Progress towards Pokrovsk itself has been negligible, just a few blocks in Hrodivka and beyond Novohrodivka. Moscow has on the other hand managed to creep further down the Vovcha, even getting around the village of Ukrainsk.
Although Ukrainsk was, like Novohrodivka, originally a key defense node on the Vovcha Line, its loss won’t be fatal to the defense of Pokrovsk. Ukraine can fall back to neighboring Tsukuryne, which is on the same ridge. An arc from Tsukuryne-Hirnyk-Kurakhivka would be ideal but not strictly essential for Ukraine to hold, as this plus a continued stiff defense on the ridge north of Selidove can keep this town, and ultimately Pokrovsk, in Ukrainian hands.
Heavy fighting is underway on the outskirts of Selidove, as has been the case for a couple weeks now. A particular railway overpass became the site of a series of intense, bloody battles waged mostly by Ukraine’s Kara-Dag brigade of the Offensive Guard, much of it caught on drone feeds.
At the beginning of September a video emerged showing an orc infantry team huddled next to an APC under the bridge, soon followed by the impact of a 125mm tank shell hitting the vehicle. The survivors scatter while the Ukrainian tank - or another coming in soon after - closes in, firing its cannon. Once it pops smoke and departs, all that’s left is one poor probably wounded soul who just sits on a curb staring helplessly with his friends all dead nearby and their vehicle burning out.
A few days later Ukrainian forces move through the area in force, mounting a counterattack into nearby Mykhailivka. A couple of their T-64 tanks and BTR troop carriers get knocked out, but orcs are killed in firefights that rage over several days. Ukrainian troops work to keep the bridge area clear of enemy troops and the path free for vehicles to travel, capturing a ruscist tank and in one rather spectacular case sending a tank of their own to physically clear several wrecks from the road, shooting and ramming them until a fuel tank ruptures and ignites, surrounding the tank in flames, forcing it to pull back to safety.
The scorch marks are still visible when a ruscist missile is finally dispatched to destroy the overpass entirely, cutting off Ukraine’s road access east. Ukrainian troops then slowly pull back, though not without conducting some vicious ambushes, one of which was caught on video showing how real gunfights go - nothing like Hollywood.
Bullets fired from the windows of a house strike the middle orc of three; he survives just long enough to realize what’s happening and stumble helplessly before crumpling under a hail of bullets. His buddy following behind is caught in this second burst too, writhing in the grass before he’s finished off by a drone a bit later. The guy in front somehow survives, laying flat in the trees blindly firing his weapon before rolling away.
Crawling out of the tree line he gets up and makes for the nearby rail line, moving out of the Ukrainian troops’ line of sight. Not their drones, though, and another soon crashes down and explodes in front of him. Once again he survives - only to turn around and walk the other way down the rail line and right back into the line of sight of the shooters holed up in the house. He lives just long enough to realize his mistake before falling under a fatal hail.
To take Pokrovsk, Moscow must first isolate it, village by village. That’s set to require a minimum of six months, assuming Ukraine retreats at the same rate it has since leaving Avdiivka last winter. There’s almost no way that will prove the case with artillery supplies growing, even if US aid is interrupted again. European and Czech-sourced ammo supplies will exceed 100,000 shells a month for the rest of the year and probably beyond. It might be only a third of the heavy artillery Moscow uses, but it’s at least three times as effective. Also, in part thanks to Danish investment (probably others too), Ukraine has tripled the rate of domestic Bohdana 155mm howitzer production to 18 units a month. That’s enough to outfit a full brigade. Nice.
At this stage, I strongly doubt that Putin has the power to seize Pokrovsk, Toretsk, and Chasiv Yar, and probably not even one. These look to be the dying days of his last major campaign, a series of problems converging in the middle of 2025 to which Putin has no solutions. Unfortunately, even a creature in its death throes can kill the unwary. And a year is an eternity at the front. Ukraine still needs more modern gear, fast.
In Chasiv Yar, Moscow has apparently managed to get a couple bridgeheads across the Siverski Donets canal, but they haven’t expanded. Similarly, some troops have begun to build up strength near Klischiivka, apparently hoping to make progress on the southern flank of this sector.
A couple weeks ago a Ukrainian counterattack into Niu-York relieved a group that was surrounded in an industrial plant on the northern outskirts. After breaking them out Ukrainian forces appear to have fallen back, but overall the defense lines here and east of Toretsk are holding pretty well. Some advance orc scouts seem to have made it close to the town center, but this doesn’t appear to presage a breakthrough.
