Ukraine Update

There’s so much going on each day that it’s quite difficult to keep caught up. In terms of fighting we are seeing combat near Kharkiv and along the coast, and we are continuing to see what looks like an encirclement effort around Kyiv. The Ukrainians have gone back and forth about whether Kyiv is surrounded, but folks still seem able to escape by train. I don’t see how this ends without a potentially prolonged siege of Kyiv. If we’re thinking endgame it’s kind of looking like Russia and Belarus are planning to seize the eastern three quarters of the country while leaving Galicia mostly alone. If European weapons continue to flow into Ukraine through Galicia that may change.

There are *some* indicators that the Chinese are not happy with how the situation is developing, that they did not expect the war, and that in case of war they did not expect Ukrainian resistance. This is going to be extremely important to watch moving forward; as I’ve suggested on twitter, it’s never a good idea for an Order Muppet to tie its fortunes to a Chaos Muppet.

The absence of the Russian air force is one of the most curious parts of what’s happened thus far. Justin Bronk has a useful roundup of the theories on why airpower hasn’t played much of a role in the fighting, despite having spent six years bombing the Syrians. The other bit on airpower is the bizarre proposal to send jets from EU countries to Ukraine, which is almost too crazy to believe but which apparently has legs. I talk a little bit about this here.

The sanctions regime is IMPRESSIVE. I’ll have more on this later but the point seems to be to crush the Russian economy. And while Washington is coordinating the effort, the heavy lifting is coming from Europeans who appear to have lost their sense of humor about Russia.

Finally, lest we forget: