PrairiePundit

 Institute for the Study of War: The Russian military is reorganizing its military efforts in an attempt to remedy poor planning and execution based on erroneous assumptions about Ukrainians’ will and ability to resist.  Russian operations around Kyiv remain limited as logistics and reinforcements arrive but will likely resume in greater strength in the next 24 hours. Ukrainian military leaders say that they have used the pause to strengthen Kyiv’s defenses and prepare to defend their capital in depth. The Ukrainian military likely cannot prevent Russian forces from enveloping or encircling Kyiv if the Russians send enough combat power to do so, but likely can make Russian efforts to gain control of the city itself extremely costly and possibly unsuccessful. The Russian military has begun using area-attack weapons in the city of Kharkiv, dramatically increasing the damage to civilian infrastructure and the number of civilian casualties it is causing. It is using tube- and rock...

 Stephen Green: ... The Ukraine War scenes of Russian soldiers crying in shame and main battle tanks abandoned due to lack of fuel tell the story of a war gone seriously wrong for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Scenes like these aren’t uncommon: ... There is more. The Russians have operational and logistic problems in Ukraine, but they also have a moral problem. Perhaps that is why Belarus is sending in some of its troops in another backstabbing operation. See, also: Russian soldiers stuck on road get roasted by Ukrainian driver

 Mike Miller: ... As  reported  by the Majorca Daily Bulletin, Ostapchuck, who was a sailor on the yacht, was taken into custody after he allegedly opened several valves to intentionally flood the 156-foot-long vessel, severely damaging the engine room. The luxury yacht, named  Lady Anastasia,  is owned by Russian tycoon Alexander Mijeev, CEO of the Russian military weapons company,  Rosoboronexport . When officers arrived to arrest Ostapchuk, as  reported  by The New York Post, he allegedly said: “My boss is a criminal who sells weapons that kill the Ukrainian people.” The former crew member, a mechanic on the yacht for more than ten years, told the court his boss’s company produced armaments used in the attack: I watched the news about the war. There was a video of a helicopter attack on a building in Kyiv. The armaments used are produced by the yacht owner’s company. They were attacking innocents. Unrepentant, Ostapchuck told the judge he ...

  Breitbart: Exclusive: Texas DPS, Military Warn Border Personnel of Possible Retaliation from Mexican Gulf Cartel The Biden administration has been facilitating the cartel operations with its open borders policy and Texas cannot expect much help from the US in dealing with a criminal invasion and attacks of Texans. 

 Monica Showalter: Ukraine is fighting back. And that must startle invading Vladimir Putin, who seems to have expected another Afghanistan-style takeover, the way the Taliban did it -- the Taliban marching in, the the local president loading up his money and flying off without a fight, and the boldest locals cramming onto U.S. waiting jets. Few fought back in that one and the disaster speaks for itself. We don't see that in Ukraine. The U.S. offered Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a flight out and he refused it. "I need  ammunition, not a ride ," he told the U.S. He was last seen dressed in a military t-shirt with his cabinet in comparable gear and probably had a rifle in his hand. After that, he was seen in combat fatigues and a hard helmet,  marching through brush . "When you attack us, you will see our faces, not our backs," he  told the Russians . He told Ukrainians this might the the last time they saw him alive. The mayor o...

 Margot Cleveland: ... Earlier this month, the Russian-connected Alfa Bank filed a motion in a Florida state court seeking an extension of time to serve the numerous “John Doe” defendants it had sued there in June 2020. Alfa Bank had sued “John Doe, et al.” as stand-ins for the defendants it claimed were responsible for executing “a highly sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications between [Alfa Bank] and the Trump Organization” in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. After filing suit, Alfa Bank began discovery in an attempt to learn the identity of the individuals responsible for what the large, privately owned Russian bank alleged was the creation of a fake computer trail connecting it to the Trump Organization. Among others Alfa Bank sought information from was Joffe, the man identified as Tech Executive-1 in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. Joffe’s attem...

 CNBC: Russian ruble plunges nearly 30% against the dollar amid sanctions over Ukraine invasion Russia's stock market is closed and interest rates in Russia are now at 20%.  Apparently, Russians are making a run on ATMs to get cash.   The cold war against Russia is beginning to have an impact on the people.  Whether it will have an impact on Putin is uncertain. See, also: Texas governor asks retailers to remove Russian products Russian Vodka is likely to take a big hit. 