Then there’s the southern edge of Donbas, near Vuhledar. Here Moscow has continued to push pretty hard, assaulting the coal mines northeast of the town. The objective is pretty obvious: get troops to Bohoiavlenka, seven kilometers beyond Vodiane. Seizing it is pretty much a prerequisite to cutting Vuhledar off, which you’ve almost got to do to take the place by storm, being heavily fortified. Moscow would also like to get closer to Velyka Novosilka, hence the push that direction along the road from Pavlivka the past few weeks.
Luckily, Vuhledar can still be supplied even if a great deal of territory is lost to the north. As long as the road through Bohoiavlenka and Uspenivka is secure, the Vuhledar-Kurakhove line should hold. Even if it is lost in the next few months, the Velyka Novosilka-Kurakhove line ought to prove durable. It will be strengthened by Ukraine pulling behind the Vovcha further north because 46th Airmobile, which has been doing an excellent job holding the orcs back from Kurakhove and assisting Ukrainian operations further north, can focus solely on the former.
Everyone hates to lose territory, but in a long war it usually proves a net harm to the enemy to cope with the consequences of being overstretched. One of the biggest reasons why military professionals have long lionized the idea of the decisive battle is the fact that once campaigns lose cohesion of purpose and effort, it’s very, very easy to make critical mistakes that undo all early progress.
It’s deeply ironic to watch Putin accomplish in Ukraine exactly what Napoleon and Hitler did in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. His army has been shattered twice over, his air force can only lob bombs and missiles over the border, and though Putin’s Black Sea Fleet is at sea again right now, a couple dozen Kalibr cruise missiles ready to launch from submarines off Novorossiysk, they’re huddled in a bastion terrified of attack by Ukrainian naval drones. Which will eventually hunt subs, because if they can carry a torpedo programmed to home in on the right engine noise profile, subs are vulnerable too.
As far as the air war goes there’s been a slight reprieve for Ukraine of late with respect to massive missile attacks, though that might have ended by the time I send out this update. Ukraine launched its own massive drone attack deep into russia last week, with at least one going off course and hitting an apartment building in Moscow. No firm word on other damage.
Before moving on to science and politics, I’d like to highlight a fascinating interview of a Ukrainian soldier named Ihor Khalus that appeared in Ukrinform this week. A Ukrainian government publication, you don’t look to Ukrinform for critical information about the country, but it still produces some of the best stuff. This interview is long and wide-ranging, but offers a compelling portrait of what leadership is like on the ground in Ukraine - and what Ukrainians need from allies.
How Putin Exploits Scholars1
One of the most stubborn problems Kyiv has encountered in its fight is a manifest intellectual blind spot across the English-speaking world with respect to russia. A potent weapon in Putin’s arsenal that no one even knew existed until it emerged is the deep penetration of Russian Studies across the academic ecosystem. An unconscious bias against Ukrainian perspectives persists in scholarly circles thanks to the presence of departments that are immersed in and professionally depend on a particular vision of russia.
This has produced a quiet but persistent pressure across the global intellectual community to push Ukraine into making territorial concessions to end the war. This attitude is driven by an artificial perception of russia as a special country.
What’s intriguing about this state of affairs is that no conspiracy is required to bring it about. Putin’s FSB has not been infiltrating academic departments - the average academic makes a poor asset in any case, being too unreliable. The FSB prefers to cultivate assets with broader ambitions and a lack of intellectual heft, like J.D. Vance.
Instead, Russian Studies does Putin’s bidding simply by carrying out its day to day activities in the Ivory Tower system. This allows it to serve as a poison pill at the heart of the knowledge production system that academia has become in modern society.
What do I mean by knowledge production system? It’s the way society at large decides what counts as a fact in public debate. Any argument or discussion that seeks to be productive, not performative, must define some common set of facts to produce a landscape people can fight over using rhetoric as their weapons.
Ultimately, a fact is anything enough people accept to be so self-evident that it alters their behavior. Most media accept without question that someone with a PhD in a given field has been deemed an expert in it, able to convey established scientific facts.
