At Forbes, "In Night Raid, Choppers Blow Up Fuel Depot On Russian Soil Near Ukraine." (With video on Twitter.)
And Kyiv's denial is here, at the Guardian U.K. "Ukraine rejects Kremlin claim it sent helicopters to attack oil depot in Russia: If Moscow’s accusation is true, the airstrike would be first raid on Russian territory so far in the war."
Actually, Ukraine neither denied nor confirmed, which makes it all the more interesting --- and freaky for Russia. Perhaps Putin's not doing so well.
I saw this first at NYT, "M.I.T. Will Again Require SAT and ACT Scores."
Now from Kathryn Paige Harden, at the Atlantic, "The SAT Isn’t What’s Unfair: MIT brings back a test that, despite its reputation, helps low-income students in an inequitable society."
I cant't block quote this one. You gotta read the whole thing.
From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "How painfully, cringingly super-woke must a comedian get to stay relevant?"
They must really love their granddaughter and all her success with that massive rack.
At W Magazine, "Sidney Sweeney's Grandparents Think She Has the "Best Tits in Hollywood."
Enjoy it while you're young babe. There'll be another super buxom blonde celebrity coming after you in no time.
From grand strategist Edward Luttwak, at UnHerd, "America's leadership is now uncontested":
War is the domain of paradox, contradiction, and boundless surprise. It is not merely because of ignorance or stupidity that military history is a record of crimes, follies, defeats, and very few victories worth their cost. Even so, the Ukraine war is exceptional in the amplitude of its paradoxes, the extremity of its contradictions, and the magnitude of its surprises. For the “post-Pacifist” German mainstream, the most bitter paradox of all is that the Russians might not have attacked Ukraine had they foreseen Germany’s response: that the Bundestag would cancel the new Russian gas pipeline, invest in regasification terminals, send weapons to Ukraine, reaffirm its fealty to Nato, and move to drastically upgrade its armed forces with a €100 billion injection. The Russians could not possibly have known these things. The day before Putin launched his invasion, the German government declared that the new Russian gas pipeline would be inaugurated no matter what, and that they would send no weapons to Ukraine; it even affirmed it would prevent Estonia’s delivery of 122mm howitzers to Kyiv because those guns had briefly belonged to Germany when the West German army absorbed East Germany’s. Yet more egregiously, Germany also denied overflight permission for British transports delivering weapons to Ukraine. As for Nato, Germany reiterated its refusal to spend 2% or even 1% of its GDP for defence. If there were to be collective defence at all, let it be European, and directed by the decidedly civilian European Commission. In that remote past of a month ago, those were all decidedly mainstream preferences throughout Europe, albeit with a north-south divide. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden had all resurrected their ancient Baltic connections and therefore viewed Russia as a live threat. But in Italy and Spain such attitudes were rare, and declared Putin admirers could become ministers in coalition governments. As for France, Macron did not oppose the effectively pro-Russian stance of the German government because he also wanted a European defence, led by France, of course, as the only European nuclear power. All this has now slipped into oblivion in today’s Europe, where Nato’s centrality and its US leadership are largely uncontested. The Russians assessed Nato as weak because it was weak, and therefore attacked Ukraine. Yet because they attacked, Nato is stronger than it has been for decades. In every country’s military, the equally abrupt reversals are causing no end of trouble for the staff officers and civil servants working on next year’s budgets. The infantry is once again the queen of the battlefield, empowered as it is by anti-tank missiles that pursue armoured vehicles until they destroy them, and by portable anti-aircraft missiles that are the doom of helicopters, even if they cannot intercept much faster jets. This means that current combat helicopter and armoured vehicle purchases should be cancelled until they can be redesigned with much better protection; that is active defences that detect and intercept the incoming missiles — a process that might take years. (So far only Israel has active defence systems for its armoured vehicles ) By contrast, killer drones that can reliably destroy armoured vehicles and anything else beyond the horizon are grotesquely underfunded given their demonstrated combat value, largely because they are captive to air force priorities, set by pilots and ex-pilot senior officers. Only with political intervention can the stranglehold of the flying fraternity be overcome — they are today’s reactionary horse cavalry that resisted tanks in the Twenties. But the main thing, of course, is to have more infantry and to train it very well, and that raises the need for compulsory military service which only Sweden has confronted so far — by re-instituting it. Because Nato has not instituted a no-flight zone, for the excellent reason that it would lead to air combat that the loser might try to nullify by escalation, and with everything happening much too fast for adult supervision, no new air combat lessons have been learned. While the heroism of Ukrainian pilots flying older models of Russian aircraft against newer models is highly admirable, it adds nothing that is not already written in The Iliad. At the level of grand strategy, the largest and by far most consequential discovery is that in spite of decades of talk about the “diffusion of power”, particularly with the rise of China but also of Turkey, Iran, Brazil and South Africa, it is still the same old G7 countries that hold the keys of the world...
