The Smoke Eater for August 22, 2022
Thoughts and prayers, boom sticks, and Gary the Cat
Good afternoon, this is The Smoke Eater for Monday, August 22, 2022 and there's just five words to say...
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ABOVE THE FOLD
Daria Dugina, the daughter of Alexander Dugan, died after a her father's SUV exploded while she was leaving a Russian traditionalist festival in Moscow.
Dugin, a Russian ultra-nationalist, has been called, "Putin's Rasputin," and "Putin's brain" in much of the western press. He's believed to be a primary influence among Russian elite, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Though he holds no official government position, he’s appears on pro-Kremlin TV all the time. He’s coined phrase, "Novorossiya" (or New Russia). Its his ideas that are used to rationalize modern Russian imperialism.
Founder of the neo-Eurasian movement, which seeks to restore former Warsaw Pact territory to new totalitarian Russian empire, Dugin wrote in 2009 that the world should be seen as a battle:
“Human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness” represented by the “Atlantic” Americans and Europeans, and the distinctly “Eurasian” Russian culture, which was still capable — unlike the sclerotic West — of honoring the mainstays of human life: “God, tradition, community, ethnicity, empires and kingdoms.”
Dugin has led recruitment efforts to find people with military and combat experience to join the Eurasian Youth Union (ESM), and fight for Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. The ESM's webpage, says rather bluntly: "Our Union has one absolute enemy. It is the USA. This is the beginning and the end of our hatred."
MORE: In the 1990s, Dugin was a proponent of National Bolshivism, a precursor to modern Russian fascism, and his ideas have been instrumental in the creation of "alt-right," influencing adherents like Richard Spencer. The ESM's flag is almost identical to eight pointed chaos star found in punk culture and fantasy games like Dungeon and Dragons, or Warhammer. They like to march around in black t-shirts emblazoned with the chaos star, take selfies with guns, and pick fights. Members of ESM once trashed an exhibit to Holodomor, Josef Stalin's genocide of Ukrainian people in the 1930s.
Like her father, Daria Dugina was also a Russian ultra-nationalist. She headed up disinformation operations at United Wold International and Geopolitica, using sock-puppets posing as US citizens to spread crazy, bullshit conspiracies and propaganda. As evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine piled up, Dugina claimed they were staged, that the town of Bucha was used for a massacre because it sounds like, "butcher." In June, Dugina told state-run radio, Sputnik, that the Ukraine's Azovstal steel plant was being defended by "Satanist(s)" and "black energy."
Dugina was placed on a US sanctions list, along with a bunch of other members of Putin's inner circle, back in March for her work in Project Lahkta (AKA: Russian fuckery). Her father has been on one since 2015.
Pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Dugin telling investigators that he and his daughter had recently received threats form "Ukrainian nationalists." Reuters reports that Russian security services are already pining the blame a Ukrainian woman, noting Russia is demanding her extradition from neighboring Estonia.
FUN FACT: Estonia has been nervously watching the war in Ukraine, and has been the target Russian nationalist rhetoric in recent months.
Ukrainian officials have denied any involvement. Andrii Yusov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s chief directorate of military intelligence, told the Washington Post that Dugina wasn't on the radar of Ukrainian military intelligence. "The process of internal destruction of the ‘Russky Mir,’ or ‘the Russian world,’ has begun,” said Yusov, adding, “The Russian world will eat and devour itself from the inside.”
Russian-American historian and Kremlin critic, Yuri Felshtinsky, commented to the Daily Beast that Ukraine special forces are likely too busy blowing up Russians inside their own country, adding that Dugin was rich and had many enemies in Russia, "People in the Russian security services who, for one reason or another, are interested in eliminating him,” Felshtinsky said. “Even if we put aside the usual provocation..."
This morning, Dugina's death was being called a "flashpoint" for the war, coming just days before Ukraine celebrates its independence day, and as safety concerns from western leaders and the UN grow over shelling near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.
Some outlets have had the balls to quote Denis Pushilin, a political puppet in Russian-occupied Donetsk, who rushed to blame the attack on Ukrainian "terrorists." Similarly, Tigran Keosayan, a Russian talking head, wrote on social media, "I don’t understand why there are any buildings still standing on Bankova Street in Kyiv." Another state-sponsored mouthpiece offered an absurdly convoluted comment that blamed, "the globalist Anglo-Saxon elite in service to their inhuman transhumanist ideology," shortly after the attack.
Russia blaming others for this attack is ironic considering Russian leaders' long history of indiscriminately silencing critics through assassinations, genocides (plural), false flag terrorist attacks and scorched earth campaigns, especially Putin -- who has links to several assassinations and attempted assassinations, including Boris Nemtsov, Boris Berezovsky, Sergi Skripal, Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, Sergei Magnitsky, Anna Politkovskaya Natalia Estemirova, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Yushenkov, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Viktor Yushchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Alexei Navalany.
MORE: World leaders called for the release of Navalany over the weekend, noting his "courage." A vocal critic of Putin critic and political prisoner, Navalny survived an attempted assaination by spooks, and was recently placed in solitary confinement for attempting to start a union at a prison labor camp.