Unfortunately, this ignores the inconvenient truth that academic fields of study have arbitrary boundaries which practitioners fight over all the time. And quite a few fields can’t internally agree on basic facts, each often split into camps clustering around a different epistemological (how to know) or ontological (what is known) starting point. Fields also come and go - they’re organisms, and either adapt or die. That doesn’t mean they won’t try to engineer conditions conducive to their perpetuation, though.
Inside academia, invisible to anyone who hasn’t spent many years of their life dwelling there, is a constant war for attention and the perception of credibility waged by field against field, scholar against scholar. It’s a public taboo to talk about it, because to do so automatically invites questions that soon become painfully divisive. Academics work very hard to avoid triggering inter-field squabbles because when they break out, the fights become vicious, and sometimes whole fields go away.
On a personal level, people are drawn into academia for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, committing years of one’s life to a relatively poorly paid profession disciplines those who are successful to be adept at carving out a defensible niche. To survive, a scholar needs the institutional security that tenure provides, as they gain a whole slew of rights that protect their income stream.
That is a precious gift; as a result it is prized and withheld from the undeserving - to get it requires doing enough recognized work in the field to have peers accept you deserve it. But tenure is also a kind of trap. Every field’s members are aware of how precarious their overall position is: academia is the marketplace of ideas, after all (in the American view) so what becomes popular rules resource allocations. What stops some new idea from rendering a whole field obsolete, destroying demand for the services it provides?
Even when a field is internally riven or fails to land predictions, it can survive so long as it has a broader network of influence, ideally connections that are in some way dependent on it, like alumni. American society in particular places a high premium on using facts as a kind of currency to demonstrate expertise. Media outlets brand themselves to their customers as repositories of facts and the analysis which helps the audience understand which ones matter more in a particular situation.
People like and need news, but tend to prefer that which makes them feel a certain way, fills a particular need. Media outlets comply, substituting form over function because it is cheaper to produce. Journalists and even TV writers seek out academics who will provide ready-made, easily digested facts; this allows scholars to promote their work and the broader field they work in. As fields are basically book clubs where members all cite each other, the more visibility an allied scholar can win the better for all.
This creates a perverse incentive for fields to lay claim to intellectual territory which members are expected to defend. Aspirants entering the sacred order have to be carefully screened to be sure that they don’t threaten the delicate narrative fields develop to help keep members organized. If that sounds like a religious organization, that’s because universities all used to be - much of the heritage remains.
Academics soon learn that it’s ideal to cultivate as large a population of potential recruits and acolytes as possible. At every university, departments seek to create an endless array of new majors and specialties, ruthlessly competing for students. Most of all they covet guaranteed slots on the core curriculum that help convert freshman into majors - then they mostly assign poorly paid adjuncts who are often barred from ever holding tenure to teach them, subsidizing research faculty with the savings.
As getting a decent job anymore is strongly contingent on having a degree in the right major, the shared experience of going to college reinforces a broad lack of critical thought about everyone’s role in the enterprise. Americans go into the workforce encouraged to believe that their degree itself has meaning and their major signifies expertise. In fact, all that American undergraduate students get in most programs is a cartoon version of a much more complex area of study. Grad school is where you work with the good stuff and newest methods, leading to the devaluation of undergraduate degrees.
Russian Studies, like many zombie fields, grew to serve government demands during the Cold War. Members took for granted the narratives about russia and its history that had been popular for decades, revolving around its supposed literary and more genuine scientific triumphs. They presented a nineteenth century romantic vision of russian nationalism as reality, as this was pleases most students attracted to the field.
Policy in the USA always tries to portray itself as being rooted in science. To justify any policy position backers will trot out folks with PhDs are eager to boost their own and their field’s profile. Rarely do they admit to the debates that roil their field.
Most PhDs follow an unwritten law that they must not actively trespass on another field’s turf - unless it’s a small one lacking connections, of course. Fields try to eat each other all the time and readily latch onto trends however they can - witness the humanities and social science majors coming for AI. Most call for regulation to redress supposed harms not because these are proven but because locking down who gets to do AI research and what the standards will be is a prerequisite to dominating the industry.
The quality of science produced by different fields varies dramatically. One can get a PhD in many fields without having to write a single equation or know how to interpret one. The disaster of a doctoral adviser I was assigned to - and was prevented from escaping by a Department director who repeatedly brought up my military service to suggest I wasn’t cut out for academia - once claimed to a class of grad students to be personally offended that a colleague thought all PhDs should be able to do math. Small wonder this professor traveled widely, leaving grad students to babysit courses by showing documentaries.