The headline claims he resigned, but when you read his comments, it's clear the Academy left him with no other choice.
At the New York Times, "Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars":
The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him. LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.” The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident. “I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday. “I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.” He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.” “Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.” Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility. Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time. In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast. Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.” “I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.” In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.” “He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock. Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said...
I said basically the same thing the other day, with a similar explanation in brief, here: "'Real Time' Panel Discusses Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Legislation (VIDEO)."
Oh sure, there are definitely a few heinous groomers around here or there.
They're evil. But in toto, the left is gunning for ideological hegemony over all of U.S. politics and culture, which Andrew Breitbart perceptively warned about years ago. Honestly, it may be too late to turn back the tide, so you have to put up pockets of resistance, like I do with my college students. I do a *ton* of ideological deprogramming. Young people don't read. Students today basically know nothing. The entertainment social media culture --- with an epidemic of youth narcissism and privilege --- has destroyed their brains, and therefore their intellectual skills, critical thinking abilities, and the gift of perspective. So they glom onto anything that's trendy and allegedly cool.
It's a fucking tragedy.
In any case, I saw this dude Josh Daws on Twitter last night expounding like he was *the* expert on all of the. Okay, not too bad:
I'm seeing a lot of people on the right share this meme. While it may be a strong satirical response to those who get lost in nuance, it fundamentally fails to recognize why the left wants to talk to your kids about sexuality. Let's connect some dots. 🧵 1/23. The left doesn't want to diddle kids. They want to create little revolutionaries. To do that they need to sever the bond between students and the parents they believe are raising their children to be hateful bigots. 2/23. In order to sever the bond between parents and their children, the left is using a two-pronged approach. Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology (properly known as Queer Theory) are not two unrelated sets of ideas. They are two parts of the same strategy. 3/23. CRT is usually the first set of ideas to be introduced. This is often enough to radicalize racial minorities, but it's merely step one for white (or white adjacent) students. 4/23. CRT instills in these students a negative self-identity as they're taught to believe they're recipients of enormous privilege that was stolen from others and that they are complicit in historic and ongoing injustice. In child terms, they're taught to believe they're bad. 5/23. Apart from the shame and guilt, this also gives them a worldview at odds with the one their parents grew up with and are trying to pass on to their kids. Step one is complete. 6/23. Once CRT is done tearing down these kids and leaving them with a negative self-identity, Queer Theory (QT) is introduced and offers them a wide assortment of positive self-identities to choose from. 7/23. Instead of living with the shame and guilt of being a member of the oppressive dominant culture, these students can be celebrated for coming out as gender nonbinary or pansexual. 8/23. In an instant, these kids can trade their negative self-identity and all the accompanying guilt and shame of being an "oppressor" for a positive self-identity as a much-venerated "oppressed" minority. 9/23. At this point, the left desperately wants this new identity to stay at school so it has time to be cemented before the parents find out. In the guise of helping these students, schools withhold this information about their child's new identity from mom and dad. 10/23. Once the parents do find out about their child's new identity it's firmly in place and an adversarial relationship between the child and parents has been manufactured. It takes extraordinarily deft parenting to repair the relationship once it has reached this stage. 11/23. The parents' tendency will be to overreact and push the child further into the arms of the woke radicals who now have the little revolutionary they wanted from the beginning. The bond between parents and child has been severed ending the perpetuation of hate and bigotry. 12/23. The left is determined to replicate this process in as many families as they can using whatever means at their disposal. It's not about diddling kids. It's about capturing the minds of impressionable children. 13/23. Unfortunately, this creates environments where actual predators can thrive. When young children are isolated from their parents, encouraged to adopt different beliefs, and keep secrets from their parents, they are made easy targets for abusers. 14/23 "But my school has Christian teachers and a Christian principal. They couldn't possibly have this agenda." Aha. This is where we turn to @joe_rigney and connect another dot. 15/23. Hear me loud and clear on this. Most teachers love the kids in their classrooms and want only the best for them...