NOTE: The bottom line here: nobody in the media knows what happened. The US (usually) isn't so brazen or sloppy, though armchair analysts and conspiracy theorists are already fashioning tinfoil hats. It's possible this was a Ukrainian resistance force sending a message to Russia with love. It's also possible this was another FSB fuck up, that Dugin and/or his daughter were intended to be a sacrificial martyrs in an effort to shore up support for Putin's imperialism, and a signal to think twice before crossing the former KGB agent who's consolidated power and held it in a death grip for well over 20 years -- going so far as to force parliamentary changes to presidential term limits so he can rule indefinitely.
BELOW THE FOLD
Last week the US announced it was sending another $775 million military aid package to Ukraine. The package includes vehicles and ammo, including 40 mine-resistant MRAPS, 50 Humvees, 15 speedy little ScanEagle drones, 16 105mm howitzers, 1,000 Javelins, 1,000 anti-tank rounds for the Carl Gustafs sent by western allies and AGM-88 missiles that can target Russian radar systems.
This new $775 million package is separate from the $1 billion package that included more HIMARS that was previously announced last week.
MORE: Back in May, Defence Blog reported an anonymous buyer had purchased $65.2 million in parts for the Swiss-made Carl Gustaf rifle, (aka “The Swedish Hammer of Thor”). Time has a story by Brian Bennett on an effort to get Ukrainian pilots A-10 Warthogs, training them via VR systems. The Drive's Emma Helfrich notes that Ukraine has been flying SU-25s Frogfoots, which are the old, Soviet equivalent of A-10s without the infamous BRRRT.
With more ammo on the way, Ukraine has finally gotten much of the bigger artillery pieces that western allies (namely the US) promised. They’ve been using them slow down the Russian advance and create what war nerds and policy experts call, "a grinding war of attrition."
In other words: it’s middle of "the Zapp Brannigan defense."
But there have recently been attacks in Russian-occupied areas that defy logic. In Crimea the Saki Air Base came under attack, destroying air support for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. In Dzhankoi, a munitions depot and an electrical substation were destroyed.
Ukrainian officials are shrugging and suggesting that this may be the result of people smoking in non-smoking areas, or a local resistance force.
Satellite images show damage that is more consistent with artillery strikes. Michael Weiss and James Rushton report for Yahoo News that, on paper at least, the weapons the US and western forces have been sending Ukraine simply don't have the range to hit targets more than 120 miles away. Some demolitions experts have called bullshit on the resistance story, saying available evidence points to missiles as opposed to cleverly placed bombs.
The current theory is Ukraine has access to a longer range missile than is being officially reported. Weiss and Rushton think it's possible Ukraine has Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), and everyone's just being quiet about it.
ATACMS can be fired from the HIMARS the Ukrainians are already getting, and the Lockheed Martin-made missile system even has a convenient disguise to help the thing avoid being detected. Because ATACMS can travel at Mach 3.5, it's unlikely anyone will ever snag a video of one in flight.
Washington has said it won't supply the Ukrainians with any long-range munitions out of concern they could be used to strike targets outside Ukraine (as if someone can’t roll up to border and start firing into Russia). But that was last month, and things change.
FUN FACT: The Pentagon now says it's sending AGM-88's for Ukraine's MiG 29s fighter jets -- after photos popped up on social media earlier this month.
ONE MORE THING...
Former basketball star Dennis Rodman says he's traveling to Russia to negotiate for the release of WNBA star Brittany Griner. Rodman feels that his relationship with autocratic rulers puts him in a unique position, saying, "I know Putin too well."
The US has already offered a prisoner swap, Griner and American idiot, Paul Whelan, for international arms dealer, Viktor Bout (the inspiration for the character in the Nicolas Cage film, Lord of War).
Griner is believed to have been arrested in retaliation for sanctions the US placed on Russians with ties to Putin following the invasion of Ukraine. Whelan was allegedly arrested in retaliation for the arrest of Maria Butina, a Russian spy who'd infiltrated top-level Republican fundraising circles during the lead up to the 2016 election, though Putin has denied Russia is engaged in so-called hostage diplomacy.
A senior White House official told NBC's Jonathan Allen, "It’s public information that the administration has made a significant offer to the Russians" but added Rodman is more likely to screw things up (again).
It's unlikely the US will take this as an opportunity to trade Rodman for Griner.
BONUS: Neil Hauer has a great profile on Anzor Maskhadov, a Chechen guerilla fighting for the Ukrainians. Anzor's father was Anslan Maskhadov. Anslan is widely credited with winning the first Chechen war, which began in December of 1994 following failed coup with Little Green Men. Anslan became third president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. In October of 1999, then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared the Chechen government to be illegitimate, and he invaded the capital, Grozny. As President, Putin began the Second Chechen War and left Grozny completely flattened by artillery fire, eventually declaring victory over the ashes. Anzor was killed in 2005 by Russian forces, and his body was thrown in an unmarked grave.
Lefty-military podcaster, Joe Kasabian, tells the story of first Chechen war in his podcast, Lions Led By Donkeys. It's worth a listen.
OK, here's your cute critter video!
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