  Fox Business: Psaki pushes renewable energy to stop dependence on foreign oil instead of increasing US production   Comments come as fears that energy prices could continue to rise amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine Biden pretends that Russian and Opec oil does not have the same impact on the environment as US oil.  This is absurd.  In the process, he is harming US national security and the US economy to push a foolish environmental absurdity.   Every time you go past a gas station it is a reminder to vote against every Democrat on the ballot. See, also: Conservatives Blast California Democrat For Asking Saudis To Produce Oil Instead Of U.S. And: Psaki: Biden Wants To Rely On Foreign Energy So U.S. Can “Look At” Green Alternatives   Green energy is decades from working properly, so it makes zero sense to cripple our nation and make it beholden to foreign powers due to some kind of fevered ideological fantasy. And:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a...

 Washington Examiner: Texas ranchers are rejecting an offer from the federal government to cover property damages resulting from illegal immigration and drug smuggling, fearing the aid will come with strings attached and won't help with the underlying problems at the border. A Department of Agriculture initiative to pay landowners across the state for a wide array of losses they sustained due to a surge in trespassers traveling from the border north into Texas is being met with skepticism and calls for President Joe Biden to secure the border. Under the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service began last week allowing farmers and ranchers to claim reimbursements for more than two dozen types of costs sustained, including fencing repairs, livestock fatalities, irrigation, and crop planting, through July 5. The service has not disclosed how much funding it will make available or how many people it expects to apply to the new pro...

 Forbes: Even as the omicron variant loosens its grip on the world, destinations continue to require travelers to show proof of vaccination. And, increasingly, a paper CDC vaccination card is not cutting it. While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card , a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, the Mayo Clinic and other health and tech heavyweights. And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access to SMART Health Cards. “We've seen a notable uptick in states that have officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR code,” says Dr....

 Fox News: CBS News is being ripped by critics for blaming increased gas prices, inflation and supply-chain issues on Russia and the crisis in Ukraine rather than the Biden administration's handling of the economy. "The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis," the liberal network wrote in a Tuesday tweet, linking to an article that described what "could" happen as a result of Russian action in Ukraine rather than the economic challenges already impacting Americans. Despite the ongoing struggles hitting wallets across the country, the piece also claimed that Americans "were able to weather" spikes in the price of goods because of government provided enhanced unemployment benefits during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, stimulus payments and tax credits. ... Critics took to social media to rip CBS News, with some accusing it of undertaking an "ingenious effort" to...

 Roger L. Simon: ... Trump has received a fair amount of criticism from media on the right, from Byron York and even occasionally from Laura Ingraham, for harping on the 2020 election. On Feb. 26, those objections seemed puerile. The paramount importance of electoral integrity couldn’t have been more clear and Trump laid that out logically. He was aided by the repeated plays on the CPAC screens of the trailer for Dinesh D’Souza’s forthcoming documentary “2000 Mules,” which evidently includes significant actual footage of extraordinary amounts of late-night ballot box stuffing. The effect of this film may be powerful when it comes out in the spring. (Special kudos should go to Catherine Engelbrecht of “True the Vote,” which forced the government to “cough up” surveillance footage that made the documentary possible.) ... “The problem is not that Putin is smart. Of course, he’s smart. The real problem is that our leaders are dumb.” “Two days ago, they [the Biden administration] cancel...

 Just the News: A study of Maricopa County's mail ballots in Arizona's 2020 presidential election estimates that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures were counted without being reviewed, or "cured" — more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing acknowledged by the county. Commissioned by the Arizona State Senate, the signature verification pilot study was conducted by Shiva Ayyadurai's Election Systems Integrity Institute, which released its final report to the public on Tuesday. Ayyadurai is an engineer and entrpreneur with four degrees from MIT who bills himself as the inventor of email, a claim which critics have alleged is exaggerated. Of the 1,911,918 early voting mail ballots that Maricopa County received and counted in the 2020 presidential election, the county reported that 25,000, or 1.3%, had signature mismatches that required curing, but only 587 (2.3%) of those were confirmed mismatched signatures. ... There is...

  Breitbart: Alabama Solar Factory to Close After Joe Biden Guts U.S. Tariffs on China Biden is buying Russian oil and Chicom solar at the expense of US producers.  Trading with the enemy seems to be one of his "climate change" policies. 

