Gabriel B
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Ukraine - March 05, 2024

Ukraine - March 05, 2024

Mar 06, 2024

An answer to what prompted yesterday's closure of the Kerch Strait Bridge arrived pretty early. As some rumors suggested yesterday, Ukraine did indeed target the Sergei Kotov. Multiple naval drones successfully hit the ship, sinking it. The loss of the ship, even though it wasn't one of the most important ones of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, seems to have been the straw that broke a camel's back. In this case, the metaphorical camel is the influential Russian milblogger community; some prominent Russian milbloggers habe begun to pose the question as to whether or not the Black Sea Fleet should be withdrawn from the Black Sea as losses mount, particularly as its role in the war at this point in time is fairly minimal. I doubt this would happen simply because it would give Ukraine an absolutely immense political victory, one that the Kremlin would be loathe to do.

Ukraine has seemingly stabilized the front, but I have serious doubts as to whether or not they can continue to hold the line of Avdiivka in the long run. They have today lost a third Abrams tank, meaning that they have lost about a tenth of their fleet in a week. In addition, Russia scored their first confirmed kill on a HIMARS. Ukraine has put them through a lot of work over the course of the war, but their mobility protected them from counter battery strikes. Notably, they are one of the primary launching methods for some of Ukraine's longest ranged weaponry, such as the very limited supply of ATACMS they received (which was likely exhausted a while back). The loss of the Abrams and the HIMARS furthers the trend of Ukraine losing their best equipment, showing that they are truly pulling out all the stops in an effort to slow Russia's advance; except for the political ones. The mobilization bill remains stalled, and restructuring the military to bring units form the national police, national guard, and border patrol to the front ,(all three entities combined only have a few units at the front) has not happened.

The list of prominent warrants with international arrest warrants thanks to the invasion of Ukraine today. The International Criminal Court has ordered the arrest of two Russian military officials. One is Admiral Sokolov, who leads the Black Sea Fleet. He was reported to have been injured or killed after a strike last year on the Black Sea Fleet's headquarters, and he mostly remained out of the public eye for weeks before suddenly making an appearance. His only other appearances during this time was simply footage being recycled, or one bizarre teleconference where he seemed to be catatonic. The other name is Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash, who commanded long range aviation during the time period that the ICC is concerned with. Namely, October 10, 2022 through March 09, 2023. The pair face charges for directing attacks against civilian targets during this time, particularly Ukraine's energy grid. They also face charges of harming civilians at high rates due to these strikes.

After an additional delay due to a political crisis that saw the forced resignation of Hungary's president, the country's new president today, his first day in office, ratified Sweden's accession to NATO. The next step is to physically deposit the ratification papers in Washington, DC. The United States has said that the expect that to happen some point in time this week. With Sweden's accession to NATO being imminent, hopefully talks on the possibility of transferring Gripen warplanes from Sweden to Ukraine in the future will progress.

Macron today continued his bluster, suggesting that those not willing to make the bold decorations that maybe troops should be sent to Ukraine after all are cowards. His loud statements won cautious support from Czechia, which is now part of the small group of countries that have expressed a loose openness to sending troops to Ukraine under a particular circumstances. However, both Ukraine and the United States recognized that the United States will not be sending troops to Ukraine in the future. It is worth noting though that, in fact, the United States at least has publicly had a very limited presence in Ukraine even after the full scale invasion, mostly to check up on and repair some of the more sensitive equipment transferred to Ukraine, such as Patriot batteries.

As foreign aid for Ukraine remains stalled, Biden has received not one, but two snubs for his State of the Union address to be delivered on Thursday. Olena Zelenska (Zelenskyy's wife) and Yulia Navalnaya (the widow of Navalny) both declined invitations. The White House stated that Zelenska couldn't attend due to schedule conflicts, while staying that Navalnaya "could no longer attend", implying that she original meant to. Also pertaining to the United States was the announced departure of long time fixture Victoria Nuland. Having served in some capacity for decades, and having been one of the point officials for Ukraine and Russia even before the 2013-2014 revolution in Ukraine, her expertise and knowledge is not something that can be easily replicated. However, she is not without controversy. She famously said "fuck the EU" at one point in time. One would not be blamed for thinking that that might endear hear to Russia, but in fact, they view her as orchestrating a "coup" in Ukraine in 2014. In my view, she was a very competent yet middle of the road official. For instance, in reality, she was trying to organize a compromise with Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president of Ukraine who was overthrown in 2014. Her departure may herald a policy shift from the United States. I think it's far too early to draw any conclusions as to how American policy may change, though.

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