Still more.
The new edition of the Economist is out, and it's a dandy.
See, "Why Ukraine must win: A decisive victory could transform the security of Europe":
When vladimir putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine he was not alone in thinking victory would be swift. Many Western analysts also expected Kyiv, the capital, to fall within 72 hours. Ukrainian valour and ingenuity confounded those assumptions. As the war enters its sixth week, the side that is contemplating victory is not Russia but Ukraine—and it would be a victory that redraws the map of European security.
Speaking to The Economist in Kyiv on March 25th, President Volodymyr Zelensky explained how people power is the secret to Ukraine’s resistance and why the war is shifting in his nation’s favour. “We believe in victory,” he declared. “This is our home, our land, our independence. It’s just a question of time.” The battlefield is starting to tell the same story as the president. After several weeks in which the Russian assault stalled, Ukrainian forces have begun to counter-attack. On March 29th Russia said that it will “fundamentally cut back” the northern campaign. Its retreat may well be only tactical, but Russia has in effect conceded that, for the moment, it cannot take Kyiv. Yet a lot of Ukraine remains in Russian hands, including the strip of land on the southern coast that the Russians now claim was their focus all along. A large chunk of the Ukrainian army, in the Donbas region, is vulnerable to encirclement. Nobody should underestimate Russian firepower. Even if its forces are depleted and demoralised they can dig in. Victory for Ukraine means keeping its Donbas brigades intact and using them to deny Russia a secure hold on occupied territory. For that, Mr Zelensky told us, the West must impose tougher sanctions on Russia and supply more weapons, including aircraft and tanks. Sanctions deplete Russia’s ability to sustain a long war. Arms help Ukraine take back territory. But nato countries are refusing to provide him with what he wants. Given what is at stake, for the West as well as Ukraine, that betrays a reprehensible failure of strategic vision. For Ukraine, a decisive victory would deter yet another Russian invasion. The more convincingly Ukraine can see off the Russian army, the more able it will be to resist the compromises that could poison the peace. Victory would also be the best basis for launching a post-war democratic state that is less corrupted by oligarchs and Russian infiltration. The prize for the West would be almost as great. Not only could Ukraine invigorate the cause of democracy, but it would also enhance European security. During 300 years of imperialism, Russia has repeatedly been at war in Europe. Sometimes, as with Poland and Finland, it was the invader. Other times, as with Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France, it was seen as a lethal threat and itself fell victim to aggression. A strong, democratic Ukraine would thwart Russia’s expansionism—because its borders would be secure. In the short term an angry, defeated dictator would be left in the Kremlin, but eventually Russia, following Ukraine’s example, would be more likely to solve its problems by reform at home rather than adventures abroad. As it did so, nato would become correspondingly less of a drain on budgets and diplomacy. The United States would be freer to attend to its growing rivalry with China. Alas, much of the West seems blind to this historic chance...
More at the link.
The culture war in Florida escalates.
Graeme Wood writes, on Twitter, "Yale administrator stole $40-million in $10k increments, to avoid detection. That means she stole $10k twice a day for 8 years, and no one caught on."
At Yahoo, "Yale employee stole $40 million from medical school for homes, luxury cars, prosecutors say":
A former Yale School of Medicine employee stole $40 million in computers and electronics from the school and sold the goods to fund a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, multiple properties and trips, prosecutors said. Jamie Petrone, 42, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return Monday in federal court in Hartford, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut announced in a news release. She is alleged to have run a scheme for eight years starting in 2013, causing Yale to lose $40,504,200, prosecutors said. Petrone started work for the medical school in the emergency medicine department in 2008, officials said. She most recently was the department's director of finance and administration. Petrone had the authority to make and authorize purchases for the department with a cap of $10,000, the release said. Since no later than 2013, she ordered or had other staff members order millions of dollars’ worth of electronic hardware, such as iPads and Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, from vendors using Yale Med funds, prosecutors said. Petrone then arranged to have the hardware shipped to an out-of-state business in New York, which resold the goods, they said...
