Weekly Mind Dump, 1/7/24-1/13/24: Ukraine Hits the Russians Where It Hurts: Behind the Lines

And - Don't argue with the MAGA crowd, which is like administering medicine to the dead.

The author with an Afghan Mujahid guerrilla leader in Peshawar

Setting Russia Ablaze: Ukraine’s Behind the Lines War Against Moscow

An Afghan guerrilla fighter once told me, “We are not afraid of the Russians. They are drunks. We are not afraid of their God. He does not exist. But we are afraid of their helicopters.” It was a refrain often told, in various forms, by the mujahidin “holy warriors” who battled Soviet troops in the ten-year Soviet-Afghan War, in which I played a small role. To help them deal with the enemy’s choppers, we provided the Afghans with lethally effective Stinger missiles. At one point, I was tasked with finding 800 mules on short notice to assist the mujahidin in bolstering their provisions supply chain (I found a good deal with an Egyptian mule trader).

I had dealt with guerrilla warriors fighting in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as well as Afghanistan in my government career. For the most part, they are not folks you want to take home to dine with the family. But as proxy warriors they generally are sublime. Excellent bang for the buck.

As the Russians become more adept at holding their lines against Kyiv’s forces and with continued Western aid in question, the Ukrainians appear to be placing more emphasis on irregular or asymmetric warfare, as witnessed by the rising number of mysterious strikes not only behind Russian lines in occupied Ukraine, but also deep inside Russia.

Several weeks ago, Russian authorities reported that sabotage caused the derailment of a 19-car freight three hours southeast of Moscow. On the same day, a gunpowder factory blew up in the same region in an act of suspected sabotage. 

In the first half of 2023, at least 57 attacks were reported on Russian railways, military enlistment centers, energy sites and other targets, according to the Moscow Times, compared with 21 similar attacks in 2022 and only one in 2021. Most of the attacks targeted Russian rails to wreak havoc on their logistics. The independent Russian media organization Mediazona reports that, as of last October, 76 incidents of railway sabotage had been carried out in Russia since the invasion in 2022. Furthermore, Ukrainian agents are believed to have carried out targeted assassinations of Russian and Ukrainian collaborationist officials, including in Moscow.

Washington is nervous about Kyiv’s heightened emphasis on such operations, lest the U.S. be blamed in assisting. “Our position on these remains the same; we do not enable or encourage attacks inside of Russian territory,” said a White House National Security Council spokesperson.

The goal of guerrilla operations and sabotage is to demoralize the enemy and keep them off guard as well as to “deliver death by a thousand cuts,” as one analyst told the New York Times.

Ukraine’s military leaders established the Ukrainian National Resistance Center to train and coordinate partisan networks behind enemy lines — akin to Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, whose mission was to “set Europe ablaze.” A key player in this effort is the Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), headed by 38-year old Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov. Granite-faced yet charismatic, Budanov has proven so effective at bleeding Russia, that Moscow has issued a warrant for his arrest, reportedly has launched at least 10 failed assassination attempts against him, and recently managed to poison his wife (now recovering). Shrapnel riddles his body as a result of battle wounds from fighting Russians prior to their 2022 invasion.

Hitting the Russians behind the lines and in their own country “demonstrates to everyone [inside Russia] that now it touches upon them,” Budanov told an interviewer late last year. “Besides that, it undermines the belief of the population in an all-powerful Russian regime that is the strongest one in the world. They start asking those logical questions, like: ‘where’s our air defenses that are supposed to protect us?’ And they start blaming their authorities for that,” he added. Another senior Ukrainian intelligence official told the New York Times, “Russian special services should get used to the fact that our people are everywhere.”

The Ukrainians clearly have a good grasp of, and are skilled in applying, age-old lessons on strategy encompassing irregular warfare. Chinese strategist Sun Tzu teaches that “that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. . . attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.” And there’s that other Chinese strategist and master of guerrilla warfare Mao Zedong’s famous dictum: “Guerrillas must move amongst the people as fish swim in the sea.”

Will asymmetrical combat win the war for the Ukrainians? Not in and of itself. But among the arsenal of weapons that contributes to the enemy’s defeat, it has an impact. Our role is to provide the necessary material wherewithal to help our Ukrainian friends to bring that about.

MAGA Now Devours the Minds of Educated Professionals

A little over a year ago, in a piece titled, “What Being a Target of the Right Teaches Me,” I wrote:

As a journalist, I’ve always prided myself on being attacked by both left and right. To me, this means I’m doing my job. I call the shots as I see them. A now ex-friend refused to speak to me for a year after I published articles critical of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election. A former fan in Nevada ended our online friendship abruptly, spitting “Snowflake!” at me after I’d excoriated Donald Trump in another article. Winston Churchill reportedly said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” And FDR added, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”

I guess I’m a kind of Rorschach test. Readers see in me what they want. I belong to no political party and often voted split ticket in the pre-Trump days. I regard none of my critics as “enemies,” just close-minded hair-trigger judgmentalists. I write according to my moral compass. Like it or leave it. These days, I’m catching flak exclusively from the right — mostly far-right.

I went on to describe the attacks I was getting on LinkedIn over an article I published on the face of American fascism. Of the almost 30,000 who read it, hundreds left comments which were hostile, often attacking me personally. These were MAGA supporters — but overwhelmingly successful, educated White male professionals, almost all in the private sector. I noted, “This bodes ill for the future of our republic.”

Well, it’s happened again. In response to my essay, “Will Donald Trump Spark Another Civil War?” — so far, the 400-plus comments are dominated by hostile MAGA supporters, again, overwhelmingly educated professionals. A Whitman’s sampler:

Let's hope so.

So is the FBI going to recreate another Jan 6?

Clearly, it’s far more likely that the Biden Administration’s weaponization of the Federal government is more likely to cause that outcome. Regardless of the ignition point, I like the chances of conservatives. We’ve got most of the guns.

Bruno: You do well with fairy tales Wow!

It is the current administration that is creating the Spark!

Nope. The demonrats will.

The only civil war will be the one instigated by the ones pulling the strings. Administrative State, Uniparty, the corrupted intelligence agencies and the ones most to benefit from the chaos. Just like 911 it will be used to push through draconian restriction on our freedom's. Paving the way for full totalitarian controll. All the while the inverted liars will accuse Trump and the Make American Great Again movement, with the corrupt Corporate Media parroting.

In a disordered era, more people fall prey to misinformation, which tends to flourish in communities that feel destabilized by unwanted change. According to Dartmouth political scientist Brendon Nyhan, three catalysts drive people to fall for misinformation: first, “ingrouping,” or a kind of tribalism in which social identity is seen as providing strength and superiority in the face of perceived enemies (e.g., liberals). In this setting, “belonging is stronger than facts,” according to sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. Second, high-profile political figures fan the flames of misinformation for their own self-interest. Third, social media act as a force multiplier for propaganda.

Check on all three points and LinkedIn proves the latter.

I don’t respond to the attacks. Why? To quote Tom Paine, “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead.”

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.