The Momentum Shift is Here: Russian Planes Drop from the Skies, Zaluzhny Interview: F-16s

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [The Momentum Shift is Here: Russian Planes Drop from the Skies, Zaluzhny Interview: F-16s]( The Momentum Shift is Here: Russian Planes Drop from the Skies, Zaluzhny Interview: F-16s, Phillips. P. OBrien, Phillip’s Newsletter on Substack For the past 5 months we have been watching one of the most peculiar offensives in modern military history. Having conscripted a new Army last fall, and allowed PMC Wagner to recruit a large force of its own, the Putin regime has used both to launch almost continual assaults on Ukrainian forces to seize a number of small cities/large towns in Donbas including Vuhledar, Avdiivka, Bakhmut and others. They took parts of a few, none of others, but they kept coming for months and months. Looking at the Deep State map from this morning, you will see tiny little eruptions up and down the line where the Russians have been trying to take these strategically unimportant towns. Now for a while there has been a discussion about when the Russian offensive would ‘culminate’ (reach the point where the attacks would stop because of an inability of the Russian to keep up the momentum). The assumption was that Russian command would be ‘rational’ in that it would stop its offensive when the costs incurred became all out of whack to the gains being made. It was widely known that more advanced western equipment was being shipped to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians prepare for their offensive in the Spring/Summer. Surely, therefore, it was judged that the Russians would stop at some point, and rest up and prepare for the Ukrainian assault. They never did, which was a surprise and a welcome one for the Ukrainians. Instead of doing the rational thing and culminating they kept feeding more and more forces into the fight (particularly Bakhmut) and making painfully small advances. Frankly it looked like strategic insanity from the Russian point of view, wasting forces for no purpose when you know the Ukrainians are preparing their own offensive. - [The Debt Ceiling Soap Opera, in Subtitles]( The Debt Ceiling Soap Opera, in Subtitles, Julia Ioffe, Puck The Russians and Chinese are loving—just loving—Congress’s latest debt budgetary hostage crisis. But how much can they really leverage it in their long economic war to replace the dollar as the world’s denominator? Last week, when Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, testified in front of Congress, she had something to say about the body’s toying with the debt ceiling. Their little game of chicken, she said, was playing right into the hands of America’s main adversaries, Russia and China. “It would be almost a certainty that they would look to take advantage of the opportunity,” she said, to play up “the chaos within the United States, that we’re not capable of functioning as a democracy.” A debt default, she added, would unquestionably “create global uncertainty about the value of the U.S. dollar and U.S. institutions and leadership, leading to volatility in currency and financial markets and commodity markets that are priced in dollars.” In fact, both Moscow and Beijing have already been hard at work spinning the debt ceiling standoff into domestic propaganda. Kremlin-owned television has been reveling in every single U.S. bank failure. “The U.S. banking system is shaking like it has a bad fever,” one anchor crowed upon delivering the news of First Republic’s demise. Other reports are predicting that an American default could happen any day now, which would finally usher in the kind of world Vladimir Putin has been pushing for for years: one not denominated in the U.S. dollar. - [Nazi cavorting anti-vaxxer, and now candidate for president, RFK Jr., is suing Daily Kos for protecting our community. The legal fees are piling up, you can donate $3 here to help us fight back?]( - [Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says]( Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says, Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan, The Washington Post THE DISCORD LEAKS: Yevgeniy Prigozhin said he would tell Ukraine’s military where to attack Russian troops if they pulled their own forces back from the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries were taking heavy losses In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not confirm the contacts with Prigozhin. “This is a matter of [military] intelligence,” he said. The Ukrainian leader also objected to airing classified information publicly and said he believed that the leaks had benefited Russia. But there is no debating Prigozhin’s bitter frustration with the grinding fight in Bakhmut. He has complained, publicly and privately, that the Russian Defense Ministry has not given his fighters the ammunition and other resources they need to succeed. Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Over the past few months, in a grinding back and forth measured by city blocks, Ukrainian and Russian forces have taken steep casualties. - [The GOP has to keep pretending its Biden investigations are legit]( The GOP has to keep pretending its Biden investigations are legit, Hayes Brown, MSNBC A new document from the House Oversight Committee's Republican staff claims that there's a serious legislative reason for its probes. Let us take {Committee Chair James] Comer at face value for just a moment. In this hypothetical world, maybe he really is concerned about “the national security implications of a Vice President’s or President’s (and candidates for such offices) immediate family members receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals, foreign companies, or foreign governments without any oversight,” as his memo on Wednesday indicated. Tightening ethics laws surrounding the presidential family would be a net good and well within the scope of the Oversight Committee. But when you think about it for more than two seconds you can see why there will be little appetite among the GOP to actually make these legislative changes. Even if they could make any new tweaks to the law retroactive to any point in time when Biden was in office and Hunter was operating his businesses that are under scrutiny, those changes would then also cover the Trump administration. That would be too embarrassing given how the Trump Organization operated as a funnel for foreign money to pour into the family’s bank accounts during those years. - [Doesn't matter if you're a coffee or tea person, whatever you're drinking tastes better out of a Daily Kos mug. Get yours now!]( - [A zero-tolerance approach to talented jerks in the workplace is risky]( A zero-tolerance approach to talented jerks in the workplace is risky, The Economist Even if banning them sounds attractive Moreover, the extreme version of the management dilemma posed by the talented jerk rarely exists in practice. The risk that you may be getting rid of the next Steve Jobs is infinitesimal. Just contemplate all the jerks you work with. If you really think they are going to revolutionise consumer technology, create the world’s most valuable company or have members of the public light candles for them when they die, you should probably just go ahead and make them the ceo. But the red-faced guy in sales who shouts at people when he loses an account is not that person. That said, the enthusiasm for banning jerks ought to make people a little uneasy, for at least three reasons. The first is that the no-jerk rule involves a lot of subjectivity. Some types of behaviour are obviously and immediately beyond the pale. But the boundaries between seeking high standards and being unreasonable, or between being candid and being crushing, are not always clear-cut. Zero tolerance is dangerous. You may mean to create a supportive culture but end up in a corporate Salem, without the bonnets but with the accusations of jerkcraft. - [The GOP's shrinking Senate map]( The GOP's shrinking Senate map, Josh Kraushaar, Axios Driving the news: In an interview with CNN last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was cautious about the number of top GOP pickup opportunities — despite a historically favorable map giving the party a strong chance of ending Democrats' 51–49 majority. “I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way," McConnell said. He only listed four Democratic-held seats as top opportunities: West Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Why it matters: If Trump's endorsements of weak candidates hurt GOP prospects in 2022, it's the prospect that Trump will lead the GOP presidential ticket that could jeopardize purple-state opportunities in 2024. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Biden puts the screws to McCarthy on default]( - [CNN's defense of Trump town hall is generating more outrage]( - [FBI cuts head off Russia's 'premier espionage tool']( Want even more Daily Kos? Check out our podcasts: - [The Brief: A one-hour weekly political conversation hosted by Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld]( - [The Downballot: Daily Kos' podcast devoted to downballot elections. New episodes every Thursday]( Want to write your own stories? [Log in]( or [sign up]( to post articles and comments on Daily Kos, the nation's largest progressive community. Follow Daily Kos on [Facebook](, [Twitter](, and [Instagram](. Thanks for all you do, The Daily Kos team Daily Kos Relies on Readers Like You We don't have billionaire backers like some right-wing media outlets. Half our revenue comes from readers like you, meaning we literally couldn't do this work without you. 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