Anti-science conspiracy theorists have no shortage of ammunition to use against scientists working to understand complex topics like the environment and pandemics - and wars - thanks to the fact that epidemiologists, botanists, historians, and philosophers all hold PhDs. Yet plenty of historians dispute the fact that history is even a science at all. And philosophers… yikes.
Senior Russia Studies faculty have spent most of the past ten years finding no shortage of excuses for demanding Ukraine’s effective surrender that rather conveniently correspond to Putin’s propaganda. The nuclear posturing, threats to send advanced missile technology to groups that oppose the US, warnings about a world war - it’s all part and parcel of an act which generations of Russian Studies professors teach their undergraduates is part of russia’s national character.
Unfortunately, national policymakers like Jake Sullivan use “expertise” produced by biased academics to justify his preferred option of dragging the Ukraine War out as long as possible. He’ll take any craven excuse to not do what is necessary for Ukraine because he doesn’t want to jeopardize his own future career goals if something goes wrong.
As the information war over the USA and Ukraine heats up in the coming weeks, it’s worth keeping in mind that while conspiracy theories are rarely the best explanation for anything, the fact that stuff keeps happening experts say shouldn’t is driving demand for new understanding. If this isn’t effectively addressed with better science education, the problem will get exponentially worse.
Good science is out there, but it often doesn’t look like what you expect. Not all that is gold glitters, to paraphrase my favorite author, Tolkien. And fair speech can hide a foul heart.
It’s important to do your own research and keep and open mind. But whenever an answer feels too clean, be wary. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
Strategic Developments2
Over the weekend another fool allegedly tried to shoot Trump. The apparent attempted assassin would be unworthy of note except for the unfortunate fact that he saw himself as a supporter of Ukraine.
This stands a very real chance of making Ukraine into a wholly partisan issue, with disastrous implications for the future of American support. When Putin’s all-out assault on Ukraine began in 2022, American media treated the whole thing like a grand show. The message had already been pounded into the D.C. media circle by the Biden Administration that what was happening was a tragedy and a crime but the USA could not be materially involved in any way because of the risk of the thing escalating.
Americans were supposed to sit glued to their television screens and post online about how evil Putin was, but not actually demand anything more than whatever aid Biden and company deigned to provide. Never mind that some of us are old enough to remember 1991, when the US led an alliance of countries against the world’s then fourth-largest military, owner of a potent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, because it annexed a neighbor. Instead of fulfilling its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum that eliminated Ukraine’s nuclear deterrent, the Biden Administration chose to apply sanctions while telling the whole world how Ukraine was doomed.
In February of 2022, Americans were being prepared for the country to play Afghanistan 2.0 in Ukraine, supporting an anticipated guerilla resistance to bleed Putin’s forces for years to come. The types who write high-minded think pieces for The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs were set to declare Putin’s seizure of Kyiv a strategic defeatl; they were visibly shocked to see Putin’s plans go so badly awry.
After the disastrous War on Terror, they decided the future must be one defined by a Second Cold War that pits an alliance of freedom-loving democracies (including Saudi Arabia, somehow) against an axis of autocrats led from Beijing and Moscow. This would be a nice, predictable, managed forever war waged mostly in the non-aligned world, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America.
Ukraine actually repelling Moscow’s forces was as much in their forecasts as the collapse of the Soviet Union and Osama Bin Laden turning from covert American asset in Afghanistan to the terrorist that drew it into the futile War on Terror. And quite a few of them saw the outpouring of support for Ukraine’s fight inside the USA and Europe as a serious threat.
Their nightmares are filled with battle-hardened volunteers returning from the front to their home countries angry at how badly Ukraine’s people and soldiers have already been betrayed and in possession of skills sufficient to do something about it. Ukraine is winning this war despite the chains placed on it by D.C., daily offering proof that the cozy world Americans are taught in college to believe is theirs for the taking is an absolute myth.
That’s why soon after Ukraine proved it wasn’t going to just roll over and die a major component of the media narrative about the war shifted. Where the first month or so Americans were encouraged to identify with the plight of those poor Ukrainians and donate to their cause, soon stories began to prominently feature in the New York Times that cast any Americans who actually went to Ukraine to fight as mentally damaged in some way. The lucky ones were portrayed as lonely veterans of the War on Terror seeking a place after being unable to reintegrate in civilian life.