 Reuters: European nations and Canada moved on Sunday to shut their airspace to Russian aircraft, an unprecedented step aimed at pressuring President Vladimir Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two. Aeroflot said it would cancel all flights to European destinations after E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the European Union had decided to close its airspace to Russian traffic. The United States is considering similar action, but has yet to make a final decision, according to U.S. officials. The U.S. government said citizens should consider leaving Russia immediately on commercial flights, citing an increasing number of airlines cancelling flights as countries closed their airspace to Russia. ... Germany, Spain and France joined Britain, the Nordics and Baltic states in declaring bans on Russian use of their airspace, a major escalation in a tactic by mostly NATO allies to wage economic war against Putin in retaliat...

  Washington Examiner: Ukraine claims roughly 4,500 enemies killed ahead of 'crucial' period in Russian invasion Russia gambled on a quick victory and it did not happen at this point.  ... The Kremlin gambled that the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over in a few days, the United States and its NATO allies would impose toothless sanctions, and the rest of the world would quickly return to normal. This sequence of events might still happen, but it is growing increasingly unlikely. Instead, Ukrainian military forces rose to the occasion, mounting a tenacious defense of their native soil and significantly slowing the pace of the Russian advance. The determination of Ukrainian resistance was underscored by the bitter fight over the Antonov Airport in Hostomel, a suburb of Kyiv, some 25 miles from the city center of Kyiv. After seizing the airport, Russian elite special forces were surrounded by Ukrainian troops and, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, were annihilated. Rus...

 Institute for the Study of War: ... Russian troops are facing growing morale and logistics issues, predictable consequences of the poor planning, coordination, and execution of attacks along Ukraine’s northern border. ... Russian forces in northeast Ukraine continue to face morale and supply issues, likely due to poor planning and ad hoc command structures, as ISW previously forecasted.[3] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported Russian forces are “experiencing an acute shortage of fuel and food“ and are increasingly using Belarusian rail networks to supply Russian forces in Ukraine.[4] ... Kyiv axis:Russian forces likely conducted an operational pause on the Kyiv axis on February 26-27 to deploy additional supplies and forces forward. Russian forces will likely resume offensive operations against Kyiv in the next 24 hours. Russian forces committed additional reserves to fighting west of Kyiv. Russian troops have not yet committed heavy armor and artillery forces to figh...

 Red States: While Kyiv is still under attack and great threat, it’s still standing yet another day, and that’s bad news for Vladimir Putin’s ambitions. As we noted on Saturday, Putin is reportedly furious. He thought he was going to walk in, Zelensky and the people would flee in panic, and then he’d install a puppet government. While he was right about Joe Biden and the EU being slow to the table on sanctions, the Ukrainian people’s resilience is what has turned the tide against him. Reports are that the Ukrainians have in just four days killed over 4,300 Russian troops. The losses are staggering, if the numbers are accurate. ... Just to put that in perspective, in 20 years in Afghanistan, more than 2,400 Americans were killed. Putin hadn’t even outfitted his soldiers with sufficient food or fuel to go more than a few days, according to reports. According to some of the soldiers, they didn’t even know they were coming to fight in Ukraine, and others are conscripts being forced to ...

 Washington Examiner: T he  European Union  has closed its airspace to any aircraft affiliated with Russia after the country  invaded Ukraine . European Commission spokeswoman  Ursula von der Leyen  announced on Sunday that European airspace would be shut down for  Russians . Russian state media are also banned from broadcasting in EU territories. ... The EU is also providing weapons , including fighter aircraft to Ukraine.  ... "We're going to provide even fighting jets," Borrell said at a Sunday press conference. "We're not talking about just ammunition. We are providing more important arms to go to a war." Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the EU "they need the kind of fighting jets that the Ukrainian army is able to operate... some member states have these kinds of planes," Borrell said. The announcement came after a series of financial sanctions on Russia and other western nations pledging humanitarian and military aid. President ...

 Power Line: ... As pretty much everyone has pointed out, Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea when Barack Obama was president (and Joe Biden was Vice President), did nothing while Donald Trump was president, and then invaded Ukraine while Joe Biden is ostensibly at the wheel. Coincidence? Funny how the Biden administration is a cascading series of unhappy coincidences. This story  about Trump is making the rounds: One has it that Trump — noting that Putin seized land from Georgia when George W. Bush was president and seized the Crimean peninsula when Barack Obama was president — warned Putin against a land grab on his watch. “If you move against Ukraine while I’m president,” Trump is said to have told the Russian leader, “I will hit Moscow.” Is it true? I doubt it, especially if Trump is the only source. But even if that anecdote is exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth, the broader point may be valid. Unpredictability is a good thing in a world leader. I think it is quite plaus...

