I was wrong about this, thinking that most of the people got out. Turns out it was really bad.
Counterpoint: Putin could have taken this path weeks ago, say by using the forces withdrawn from Kyiv to reinforce his gains in the south. He didn’t do that. Instead he chose to try another risky offensive. It’s close but I think he takes one more whack at it by bringing in more men.
His decision will tell us a lot about whether Putin is still a functional psychopath or has crossed over to Marvel Villain.
Edit: meant to reply to @bobman0330
Not all the strikes have been carried out with American intelligence. A strike over the weekend at a location in eastern Ukraine where Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, had visited was not aided by American intelligence, according to multiple U.S. officials. The United States prohibits itself from providing intelligence about the most senior Russian leaders, officials said.
Why?
I’d guess it’s this.
No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
Preceded by this
The Executive Order was created and signed by Gerald Ford after the Church Committee and Pike Committee had divulged secrets about the U.S. Intelligence Community in the 1970s, particularly regarding the Central Intelligence Agency’s assassination operations. The committees had been investigating the CIA’s activity and EO 11905 was signed in an attempt to ban assassination and reform the intelligence community.[3]
None of this applies to terrorists. Or if you think you can get away with it, obviously.
Proxy wars aren’t inherently wrong.
That doesn’t mean that we started it or that it is morally superior to let the Ukrainians get genocided, though.
Lying liar.
Yeah I don’t get it, and unless the leaks are extremely senior, I question the NY Times even reporting it. In journalism ethics class, we were taught to always weigh the public’s need/desire to know with the people hurt by reporting something. Ask “Who does it help and who does it hurt?” and weigh that and decide.
I don’t think the public gains much, if anything, from this reporting and it theoretically could lead to escalation that pulls the west into the war and increases the risk of WW3.
Russia has only ~40 T-90M in service.
This article is actually pretty fascinating. If you were teaching a class on Critical News Reading, it would be a good final exam question to ask students to infer what was actually leaked here. In particular, the “US helping to kill Russian generals” angle is explicitly not sourced to anyone in the USG:
The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials
The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.
Not all the strikes have been carried out with American intelligence. A strike over the weekend at a location in eastern Ukraine where Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, had visited was not aided by American intelligence, according to multiple U.S. officials. The United States prohibits itself from providing intelligence about the most senior Russian leaders, officials said.
But American intelligence was critical in the deaths of other generals, officials acknowledged.
Asked about the intelligence being provided to the Ukrainians, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said that “we will not speak to the details of that information.” But he acknowledged that the United States provides “Ukraine with information and intelligence that they can use to defend themselves.”
After this article published, Adrienne Watson, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement that the battlefield intelligence was not provided to the Ukrainians “with the intent to kill Russian generals.”
It seems very possible that this story was primarily sourced by Ukrainian officials, and grudgingly confirmed by US sources. Consider the following scenario:
- US gives Ukraine the equivalent of the intel feed that a tactical commander in the US would get. Something along the lines of current best estimates of where opposing units in their area are, including their command posts, which are legitimate and important targets, but not the kinds of places a general would be stationed. From what I’ve been able to find, BTGs are normally lead by battalion commanders, who would be colonels, not generals.
- Ukraine has their own intel about when Russian generals are likely to be on the frontlines, and they conclude that the most likely place for them to be is at a BTG command post, so they take some shots and get lucky.
- NYT does some digging to try and figure out how so many generals are dying, and someone on the Ukrainian side basically explains the above. Really all they would need to provide for this story is that Ukraine had intel that some generals would be in the area and they used US intel to mount a strilke.
- Then NYT goes to their American sources for confirmation/comment (and perhaps asks about the attack on Gerasimov), and they say something like:
- WTF are you thinking, don’t run this!
- We have don’t provide intelligence aimed at assassinating Russian generals. Intelligence sharing is limited to information intended for tactical self-defense.
- As a matter of policy, we don’t provide any intel about Russian government officials, including Gerasimov. (Note that the prohibition on intel-sharing relating to “the most senior Russian leaders” is vague–maybe there was a policy against sharing intel on the very generals who were assassinated–if Ukraine picked up intel on their whereabouts from unencrypted communications, it’s safe to assume that the US had the same info, but the article makes clear they did not share it with Ukraine!)
This would account for the contents of the article pretty well, and doesn’t require anyone to have intentionally leaked the headline. Or Ukraine may have leaked this deliberately, wanting to force the US to get more engaged.
Yeah, this is a pretty reasonable hypothesis.
I’ve thought it was obvious that the USA has been doing sigint and helping Ukraine out for a long time. Doubt that article contains any new information for the Russians.