The same trick is pulled with veterans in general, anyone in American culture associated with violence portrayed in the media as somehow tainted, different from ordinary folks. If it’s a socially accepted sport or police work then the violence is acceptable, provided the athlete play their role and not step out of line or forget that police officers are always considered even more heroic - that’s why they’re paid so much less.
Now, way too many of the Americans who went to Ukraine in 2022 were little better than tourists. The ones who actually cared found an organization to serve with and quietly did their job. More than a few have died. You don’t hear much about them until they do for a reason.
Ukraine unfortunately had to fend off a horde of people who were responding to the media portrayal of the conflict as a grand fight between good and evil, many with good intentions but lacking the skills and experience needed to be more than a drain on Kyiv’s resources. One of them appears to have been the latest dude to think he was going to be the one to off Trump. Unlike the last guy, this one mercifully didn’t hurt any bystanders or apparently even get a shot off.
Quite frankly, anyone who uses a gun in an assassination attempt against someone protected by the Secret Service has almost got to be a lunatic or other variety of fool. I probably shouldn’t write this, and in the emerging climate fully expect to pop up on Secret Service radar, but there’s no point in ignoring the harsh truth: the next successful major assassination is set to be done by a drone.
Anyone who has seen a few videos of drones in action in Ukraine knows the truth: nobody is ready for drone attacks. Ukraine’s innovations are too new; bureaucratic institutions are not prepared to cope with emerging developments.
Fortunately, neither are many would-be assassins, yet, though the guy who clipped Trump supposedly used one for recon. Drones emit telltale signals which give some warning, but unless the Secret Service is prepared to respond to every drone hobbyist working in their garage within a broad radius of every event…
I seriously doubt that the Secret Service is able to do broad spectrum jamming over every speech or even Trump’s golf rounds. Drones in Ukraine now fly over 300km/h, which translates to more than 80 meters per second. It’s only a tenth the speed of a bullet, but even if the drone doesn’t carry an explosive charge or spew thermite, a direct physical impact could be fatal.
A determined assassin probably doesn’t even need the kind of hardware Iran could likely use to take revenge for Soleimani’s assassination, like a flight of drones launched from the deck of a container ship off Florida. Aside from holding all events indoors or putting public figures in armored capsules, I’m honestly not sure how to stop this in the short run.
Now, let me be perfectly clear: I’m not suggesting that anyone should kill Trump or any other American politician. Anyone dumb enough to think killing Trump would help Ukraine is probably an FSB asset. Trump’s VP pick is an outright American fascist who has zero respect for the Constitution and would happily wage war against fellow Americans.
Though most military service members understand that their oath to the Constitution transcends partisan politics or ideology, a few serve intending to use their status as veteran to undermine other people’s Constitutional rights. I met a few in my own brief service, white supremacists looking for recruits and Christian fascists determined to bring about an Iran-style theocracy. When placed on alert to respond to any disasters or terrorists attacks stateside for a time, I got to attend a legal brief where a group of soldiers eagerly questioned a lawyer about what excuses they could use to shoot people they claimed were looting.
I’m absolutely certain that J.D. Vance is one of those who cares nothing for his oath to the Constitution. That’s why he voted to overturn the last election, a power that no honest American has ever believed Congress was granted once the states had certified their results. If the federal government could do that, state’s rights would be doomed - something any true traditional conservative knows.
Vance is an outspoken enemy of Ukraine because he, like my brother in law who to took his family to live in Rostov-on-Don last year, wants to be Putin. Those of that ilk who are smart enough to stay in the USA instead of joining Putin’s empire merely want to bring russia to the rest of us.
The alleged wannabe assassin’s interest in Ukraine will probably be used to further undermine US support for the country among Trump supporters. If he wanted to take revenge for Ukraine apparently not taking him seriously when he traveled there to offer his services in importing fighters from Afghanistan, there was no better way.
With any luck the event will fade into the next media cycle, but the Trump-Vance opposition to Ukraine seems likely to firm up. Trump can likely still be convinced not to abandon Ukraine because it would make him look very weak, but if he delegates Vance to manage relations, as Vance will want, it’ll be bad news.
For Ukraine supporters hoping to get some solid information about the future of American aid after the election the recent Harris-Trump debate was a bust. Both reiterated their standard partisan talking points, Trump pretending he can end the war before even taking office and Harris merely trying to claim credit for what Ukraine’s defenders actually did.