 Washington Times: The White House held a brainstorming session on how to combat climate “denialism and delay” even as the Russian invasion of Ukraine fueled pressure on President Biden to end his crackdown on domestic oil-and-gas production. The White House released Friday a readout from the previous day’s first-ever roundtable discussion held by the Office of Science and Technology Policy [OSTP] on “the scientific understanding of why arguments for delaying action on climate change are appealing and how they can be countered effectively.” “It’s clear that a variety of special interests have had a vested interest in sowing doubt on climate change and feeding denialism and delay,” said White House senior adviser Neera Tanden in a statement. “We need to confront that reality.” ... It is not denialism.  It is history.   The climate kooks have been serially wrong about climate change or global warming for decades.  The poles are still not ice-free and coastal citie...

  Breitbart: Blinken: We’re Not Halting Gas and Oil Purchases from Russia Because We’re Trying to Minimize ‘Pain to Us’ If the Biden administration had not been blocking US drilling and the various pipelines, we would never have needed Russian oil, to begin with.  It does zero for their climate goals since the same amount of fuel is being used.  What it does do is fund Putin's war machine. The Biden administration's energy policy has no intelligence defense.  It hurts US producers and consumers and helps an enemy like Russia.  It is just nuts. See, also: Is this the end of the climate change scam?

  DailyWire: Trump Hammers Germany In 2018 For Relying On Russian Energy This was one of the reasons he opposed the Nordstream projects.  It is another example of the mistake of funding Russian energy projects and in effect funding the Russian war machine aimed at them. 

 DailyWire: Multiple Russian military aircraft were allegedly shot down on Friday night as Russia closed in on Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, according to claims from Ukraine’s government. “According to a statement from the military’s General Staff, the Il-76 heavy transport plane was shot down near Vasylkiv, a city 40 kilometers south of Kyiv,” The Times of Israel reported . “The Russian military has not commented on the incident so far, and the report could not be immediately verified.” Illia Ponomarenko, a reporter with The Kyiv Independent, claimed that a second Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transport plane was shot down in the area. “Yet another Russian Ilyushin Il-76 has been downed near Bila Tserkva, Ukraine’s State Agency for Special Communications says,” he wrote on Twitter. “The Battle of Vasylkiv Airfield rages high.” The Associated Press later confirmed the reports that the two heavy transport planes had been shot down.... ... It is not clear what the cargo was in the transpor...

 Fox News: The Russian effort to invade Ukraine appears to have been underfunded and under-equipped to handle the swift takeover that Russian President Vladimir Putin was hoping for. Russia is " increasingly frustrated " by the lack of momentum in the invasion, particularly in the north of the country, a U.S. official said Saturday. Despite the months of planning and preparation, Russia has yet to achieve air superiority, and Ukraine retains command and control. And a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin that the Russian military is not moving or fighting at night: Most movement starts just before dawn and occurs during the day because they don’t have night vision and are not trained in night vision, which contributed to slower than expected progress. Part of the issue may be that the Russian troops are conscripts, not highly trained. Many don’t know why they are there, according to the Soldiers’ Mother Committee. Several days before th...

 Streiff: One of the great lies we’ve heard from Joe Biden’s fluffers is the tale of glory where Biden rallies the Free World to the defense of Ukraine and something-something happens, and everything turns out great. No part of this could be further from the truth. From the earliest days, Joe Biden and his henchmen ignored a build-up of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine that began a year ago. As the crisis intensified, the Biden junta did things which a) made it look ridiculous (for instance, the repeated predictions over more than a month that Russia was invading Ukraine imminently) and b) seemed calculated to force Putin to attack Ukraine as a face-saving exercise (read Why Today’s Austin-Milley Press Conference Convinces Me That Joe Biden Wants Conflict With Russia in Ukraine ). When Putin declared the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk to be independent, Biden’s reaction was so weak that it seemed calculated to encourage Putin to do more, see Potemkin Sanction...

  Daily Mail: Sweden's no lockdown policy WAS right and countries that enforced them had 'significantly worse outcomes', report by its government finds Florida and Texas in the US have also demonstrated that better outcomes result from not locking down the population. 