At the Blaze, "Baltimore parents sue city after student graduates high school not being able to read; shocking number of students have failing GPAs":
With the lawsuit, which is still in its early stages, the couple is accusing Baltimore city officials and BCPS of failing to educate area children — and in the meantime wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money. "We’ve heard for decades about some of the failures to educate and things like social promotion, lack of resources," Jovani [Peterson], who ran as a Republican for city council president in 2020 on a platform of accountability in education, added. "[Yet] year after year, time after time, all we hear is, 'Well, this is the way it’s always been. This is the way it’s always going to be.'" His wife, Shawnda, has firsthand experience in the classroom. She worked as a public school teacher in Baltimore for almost a decade. She recalled how low standards and oversized classrooms led to educational failures. "Most of the time, my class size was pushing 40 kids with no assistant. To effectively teach 40 children, that is a challenging task," she said, adding that teachers are not the ones at fault. Rather, "it’s just the way that the system is run." Now, the couple hopes their lawsuit will serve as a message to the city and the school system that their management of the education system will no longer be tolerated...
I've never heard of anything this bad. It's really incredible and extremely sad.
Still more.
This is from Charles Sykes at the Bullwark.
I don't like these people, although I'm interested in this story.
Here, "You can be forgiven if you didn’t have “Right-Wing Jihad Against Disney” on your bingo card for 2022":
But I regret to tell you that the entrepreneurs of culture war have grown tired of ginning up indignation about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” CRT, and the cancellation of Dr. Seuss. And so they have found a bright new shiny object of outrage, that bastion of moral decadence and wokeness, the Walt Disney Company.This is, of course, the Disney of Mary Poppins, Frozen, Snow White, Moana, Encanto, High School Musical, Finding Nemo, 101 Dalmatians, Fantasia, Coco, Epcot Center, Bambi, Cinderella, Ratatouille, Splash Mountain, Beauty and the Beast, Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, Space Mountain, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, The Princess and the Frog, Remember the Titans, The Mighty Ducks. Old Yeller, and the It’s a Small World After All ride.
But the company has now spoken out against Florida’s new law regulating instruction about sexuality (read gayness), and, since clickbait doesn’t click itself, the new hotness is canceling Disney.
[Image of tweet from activist Christopher Rufo.]
You remember Rufo, of course. He’s this guy:
Rufo has become one of the go-to critics of CRT. His work has appeared in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Fox News, and the NY Post; he has also been featured by Hillsdale College; and touted by the Heritage Foundation.
Rufo also reportedly inspired Trump’s personal interest in the issue…
But here is Rufo, essentially giving away the game. For Rufo, it is all about “branding,’ and the audacity of his charlatanry is breathtaking:
[Another couple of tweets from Rufo, who is a dogged oppenent of the leftist culture agenda, though he goes to far in calling for a ban on *all* instruction in critical race theory, all the up to the university level. That's actually dumb. Grappling with stuff like CRT, which started in law school journals decades ago, is what you do at university.]
Now, he’s moved on, leading the attack on all things Disney. This week, Rufo fired up the jihad with what he excitedly described as a SCOOP: “Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, "as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child," she supports having "many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories" and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities.”
And he attached a video with the smoking wokeness...
Here's the video:
At FrontPage Magazine, "A hospitalized justice, a racist campaign, and the media heckler’s veto":
Even as Justice Clarence Thomas was hospitalized, a leftist lynch mob rallied on social media calling for his impeachment or death. They weren’t especially picky about which one it would be.