I don’t watch these silly rituals any more, sticking to reading highlights; they’re too predictable unless someone literally loses the plot, a la Joe Biden. Political journalists intentionally portray campaigns as a horse race or professional wrestling spectacle because this serves their professional interests. Pundits bleat about who won or lost based on how well their champion made the team look, but the demonstrated impact on persuadable voters is negligible.
Polls tend to shift slightly after big theatrical events mostly because Americans who feel like their candidate was on the losing side tend to express indecision or just not respond to polls. This is part of why Trump tends to routinely outperform many state level polls, especially in places where “Midwest Nice” is the prevailing norm. People generally don’t lie about their preferences, but some feel pressured into saying they aren’t 100% sure who they’ll vote for to avoid associations with Trump.
Trump’s appeal is rooted in his acting like a prize fighter willing to break any rule to win, which he implies also means his supporters will win, too. For people who feel as if the world is turning against them, that’s a powerful appeal.
Harris, on the other hand, is enmeshed in a Democratic Party machine geared solely towards presenting anything Republican as culturally toxic. It is positively obsessed with attacking, bashing, and fact-checking Trump at every turn like a teacher correcting a wayward student. To the majority of Americans who don’t have a college degree and so worry about securing decent jobs that won’t go away in the next recession, this act is incredibly off-putting.
The choice by the Democratic Party to embrace a policy-light, feels-heavy approach this election is adored by most Democrats, but they were always going to vote Harris in November. 2024 will be won or lost by the candidate who is able to turn out the greater proportion of their party’s 2020 voters in the seven or so states that will decide the Electoral College. A chunk of about 10% of Biden voters were always unlikely to turn out again; they’re not traditional Democrats and don’t respond to partisan appeals, so the Harris approach at present is a mistake.
2020 very likely marked the high point for turnout, reaching 2/3 of eligible voters. The situation was unique, the country at a boiling point after a failed pandemic response and nationwide protests against police brutality. For anyone who had been paying attention to US politics since the 2000s, it was a given fact that a boost in turnout should benefit the Democrats. Instead, Biden and Trump turned out new voters in roughly even numbers, producing a closer election than 2016.
Ever since Trump nearly won the 2020 election, the Democratic Party has been in a state of permanent crisis. Its leaders and members won’t admit it, but the strategic assumptions that drove the party since the Clinton era are in error. The Democratic Party has begun to act like the Evangelical-dominated Republicans once did, relying on morally motivated voters and donors. At the same time, it is the Republicans who have started to attract voters who haven’t previously been interested.
This is why the obsessive liberal urge to rage at Trump is such a mistake. All that the Democrats are accomplishing is punching down against a population that doesn’t need any added motivation to vote for Trump out of pure spite.
Even if America’s institutions hold and Harris takes office, thanks to the Democratic Party’s inability to materially expand its coalition over the past eight years Congress is set to be paralyzed. Ukraine still won’t be able to count on any more aid going forward than it receives before Biden leaves office.
This makes Biden’s ongoing refusal to reconsider the painfully slow, escalation-fearing approach to Ukraine support a cruel betrayal of what Ukrainians have a right to expect. It’s a perfect summation of how deep American support for Ukraine truly runs at the highest levels that Harris asserted in the debate that Abrams tanks were a key reason for Ukraine staying in the fight.
If you were to ask the average Ukrainian soldier, it’s Bradley infantry fighting vehicles more than Abrams tanks that save lives. But these are built in Ohio, which is in the Rust Belt, and positive associations might marginally boost turnout, just like name-checking Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania. Guess those Palestinian-Americans upset about their relatives being slaughtered in Gaza by American taxpayer subsidized bombs don’t matter.
And in any case, the USA has sent just 31 old models out of hundreds sitting in warehouses. Almost half have been destroyed, because guess what? Fifty year old designs in either NATO or Soviet service weren’t built to fend off drones. Another generation of soldiers gets to learn just how much their leaders actually value their lives.
Yet as obsolete as old Abrams are, they still beat literally anything Soviet. It is imperative that Ukraine’s backers pull out all the stops to shame the Biden-Harris Administration into taking the necessary level of action for its own good, while there’s still time. Instead of 31 Abrams, Ukraine needs 300. Twice as many Bradleys.
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