  Epoch Times: NATO Secretary General Warns Russia of ‘Article 5’ Counter Attack  Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, has warned Russia that if Moscow’s attack against Ukraine spills over into other European nations who are member states of NATO, it will force the intergovernmental military alliance to take counteraction. ... This is an unsubtle message not to move on the Baltic countries that are now part of NATO and that were once part of the Soviet Union.  Estonia is one example.  At this point, it looks like Russia has its hands full with Ukraine which has been a much tougher target than expected. ... Cyber attacks on NATO nations can also trigger Article 5, Stoltenberg stated. NATO is presently focused on “strengthening our cyber defenses” and providing support to Ukraine, he added. In addition to military attacks, Ukraine has also been hit with cyberattacks from Russia. On Feb. 23, the websites of several government departments and Ukrainian banks...

 Epoch Times: Russian military forces advancing on Kyiv and other major cities have been slowed by Ukrainian fighters, defense officials in the United States and the United Kingdom said on Feb. 26. “Their momentum continues to be slowed predominately from a stiff Ukrainian resistance,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on a call. “What they have seen is a very determined resistance, and it has slowed them down,” the official said. According to the UK’s Ministry of Defense, the speed of the advance has been slowed, “likely as a result of acute logistical difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance.” The Russian forces are bypassing major Ukrainian population centers while leaving soldiers to encircle and isolate them, according to British officials, who added that the capture of Kyiv is still the primary goal of the Russian invasion . Fighting broke out in Ukraine ’s capital overnight but Ukraine still held the city on Saturday . Kyiv is about 240 miles from the Ukrain...

 Washington Examiner: ... Trump’s first reference to Ukraine in his CPAC speech was when he brought up Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff in relation to the phone call with Zelensky, adding that the Ukrainian president, who has taken up arms to defend his country from Russia, is “a very brave man.” And he defended his relationship with Putin. “I was with Putin a lot. I spent a lot of time with him. I got along with him,” Trump said. “It's a good thing to get along with people, not a bad thing. You can be very tough and get along.” The invasion, Trump argued, was the result of the election being “rigged” in 2020. “This horrific disaster would have never happened if the election was not rigged and I was president,” Trump said. “Under Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine. I stand as the only president of the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country.” But while he condemned the invasion and Biden’s response...

  Bloomberg: EU Moves Toward Expelling Russia From SWIFT With German Support   French finance minister calls it a ‘financial nuclear weapon’   The move would require unanimity among the 27 EU countries ...  The EU’s first two sanctions packages did little to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from continuing his aggressive actions against Ukraine, leading the bloc to start work on a third package that may include the SWIFT provision, according to an official familiar with the plans. Opposition to the move has been decreasing, with France and Italy also publicly expressing support.   ... SWIFT, which delivers secure messages among more than 11,000 financial institutions and companies, is central to the global financial system and an inability to access it could cause significant economic damage. ... The sooner it is in place the more effective it will be at imposing a cost on Russia. 

 Institute for the Study of War: ... Key Takeaways Russia has failed to encircle and isolate Kyiv with the combination of mechanized and airborne attacks as it had clearly planned to do. Russian forces are now engaging in more straightforward mechanized drives into the capital along a narrow front along the west bank of the Dnipro River and toward Kyiv from a broad front to the northeast. Russian forces have temporarily abandoned failed efforts to seize Chernihiv and Kharkiv to the northeast and east of Kyiv and are bypassing those cities to continue their drive on Kyiv.  Russian attacks against both cities appear to have been poorly designed and executed and to have encountered more determined and effective Ukrainian resistance than they expected. Russian movements in eastern Ukraine remain primarily focused on pinning the large concentration of Ukrainian conventional forces arrayed along the former line of contact in the east, likely to prevent them from interfering with Rus...

 Red States: As RedState reported earlier on Friday, Vladimir Putin’s plan to overtake Ukraine is not going particularly well. The four-pronged attack has stretched supply lines thin and weakened Russia’s ability to strike the decisive blow it was looking for. Specifically, plans to take the capital city of Kyiv have fallen well short of expectations and the resistance there now represents a huge problem for Russian forces staring a bloody urban conflict in the face. Multiple airborne assaults meant to take the city have been rebuffed since the invasion began, and Ukraine has now struck a major blow on that front, downing an Il-76 transport plane. With a capacity of 126 paratroopers and every reason to believe it was full, the number of deaths for Russian forces continues to far surpass pre-invasion estimates. ... Indeed Russia has been stunned by Ukraine's air defenses. ... "We do assess that there is greater resistance by the Ukrainians than the Russians expected," ...