The same radical faction championing Biden’s selection of a black woman for the Supreme Court as a groundbreaking step forward and berating Republicans for refusing to support her were simultaneously demanding that the only sitting black justice on the court step down. The calls for Thomas’ death are based on pure unadulterated hatred. And so are the calls for his impeachment. None of them have even the faintest basis in anything resembling the law. The Women's March called for the impeachment of Justice Thomas because his wife, Ginni, had advocated against election fraud. Or as the racist leftist hate group put it, "The revelations that Ginni Thomas advocated for the overthrow of our democracy are disqualifying — not just for her as a human being of any decency, but for her husband.” A “human being of any decency” wouldn’t be going after a judge by targeting his wife. The only possible reason for disqualifying Thomas would be the presumption that men are obligated to control their wives. And prevent them from expressing political views in public. Is this the exciting new feminist position that the Women’s March would like to debut? Would any of the great minds at the Women’s March like to contemplate the legal implications of creating a male guardianship for women of the kind that might have existed in the 18th century? Justice Breyer’s wife is a member of the English nobility, it doesn’t mean he answers to the Queen. Judges whose spouses have an “interest” in a case are obligated to recuse themselves from it. But having political views about a national issue is not the same thing as having an “interest” in it. I doubt there’s a single judicial spouse who didn’t have an opinion on the 2020 election. And many of them may have signed petitions, posted comments, or otherwise urged an outcome. Or participated in the Women’s March attacking the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election. That’s political activism, it’s not an “interest”. The New York Times and the New Yorker cited a federal law stating that judges must rescue themselves if their spouses have “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” A point of view is not an interest. If it were, there could be no married judges. Nevertheless law professor Lawrence Tribe tweeted, “That clearly applied here.” How? “By writing to Meadows, who was chief of staff and active in the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, she joined the team resisting the results of the election,” Stephen Gillers, an NYU prof quoted by the New York Times, convolutedly argued. “She made herself part of the team and so she has an interest in the decisions of the court that could affect Trump’s goal of reversing the results.” Millions of Americans have phoned, sent letters and emails to members of Congress advocating particular policies. Did they all join the “team” of every single public official whom they contacted? Should any judges they’re married to have to recuse themselves from those cases? Had Ginni Thomas been formally employed by the Trump team, it would be another story. Instead she was an activist urging members of the team to do everything they possibly could. It doesn’t make her a member of the team. If that weren’t absurd enough, both media outlets have cited a law stating that “any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Is there any federal judge, appointed as part of a partisan process, whose impartiality can’t be reasonably questioned in partisan cases? As usual the Left has invented a standard that it doesn’t intend to apply in any other cases. Certainly not in any cases where it would inhibit its stable of unconstitutional judicial activists. “What did Justice Clarence Thomas know, and when did he know it?” a New York Times op-ed demanded. The author, Jesse Wegman, a Times editor, presumably knows the political views of his wife, Kyra, and also, presumably, he writes his own views in his columns. Not hers. This isn’t a complicated concept for any functional adult. Supreme Court justices are aware of the storm of controversy over the cases in front of them. They’re expected to follow the law and rule accordingly without taking into account the views of family members, friends, and New York Times editors. That’s what they do for a living. Thomas married Ginni in 1987. By then he was nearly 40 years old and had worked as a lawyer, a prosecutor, and as a civil rights official in the Reagan administration. He had developed his own point of view on the world. A unique one as testified by his rulings over the years. Leftists and their media would like us to believe that the only reason Justice Thomas believes anything or rules on anything is because his white wife tells him to do it. That’s stupidly racist. Even those who violently hate Thomas ought to be able to admit that he has a developed judicial philosophy and that his rulings reflect that unique worldview. The idea that a man who has defied expectations throughout his life, who has persevered despite being repeatedly hit with every racial slur in the book, is just following his wife’s lead is dumb beyond belief. And yet this is the argument that the lynch mob targeting Justice Thomas is going with. After all the fury over his wife’s activism, what does this amount to in Justice Thomas’ rulings? Where is the evidence of any conflict of interest or any violation of the law? It doesn’t exist. The New York Times noted that "Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr." responded to the Supreme Court rejecting an election lawsuit by Texas by "issuing a brief statement suggesting the majority had acted too soon in shutting the case down." Actually Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas joining him, on procedural grounds. At the time the dissent was issued, the media and its legal experts argued that it was not a ruling on the election, but on jurisdictional standing. The paper also misleadingly notes that, "Justice Thomas addressed election fraud in a dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to turn away a challenge to Pennsylvania’s voting procedures." The Supreme Court had previously deadlocked several times over the issue with previous dissents by Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas, and the Thomas dissent highlighted by the paper had focused on the importance of providing "clear rules for future elections." The media and its legal experts, shoddy as they may be, know all this perfectly well. They know that the paper is deliberately misrepresenting these cases in order to single out Thomas. And that there’s no basis for doing so. Thomas wrote as one of the court’s two leading conservatives, along with Alito, and there was nothing unique in his dissents that deviated from his judicial philosophy. Using his wife to attack him is the despicable tactic of a ruthless totalitarian movement with no shred of decency. Having run out of any credible legal arguments, the lynch mob once again borrows the familiar logic of Russiagate to argue that their smear campaign proves that Thomas must recuse. “Judging by the nature of the text messages and the uproar over them, that provision alone is enough to require Justice Thomas’s recusal, legal experts said,” the New York Times argued. Since the New York Times and its media partners are the source of the “uproar”, conservative judges would have to recuse every time lefties launch a vocal smear campaign against them. That’s using the media as a heckler’s veto to bar conservative judges from cases. And that’s what this is really about.
