PUTIN WANTED TO INVADE UKRAINE IN THE WORST WAY: And he did. It’s difficult to write about a story like the invasion of Ukraine because the surprises keep coming minute-by-minute. But one surprise we’re still trying to figure out – Russians seem to be pretty bad at behaving badly. Slate.com had a piece that summed it up: No, You’re Not Imaging It: Russia’s Army Is Inept.They quoted B.A. Friedman, a military historian and tactician saying: “This isn’t a good army executing a bad plan. It isn’t a good army executing outdated or out-of-context tactics. It’s a bad army!” Of course, bad armies can ruin your day – or your country, but we didn’t expect this.
ALL SIGNS POINT ONE WAY: Apparently, Bellingcat Executive Director @christogrozev shared a meme on social media showing a typical – though slightly altered - road sign in Ukraine. It looked like any old road sign you’d see with a blue background and white lettering with arrows showing driver’s the way to different locations. Someone changed the names of the destinations, however. The meme read, “Ukraine’s Interior Ministry asked residents to take down street signs in order to confuse oncoming Russian troops. The state road signs agency went one step further. (Roughly: all directions are to “go f*#@ yourselves.”
ON THE OTHER HAND: Ukrainian citizens have proven to be exceptionally good at improvising acts designed to make the Russians rue the day they messed with Kyiv. One of our favorite examples was the work of Taras Ostpchuk, a 55-year-old Ukrainian merchant seaman, who worked on the Lady Anastasia, a luxury yacht owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Mijeev whose company Rosoboroexport, sells weapons. Ostpchuk was put off by what Russia was doing to his homeland – so he opened valves in the engine room of the yacht and “partially sank” it near the island of Majorca, Spain. Being a standup guy, Ostpchuk turned himself in reportedly telling authorities: “I don’t regret a thing” adding “My boss is a criminal who sells weapons that kill the Ukrainian people.” Apparently, he found some sympathetic ears – since at last report, he had been released from custody and was on his way back to Ukraine to fight Russians.
YACHTS OF A DIFFERENCE CALL SIGN: Then there is the story about a super yacht supposedly owned by Vladimir Putin. According to Business Insider, the hacktivist group known as Anonymous claims they went online and changed the vessel’s call sign to “FCKPTN” and altered its eventual destination as “hell.” Maritime monitoring sites later reported that vessel (the real name of which is “Graceful”) was last reported in the Baltic Sea and its destination was: “FCKPTN.” We’re sure if he has any trouble finding it, the Ukrainian Ministry in charge of road signs will draw him a map.
SAILOR SOLIDARITY: It was not just anonymous hacktivists and Ukrainian sailors making life difficult for seagoing Russians. According to Raw Story, a Russian ship approached a Georgian oil tanker and requested fuel. Reminiscent of the salty-tongued Ukrainians of Snake Island (who, thankfully despite earlier reports, appear to be not dead,) the tanker crew told the Russian to “…go f..yourself. Glory to Ukraine. And you can always use oars, so row!” Sensing a theme here?
GOING OUT WITH A BANG: There has been a lot of attention paid in the U.S. media to Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons if things don’t go the way he wants. Those threats did not go unnoticed in the Russian media, either. Russian state TV anchor Dmitry Kiselyov commented recently, “Our submarines alone can launch more than 500 nuclear warheads, which guarantees the destruction of the US and NATO for good measure. The principle is: why do we need the world if Russia won’t be in it?”
THAT SPECIAL GLOW: Russian forces (for some reason) captured the site of the entombed Chernobyl nuclear facility last week. Perhaps that was the one part of Ukraine that was not full of local citizens ready to put up a fight. The Express newspaper in the U.K. dug up the fact that the Russians have been working on a documentary about the 1986 nuclear disaster that pinned the blame for the monumental mishap on the CIA. The Dead Drop told you about this back in 2019. Stung by the success of the HBO dramatization, Chernobyl that accurately gave responsibility to Soviet incompetence and petulance, Russia began to produce a series with their own version of the truth. The Express says: “It is unclear if the Russian drama about the Chernobyl disaster was ever released.” If they are still working on the series – maybe they can now shoot on location.
MASSIVE LEAK: You should always be wary of news items labeled “Important, if true.” But we were intrigued a tweet by SAIS information technology professor Thomas Rid, who said the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda apparently “leaked what appears to be the personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.” He said the leak, “appears to contain names, DOBs, addresses, unit affiliation, passport numbers, and phone numbers for thousands of alleged Russian military personnel.” We figure the exposure of all that data will be confirmed if Russian soldiers start getting robo-calls offering extended warranties on their tanks.
THEY ARE SO ADVANCED IN RUSSIA…. They publish future news today. Or news they wish were true. The Russian state-operated news agency RIA Novosti published an article on February 26, essentially saying that the war in Ukraine was over and Russia won. They subsequently took down the piece which said, “Ukraine has returned to Russia” and celebrated “the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe.” Russia media watchers like Julia Davis suggest that Team Moscow was getting ahead of their skis just a bit.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
WHADYA CALL ‘EM? The folks at Task & Purpose have put together a fun little video explaining to civilians what you call members of the various U.S. military branches. It includes good advice like: never call a Marine, “soldier.” They also reveal what members of the military call each other – for example, if one sailor calls another “shipmate” it usually means they are a little bit pissed at them. Next, maybe Task & Purpose can create a video explaining what military members call civilians. And, if all this works – maybe they can do yet another production convincing the media and public not to call people working at the CIA “agents” but rather, “officers.” That may be too hard. For example: Newsweek is out with a piece titled: “Former CIA Op: Putin Looks Like He’s Crossed Over to ‘Dark Side of History.’” The story starts with “A former CIA agent says…” and goes on to report the views of “Tracy Walder, who served both as a covert operative for the CIA and as an FBI special agent.” Now, there are two titles you never want to get mixed up.
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