I've been lagging on my Ukraine blogging since the slapping blowout at the Oscars!
Back at it now, in any case.
At WSJ, "Moscow’s new focus on Donbas and retreats from Kyiv set the stage for a protracted war of attrition":
Russia’s war on Ukraine shifted gears this week, as Moscow, lacking the strength to pursue rapid offensives on multiple fronts, began pulling back from Kyiv and other cities in the north, and refocused for now on seizing parts of the country’s east. The pivot, after five weeks of intense fighting, was a gauge of the intensity and effectiveness of Ukrainian resistance and signaled a decision by the Kremlin to pursue what is likely to become a prolonged war of attrition. Ukraine’s counterattacks—including a helicopter strike inside Russian territory—and Moscow’s redeployment toward Donbas in Ukraine’s east suggest that both sides believe they can win, making it unlikely that peace talks will result in a deal anytime soon. Russia’s “military and political strategy hasn’t changed, it remains to annihilate Ukraine,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian minister of defense who advises President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. But he said, “Now, their capabilities no longer match their strategic vision.” That could be a recipe for a prolonged conflict, increasing the stakes for both sides’ ability to raise troops and money and access weapons, ammunition and supplies. For Ukraine, with its smaller military resources, such a shift to a lengthy conventional war heightens the need for shipments of heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, Ukrainian officials said. Russia’s declared shift toward trying to seize Donbas could allow it to concentrate firepower on a smaller front, shorten supply lines and make air support easier, giving Moscow a better chance at military success. It would also position Russia to try to encircle some of Ukraine’s best units, which are stationed there. The Russian pullbacks from Kyiv, however, also allow Ukraine to redeploy additional resources to the eastern Donbas front—and to do it much faster because of shorter routes. Ukrainian officials were initially skeptical of Russian announcements that Moscow would limit military operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv, but lengthy convoys of Russian armor began leaving these areas Thursday, and scores of villages in northern Ukraine have been retaken by Ukrainian troops. Russia appears determined to retain a smaller, blocking force around Kyiv to threaten the Ukrainian capital and prevent a large Ukrainian redeployment to Donbas, Ukrainian officials say. But a threat of encirclement of these Russian forces, northwest or northeast of Kyiv, could still precipitate a full withdrawal toward the Belarus border in coming days, they say. “The enemy is not fully successful in retaining the areas that it wishes to keep. Our forces are kicking them out in the northwest and northeast, pushing the enemy away from Kyiv and making another attempt at storming it impossible,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Friday. Russia sent some of its best units to Kyiv and northern Ukraine. Many of them have been battered by fierce fighting, and would need considerable time to be reconstituted and prepared for redeployment, military analysts say. U.S. officials estimate that some 10,000 soldiers out of Russia’s 190,000-strong force in Ukraine have been killed, with tens of thousands of others injured or taken prisoner. The elite 4th Guards Tank “Kantemirovskaya” Division lost 46 of its estimated 220 T-80 tanks, according to visual evidence compiled by military analysts. Seeking to replenish its forces, Russia has been calling up reserves, sending to Ukraine troops deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia as well as conscripts. Some of these troops, particularly from the Russian National Guard, which usually performs mostly internal-security duties, have refused orders to deploy to Ukraine. British Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who headed operations for the British Defense Ministry and also helped create Britain’s military training program in Ukraine, said Russia no longer has many additional reserves to throw into new offensives. “Most of the effective combat power is already assigned to the war,” he said. So Russian President Vladimir Putin “has to build some more, which is tricky without mobilizing and under sanctions, or concentrate the combat power that he has.” Russian nationalists, dismayed by the retreat from Kyiv, have called on Mr. Putin to mobilize for all-out war...
Still more.
I hope my retirement accounts didn't take too drastic of a hit. I'm not getting any younger!
At WSJ, "Stocks Post Worst Quarter in Two Years Despite Strong Finish":
A head-spinning quarter came to a disappointing end, with major stock indexes suffering their worst performance in two years and other markets recording some of the most extreme moves on record. The action reflects a sense of dislocation shared by many traders and portfolio managers who are confronting challenges not seen in years. Yet their unease has been offset in part by a fierce determination among many investors to take advantage of any price declines to add to positions in stocks, bonds and commodities. Inflation has surged to its highest level in four decades, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rattled already stretched supply chains and the Federal Reserve has embarked on a rate-increase plan whose pace investors are struggling to handicap. All three major U.S. indexes declined more than 1.5% on Thursday, with losses accelerating in the final hour of the session as traders dumped stocks to end the quarter. The declines have dragged the S&P 500 down 4.9% over the past three months, snapping a seven-quarter streak of wins. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite have lost 4.6% and 9.1%, respectively, this year. U.S. oil futures cleared $130 a barrel in early March, a level that flashed a warning signal for many economists. But the futures have since declined to around $100, a price that likely limits immediate economic damage but still marks the biggest quarterly gain since 2008. “There are different parts of this market that rhyme with history, but really not even that well,” said Eric Veiel, head of global equities at T. Rowe Price, which oversees $1.5 trillion in assets. “This is a truly unique time.” Underpinning the uncertainty that permeated the first quarter was the Fed’s plan to raise rates. In doing so, the central bank removed a historic wave of stimulus that had driven stocks to dozens of records over the past two years and fueled a rush into some of the most speculative investments in the market. That made the recent market downturn markedly different from the crash in 2020, which was abnormally short and severe. “The changes to our market views are just as dramatic as they were when the Covid-19 pandemic emerged two years ago,” Erik Knutzen, multiasset class chief investment officer at Neuberger Berman, wrote in a note to clients after the Ukraine invasion, adding that he is pessimistic about stocks over the next year. Few assets were left untouched by the volatility. Investors have dumped bonds, sending yields on corporate and municipal bonds as well as Treasurys sharply higher. The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index—largely U.S. Treasurys, highly rated corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities—returned minus 6% in 2022 through Wednesday, headed toward the biggest quarterly loss since 1980. Wheat prices have climbed 31%, logging the best quarterly performance since 2010. The swings in nickel prices during the Ukraine crisis were so large that the London Metal Exchange closed trading in the commodity after a huge run-up in prices inflicted severe financial pressure on producers that sold nickel as a hedge. “That’s not rational behavior for an instrument, and that’s terrifying,” said Paul Britton, founder of Capstone Investment Advisors, an investment firm specializing in trading volatility. He says he expects the turbulence to continue the rest of the year. Adding to the pain for many investors was the decline among shares of big technology companies, the biggest market leaders of the past decade. Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., lost about $232 billion in market value in a single session after posting disappointing earnings, the biggest loss in market value for a U.S. company in history. The next day, Amazon.com Inc. recorded the biggest-ever one-day gain in market value. Meta had its worst quarter since its shares started trading publicly in 2012 and has been one of the biggest losers within the S&P 500. Other former market leaders also struggled. Netflix Inc. has lost 38% this quarter, its worst period since 2012. PayPal Holdings Inc. has also lost around 39%, its worst quarter on record, and Salesforce.com Inc. finished its worst quarter since 2011. The S&P 500 outperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite by about 4.2 percentage points, the greatest margin since 2006, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Other corners of the market have fared better. The S&P 500’s energy sector has soared 38% and notched its best quarter in history. Energy stocks like Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Halliburton Co. have skyrocketed more than 95% and 65%, respectively. Some optimism crept back into the market recently. After the Fed raised rates in March for the first time since 2018, a familiar pattern emerged. Investors piled back into stocks and stepped in to buy the dips in shares of tech and growth companies, as well as more speculative bets that had suffered to start the year. Bitcoin prices have rebounded in March. Meme stocks like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. have soared, gaining more than 30% for the month. Some analysts said individual investors appeared to be piling back into the market, driving some of the gains, a move reminiscent of last year...
